It’s So Easy

by McKagan, Duff

  Honestly, this was probably the point when I first got a little cocky in my sobriety. Here I was with a backpack full of Buprenex, Soma, Xanax, and syringes, left totally in my care with a doctor’s note to get me through airport security. A year earlier, my life had been so damn normal and far removed from all of this kind of nonsense.

  It’s okay. Just focus on the mission: to get Scott sober, productive, and reliable—and to help a friend be a father to his kids again.

  Scott, Dave, and I flew from Burbank to Seattle and stayed the first night in my house there in the city. I got my first lesson on how to shoot up another person in the thick of their ass muscle that first night. Sexy. Scott was a trouper. He was in the throes of a brutal jones but did not waver in his determination. Before we left the next morning, I took him through a meditation that Sensei Benny had taken me through many times before. It felt good to be able to pass on to someone else something that had helped me so much, and it allayed—rightly or wrongly—some of the doubts I harbored about my ability to play the role of teacher.

  During the car ride out to the mountains, Dave and I listened to music and talked and joked while Scott slept in a drug stupor in the backseat. We met Sefu Joseph in a Safeway parking lot about twenty miles from his mountaintop retreat. In Safeway, we bought healthy food, razors, soap, and little else. This was not going to be a pleasure cruise and the bare essentials would suffice.

  Sefu Joseph may have been a little surprised at first about Scott’s state, but he did not show it. Tailing Joseph and his girlfriend Addy and their big black Lab named Blue, we drove toward what would serve as our home for the next month. I had no idea what to expect. I had been to Joseph’s dojo many times, but never to his house. The steep road wound through switchback after switchback and just kept going up. A beautiful lake appeared and then receded, smaller and smaller as we climbed even higher. Then we turned off the main road and onto a dirt road that burrowed farther into the wilderness.

  The brake lights on Joseph’s pickup indicated we had finally arrived. I was stunned by the scenery. The setting was like a hidden Chinese monastery in an old kung fu movie—there were meditation pagodas, wooden dummies, fighting platforms, and a covered area with heavy bags. A man-made waterfall disappeared into a well-kept Zen garden. Beyond that was a tree-lined path. And to top it all off, there was an impressive wrap-around view of the surrounding Cascade Mountains and Lake Chelan far below. I suddenly had high hopes—and not just for Scott. I was here to learn and grow as well. If there was one thing that the ardent study of martial arts had taught me, it was to continue to try to learn and grow until the day you died: never get set in your ways.

  As we climbed out of the car, I noticed stairs ascending a huge grassy mound. There, at the back of a deck, a glass door was set into the mound. The house appeared to be underground. My jaw dropped. Scott must have been shitting his pants at this point. When Joseph had first tossed out the idea of us staying with him, he had mentioned something about his home being an “earth berm” house, but having no idea what that meant, I hadn’t given it a second thought. Now, as we climbed the stairs to the deck in front of the mound, that conversation came back to me. From the outside, his place looked way too small for five adults and a large dog, and I thought I had made a mistake committing sight unseen to stay here. When we entered the house, though, I could see I was completely wrong about the size. It was amazing inside. Flat-screen TV, fireplace, phone, full kitchen, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms.

  As we unpacked the groceries, I made a mental checklist of the meals that would hopefully help to cleanse Scott’s drug-ravaged bloodstream of its nasty toxins. Fresh fish and free-range chicken. Lots of green vegetables and corn on the cob. Irish steel-cut oatmeal. Pineapples, bananas, melons, and apples. Tons of espresso roast coffee. And my trade secret, baked beans. I’m not really sure whether beans have any cleansing properties, but they sure do get out a lot of hot air.

  I put Scott on the diet that had done me so well during my first year of sobriety: fruit for breakfast, grilled fish over greens for lunch, and barbecued chicken with corn and beans for dinner. I added oatmeal to Scott’s diet because I supposed with all the exercise we’d be doing, he could use the extra carbs. He did not have fifty pounds of booze weight to lose—he was a rail. The larder was filled to the brim and there was nothing left to do now except what lay directly in front of us: getting Scott detoxed and keeping his body too exhausted and confused to do anything more than sleep.

  At this point, I should have taken a step back and assessed the situation. Never before had I felt I had so many people depending on me. I was now juggling being a good father and husband with trying to get a guy sober so that he could do the same. But I was also doing this because I saw real possibilities for this new band with Scott as our singer. Other people recognized the potential there, too, and I was fielding phone call after phone call saying I had to make this happen. The Hulk had come out, and even though the movie did only so-so, it seemed like every rock radio station in America had picked up “Set Me Free.” With the national exposure there was a lot of interest in Velvet Revolver. Of course, everything hinged on the band actually existing. For the first time ever, I was mixing the spiritual healing of martial arts with commerce.

  Seeing Scott nodding and jonesing up there reminded me of some not-so-pleasant memories. In hindsight I see this was the moment I swerved away from the path I’d been on, a path that shielded me from the dark parts of my past. Each of us makes a handful of decisions in life that can have a drastic impact on subsequent events. By getting involved with Scott, I had made one of those potentially life-altering decisions. We did start to have some fun up there after about a week, though. Scott had gotten through the worst of his withdrawal by that point and could start to do some of the physical stuff.

