Good evening everybody, today we’ll take an in-depth look at the apparent feud between Buckethead and Slash. And when I say feud, I mean, one guy saying a bunch of stuff and the other guy saying nothing.

In 2000, 4 years after slash quit the band, Buckethead joined guns n roses, with many people seeing him as being Slash’s replacement, even though technically he wasn’t.

(June 2004 guitar world magazine)
The bizarre thing about the feud is that it started after Buckethead had already left guns n roses in 2004. Beginning with an interview slash gave in june 2004 for guitar world magazine.
Fans were given the opportunity to ask Slash a question, and one of those ‘bizarre’ questions was
“have you ever felt like beating the crap out of buckethead”
to which slash replied
No. I don’t see any reason why I would. At this point I have a hard time even accepting Buckethead is real. I’ve never met him 

ironically, a few years later, slash himself was accused of not being real…kind of.
(South Park Scene)

(2004 halloween oct 31)
Later that year During Rocktoberfest on Halloween night 2004 velvet revolver took to the stage dressed up as the new guns n roses.
with scott weiland dressed as axl and slash dressed as buckethead.
Whether u think slash was mocking buckethead or not is really up to you to decide. Personally I think he was. As its pretty hard to imagine it being a tribute.

(2004 Eminem dressed as Axl vma’s Aug 29th 2004)
Its worth noting that velvet revolver weren’t the first ones to dress up as axl and buckethead that year. 2 months previously, at the 2004 vma awards, Eminem and d12 also dressed up as guns n roses, seemingly mocking GNR’s 2002 vma appearance. Eminem dressed as axl and whoever that is, dressed up as Buckethead.

(2007 Howard Stern)
And then there’s the infamous 2007 appearance slash made on the howard stern show In promotion for his newly released autobiography.
When Stern asked Slash his opinion of Buckethead.
Slash said “Buckethead isn’t a rock guy but I heard that technically he’s great”
Stern replied “so what you’re saying is, he’s technically skilled but doesn’t have much heart or much feeling?”
To which slash replied “yeah, pretty much”
Wow, bear in mind this was 2007, 3 years after buckethead left gnr and by that time had already released albums like colma, electric tears and population override. Which have as much heart in it as any albums you’re ever likely to hear.

(Dave Mustaine 2008 July)
The following year, in an interview for laweekly megadeth frontman and guitarist Dave mustaine said

“When I think about a guy with a hat, I think of slash. I think slash is an excellent guitar player, he’s one of my favourites. But then you see some guy like Buckethead..Buckethead is probably twice as good a guitar player as me and slash combined, and can stand having fried chicken rubbed up against his face all night”.

Shortly after Slash responded to Mustaines comment saying
“That is actually true, anybody who knows me knows that technically I couldn’t play my way out of a paper bag…or a Kentucky fried chicken bucket for that matter.
I manage to do what it is I do, based on a certain kind of feel and sound. I’m getting better at it but I’ve never been what you’d call a technical guitar player. So he’s totally right”.

And there’s slash dropping that ‘technical’ word again, even though dave mustaine never mentioned about Buckethead being technical.

(2008 Chinese Democracy released)
That same year Chinese Democracy was finally released 8 years after Buckethead joined the band and 4 years after he left. Slash was quoted as saying he enjoyed the album and that it was the album that he felt Axl always wanted to make.

After years of going back and forth and law suits, Slash would rejoin Guns N Roses in 2016 and the band went on to have one of the most financially successful tours of all time. During the tour the band played many of the Buckethead driven Chinese democracy songs which slash commented on in October 2018 stating.

(Music radar Oct 2018)
“ (chinese democracy) was a whole different Guns N’ Roses animal in terms of the musicians involved. A lot of it I thought was really cool, like Buckethead did some cool shit so I would stick to that but do it in my own way, so it didn’t feel too foreign. That was interesting and fun… more fun than it was intimidating.”

(in promotion for Slash album Living the dream
Guitar world Oct 2018)
“I want to give credit where credit’s due – the guitar players that played on Chinese Democracy, Buckethead being one of the main ones – are amazing guitar players.
I have to give those guys a shout-out because that stuff was cool. Very different to what I normally do. So it’s been interesting learning some of the stuff that was on that record. I definitely had to figure out ways to adapt to it.”

So, 18 years after Buckethead joined Guns n Roses, and over a decade after Slash basically said “he had no heart”, Slash finally gave props to buckethead. (trump clap)
Meanwhile in all that time, Buckethead has released over 400 albums, which I can assure you, aren’t just technical, and has never mentioned Slash or responded to any of his comments.
But maybe one day they’ll all sit down together and enjoy a nice cold doctor pepper…whats the worse that can happen?