Slash (12 page)

Slash on the circuit, 1985.

I went on to join a band called Black Sheep with Willie Bass, which was a rite of passage for a succession of talented musicians. Willie is a great front man; he’s a really tall black guy who sings and plays bass and he had a penchant for landing the hottest shredder guitar players of the day, one after the other. He’d had Paul Gilbert, a virtuoso, Yngwie Malmsteen type; Mitch Perry, who had played with Michael Schenker; and for a time, me. Shredding was not my forte—I could play fast, but I valued classic rock-and-roll, Chuck Berry–style playing over heavy metal showboating. I took the gig anyway, because, after Hollywood Rose, I realized that getting out there and being noticed was essential: it was a way to meet other players and learn about other opportunities in a fashion that suited my personality more than networking on the Strip.

I took the gig and played to about eight hundred people out at the Country Club in the Valley, and it was a particularly good show, I must say. It was also the first time I’d ever played to so many. I enjoyed the exposure, though I remember thinking that I’d played terribly. I found out later that Axl was there, but I had no idea at the time because he didn’t come up and say hello.

Black Sheep wasn’t really doing much by this point; after that one gig, we didn’t have any others booked; we’d just get together to rehearse now and again. My brief experience with them might not have been exactly what I wanted to do, but it did make me more public, so it seemed to me that if playing in a well-liked L.A. club band was winning me attention and putting my career on some kind of track, joining the biggest L.A. club band of the day might not be a bad idea at all.

Poison’s guitar player, Matt Smith, called me when he decided that he was going to leave the band. His wife was pregnant and they had decided to move back to Pennsylvania to start their family. Matt and I had friends in common and he’d invited me to a few of Poison’s parties. Matt was a good guy, he was down to earth—the least poisonous of the bunch. Matt knew that it wasn’t my thing at all, but he said that it was a good gig that paid well and I already knew the band was definitely in demand. I was pretty against it, but Matt talked me into trying out.

Poison rehearsed in a big flat way down in Venice on Washington and La Brea or something like that, which was plastered with posters…of
themselves. I showed up to the audition wearing my typical uniform: jeans, T-shirt, and that day a pair of these really cool moccasins that I stole from the farmer’s market—they weren’t beaded, just really plain brown leather with short fringe around the ankle. I had learned four or five songs from a tape they’d given me and I just killed them when we ran through it all. They called me back for a second audition and I remember Bobby Dall, the bass player, looking me over as I played. The vibe was very different; there was a tangible attention to detail.

“So, like, what do you wear?” he asked me. “You don’t wear those shoes on
stage,
do you?”

“I haven’t given it much thought, to tell you the truth,” I said. He looked concerned and confused.

I was one of three that they were deciding on, and I saw another guy at the callback that day. He had platinum-blond hair, a sparkly white leather jacket, and full makeup, complete with frosted pink lipstick. I got one look at him on the way out and knew that he’d get the gig. He did, of course—it was C.C. Deville. I had played the shit out of Poison’s material, but that was the one and only way that I was a perfect fit for what they were all about.

Nobody ever complained because they were shocked speechless.

IN
1984,
AXL HELPED ME GET A JOB AT
Tower Video and when he did it was bittersweet to see him again. When Hollywood Rose broke up, it wasn’t exactly acrimonious but in the interim, another source of contention had come between us: Axl had hooked up with my then ex Yvonne.

I had met Yvonne through Marc Canter at a Ratt concert, where they were playing with Yngwie Malmsteen, at the Hollywood Palladium. She’d actually been Ratt front man Stephen Pearcy’s girlfriend at one time. We went out to a late-night dinner afterward at this place the Beverly Hills Café that was one of Marc’s favorite spots and that’s where we got eyes for each other. We started dating after that. Yvonne was really cool—she was the person who turned me on to Hanoi Rocks and front man Mike Monroe, which was a band that I definitely appreciated. They were an influence on Guns N’ Roses and are still an undervalued rock-and-roll institution as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, Yvonne and I dated for a while, but during one of those spells where we took some time off from each other, Axl fucked her. I was not happy about that at all, but I can’t say that I was surprised because it was obvious that he always had a thing for her. When she and I got back together, of course she had to tell me about it, under the guise of “being honest,” when the real motivation was probably revenge for my dumping her.

I called Axl at his job at Tower Video to confront him. I was just
pissed
.

