by Marc Cantor
MIKE CLINK I ran a pretty tight ship when I was there. I had set hours that I started and everybody was pretty good about being there. Once we found the hours we were going to work, it was all great. Call time was around eleven in the morning out at Rumbo Studios to cut the basic tracks. Everyone showed up around noon and by one o'clock we were pretty much rolling. They were pretty good about showing up on time and being there. I started with Slash around noon and we worked up until eight at night. Axl was scheduled to come in around nine. What happened was nine became ten and ten became eleven. And then we started working around the clock. Axl was typically late. However, I wasn't sitting around waiting for them to get something done. Use Your Illusion was a whole other story. But while they were in the studio, they were very focused and we got a lot accomplished every single day. "Appetite for Destruction" did not happen by accident. We really worked hard to make that record. It was a labor of love. I put a lot of love into that record.
MICHELLE YOUNG I think that Mike was probably somebody they really needed and they knew that he wasn't messing around. He wouldn't let them get away with stuff. He was kind of like a father figure and none of them really had that. I actually worked with Mike's wife when he was working with them at an advertising agency. Mike was very stern with them. He didn't mess around. He said, "You've got to be here, and if you're not going to be here then I'm not going to do this." They got busy and they worked.
MIKE CLINK In the studio, we got work done. We worked solid. We worked hard. Outside of the studio it was total chaos. Duff would show up at the door one afternoon when we were doing guitar dubs and his arm was in a sling. I think he might have had a black eye and he was limping. When I asked what happened, he said, "Well, you know, we were stair diving." He was trying to jump from the top stairs of someone's apartment, all the way to the bottom without hitting a step. In the studio lounge it was going haywire. I remember sitting there when we were cutting basic tracks and all of the sudden I heard this raucous. It sounded like an earthquake. Steven was upset about something and was trashing the lounge; knocking over the sofa, the tables, and the refrigerator. There was definitely chaos going on around me, but I rarely left the studio. I was always in the studio working, pulling the guys in, getting something accomplished no matter what happened fifteen or twenty feet away from me.
SLASH The process of recording "Appetite" was a lot simpler and quicker and basically lackluster then the album turned out to be. I was in at 12:00pm, made a Jack [Daniels] and coffee and recorded a song a day. That's how I put all the guitar tracks on. Izzy's tracks were from the basic track recordings and I just stood in the control room with the speakers blasting and just put all my guitars on. And then at 10:00pm we'd be done and then I'd go into Hollywood and just stir up a lot of shit and then somehow make it back the next day at 12:00pm. That was the making of "Appetite" for me -- at least the recording part.
TOM ZUTAUT Why is "Appetite for Destruction" one of the best records ever made? Because it captured Guns N' Roses when they were in the spirit of mind to be captured. When they were ready to roll, we rolled whenever that time was. It took a guy like Mike Clink with that kind of patience to be willing to put up with that. I mean most people need a schedule.
MIKE CLINK I always said that they were a gang. When we would go out at night, if one person got in a fight, everyone got in a fight. They were a tight knit group. I had never experienced a band that basically lived on the street. They were streetwise kids and I wasn't used to it. But, I caught up to it and it was a lot of fun.
STEVEN ADLER In the studio, I would always say that I wanted the drums to sound like drums. I didn't want them to sound like machines. I want the snare to sound like a real snare drum, the bass like a bass drum; no effects.
RON SCHNEIDER There were some days that Slash was kind of nervous. Nobody was in the room at the time because he just needed some time to flow on his own without any distractions. Everybody had to go. In fact, at that time, Slash had broken up with his girlfriend and had two green garbage bags full of clothes and all of his other personal effects and was living at the studio. Whenever they had this one room that wasn't being used, that was Slash's little room. When he was hanging out, that's where he camped out and was calling home for a little bit.
