Slash made his Broadway debut with a one-night appearance in The Lost Boys, playing guitar during the musical’s rock-club number “Have to Have You”. The Guns N’ Roses guitarist is also a producer and investor in the Tony-winning stage adaptation, and his participation reinforced the show’s deliberate connection to late-1980s rock culture.

The musical, adapted from Joel Schumacher’s vampire comedy, opened ten days after Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction in 1987. Slash recorded the single’s studio solo but had not previously performed it with the cast; he attended the completed show for the first time shortly before the appearance and said its music and effects had a strong emotional impact on him.