Slash reveals 'Sweet Child O' Mine' riff origins

Slash has opened up on how he came to write the lead guitar riff for 'Sweet Child O' Mine'.

The Guns N' Roses song is the band's most famous track and a recent BBC poll decided that it has the second best guitar riff of all time.

Speaking to Billboard, axeman Slash said that the lick merely came from an unassuming jam session with bandmate Izzy Stradlin.

He said: "It was a riff that I was messing around with and really just sort of discovering all of the notes within the riff. We were sitting in the living room of this house we were staying at [during] pre-production for 'Appetite for Destruction'. It was just a fun thing that I felt like I'd stumbled on, and then Izzy [Stradlin] started playing chords behind it and it started to take on a little bit more of a song vibe.

"I had a [Les Paul] replica back then that used to be Steve Hunter's, so I was probably using that [not the 1959 replica acquired later]. We were playing acoustic in the living room, there was no amps or anything - not acoustic guitars, just acoustically.

"Axl [Rose] had apparently overheard us doing it from upstairs in the bedroom where he was and so we were at the rehearsal room the next day or later that night and he goes, 'Hey, play that riff that you were playing'. We started playing it and all off a sudden, he had words for it and it just became the song."

Watch the video for 'Sweet Child O' Mine' below: