Last of the Giants

by Mick Wall

  With the financials sorted, Alan and Tom sat together at Geffen working on ideas for the video. ‘Tom says, “What are we gonna do?”’ Niven begins. ‘And in that moment, I came up with the three steals – Midnight Cowboy, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Clockwork Orange.’ The Midnight Cowboy steal was there in the opening scene of Axl getting off the bus with a straw hanging out of his mouth, the country boy arriving footloose in the big, bad city. The Man Who Fell to Earth steal was evidenced in the scene where Axl is seen viewing multiple TV scenes (using free news footage). And the Clockwork Orange steal, the climactic scene of a straitjacketed Axl forced to sit in front of TV images of sex and violence. Until he is ‘cured’.

  Alan Niven says he ‘bullied’ Nigel Dick into doing the ‘Jungle’ video. ‘He didn’t want to do it.’ But ‘Rock Me’ by Great White had got significant airplay and by the autumn of 1987 their Once Bitten album had gone gold, heading for platinum, ‘and Nigel wanted to keep his relationship with me’. As it turned out, MTV paid scant attention, only playing the video during the graveyard hours between midnight and 6 a.m., and then only grudgingly. If the band was to make any headway outside LA, it was going to be the hard way – on the road. The bill with The Cult was a good one, though. They had been invited onto the tour personally by Cult frontman, Ian Astbury, after he had witnessed one of their Marquee shows in London. ‘He spent more time in our dressing room than his own,’ said Axl. Between The Cult’s sudden metamorphosis from Goth-punk British invaders to arena-pleasing American rock goliaths and Guns N’ Roses’ everything’s-cool, post-punk trip, for those in the know this was the must-see show of the summer holidays.

  Behind the scenes, though, Axl was so intent on making the band’s first major tour a success he was driving everyone else crazy. Alan Niven sighs heavily. ‘Third date on the Cult tour, up in Canada, I flew up to see how it was going and spend a week on the tour. I’d just dropped my bags on the bed in the hotel room and there’s this bang on the door. I go to open the door and there’s Izzy, he looks a bit disconsolate. He brushes past me, walks into my room, and he flops into the sofa. I go, “What’s up, Iz?” He looks up at me and he goes, “He makes us fucking miserable every fucking day.” Three days into their first national tour. My response was, “Come on Iz, it’s Ax. You know how he is. At least he’s here. Let’s go.”’

  A year into his own involvement with the band, Niven was painfully aware how uncomfortable Axl could make the others feel, when his mood wasn’t right or his anxiety was high: insecurities he hid behind a barrage of angry tirades or days spent sulking in the shadows. Niven says the only time he and the singer ever came close to bonding was later on the Cult tour, when they arrived back in LA for a show at Long Beach Arena. ‘It was an almost unique moment. We were sitting in the bus after the gig and I had to zip from Long Beach to somewhere else, where Great White were playing. And Axl looked at me and he said, “I miss you” – because I’d been running around doing other things. And he looked at me and he said, “I miss you.” It was the only time that I ever got a statement like that from him.’

  Even with a new cover on Appetite, Niven and Geffen were fighting to get it any attention. Tom Zutaut began to despair of the album selling enough copies to justify his faith in signing them, and his mood darkened further when David Geffen expressed his doubts, having finally listened to the record and found it ‘unpleasant’. Zutaut did everything he could to put on a brave face to the Geffen promotions department, as though a complete lack of TV and radio exposure was all part of the plan, never wasting an opportunity to inform the head of promotions, Al Coury, that Appetite was merely a ‘slow-burner’. Coury remained unconvinced. Zutaut told Niven to keep the band out on the road, keep them working, and so when they had the chance to jump on the next Aerosmith tour to Europe, it seemed like the perfect marriage of bands, and a chance to repeat the trick of building a buzz overseas that they could use when Guns returned home.

  Except Aerosmith cancelled at the last minute. According to their co-manager, Tim Collins, the last straw was when Joe Perry told him he’d once bought heroin from Izzy Stradlin. With Aerosmith’s newfound sobriety only ever one drink away from cracking and the band finally achieving all of the commercial success that their habits had denied them for a decade, he wasn’t taking any chances. Meanwhile, their new album, Permanent Vacation, which had come out at the end of August, looked set to be their first major hit since their Seventies heyday, and the European dates were scrapped in favour of a gargantuan American tour now slated to begin in New York on 16 October.