“You fucked Yvonne,” I said. “What kind of cheap shot is that?”

I have to give Axl credit—he was honest and didn’t try to weasel his way out of it. He told me that of course he did but that at the time I wasn’t fucking her, so what did it matter? I didn’t see it quite the same way, so things escalated from there until he invited me to try and kick his ass. I was going to go up there and duke it out but I let it go. Needless to say, it took some time to defuse the animosity. And one day, after hearing I was looking for a job, he told me about an opening at Tower as a peacemaking gesture. Axl always chose to patch things up with grand gestures.

Tower Video was located directly across the street from the Tower Records where I’d been busted shoplifting a few years earlier. Axl was living with one of the managers, and once I’d joined the ranks it didn’t take me long to figure out that I was now one of a truly loony cast of colorful characters; I imagine that we were the most ludicrous and utterly negligent staff that any Tower location has ever employed. There were also
some great, senile alcoholics who worked at the Tower Classical next door.

Every night at about eight o’clock, after the general manager for records and video left for the night, those of us in video would stock up at the liquor store across the street, throw porno movies on the store’s video system, and just drink. We’d put our friends’ bands on the stereo and generally ignore every customer that wandered in.

It wasn’t anything that the security cameras picked up because we didn’t have vodka bottles next to the cash register, so it went on unnoticed for a long time—I imagine, though, that if those tapes were viewed, we’d come off as lazy and unhelpful. We’d mix our cocktails back in the office and walk around with them in plastic Solo cups; we’d be ringing up any purchases with one hand around a screwdriver. I’m sure the customers knew what we were up to the moment we breathed on them, but nobody ever complained because they were shocked speechless. All things considered, we were way too scary for most people; they just got out of there as quickly as they could.

Unfortunately, one of the tighter-assed managers caught on to us and when he did, Axl took the fall: he was fired for the antics that we were all guilty of. Even then, I knew why: Axl has the kind of presence and star power that threatens authority figures; they see someone like Axl as nothing but a “ringleader.”

MY MEMORY IS HAZY ON THE VARIOUS
events that led to the forming of Guns N’ Roses, because, to be honest, for most of it I wasn’t there. I’m not here to present the academic history of the band or set straight every misconception; I can only speak of my experience. In any case, sometime in early 1985, Axl and Tracii Guns started putting a band together; they brought in Ole Bench and Rob Gardner, who’d played bass and drums, respectively, in L.A. Guns. Not too long after that, Izzy joined their group and that is when Axl opted to change the name to Guns N’ Roses for obvious reasons. Tracii had finally gotten his dream situation—as I said, he’d been after Axl and Izzy
to be in a band with him for a while. They did a few gigs, they wrote a few songs—in that order.

I was still working at Tower and had nothing else going on. I was envious, to say the least, when Izzy came in to give me a flyer for a Guns N’ Roses show in Orange County. Somewhere along the line, Duff replaced Ole; they did a few more gigs and wrote a few more songs. I believe that during those Orange County shows Tracii and Axl had a major falling-out. Tracii quit pretty soon afterward and then one night Axl showed up at Tower to ask if I’d be interested in hooking up with Izzy to write some songs and give the gig a go. I stopped for a moment to think about what that meant.

Axl and Izzy were a unit, so any other players coming into their band had to work well with both of them, and Izzy had left Hollywood Rose too quickly to get to know me at all. I liked Izzy. He was, after all, the first guy I met and I enjoyed his style and admired his talent. In dealing directly with Izzy, I’d have something of a buffer with Axl. Axl and I got along in so many ways but we had innate personality differences. We were attracted to each other and worked together tremendously well yet we were a study in polar opposites. Izzy (and later Duff ) would help. At the time, Izzy was enough to take the pressure off.

I showed up at Izzy’s apartment a few days later and he was working on a song called “Don’t Cry,” which I immediately took to. I wrote some guitar parts for it and we fine-tuned it for the rest of the evening. It was a cool session; we both got a lot out of jamming with each other.

