When the ultimate geek meets the ultimate rock star

On 6th January 2007, the unthinkable happened. Former Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash shared the stage with Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and played some parts of the classic “Welcome to the Jungle,” with a Gibson Les Paul (one is on display at Guitar Point near Servay, Penampang – costs more than RM10,000) plugged into a pair of Marshall half-stacks. You know what that means? It means sonic heaven for guitar fans like me.

It came at Las Vegas, during Gates’ final Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote speech before retiring from Microsoft.

So basically, it was Gates’ final day at work at Microsoft, the company he founded more than 30 years earlier, and Slash played guitar at his retirement party. The mere thought of that happening is so cool that if there’s any chance it happening again, I think I should gonna book quite a few Vegas vacations in advance.

I’ve seen seen Slash play live with Guns N Roses once, 16 years ago, at Manchester City Stadium. Of course they played “Welcome to the Jungle” then. It was simply… electric!

Happy retirement Bill.

Note about the video: the young woman at the beginning of the video is Guitar Hero world champion (didn’t get her name).