  Cue panic. It would take weeks for Niven to find another major tour for GN’R to piggyback on to, and with no video action and radio interest to help fill the void he feared the album would be dead in the water by the time the band got busy again. He discussed it over the phone with John Jackson, in London: ‘John, out of a combination of humour, genius and sarcasm said, “Why don’t you come and headline yourself?” I went, “If we can, let’s do it.”’ John called Alan back the following night and said he thought they could pull it off. Five theatre shows in the UK splashed with posters. Plus some high-profile club shows around mainland Europe, with each town on the tour swamped in posters. ‘That was that awesome fucking poster of the skulls and cross. And we blanketed the cities we were playing with those posters. They looked fucking amazing. And we pulled it off.’

  They just needed one more thing: another band with similar appeal to help fill out the venues. Once again, John Jackson came to the rescue when he suggested Faster Pussycat, a shrewd choice given that they were being talked of with almost the same excitement as Guns in the UK rock press. Says Niven: ‘It worked pretty good because it was just Faster Pussycat, what threat are they? Except that when we got to Germany it became very apparent to me that the record company thought [Faster Pussycat’s manager] Warren Etna was the shit. And it took the Germans ages for them to come off of their high fucking horse and do something with Appetite.’ That was the only serious glitch, though, to what was a bold new plan. ‘How many people do that now? Go and headline the UK when you’ve sold 7000 records?’

  After the indifference of Canadian ice hockey arenas, the opening shows at Hamburg’s Markthalle and Amsterdam’s gorgeous wooden former church the Paradiso were bustling, vibe-rich sellouts. Steven Adler would tell me later that Amsterdam was the first time he’d used heroin (a claim he’d later contradict in his autobiography, recalling he’d first shot up years before at the former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob Welsh’s house in Laurel Canyon). Nonetheless, the story he told proved that Todd Crew’s death had done nothing to still the band’s use: ‘We were bumming around the red light district, amazed that hookers actually advertised it in store windows. We stopped by a hash bar, ordered off a menu and got high. On the way out, this Dutch dude recognises us and invites us to a party. We follow the stranger to his townhouse on one of the canals. Everything’s cool until Slash and Izzy disappear into another room. I know what they’re doing – and I’m tired of being left out. I walk in and Izzy and Slash are already flying. I turned to Slash and said, ‘Do me.” He ties up my arm and stabs me. Halfway through the syringe, I was already freefalling and told him to take it out. This would be the night I most regret in my life. But at that moment it felt so damn good.’

  They flew to England, where ticket sales in Nottingham and Manchester were slower. The Manchester Apollo show, where they had closed off the balcony for lack of ticket sales, was where I met them for the first time, immediately after they’d stepped off the stage. Standing in the dressing room, it seemed like the clock had been turned back 15 years; they were dressed like old-school rock stars, all hats and scarves and skull rings – and they were acting like them too.

  ‘Hey, man,’ said Steven. ‘Where can I score some loods?’

  Here was a guy barely into his twenties asking for Quaaludes – the drugs du jour for early-Seventies American concert-goers; heavy-duty tranquillisers that made falling down stairs seem fun.r />
  ‘You can’t get loods in England,’ I told him.

  ‘What!’ he cried. ‘You’re fucking kidding me! What can you get then?’

  ‘Mandrax,’ I said. ‘Mandies. Or reds – Seconal. That’s probably the nearest equivalent.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said, ‘so how can I get me some red Mandies, dude?’

  Then Izzy ambled over. ‘Hey, man,’ he drawled, ‘I smell pot. Who has pot?’

  Someone passed him the joint and he clung to it like a drowning man. Slash shambled up, his face almost entirely obscured by the top hat and the cascade of curls that showered from underneath it. In his hand was clamped a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  ‘I bet you go to bed with that thing …’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I like to wake up to it, too. It’s the only way …’ He paused and glanced around. ‘ … I can handle this.’