We found ourselves a rehearsal space in Silverlake: Duff, Izzy, Axl, Rob Gardner, and myself. Everyone knew one another, so we started throwing songs together that evening and it just gelled quickly; it was one of those magic moments that musicians speak of where every player naturally complements the other and a group becomes an organic collective. I had never felt it that intensely in my life. It was all about the kind of music I was into: ratty rock and roll like old Aerosmith, AC/ DC, Humble Pie, and Alice Cooper. Everyone in the band wore their influences on their sleeves and there was not a bit of the typical L.A. vibe going on where the goal is to court a record deal. There was no
concern for the proper poses or goofy choruses that might spell pop-chart success; which ultimately guaranteed endless hot chicks. That type of calculated rebellion wasn’t an option for us; we were too rabid a pack of musically like-minded gutter rats. We were passionate, with a common goal and a very distinct sense of integrity. That was the difference between us and them.

We weren’t exactly the type of people who took no for an answer. We were much more likely to give no for an answer. As individuals, each of us was street-smart, self-sufficient, and used to doing things his way only—death before compromise. When we became a unit that quality multiplied by five because we’d have one another’s backs as fiercely as we’d stood up for ourselves. All three of the common definitions of the word
gang
definitely applied to us: 1) we were a group who associated closely for social reasons such as delinquent behavior; 2) we were a collection of people with compatible tastes and mutual interests who gathered to work together; and 3) we were a group of persons who associated for criminal or other antisocial purposes. We had a gang’s sense of loyalty, too: we only trusted our oldest friends, and found everything we needed to get by in one another.

Our group willpower drove us to succeed on our own terms but never made the ride any easier. We were unlike the other bands of the day; we didn’t take kindly to criticism from anyone—not our peers, not the charlatans that tried to sign us to unfair management contracts, not the A&R reps vying to hand us a deal. We did nothing to court acceptance and we shunned easy success. We waited for our popularity to speak for itself and for the industry to take notice. And when it did, we made them pay.

W
e rehearsed every day, working up songs that we knew and liked from one another’s bands, like “Move to the City” and “Reckless Life,” which were written by some version or another of Hollywood Rose. We had a piece of shit PA, so we composed most of the music without Axl actually singing with us. He’d sing under his breath and listen and provide feedback on what we were talking about in the arrangements.

After three nights we had a fully realized set that also included “Don’t Cry” and “Shadow of Your Love,” and so we unanimously decided that we were now fit for public consumption. We could have booked a gig locally, because, collectively, we all knew the right people, but no, we decided that after three rehearsals, we were ready for a
tour
. And not just a long weekend tour of clubs close to L.A.; we took Duff up on his offer to book us a jaunt that stretched from Sacramento all the way up to his hometown of Seattle. It was completely improbable but to us it seemed like the most sensible idea in the world.

We planned to pack the gear and leave in a few days, but our zeal scared the shit out of our drummer, Rob Gardner, so much that he more or less quit the band on the spot. It didn’t surprise anyone because Rob could play well enough but he didn’t fit in from the start; he wasn’t of the same ilk, he wasn’t one of
us:
he just wasn’t the sell-your-soul-for-rock-and-roll type. It was a polite departure—we couldn’t imagine anyone who had played those last three rehearsals not wanting to tour the coast as an unknown band with nothing but our gear and the clothes on our backs, but we accepted his decision. We would not be stopped, however, so I called the one drummer that I knew who would leave that night if we asked him to: Steven Adler.

We watched as Steven set up both of his silver-blue bass drums and loosened up with a few typical double-bass fills at rehearsal the next day. His aesthetic touchstones were off, but it wasn’t an insurmountable problem. It was a situation rectified in a typically Guns fashion: when Steven ducked out to take a piss, Izzy and Duff hid one of his bass drums, a floor
tom, and some small rack toms. Steven returned, sat down, and started counting in the next song before he realized what was missing.

“Hey, where’s my other bass drum?” he asked, looking around as if he’d dropped them on the way to the bathroom or something. “I came here with two…and my other drums?

“Don’t worry about it, man. You don’t need them, just count off the song,” Izzy said.

Steven never got his extra bass drum back and it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Of the five of us, he was the most conventionally contemporary, which, all things considered, lent a key element to our sound—but we weren’t going to let him hammer that point home all night long. We bullied him into being a straight-ahead, 4/4 rock-and-roll drummer, which complemented and easily locked in with Duff ’s bass style, while allowing Izzy and me the freedom to mesh blues-driven rock and roll with the neurotic edge of first-generation punk. Not to mention what Axl’s lyrics and delivery brought to it. Axl had a unique voice; it was brilliant in range and tone, but even though it was often intense and in your face, it had an amazingly soulful, bluesy quality to it because he had a choir background from singing in church when he was in grade school.

