Hard & Fast

Album: Apocalyptic Love (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • Slash (from MusicRadar.com): "It's a flat out riff in A, C, D and E. It was written in between takes of another song we were working on. After working on something for a long time you need to break out of it. That came up spontaneously on the spot and we put it together real fast then went back to work on the other song."
  • Some of the lyrics on Apocalyptic Love concern vocalist Myles Kennedy's long conquered drug past. "I think there was a period in his life that we've often talked about that is the basis for the majority of the lyrics on this record," Slash told Billboard magazine. "There's some random songs that don't have anything to do with that as well, but I'd say the majority of them have really pointed lyrics about something in particular that he went through."
  • Kennedy told Noisecreep that two tracks, this song and "Not For Me," "definitely hearken back to a period in my life with certain substances and alcohol where I was kind of - for lack of a better word - experimenting." He added that this was, "because I really, through high school and most of the early part of my adult years, didn't really do much in the way of partying. And then for some strange reason, I kind of woke up one day and just did a total about-face and did things and went down a road that to this day, when I think bout it now, 13 years after the fact, I'm like 'Wow, that's pretty amazing.'"
  • Some of Kennedy's lyrics for this song came from reading Glenn Hughes' autobiography From Deep Purple to Black Country Communion where the rock vocalist writes about the things he went through during his years of substance abuse.

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