MIKE CLINK Izzy wanted to live at the studio. For insurance reasons he couldn't actually do it. But during the day we let him stay there. So he actually lived in a closet at the studio and had all his things there. But at night when we would lock up, he would go out with the guys. But he would always come back, and would have a little bed in the closet and had all his possessions. They didn't own that much stuff so it was easy. They could basically pick it up with a couple suitcases and take it.
MICHELLE YOUNG I went to the studio and listened to some of the tracks and I was just blown away by what I was hearing. It was just genius being put out for the world to hear and the magic in the studio was great. At that point, they were so carefree and they didn't have all these anger issues or money issues or life issues or whatever they began to have later. They had a strong bond and lots of energy and were willing to just take it and run with it at that time.
MIKE CLINK I knew the record was going to be a success. I really did. In fact, when Tom Zutaut came down to listen to the playback of the rough mixes that I had done, he said to me, "what do you think the records going to sell?" And I said, "I think it's going to sell two million records." I really had a gut feeling that this was something unusual and exciting and interesting and Tom said, "No you're wrong. It's going to sell 5 million.
SLASH After the studio recordings with Mike, Axl and Izzy and I went out to New York to mix the record with Steve Thompson and Mike Barbiero.
The Appetite for Destruction mastering sessions, from left to right: Victor Deglio, Slash, Steve Thompson, Izzy, and Axl. Photograph taken by Mike Barbiero.
STEVE THOMPSON Tom Zutaut sent me the Guns demos and I really liked the band. I remember getting demo after demo and thinking, "Holy shit, this stuff is great." And I think the songs don't deviate much from the demos. The band had the essence of "Appetite" on those demos. Tom asked us to produce it and we had so much work we were doing at the time, we just couldn't get it in there. It sucked, because I really loved what I was hearing. We told him that we couldn't produce it, but we'd love to mix it. I remember when we started working on "Appetite," I felt that that's where rock needed to be. Nothing was really jumping out and kickin' you in the ass. And Guns was just the perfect band, the perfect attitude, just the perfect vibe for what was going on then. I felt if that record didn't make it then I should get out of the business. I really believed that.
MIKE BARBIERO Tom Zutaut originally asked Steve and I to produce the first Guns N' Roses LP, "Appetite for Destruction". My recollection is that he liked the work we had done earlier on the Phantom, Rocker and Slick albums we had done for Capitol, but we wound up passing on the production of "Appetite" because we were involved in something else. That decision definitely turned out to be a bad move in retrospect. Fortunately, Zutaut came back to us with the mix of the album after he heard what we'd done with Tesla's first album, which was also for Geffen. Tom was a big supporter of our work in those days, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for keeping us involved in many of his signings.
STEVE THOMPSON We worked at Media Sound in NYC on a vintage sound board. This was before Pro Tools and computers and everything was manually mixed. You could tell that there was a very angst, humanist way they approached music. I'm one of the die-hards. I remember in the late 1980's when we were mixing the album, drum sounds were very ambient; big chamber snare drums. The cool part was that this music was a lot drier and less processed sounding then the style of songs that were going on. Matt Sorum is a good friend of mine and I have total respect for him, but I kind of like Adler's style better because it was looser. Matt would be more of a clinical type drummer. Adler had a swagger to him. And that's what was cool about the band. I don't think the music was o
ver-analyzed. It was a gut instinct. Which a lot of bands today and at that point would overanalyze everything and make everything perfect. I felt it had everything music was lacking at that point, because everything was just being cookie cutter with all the so-called glam bands at that point with the teased up hair and the spandex. They were nothing like that. They were just in your face. To me, it was refreshing to hear a band like Guns N' Roses. I don't think there was anything you could compare it to.
