Slash

by Slash

  It shouldn’t be shocking to hear that it wasn’t always smooth sailing when Axl lived with my family. As I mentioned, my room was off the living room, down two flights of stairs, under the garage. For the most part, Axl kept to himself when I wasn’t there, but one morning after I’d left for work, apparently he wandered up and crashed out on the couch in the living room. In other households that might not have been that big of a deal, but in ours it was. My grandmother, Ola Sr., was our matriarch and that couch was the throne from which she watched her favorite TV shows every afternoon. When she arrived, right on time to enjoy her regularly scheduled programming, and found Axl there, sprawled out, Ola Sr. politely roused him. In her sweet, soft, old-lady voice she asked him to go back downstairs to my room, where he could sleep as long as he liked. For whatever reason, that didn’t go over well: from what I understand, Axl told my grandmother to fuck off then stormed downstairs to my room—at least that’s what my mom said.

  My mom took me aside when I got home from work, and as easygoing as she is, she insisted that if Axl was going to live under her roof for even one more day, he needed to apologize to her mother and promise to never behave that way again. It was my duty to make it happen, which at the time I didn’t think was that big of a deal.

  My mom used to loan me her green Datsun 510, and as Axl and I drove to rehearsal that evening, I mentioned, in the least confrontational way, that he should probably apologize to Ola Sr. for telling her to fuck off. I hadn’t known Axl long, but I already knew him well enough to understand that he was a sensitive, introspective person who endured serious mood swings, so I chose my words carefully and presented the issue in a very nonjudgmental, objective tone. Axl stared out the window as I spoke, then he started rocking back and forth in the passenger seat. We were driving on Santa Monica Boulevard, doing about forty miles an hour, when suddenly, he opened the car door and jumped out without a word. He stumbled, kind of hopped, and made it onto the sidewalk without falling. He steadied himself, then took off down a side street without looking back.

  I was shocked; I did a U-turn and drove around in vain, looking for him for an hour. He didn’t show up back at my house that night and he didn’t come to rehearsal for four days. On the fifth day he appeared at the studio as if nothing had happened. He’d found somewhere else to crash and he never mentioned it again. It was pretty clear to me from that point forward that Axl had a few personality traits that set him very far apart from every other person I’d ever known.

  THE LAST HOLLYWOOD ROSE GIG TOOK place at the Troubadour and it ended eventfully. It was an “off” night all around, basically a series of almost right moments. We went on late and everything sounded terrible, the crowd was rowdy and disengaged, and no matter how hard we tried, there was no turning the vibe around. Some heckler in the front row antagonized Axl and soon he’d had enough; he threw a glass at the guy or broke a bottle on his head—it doesn’t matter which, but it was a fitting expression of the pent-up frustration within the band that night. As I watched the altercation with this guy build throughout the set, it was such a big distraction during the show that I knew I was going to quit as soon as the set was done. Axl going after him was like affirmation from the universe.

  It’s not like I hadn’t seen it coming: I wasn’t satisfied and the whole situation didn’t seem very stable. We’d had only a handful of gigs in the few months we’d been together and the lineup never felt quite right. By that point, it didn’t take much; and the bottle scene seemed uncalled for—it distracted from the music to say the least. Here we were, a fledgling band with enough internal issues trying to scratch out a name for ourselves, having to contend with incidents like that. It meant something to Axl, of course, but not everyone necessarily agreed with him. It was the way he felt and, seriously, if it was called for, fine, but sometimes you gotta pick your battles. Stopping the show to deal with this situation was a bit much. In the spirit of rock and roll, I had an appreciation for the full-on fuck-you, but as far as professionalism was concerned, it was an issue for me.

  Axl is a dramatic kind of individual. Everything he says or does has a meaning, a theatrical place in his mind, in a blown-out-of-proportion kind of way. Little things become greatly exaggerated, so that interactions with people can become magnified into major issues. The bottom line is, he has his own way of looking at things. I am a pretty easygoing guy, so I’m told, so when Axl would fly off the handle, I never followed suit. I’d be like, “what?” and blow it off. There were such dramatic highs and lows and extreme mood swings that being close to him always felt like a roller-coaster ride. What I didn’t know then was that this would be a recurring theme.

  In any event, I told everyone in Hollywood Rose that I quit as soon as we got offstage. The band split up after that and Axl and I parted ways for a while. He went on to join Tracii Guns in L.A. Guns, which soon became the earliest incarnation of Guns N’ Roses.

  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 onstage, 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.

  6

  You Learn to Live Like an Animal

  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 ha
d 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.

  We 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.