Slash Childhood Home — Consett Road, Blurton, Stoke-on-Trent

Slash — Saul Hudson — lived on Consett Road in Blurton, a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, until the age of six, when his family relocated to Los Angeles. He was born in Hampstead, London on July 23, 1965, to a British father (Anthony Hudson, a graphic artist who designed album covers for David Bowie and others) and an African-American mother (Ola J. Hudson, a costume designer who worked with Bowie). The family's move to California transplanted him into the Laurel Canyon music world, where his mother's industry connections meant rock royalty passed through the house — Bowie himself was a family friend.

Growing up in LA, Slash took up guitar in his mid-teens and fell into the Sunset Strip hard rock scene that would coalesce into Guns N' Roses in 1985. His playing style — Les Paul through a Marshall, pentatonic blues phrasing with a ferocious physicality — owed debts to Aerosmith's Joe Perry, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, and the British blues tradition, all filtered through a distinctly LA aggression. His top hat and waterfall of dark curls made him one of rock's most recognisable figures; the 'Sweet Child O' Mine' intro riff is one of the most played guitar lines in history.

Consett Road in Blurton is a quiet residential street in the southern suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent. There is no formal marker acknowledging Slash's early years there. Blurton is a short drive from Stoke city centre. Stoke-on-Trent, the Five Towns of Arnold Bennett's novels, is an unlikely nursery for one of rock's great guitar heroes — a fact Slash has acknowledged with some affection in interviews.