By the end of his tryout, Steven was hired and the original Guns N’ Roses lineup was locked and loaded. Duff had booked the tour; all that we needed was wheels. Anyone who knows a musician well, successful or otherwise, knows this: generally, they are adept at “borrowing” from their friends. It took one phone call and very minor convincing for us to enlist our friends Danny and Joe, whose car and loyalty we made use of very regularly. To sweeten the deal, we christened Danny our tour manager and Joe our roadie and the next morning drove Danny’s weathered green tank of an Oldsmobile out to the Valley to pick up a U-Haul trailer that we filled with the amps, guitars, and drum kit.

Seven of us packed into this mid-seventies Olds and set out on what I don’t think anyone but Duff realized was a trip of over a thousand miles. We were outside of Fresno, two hundred miles from L.A. and two hundred short of Sacramento, when the car broke down. Danny wasn’t the type of guy to have splurged for AAA, so luckily we broke down within pushing distance of a gas station, where we discovered that it would take
four days to get the necessary parts to fix a beast that old. At that rate, we wouldn’t make any of the shows.

Our enthusiasm was too great to allow for delays or thoughts of practicality, so we told Danny and Joe to stay with the car and gear until it was repaired and to meet us in Portland (about seven hundred fifty miles away), at one of the gigs on the route. From there, we decided we’d drive to Seattle together (about a hundred and seventy-five miles farther) to play the final show of our tour with our own gear. There was a brief moment when Danny and Joe campaigned for us to remain in Fresno together until the car was back on the road, but neither that nor the obvious option of turning back were ever considered seriously. We hadn’t even considered how to get from one gig to the next, let alone that we might not find amps and drums ready to borrow when we got there. We really didn’t give a shit about any of that; the five of us didn’t hesitate—we hit the highway to start hitchhiking.

We gave Danny and Joe whatever money we could spare to pay for the car—probably about twenty bucks—and walked up the on-ramp to the highway, guitar cases in hand. A few hours without so much as one vehicle even slowing down to check us out didn’t dent our confidence. We remained proactive, testing the efficiency of the various hitchhiking configurations available to us: five guys with no visible luggage; two guys hitching and three guys hidden in the bushes; one guy with a guitar case; just Axl and Izzy; just Izzy and me; just Axl and me; just Steven alone, waving and grinning; just Duff alone. Nothing seemed to work; the people of Fresno weren’t having us in any way, shape, or form.

It took about six hours for our kind of misfit to come along; a trucker willing to take all of us on board, stuffed into the front seat and the small bench behind it in his cab. It was close quarters, made even closer by the guitar cases and the sheer intensity of this guy’s speed habit. He shared his stash with us sparingly, which made his endless stories of life on the road more digestible: the five of us were all pretty cynical and sarcastic, so in the beginning we were thoroughly amused by this guy’s insanity. As that night, the next day, and the day after that came screaming down the road at us through the windshield, there wasn’t anyplace else I thought I’d rather be. When we’d pull over at rest stops so this guy could sleep for a while in the
back of his cab—which was a consistently inconsistent amount of time lasting anywhere from an hour to half a day—we’d crash on park benches, write songs as the sun came up, or just walk around kicking trash at squirrels.

After a couple of days of this, our chauffeur started to smell particularly pungent and his formerly affable, strung-out chatter seemed to turn darkly weird. We were soon collectively disenchanted. He informed us that he planned to take a detour to pick up more speed from “his old lady,” who I guess drove out to meet him at regular spots on his route to keep him juiced up. It didn’t look like the situation was bound to improve. The next time he pulled into a rest stop to take one of his endless naps, we were way too bored and broke to stick it out any longer. We decided to explore our options by hitting the blacktop to again look for a ride, figuring that if worse came to worst, the speed demon in the semi would find us and pick us up again whenever he woke up. He probably wouldn’t even think we’d ditched him.