  I was introduced to Axl as we passed on the stairs. I’d only seen the pictures and the reality was surprisingly small, his pinched, freckled face and upturned nose giving him a vulnerable quality the stage lights had kept hidden. Of all the band he seemed to be the most self-contained and grown up; the one most certain of who he was and what he was trying to achieve. ‘I wanna thank you and the magazine you’re from for everything you’ve done for this band,’ he told me, gripping my hand firmly. ‘And I wanna tell you how much it means to me, cos I read your shit, man. I know who you are.’ He delivered the lines sincerely, in a low voice. I believed what he said. ‘You coming to see us in London, too?’

  ‘London’ was perhaps the most significant moment in the band’s career as a live act, up to that point, a show that would go down as one of those ‘I was there’ gigs. The Hammersmith Odeon (as was: it’s now known as the Apollo) was the capital’s landmark gig, a transition point between clubs and arena as well as a gig almost every significant rock band had on their CV, most of them numerous times. Its capacity was 3500, and Guns were ultimately maybe 200 tickets short of a sell-out, a sign of how far they’d come in a few months. Axl dedicated ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ to Todd Crew. The reviews of a ferocious show that climaxed with Axl playing Duff’s bass while Slash soloed were overwhelming. Guns went back to America with some momentum at last.

  There was also a new and increasingly significant figure on the scene: their tour manager, Doug Goldstein, whom I also met for the first time on those UK dates. Doug would ‘put a lot of good energy in’, according to Alan Niven. ‘Dougie was really reliable to me initially. He was someone I trusted. He had patience and he wasn’t a fucking nine-to-fiver. I didn’t run an LA management company. I was involved in a way of life, as far as I was concerned. And he fit with that.’

  Goldstein was the 26-year-old son of a retired policeman who had studied international marketing at North Arizona University. After college, Doug had worked in events security, and in 1984 he was appointed chief security recruiter for the Olympic Games. Since then he’d made his way into the music biz handling security for Air Supply, Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Black Sabbath and Heart. At first glance he may have seemed like an odd appointment: short-haired, clean-shaven, with a moustache … ‘Izzy was convinced that Niven had hired a cop,’ he says now with a chuckle. Perhaps because of this, Izzy was the only member of the band that Doug readily admits he never really established a bond with. Interesting, too, as Izzy was the one member Alan Niven felt he most related to.

  Goldstein soon got a handle on the rest of them, though – beginning with Steven. The drummer’s nasty habits were already becoming hardcore, but Doug just liked him. They had met at a specially arranged band dinner at El Compadre. ‘That was Slash’s spot. That and Hamburger Hamlet, Slash’s other spot.’ After the meal, Doug and Steven went to jump in a car, ‘a big truck with a camper shell’. They both dived into the back of the truck. ‘Steven goes, “No wait. There’s room upfront.” I go, “No, I’m getting in with you.” He goes, “Dude, I’m just the drummer.” And I go, “Yeah? I’m just the fucking tour manager, which means you’re my boss.” And that was all it took. He was like, “Oh my god. Somebody’s treating me like I’m their equal and/or they’re below that.”’

  Duff was cut from the same cloth as Steven, thought Doug: a wannabe rock star living life as he’d read about it in rock magazines. When the band came to Doug complaining that Duff had been wearing the same leather pants on- and offstage for three months, he handled it the best way he knew how. ‘We’re travelling in a bus. It stinks. The band is coming to me saying, we don’t give a fuck what you have to do, lose the fucking pants!’ So, at the next gig, ‘I sent the runner out for a pair of gym shorts. Duff comes offstage and I’m in hiding. I wait until he goes to take a shower and I grab the leather pants and take them out to a dump-ster at the back of the venue. He gets out and he’s like, “What the fuck’s going on?” I came in and said, “I’m sorry. We all voted. You have to lose the leather pants!” He was so upset because he had promised his then wife Mandy that he was going to wear the same pants on and off stage for the whole tour.’

  The relationship Doug Goldstein would have with Slash was more complicated. Today, Slash likes to blame Doug for the break-up of the original GN’R line-up. Back in the late-Eighties and early Nineties, however, it is no exaggeration that the guitarist owed his life to his intrepid tour manager. They also became close in other ways, working side by side often, during those times, which were many, when Axl either couldn’t be found or simply didn’t want to know. ‘He doesn’t get the credit for it but Slash really was the guy that helped me run that band. No question. He’d pass out in a chandelier at four a.m. and he’d be at my door knocking at ten a.m. saying, “What do we have to do today?” We’d sit down and do all the radio interviews. I’d pick out him and Duff and we’d go and do in-store [appearances], Steven when he was in the band still. People think that Axl was the overall visionary, and Axl’s an artist but he’s not … he knew where he wanted to go but Slash was the guy that really put the plan into place.’