MIKE BARBIERO The guys in the band were great. There were no ego problems of any kind and everybody was really in sync. Most of the time the guys would hang out down the hall with Tom while Steve and I put the mixes together. When we were ready, we'd call them in to listen. Most of the time they'd just go, "That's great!" and we'd be done. I do remember that for "Paradise City" they wanted the end to be a bit more raucous than we originally had it. Axl and Slash described it as more of "a fist fight between the guitar and vocal, where nobody wins." So they went out, while Steve and I did it. When they came back, I was editing the new piece in and made two marks where I thought the cut would work. We got into telling stories, and when I went to replace the end, I cut the insert in late, repeating a whole section of the song. I was horrified, but before I could move to fix it, the band said, "that's killer! Leave it that way." So the mistake stayed in and they began playing it that way live.
Mike Barbiero and Slash.
STEVE THOMPSON The people in the mix were Axl, Slash and Izzy. Each day they would come in to explain a little bit about the tracks and then we'd go off and do our thing. Then, when we felt we were ready for their ears, we would have them come in. I remember when we were mixing "Paradise City," I goofed this one part during the breakdown before "take me home." I basically copied that part of the song and duplicated it. Axl heard it and loved it and said to keep it in there. Back in those days, if you wanted to do experimenting, it was tape editing. What I liked about mixing that record was that you weren't being over anal, which a lot of people in music and films do today. They just overanalyze everything and that's when you tend to screw things up. We went for a vibe and the gut, song by song.
We worked closely with Tom Zutaut. He was there every day and I'd have to say Tom has an amazing ear and I really liked his perspective on things. I think he was right on the money on everything in terms of the approach on the mixing of the record. Just keeping it raw and keeping it in your face. You can credit Tom Zutaut with a lot cause he camped out for a long time. He got in the trenches with them. Tom had the passion and to me, that's everything. That's what makes something successful.
MIKE BARBIERO Tom Zutaut was very specific in his instructions for what he wanted the album to sound like. He had a cassette tape of rough mixes that Mike Clink had done which he played for us. He actually did an A-B of each mix against that tape on a beat box that he had brought from L.A. to make sure the mixes had the sonic elements he wanted. He said he wanted the sound of that rough mix, but bigger. So that's what I went for.
STEVE THOMPSON Izzy would get on the console every now and then and check things out. Slash would come around. I remember we were working with "Rocket Queen" and Axl said it was missing something. He said "I want to get some sex noises on this." So obviously you could go into your porn collection and record some stuff, but he said, "No I want something real."
Izzy at the mixing board.
ROCKET QUEEN
AXL (Reprinted from a Geffen press release) There was also something I tried to work out with various people -- a recorded sex act. It was somewhat spontaneous but premeditated; something I wanted to put on the record. It was a sexual song and it was a wild night in the studio. This girl we know was dancing; everyone was getting really excited. The night could have gotten really explosive, lots of trouble for everyone, and I thought wait a minute, how can we make this productive.
ADRIANA DURGAN Slash invited me to go to New York where they were finishing the recording of "Appetite." I used to live there, so I had friends I could visit and a place to stay. So I went out at same time as the band and I ended up hanging out at the recording studio the entire time. One night I got drunk in the studio and Axl propositioned me to have sex in the recording studio. Axl was having a hard time finding anyone to do it. I know that he'd asked several women to do it, including his girlfriend and they wouldn't. He said, "No one will do this for me; Erin wouldn't, no one will." Alan Niven got me a big bottle of Jack Daniels for me and Slash if I did it. That was that deal, I would do it for a bottle of liquor for me and Slash because we were drinking buddies. This was something that Axl wanted and I absolutely adored Axl and I fully trusted him. I said to myself, "Right on for the band, I'll do it for the band."
RON SCHNEIDER Let me tell you about the girl you hear in the background, moaning and groaning. That is the real deal. That is a stripper, an ex-stripper, a very good friend of ours. Her name is Adriana Durgan. Axl threw a blanket on the floor in the recording studio, they set up a mic, dimmed the lights and Axl proceeded to fuck this girl right there. She's getting nailed right there and it's for real. Adriana Durgan was originally Steven's girlfriend but her and Axl went at it for a while.
