Slash

by Slash

  I DID ABOUT A SONG A DAY; I’D SHOW up, make myself a coffee and Jack Daniel’s—or was it a Jack Daniel’s and coffee?—and get to work. Izzy’s stuff was one take—there was no way he was going to come down and rerecord it, and he didn’t have to: his playing is so here and there, just the essence of great rhythm guitar, that spending too much time on it, or recording it on top of the live track, is just silly. Basically, what Izzy played was the simple heart of the songs, no matter who wrote them; if everything else was taken off one of our songs, you’d hear the grace of Izzy’s simple scratch rhythms.

  As a unit, the entire band had a simple but effective way of playing together. Steven would watch my left foot to determine the tempo, and he’d look to Duff to cue every drum and bass fill. Those two had a really cohesive relationship—they would communicate the changes and subtleties of every single song through eye contact. Meanwhile, Izzy played all around the riffs that I’d be playing beside Duff: he and I would do Led Zeppelin–style single-note riffs while Izzy brought simple chord patterns that fell around the beat instead of on it. For every downbeat, Izzy had an upbeat. It made for a pretty complex-sounding rock-and-roll band, but at its core it was very simply executed.

  The first song I worked on in the studio with my new rig was “Think About You” and the very last was “Paradise City.” Duff came down there and hung out every day, because now that I wasn’t doing dope, I’d switched to booze again with heartfelt abandon, so he and I were drinking buddies. I would pick Duff up at the apartment that he shared with Katerina on Crescent Heights and he and I would show up at the studio around noon. He’d hang out, listening in until I wrapped it up sometime in the evening, then we’d go out looking for trouble in Hollywood every single night. At the time, trouble was most easily found at the Cathouse.

  The Cathouse inhabited the building that used to be Osco’s, the ridiculous disco that was featured in the movie Thank God It’s Friday. I remember Osco’s being the spot for all of those “crazy” people when I was a kid, but I never went in there. It was enough for me to see it from across the street: all of their matching slacks and coats, silk shirts and thin belts, shiny shoes and flashy girls in red, blue, or yellow silky dresses, bouncing all around. By then the space looked different, and now it was ours; it more or less became our club, though we didn’t realize it at first. It was as if we already had a table there in the VIP, but nobody had told us so.

  We were sort of shy and meek when we first started hanging out there until we realized how much the owner, Riki Rachtman, really wanted us there. Once we discovered that we could get away with anything at that place, we exchanged shy and meek for crazy and out of control; it was as if we’d been given psycho carte blanche. I was known to break a beer bottle over my head for no reason when the mood caught me and I thoroughly enjoyed stair-diving headfirst down the long flight of stairs leading up into the Cathouse, so long as it was packed with people filing in. Whenever I watch Jackass it makes me nervous. I never put a fishhook through my cheek but I definitely had that mentality back then.

  I remember one night Mike Clink politely asking if he could come down and hang out with us, and he showed up on a first date with the girl that he eventually married. I did my best to behave and make conversation, but as I walked away from them, in a very Sid Vicious type of move, I stumbled into a huge plate-glass window, which shattered all over me.

  Guns rocks the Cathouse.

  The Cathouse became our haven during the final stages of making the record. I got to know Nikki Sixx really well at the Cathouse, because he was there a lot. I ran into Yvonne on occasion over there, too. It was such a spot for us that Axl even went, which always brought us added attention—even we’d get excited because he didn’t often hang out with us at the clubs and bars. Duff, Izzy, and I were gutter rats, but Axl was more sophisticated, and always brought a different edge to the proceedings. At the very least, he usually wasn’t passing out like we were.

  Almost every night after leaving the Cathouse, I ended up at someone’s house—usually someone I didn’t know. Most often, they were girls, and if I was fortunate, they’d let me shower there in the morning before I headed out in the rental van to pick up Duff on my way to the studio to work on the next song. That’s the way it went—I had no money at the time but I got by. I got lunch on the studio budget—it was always Taco Bell. Duff and I were so broke that before we headed to the Cathouse to scam free drinks all night, we’d head to McDonald’s for dinner, where we’d use these game coupons to cobble together a meal. If you bought anything you’d get one of these scratch-off tickets and receive free fries or a free Coke or a hamburger. There was some kind of McRib promotion called Mac the Knife, so I developed a taste for those. We’d pool our resources into a meal, then whip back over the hill into Hollywood.

