Slash thought he was "probably gonna die" filming 'November Rain'

Everyone remembers the music video for the Guns N’ Roses classic ‘November Rain’ but it turns out poor Slash thought he was “probably gonna die” during the making of it.

The guitarist discussed the video during a new interview with Yahoo!. “‘November Rain’ as a video was really Axl [Rose]’s kind of brainchild, and I don’t even know exactly what it’s about,” he admitted.

Slash then revealed that the iconic moment in which he emerged from a church to drop an epic solo was the idea of director Andy Morahan. “But [Morahan] didn’t tell me that they were going to be doing bomb shots with me with a helicopter!” he explained. “And when I got out onto the set and did my thing, then I noticed that this helicopter would come back and forth at extremely fast speeds and get really, really low.”

That’s why Slash ended up fearing for his actual life. “I thought, ‘Well, this’ll be my last day on Earth,’” he recalled. “It was the kind of thing where you’re just resigned to the fact that you’re probably gonna die. And at that point in time, I was pretty much had that — I didn’t have very much fear of death in those days.

Anyway, we shot it and I had no idea what it was going to look like afterwards. But it ended up looking pretty cool. But I didn’t know it was going to be as memorable as it turned out to be.”

‘November Rain’ was one of the most expensive music videos ever but it paid off in the end: in 2018, it became the first video made before YouTube’s founding to surpass one billion views. As of this year, the video has now amassed over 1.8 billion views.

For more on this topic, follow the Classic Rock Observer.