Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash got hooked on horror movies at 8 years old when his mom took him to see a double-feature of “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Exorcist” at a drive-in theater in the family’s Volkswagen.
Slash’s love affair with creepy stuff that began in the 1970s continues every year at Universal Studios Hollywood as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy-winning guitarist writes a musical score for one of the haunted houses at Halloween Horror Nights.
This year, Slash wrote his seventh Horror Nights soundtrack — this time for Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines, one of eight new mazes featured on select nights through Nov. 3 at the Hollywood movie theme park.
“It’s fun to do,” Slash said during an interview at the Horror Night media preview. “I look forward to it every year.”
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Scoring a haunted house soundtrack is a yearlong process that requires close collaboration between Slash and Halloween Horror Nights creative director John Murdy.
The horror fans met in 2013 when Universal launched a Black Sabbath maze at Horror Nights.
“The first thing he said to me was, ‘How do I do this? I want to work with you,’” Murdy said during an interview at the Horror Night media preview. “So we landed on the music approach.”
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Slash scored the soundtrack for the Clowns 3D maze in 2014 and has done the soundtracks for all six Universal Monsters mazes since 2018.
Murdy knew Slash was a huge Universal Monsters fan the first time he walked into the guitarist’s studio and saw a Bride of Frankenstein picture on the wall.
“I know that his heart is in the right place,” Murdy said. “I trust him implicitly.”
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Murdy doesn’t really set any musical constraints, guidelines or guardrails for Slash when it comes to Horror Nights soundtracks.
“You’re on the Mount Rushmore of guitarists,” Murdy recalled telling the musician. “So I’m not going to tell you musically what you should do.”
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The creative process begins with Murdy sending Slash the concept for an upcoming haunted house.
“That just gets my wheels turning,” Slash said. “Melodies just come.”
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Slash sends back some written notes about his musical ideas for the maze.
“I never reference old stuff,” Slash said. “I just come up with whatever inspires me at the moment.”
Murdy passes along character art, scenic designs and photos from the maze set as they become available. Slash offers up early musical ideas.
“He’ll do a rough demo that’s pretty much just guitar,” Murdy said.
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Eventually, Murdy writes a 100-page treatment for each maze that serves as a script-like narrative from the visitor’s point of view. At the same time, Slash starts composing the main musical theme for the maze.
“You want to create a mood. That’s the most important thing,” Slash said. “But you’re doing it with music and with guitar. You want to have a melody and a rhythm and something sort of catchy.”
As the process moves along, the team locks in on a central melody and musical style that will serve as the film score for the maze.
“When you’re doing these things you can’t just change the music every week,” Slash said. “You can change certain dynamics about it, but keep a through line.”
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The main musical theme is then broken down into 20- to 30-second segments for each scene in the maze.
“There’s a central melody that he comes up with and then there’s lots of different variations as you go along,” Murdy said. “And then there’s usually a couple of other different pieces of music.”
Establishing a consistent rate of beats per minute for the music allows the soundtrack to ratchet up or slow down the action depending on the intent of each maze scene.
“If there’s a series of scenes that are connected, you want to flow with that same tempo,” Murdy said. “If we want to change the mood, then we might change the tempo.”
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Once the music is done, the final step is for Slash to head out to Universal to hear his soundtrack inside the maze.
“He came down to listen to the mix and give us his thoughts and comments,” Murdy said. “He gets involved all the way down to the mix.”
After a year of work, Slash was thrilled with how the soundtrack turned out for the Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines maze.
“It came out really, really cool,” Slash said.
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The “Sweet Child O’ Mine” guitarist has a job every year at Horror Nights if he wants it, according to Murdy.
“As long as he’s willing to do it, I will always want to work with him,” Murdy said. “He’s one of my absolute favorite people to work with because he’s so cool and he gets what we do and understands it.”
Slash now has enough Horror Nights soundtracks to warrant an album. The 11-song compilation is available at Universal throughout the Halloween season.
Someday soon Slash might have his own Universal maze based on one of his own horror movies.
The guitarist launched the BerserkerGang horror production company in 2023 with “The Breach” that played at several film festivals. Slash produced his first horror film in 2013 with “Nothing Left to Fear” starring Anne Heche.