  Another pastime of mine was taking my frustrations out on the rental vans that Alan provided for us. There was no rhyme or reason, I’d just kick the windows out, break the mirrors—anything glass was in danger. I drove one of them through an industrial-strength fence and destroyed both the fence and the van’s front end. I treated those things as if they were battering rams. I would walk up to a brand-new one and smash the headlights out before I even got behind the wheel. One night I drove this girl home, all the way up to Edinburgh and Santa Monica, thinking I was getting some for sure. The next thing I knew it was eight a.m. and I was double-parked, slumped over the wheel, with the lights on and the passenger door wide open. Apparently she’d left me there passed out at the wheel. It was hilarious—only because I didn’t get caught. I remember waking up, taking stock of the situation, and hightailing it out of there. I can’t imagine how the fuck I got away with that.

  One of those vans is immortalized in a great picture that Robert John took of me. It features the one other guitar that I used on Appetite—a 1960-something Gibson SG that I managed to borrow from Howie at Guitars R Us, that sounded great once I got it in the studio. It was really heavy-sounding, so I used it on “My Michelle.” Anyway, that afternoon I decided to stick it through the hole I’d kicked in the windshield (from the inside) of the van I was driving at the time strictly for Robert’s entertainment.

  My van abuse demanded that we became familiar with a few different rental companies and a few different locations; Hertz, Budget, Avis, we knew every franchise within a five-mile radius. What I would do is pick up the van, destroy it over the course of two or more days, then return it in the middle of the night—I’d just leave it in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition. Then I’d go to a different location and pick up a new one. Eventually Alan had to take me aside.

  “I got a call from Budget,” he said. He was pissed off. “The manager of the location insisted that I come down there. I kept asking why and he said that I needed to see the damage that had been done to the van to understand the scope of the problem. And I have to say that he was right.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, almost proud. “Was it really bad?”

  “It was but that wasn’t all,” he said. “The manager chewed me out for an hour as he showed me every inch of damage that had been done to the van. Then he asked me if I had any idea what kind of psychopathic horrible people I was involved with. After seeing that, I’m not sure that I do.”

  What can I say? Those vans were mobile hotel rooms—they got a lot of wear and tear. At the time I didn’t even have a hotel room: all of my belongings were in an empty storage room at Take 1. Every day when I’d return from whatever I’d gotten into in Hollywood the night before, I’d head in there to change my clothes; I’d be happier if I’d managed to get a shower wherever I’d crashed. That place was the biggest closet I’ve ever had—it is actually where we took the photo on the back cover of Appetite. I loved it in there; it was all nice and quiet and the only sanctuary I had then. The studio wouldn’t let me sleep there, unfortunately. They said that it was an insurance issue, but you know what? I never believed them.

  There were only two things that
I found difficult while recording my overdubs for Appetite. The first was the solo at the end of “Paradise City,” which was always easy live but wasn’t in the studio. In concert, it could last anywhere from one to two minutes, but on the album version of the song, it was designed to be exactly thirty seconds. So it wasn’t easy for me to focus the same narrative and emotion into thirty seconds, and when the red light came on, it threw me for a loop—I actually got gun-shy. I remember going at it a few times and getting so frustrated that I just left the studio completely disappointed; the next day, though, I came in fresh and nailed it.

  My other issue was recording “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Steven watched my foot to keep time; and for that song I’d count him in because my riff kicked off the proceedings. There was no high hat through the beginning and we hadn’t recorded a click track for it, so when I went in to do the overdubs it was a guessing game: I’d be sitting there anticipating the start of the song, hoping that in my mind I’d timed it right so that when I started playing, my timing was right. This was years before digital recording, so there was no signifier to guide me in any way. It took a while, it took many takes, but we got it in the end. Other than that, the album came together so quickly and naturally that it felt like it was meant to be. Obviously it was.