  Goldstein also credits Slash for much of the band’s early, iconic artwork. ‘Nobody knows this and I don’t know why but Slash has done probably ninety-five per cent of the band’s artwork. Merchandising, I mean, everything. He’s a brilliant artist. He’s a brilliant artist. He was the merchandise company’s dream because they didn’t have to pay people to do artwork. He came up with it all.’

  Goldstein had his own opinions about Slash. ‘The derivation of the top hat has a lot of different stories behind it but I have my own theory. When we went to Hawaii he wouldn’t go outside; it was like he was avoiding getting tanned. Back then you didn’t see many African-Americans in the rock’n’roll scene.’ So are you saying you think Slash was self-conscious about being half black? ‘Yep.’ Hence ‘the hair in the eyes, the top hat and all of it’.

  The most significant relationship Doug Goldstein would forge with Guns N’ Roses, though, was with W. Axl Rose. Where Alan Niven would appear increasingly at loggerheads with the flame-haired singer, Goldstein, with his more emollient approach, would quickly become Axl’s go-to guy in all matters relating to both the business of the band – and, increasingly, his own, almost ritualistically tangled personal affairs. Put simply, Axl, who never trusted anybody, trusted Doug. ‘Implicitly. No question. I’m the guy he’d call at three o’clock in the morning and say, “Dougie, can you talk?” I’d say, “Sure.” “Come to my room.” So I’d go down to his room and we’d just sit around till, like, five, six in the morning, discussing different ideas.’

  Initially, this good-cop/bad-cop routine would work in everybody’s favour. Stephanie Fanning, then working as assistant to Alan and Doug at the Stravinski offices in LA, recalls how, ‘In the very beginning with Alan and Doug they could not have been [more] perfectly matched for each other. As far as Alan being on the business side, he’s meeting with the record company, he’s meeting with the attorneys. He’s meeting with all of the business side of things and he is doing an amazing job. Then there’s Do
ug, being the social guy. “Hey, how are you? I’m Doug Goldstein, GN’R’s tour manager.” Knew everybody’s name, shook everybody’s hand. There was nothing that you felt like he couldn’t take care of for you, make you happy, everything just felt in control and taken care of.’

  Goldstein elaborates: ‘When I first was hired on, Niven was like, “I’m having the typical rock’n’roll issues.” “Like?” “Well, like they’re busting up hotels.” I said, “Give me two months and I can fix that.” He said, “Okay, yeah, you got it.” So Stevie breaks a lamp in his room. I tell him, “Steven, this is the way I handle things. We’ve got to pay for it. We don’t break shit and leave.”’ He took Steven downstairs to the hotel reception, where Doug explained to the guy behind the desk that they had broken a lamp and would like to pay for it. ‘The guy asks for $150. I go, “No way. That’s a seventy-dollar lamp.” The guy says, “No, it cost us $150.” I go, “I don’t give a fuck. I’ve been travelling most of my life, I know what this lamp is worth so I’m gonna give you seventy-five bucks and we’ll call it a day.” The guy’s like, whatever, fine. So Stevie goes back and tells everybody, “Doug saved me seventy-five bucks today.”

  ‘So I do that. You know, a television here, a lamp there. I do that for, like, six weeks. Finally Slash breaks a TV. So he calls me.’ Doug took him down to reception, told the manager on duty that they’d accidentally broken a TV and that they’d like to pay for it. ‘The guys says okay, and that the set cost $350. I go, “No way.” And Slash is waiting for me to bring it down, right? I go, “Not a chance. That is not a $350 TV. That’s a $700 TV.” Slash is like, “What?” I go, “Slash, shut up. I do this for a living and I know a $700 TV when I see one.” The guy is like, “No, really. Just give me $350.” I go, “Shut up! I do this for a living.” I go, “Slash, I’m gonna have to take $700 of your money.” So now it’s not even a band deal, I’m taking it out of his personal income. He was fucking livid! But I tell you what. Nobody broke shit after that.’