  A typical day up there:

  Breakfast

  Meditate outdoors

  Jump rope

  Stretch

  Work the punching bags

  Train on technique

  Lunch

  Run and lift weights

  Work on the wooden dummies

  Practice tai chi

  Write

  Dinner

  Talk with Sefu Joseph and write more

  Read

  Bed

  This rigid regime we dubbed “Man Camp.” The idea was not only to test physical strength and endurance, but, through the talks and writing, to foster honesty and responsibility. Once in a while Sefu Joseph brought in someone from the community to pitch in. We went mountain biking with friends of his. We went fishing with other friends. A local SWAT guy even came up with an arsenal of guns and taught us how to clean, load, hold, aim, and shoot everything from riot shotguns to large-caliber handguns. It seemed as though the whole town was pitching in and pulling for us to succeed.

  After about two weeks of this, Susan and the girls came up to our cabin, which was about forty miles away from Joseph’s mountain redoubt. It was Susan’s birthday and I was more than happy to see them all. During the six years I had been with Susan, we lived in a safe bubble that we controlled. We now found ourselves in uncharted territory. Susan had my back and even felt some responsibility—after all, she was the one who had introduced me to Scott. Yet she and I had never had a conversation about the possible consequences of working with him. Suddenly her man was gone and she had to take care of our kids on her own—and shit, this was even before recording and touring started.

  I continued to get daily calls from L.A.

  “Do we have a singer?”

  “Should we book studio time?”

  I started to see glimpses of hope with Scott up on top of that mountain. Scott became so enamored of the area that he asked Joseph if he knew any local real-estate brokers. This from a guy who just weeks earlier was on a drug run for the ages. Crack houses in L.A. now seemed the last thing on his mind. Looking back, we made progress fast.

  Slash and Matt were relieved to hear Sco
tt was getting better, but I’m sure they were also still suspicious. I couldn’t blame them. But when we arrived back in L.A., they saw with their own eyes the results of our Man Camp. Here we were at the rehearsal space with an ass-kicking mountain man, practicing martial arts and meditating before band practices. Scott seemed inspired and focused now. He started to listen to more of the music that Slash, Matt, Dave, and I had written over the past year. We would sort of spoon-feed him two or three songs at a time; to throw everything at him at once would have been overwhelming given the fact that we had something like fifty-five songs by this point.

  With the band lineup finally solidified and “Set Me Free” still on the radio, every major record label now wanted a piece of us. One of the people who wanted to schedule a meeting with us was the same executive who had dropped me from Geffen without so much as a phone call back in 1999. He was president of another company now and apparently didn’t remember the incident. But I did. I told the guys the story. At first, they said we should just cancel the meeting. Then they decided it would be more fun to have him in and fuck with him. He arrived at our rehearsal space and went through his routine, using all the standard industry buzzwords: artistic freedom, artist-focused, personal touch, like a family, blah, blah, blah. Then Scott asked him to talk more about the way he would personally take an interest in the project. Scott listened thoughtfully and then started talking—seemingly off-the-cuff—about a friend who had been dropped one time without a call from the label.

  “Look, we know the industry is changing,” Scott said, “but we don’t want to work with people like that.”

  The guy took the bait: “No way, I treat my artists like family. That would never happen with me.”

  Then Scott dropped the bomb: “That friend was this guy here,” he said, pointing to me, “and you’re the asshole who didn’t have the decency to make the courtesy call. Get the fuck out of here.”

  We also flew to New York to meet the legendary Clive Davis. He had helped develop everyone from Janis Joplin to Bruce Springsteen to Beyoncé. When Clive Davis said he believed in our band, I was sold. Even guys like us, who had been through it all in this industry, respected Clive. After that, the process was just an exercise as far as I was concerned. I knew we would go with Clive from the very beginning of that summer. Done deal.

  Another interesting aspect of these meetings was that I found I did in fact understand the lion’s share of what was going on financially with the band. I also learned that word had gotten around about my studies. People took me more seriously in business meetings. Cool shit. Sometimes I looked into the eyes of industry types and saw a flash of panic: Shit, I wonder if Duff knows more than I do.

  I also started to get requests to make media appearances as an expert on the business of music. It was nice to be thought of as an intellectual equal at least. After I did interviews on PBS’s Frontline and in the Wall Street Journal, I started to get calls from other artists with questions on how to manage their personal wealth and anticipated earnings. I had been in the exact place these people were in: I hadn’t known a damn thing about money, I’d been scared of who might be trying to rip me off. After getting at least a dozen different calls from peers about their dough, I started to think about perhaps one day starting a financial consulting firm of my own.

  But that could wait. My new band was on a roll.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Susan and I decided to rent a house back down in L.A. and I took a leave of absence from Seattle University. Our first priority was to find a good school for Grace, who was about to start kindergarten. We found one we loved in Studio City and then worked backward from there to find a place to live with easy access to the school.