Our prospects weren’t plentiful, because, among the five of us, not one of us bore an iota of mainstream appeal, from Duff ’s red-and-black leather trench coat to our black leather jackets, long hair, and a few days of road grime. I have no idea how long we waited, but eventually we hailed a ride from two chicks in a pickup truck with a shell. They drove us to the outskirts of Portland, and once we got within the city limits, all was well—Duff ’s friend Donner from Seattle had sent someone to get us who informed us that Danny and Joe had called ahead: apparently the car was too unreliable to make the trip so they had headed back to L.A. It’s not like we cared; we were forging on, even though we’d missed every single gig along the way. It didn’t matter to us so long as we had a shot at making our final show of the tour—it was scheduled to take place in Seattle, and what was meant to be our last gig became the first Guns N’ Roses show that ever was.

Arriving in Seattle was especially victorious both because we’d actually made it (that last drive came off with no problems), and also because Donner’s house was the closest thing I have ever seen to
Animal House
. The day we rolled in, they threw a barbecue in our honor that, as far as I could tell, never seemed to end—it was as raging when we dragged ourselves out of there as it had been when everyone first cheered the five strangers from L.A. who came through their door. There was an endless supply of pot, a ton of booze, and people sleeping, tripping, or fucking in
every corner. It was a fitting Guns N’ Roses after-show party…that started before our first show.

We arrived at Donner’s house a handful of hours before we were supposed to be onstage. We had nothing but our guitars, so we really needed to find ourselves equipment. As I said, before moving to L.A., Duff had played in legendary Seattle punk bands, so he could pull in some favors: he gave Lulu Gargiulo of the Fastbacks a call, and she came through for us by loaning us their drum kit and amps. She personally made the first Guns N’ Roses show possible. And I’d like to thank her right now once again.

The club was called Gorilla Gardens, which was the epitome of a punk-rock shit hole: it was dank and dirty and smelled of stale beer. It was situated right on the water, on an industrial wharf that lent it a vaguely maritime feel, but not in a picturesque, wooden dock manner at all. That place was at the end of a concrete slab; it was the kind of setting where deals get made in East Coast gangster movies, and on top of all of that, it was cold and raining outside the night we played there.

We just got up and did our set and the crowd was neither hostile nor gracious. We probably played seven or eight songs—“Move to the City,” “Reckless Life,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Shadow of Your Love,” and “Anything Goes” among them—and it went by pretty quickly. That night we were a raw interpretation of what the band was; once the nervous energy subsided, at least for me, we’d reached the end of the set. That said, we had a very small number of train wrecks in the arrangements, and all in all the gig was pretty good…until we had to collect our money. Then it became as much of an uphill battle as the rest of our early career would be.

The club owner refused to pay us the $150 we were promised. We tackled this obstacle as we had the entire road trip—as a group. We broke down our gear, got it packed up outside of the club, and cornered this guy in his office. Duff talked to him while we crowded around, looking formidable and throwing in a couple threats for good measure. We blocked the door and held him hostage until he finally coughed up $100 of our cash. He had some sort of bullshit excuse about why he was shorting us $50 that was just fucking dumb. We didn’t care to get to the bottom of it at all, so we took the $100 and split.

THERE IS ONE IMAGE THAT I HAVE OF
our days in Seattle that sums it all up to me. It is of an upside down TV. I remember lying with my body half on the bed, my head hung over the end of the pull-out couch so far that the top of it was against the floor. There were equally rotted people that I didn’t know lying on both sides of me and I was so stoned that I thought I’d found the best position in the world that a body might ever be in. The blood rushed to my brain as I dangled there watching
The Abominable Dr. Phibes,
starring Vincent Price, and there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do.

After a couple of days of after-partying at Donner’s house, we hopped back in the car with his friend, whom we’ll call Jane. She was either crazy or just liked us enough to drive us all the way back to L.A.. I’m still not sure which. We drove through to Sacramento, which is about seven hundred fifty miles, before we made our first pit stop. By that point, we had to pause: Jane wasn’t the type to have a car with functioning air-conditioning, and considering the summertime heat, it might have been lethal to keep going by that point.

We parked and spent the afternoon wandering around the state-capitol area begging for change to get something to eat. After a few hours, we took our earnings and hit the McDonald’s and we barely had enough food to share among the six of us. Afterward, we lay down under the shade of a few oak trees in the park across from the capitol in search of some relief from the heat. It got so unbearable that we jumped the fence and took refuge in some convalescent home’s pool. We didn’t give a fuck that we were trespassing; actually, if we’d gotten arrested, it probably would have been an improvement—at least there would be food and better air-conditioning than Jane’s car. Once the sun went down and it finally cooled off enough to get back in that thing, we got back on the road.