MIKE BARBIERO The truth is that I didn't want any part of what I perceived at the time to be a betrayal of a member of the band. I guess one could argue that it was all in the spirit of rock n' roll, but I didn't really dig the vibe, though a lot of folks at the session were eating it up. I left the recording of that bit to my assistant, Vic, hence his credit, "Vic the fuckin' engineer Deglio."
STEVEN ADLER I love Adriana Durgan. She is amazing. She did what she did. We were going out and she did what she did on "Rocket Queen." It was cool. It was all right. It didn't matter. We weren't married or anything, we were just close. We were naked skydivers from hell.
STEVE THOMPSON We had to mic her up and Axl did his thing and it was recorded and that's basically what happened on the session.
ADRIANA DURGAN The process was pretty mechanical. We went into the recording studio. Axl and I were in the vocal booth where the singers go and I was ready to go. There was a bunch of people that wanted to be in the studio and I didn't want that. I said the only people that can be in the recording studio area -- that could see the vocal booth -- were Tom Zutaut and maybe one or two other people. I kicked everybody else out because I would be having sex in front of them. There was wood paneling and we'd laid on the floor, put our headphones on and began to have sex for about two hours and it all got recorded on a reel to reel. I don't care how screwed up or drunk you are, some people would never do that. But I totally trusted the process. I trusted those guys and I trusted Axl, who guided me through the whole thing. There was a lot of, "Adriana shut up, quit fucking around," on the recording because we listened to it later on. But there's over two hours of us doing stuff. I'm sure they could've used more on the album because they only used a little piece and it's like muted down way low.
STEVE THOMPSON If it's blatantly in your face, I don't think it has as much of an impact. I thought it was done very well. I've talked to people who have listened to "Rocket Queen' before and didn't even know there was sex noises on there. Until you told them and they go, "Holy shit!" That to me works better than just having it up in your face and everything like that. I thought it created the right mood for the song.
ADRIANA DURGAN After the whole ordeal, Axl took me upstairs to his hotel room where we were staying and he played me November Rain for the first time on a piano. He told me that it was something that he wrote when he was fifteen. And it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. It was awesome. The next day I woke up in the hotel room. I was all alone and Slash called me and said, "You need to come down to the studio right now." And I was like, "Oh fuck, what did I do? Oh my God." I was incredibly embarrassed and I realized there might be repercussions to my current relationship with Steven [Adler], which was a rocky relationship anyway. Instead of being happy about what I did, I got a lot of crap about it because Axl was seeing Erin and I was
seeing Steven, so I was now this big slut. I said I wanted the tape destroyed, but too late; Axl was overwhelmingly happy. He was stoked! This was just what he wanted. He was happy as pie.
It's kind of cool that I actually did that. I'm the Rocket Queen!
Photograph of Adriana taken by Axl directly after recording their romp for Rocket Queen.
Act III
Chapter 12: The Rest is History
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MTV Will Never Play This Band (4:55).
At the core of producing "Appetite for Destruction" was the collective belief that the music Guns N' Roses had created was inherently powerful and fiercely original. Not one remix or rewrite would be made to appeal to the mainstream or to sell more records. The integrity of the music, as it was written and played, was first and foremost. Nonetheless, everyone sensed the potential for the album to strike a chord with rock n' roll enthusiasts and go platinum. Tom Zutaut wouldn't settle for anything less. He believed he found the next great rock band and his reputation as a top A&R rep for Geffen was on the line.
Meanwhile, the band bid farewell to Los Angeles and took their act to the UK, headlining at the prestigious Marquee in London. After a few more gigs, they joined The Cult as the opening act and toured the world for the next eighteen months, coming back to Los Angeles periodically. Tom's initial strategy of building mystique around the band backfired. Their reputation took on a life of its own as they were characterized as out-of-control drug addicts; to hot to handle for mainstream media and against the family values of the corporate conglomerates that could carry them to success. No one would touch them, despite the fact that word-of-mouth sales were on the rise wherever they toured.