  In Seattle, Susan and I had built up quite a nice circle of friends, a lot of whom had kids the same age as ours. Now back in L.A., we reconnected with one of the few couples we knew with a growing family—Richard and Laurie Stark. Back in 1993, I had hosted a shower for their first baby up at my house on Edwin Drive. (I’d had the place cleaned and made sure none of my knucklehead buddies stopped by during the baby shower.) I had met Richard in 1988, when he was peddling jewelry and leather he designed from the back of his Harley. In the interim, his little business had grown into a full-fledged company called Chrome Hearts, with hundreds of employees and stores all over the world. I’d been among his early customers and we’d become friends. Richard and Laurie now had three kids and were glad to have me and Susan back in L.A.

  This period was really good for us. We were facing different challenges from the ones we were used to as a family, but Susan trusted my judgment and supported my every move. What more could a guy hope for?

  Then I started to get sick a lot. At first, I chalked it up to Grace’s being in school—she must have been bringing home new kid colds all the time. Hard physical activity was still the key to my ability to meditate, and the endorphin spill into my system also helped stave off drug and alcohol cravings. I was getting sick so much by this point that it was hindering my ability to go to the gym. Not a good thing for a guy like me. And sometimes I skipped a workout or a morning meditation even when I wasn’t feeling sick. Hey, I was busy. After so many years of sobriety, I had convinced myself I would never use again, even if I let my routine slip. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, this attitude would come back to haunt me.

  Eventually I got sick so often that I began to worry. I shuddered to think what might be wrong. Some strange immunity deficiency? Cancer? HIV? I asked my doctor to run some tests on me. The tests all came back negative, however, and he said he thought it was just a recurring sinus infection. Even after he mentioned that, it never dawned on me that my coke-damaged sinuses might not function very effectively as a filter against germs.

  At least I had plenty of work to do through the end of 2003 and the first part of 2004. Velvet Revolver decided to record our album at NRG Studios, the same place where I had done basic tracks for the Neurotic Outsiders record. I’d had a great experience there before and so, all in good spirits, we began work on our debut record, Contraband.

  I don’t think any band can survive without at least one person who helps to fuse the personalities and defuse the inevitable problems. It’s just like any job in that regard, except in a band there is no formal boss. Just four or five outcasts who, in our case, had always used shitloads of drugs and alcohol to deal with life and its conflicts. So much drama started to swirl in and around the band that someone had to sort of take charge. It fell to me. This was, I believe, the first time any of us had entered a band partnership while married. Not that the wives posed any real problems, but there were twice as many opinions—and at times very, very strong ones. It was fine for now, just different.

  We kicked off our first tour in May 2004, in St. Louis. Contraband entered the charts at number one upon its release in June.

  Touring made it difficult to be rigorous about my workouts and meditation.

  I’ll get to it tomorrow.

  Then the same thing would happen the next day.

  And I continued to get sick on tour, further limiting my time in the gym. I was tired and I was beat-up mentally—not from the shows themselves but from the constant background shit. We had a few weeks off in July after the U.S. leg before we were due in Europe. One night as I was trying to figure something out, Susan asked, “Why are you always the one who has to fix all the problems?”

  The first week of August we flew to Denmark to begin a five-week leg through Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, and the UK, with some additional festival dates in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Holland. At first, I made sure to get in a workout and meditation every morning. Sometimes I’d hit the gym several times a day just to clear my mind. But then I started getting to it less and less frequently.

  Just too busy, I told myself. And besides, you’re strong now.

  If so many people can depend on me—my family, the band—I must be dependable, I must be strong. Hell, I’m even keeping Scot
t’s shit together—I’m the man!

  By the time we finished that leg, I was lucky to manage ten seconds of meditation at some point during the day.

  The same pattern accompanied subsequent legs. We had been out on tour—with breaks here and there—for thirteen months by the time we arrived in Germany in June 2005, for a second European leg. Workouts and meditations dwindled again. Then I stopped altogether. Meanwhile the band started to show cracks. Being around drugs and booze had proved manageable; handling band business amid increasingly rancorous interpersonal drama, however, drove me fucking nuts.

  I had a stash of Xanax pills for panic attacks. I had them in my backpack all the time for emergency use on flights. Though I had been able to really get a handle on my attacks in everyday life, I did still get uncomfortable when flying. It wasn’t the plane-could-go-down part of flying that freaked me out, it was the being-stuck-in-a-metal-tube-with-no-way-to-get-out part. For the most part, just knowing I had Xanax with me was sufficient to ward off any potential attack. I knew the drug worked quickly, so having that little bottle in my carry-on bag was enough to keep me panic-free on plane rides. Between 1994 and 2004, I had taken a quarter pill—you could cut them to avoid taking a full dose—on three occasions, always on an airplane. Except for those three occasions, I had always been able to go to my place, the calm safe house I knew from martial arts training.

  One day in Essen, Germany, my shoulders and back were tense and my head was throbbing. I felt trapped. Trapped, like on a plane. As I sat in my hotel room, I reached into my backpack and took the Xanax bottle out of the side pocket of my bag.