  Once I was done at Take 1, I had to find somewhere else to stash my shit, and theoretically myself, so I shacked up with my friend Todd Crew of Jetboy, who had moved down to L.A. from San Francisco. He was living with his girlfriend, Girl—that was her name—and their roommate Samantha, who had the biggest set of tits that I’ve ever seen on a petite girl like herself; that was enough to inspire me to be a one-girl guy for a minute. The four of us had a blast and were a complete and utter spectacle: we went to the Cathouse every single night, just carousing and making a general nuisance of ourselves during the few weeks that Axl took to finish up his vocals.

  ONCE THE RECORDING WAS DONE IT was time to get it mixed. Tom Zutaut took me to New York—it was my first time there—to introduce me to a few candidates as well as some East Coast industry folk. Tom loved to show off: he liked showing his talent the luxury of business class, and showing his talent how important he was in the industry—that was the motivation behind this trip as much as finding us a mixing team. I met Rick Rubin, who was just hitting it big with Run-DMC and Def Jam and his new signing, the Beastie Boys. Rick took us out to his favorite spot to eat, White Castle in Queens. Rick was great; we talked about all kinds of records that we liked, and just shot the shit, because he’d already passed on mixing us. A lot of people passed on mixing us, and once again—all of them regretted it later.

  The pair that took us on in the end was Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, whom I met on that trip. We had Thompson and Barbiero mix “Mr. Brownstone” while we were there and we sent it back to the rest of the band. At the same time Alan Niven did a mix because he wanted a shot at doing the album. Alan’s version wasn’t bad—I remember that Izzy liked it a lot, but the other guys’ take was much more in-your-face. They had a tight midrange to their sound that fit our band perfectly. Theirs was ballsier and meaner; there was good interaction between the guitars, while Alan’s was more linear, two-dimensional, and hollow.

  We set two weeks aside to mix the record and then Axl, Izzy, and I, along with Alan Niven and Tom Zutaut, returned to New York and stayed at the Parker Meridien in midtown while it got done. Tom had his own room, Izzy stayed with Alan, and Axl and I shared the other room. At the time I had a broken wrist and a cast on my arm; an injury I’d sustained during a recent trip to Seattle with Duff. We were partying at his friend Donner’s place, which was as rowdy as ever, and somewhere along the line, I met some girl, and while she was on top riding me, the record player started skipping. It was ruining the moment, so I punched the floor, a bit too hard, obviously, to get it to stop.

  In any case, my cast didn’t stop me from trying to wrestle Alan to the ground and destroying our entire hotel room during one of our first evenings in New York. I don’t even remember how it started—I’m sure it was nothing more than my being fearless, and drunk, and Alan being a big bear of a guy that I wanted to tackle. I woke up with rug burns all over my face and chest—apparently I lost the match.

  Our stripper friend Adrianna Smith made an appearance on that trip as well; she was on the East Coast visiting friends who lived in Alphabet City. It was good to have her there, because Adrianna was a fun-loving, high-spirited individual, but once Axl coaxed her into his bed, I had to put up with listening to them fuck all night in the room we were sharing. Adrianna is a very vocal individual so I opted to spend most of my nights out, usually as late as possible.

  I spent one of them with Steve Thompson, who took me to the China Club, which was the epitome of eighties New York nightlife—lots of coke, little substance, and much too expensive all around. I was in there in my top hat, leather jacket, and leather pants tucked into my cowboy boots amid a room full of the type of New Yorkers who say “Yo, how you doin’?” all the time and try to impress one another with their expensive Italian blazers and the sack of blow they’ve got in their pocket. Steve, of course, was pretty dialed into that scene—he was in the music business after all.

  Once I decided that I’d had it with that place, I slipped out without telling anyone as I’m sometimes known to do. It has gotten me into trouble before—for example, when I opted to wander off in rural Canada—because usually I just get lost. Such was the case that night: the club was in midtown, less than ten blocks from the hotel, but at around four a.m. I set out the wrong way on an all-night journey in an unfamiliar city. It was very surreal: I wandered down Broadway all the way to Houston Street, over to Avenue C, and by nine a.m. somehow found my way back uptown to the hotel. New York isn’t really the city that never sleeps: I managed to find pitch-black stretches of street with no one else around aside from the occasional bum. As it did get quieter and quieter I began to feel more and more alone. A montage of New York City movies came to mind as I looked at blocks that were both familiar and totally strange to me. Once I finally admitted to myself that I had no idea where I was going, it came together and I started to recognize a few landmarks. Before I knew it, I found the hotel. As usual, there was hardly a welcoming party. I wandered in and found Axl and Adrianna asleep.

  Mixing the record was an incredible experience. It was the first time that I learned the process of sound manipulation, and looking back at it now that digital technology has changed the recording industry forever, I feel privileged to have made and mixed that record in the days before things changed. There was no automated interface back then: Thompson and Barbiero manually worked the faders, making minor adjustments to each channel, as per our request, each time we listened back to each track. Those two guys were amazing; they had a system, pretty much an unspoken language between them. Steve was the energetic, in your face guy and Michael was the reserved, analytical, calculated guy. And they got on each other’s nerves constantly, which somehow fueled their creativity.

  The way they’d work was that Barbiero would set up the basic mix—the drums, the bass, and all of the EQs. Then Steve would come in and they’d start taking passes, with Steve doing all of the frenetic tweaks to the guitars and the vocal jumps throughout the mix—he did all of the dynamic rocking parts, while Barbiero laid the sonic foundation. Since mixing was entirely manual, done while the song was playing, it was a one-take affair. When they took a pass, the song would start, they’d have all four hands on the board and they’d immediately start jumping around each other, adjusting knobs and faders in real time as the music played. If they got just one thing wrong, they’d start over. And on top of that, they had all of us in the room backseat-driving.

  One of the funnier episodes was the day that Izzy got up bright and early to head down there and oversee the mixing of “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” He totally rode their asses. Usually they’d have a mix up by noon and would have it done by four. That day Izzy called us around one and told us all
to come down immediately because it was finished and it sounded great. When I walked in, the first thing I saw was the traumatized look on Mike Barbiero’s face—the guy looked like a prisoner after a long night of interrogation. He played us the mix, which was ridiculous; it was nothing but Izzy’s guitar and Axl’s vocals with everything else faded into insignificance. I could hardly hear the drums, the bass was nonexistent, and my guitar was audible only in the intro and the solo. Let’s just say that Izzy has a sparse way of looking at things and that was very indicative of his point of view. Obviously we redid it.

  As we mixed down the song “Rocket Queen,” Axl felt that the bridge needed something; some other element to elevate the drama. He suggested that Adrianna Smith, who was with us in the studio that day, fuck him in the live room so that we could record her vocals and layer them over the breakdown. We’d been drinking Jack pretty heavily all day, so it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I was all for it; I knew too well what she was capable of vocally—she had kept me up for the past three nights. So we lit up some candles for atmosphere, then she and Axl went out into the live room, got down on the floor by the drum riser, and we recorded Smith’s performance in all of its honest moaning and groaning. Enjoy it—it’s right there in the final mix. That breakdown said it all; I couldn’t think of a better song to close the album and I couldn’t think of a more telling slice of our lives at the time to hand to our fans.

  It encourages you to drink responsibly and behave politely.

  ALAN NIVEN WAS ALWAYS THINKING of how to best exploit every situation to our advantage; he was excellent at spreading the word and generating excitement. While the album was mastered and prepared for release, he kept us rehearsing and booked us a three-gig run in London at the Marquee, and arranged for some interviews over there. He did everything he could to introduce us to England ahead of time, which was a smart move on his part. Before we could go, however, I had to get myself a new green card, because I’d recently lost it when I left the black day planner in which I keep all of my important papers on top of the van as I pulled out of rehearsal with Duff one night. It ended up all over Santa Monica Boulevard, and even though I was able to find most of it on the street, the one thing I never found was my green card—it’s possible that there is an illegal immigrant walking around L.A. with the name Saul Hudson. If so, I hope my name has served him well.