by Slash
THE EXPANDING GAP BETWEEN AXL and me and between Axl and the rest of us got pretty wide during the process of having the Illusion records mixed. As I’ve said, Axl would be at his house and I’d be down at the studio and I’d have the mix of each song sent out there to him once it was done; then I’d wait to get his input. All things considered, we were on a collective creative high, but there wasn’t exactly a spirit of solidarity in that arrangement; it was a one-sided relationship. Still, to me, it was tolerable. Subconsciously, I think I began to see the band as one guy sitting on a throne high above and completely apart from the crowd of people hustling around beneath him.
The first touchy situation I got into with Axl came after I got on the cover of Rolling Stone following the release of the Illusion records. The impression that I gave the writer, which was also true, was that we were a band who had exploded so quickly that three years later we were still trying to catch up to what we’d become.
Axl got ahold of the interview and he read it, and from what I understand, he was cool with it, or at least didn’t see anything wrong with it at first. But apparently, upon further review he found something I said insulting. At least that’s what I think…actually I don’t know what happened there.
The next time I saw Axl was at the Long Beach Arena, where our entire stage setup for the Illusions tour was fully assembled and he was not speaking to me at all. If I’d been so deluded as to think that it was just my imagination, he made sure that I knew he was pissed. I had given him this really cool straitjacket for his birthday not too long before and he’d brought it with him that day, just so he could make a point of leaving it on my amp when he left.
We didn’t talk to each other at all over the next few days as the band ran through those rehearsals. It was exactly the type of eggshell walking that being in Guns N’ Roses had become. The vibe was bad; I just tried to do my thing without issue each day. All things considered, I was very concerned because the truth is that I’m more sensitive than I seem to be. I worried about what was making Axl so angry because I had no idea what I’d done; he wasn’t saying anything, and no one else knew either. It eventually came to light as much as it could…and it took a huge discussion to work it out.
We did amazing things every single night that were godlike.
SO THAT WAS THE STATE OF OUR BAND as we set off on our longest tour with our most intense production to date. The touring was fucking exciting—it was what kept us together through the increasingly frequent rough spots. After we got our stage show together, backup singers, horn section, and all, and did a week’s worth of rehearsals with every element intact, suddenly we found ourselves in South America, before a crowd of 180,000 at Rock in Rio II, on January 20, 1991. We didn’t even have a new record out yet; we were there solely on the strength of Appetite and Lies, which by this point were four and two years old, respectively.
Duff and Slash enjoying the MGM Grand jet.
We flew down there on the private 727 owned and leased by the MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas, and that was it—we had to have that thing for the rest of the tour. It was pretty ornate: it had all of these little private lounges and bedrooms; it was a great crash pad. And it was the best way to get from country to country because you took off and landed on your own schedule and you circumvented the standard entry procedure. The paperwork would be handled while you sat on the plane, and I don’t think customs officers ever boarded and searched us once in the two years we leased the plane. As much as I was glad to have it, like the rest of the guys in the band, I didn’t think we were nearly big enough to warrant that thing—I’m sure Axl told Doug we needed it at all costs, which probably sealed the deal.
That tour was a great time: Duff and I had our new party buddy Matt, and no matter how many days we’d stay up, we could always play the gig. We just felt like we were kings of the world; we had a good time with everything and we always did our job. Izzy, unfortunately, was shell-shocked; he was trying his best to keep far away from our whole partying scene, so that tour from the start wasn’t as much fun for him. And Axl…well, I don’t know where his head was at; I won’t pretend to understand what was going on with him then, now, or ever. But I do know that we all came together and enjoyed what we couldn’t have without each other: the mutual high of performing onstage every night.
All the same, we began to go on later and later as the tour progressed. That was an Axl thing and it wasn’t just one or two occasions, it was every night. That hit me, on a personal level, as his biggest betrayal ever. It’s not like a band has to cater to their audience or feel as if they are at their mercy, but it is a band’s job to play for the people who have bought tickets to see them. It became a major issue with me. When I’m asked why I quit Guns N’ Roses, I can think of three reasons: the first was the fact that on that tour we almost never took the stage on time; the second was canceling shows for no good reason; and the third is the infamous contract awarding Axl the band’s name should we ever break up. That contract was a real slap in the face. We’ll get to all that in just a little bit, but at the time I just thought, Take the fucking name and shove it.
All of those conditions pointed to a situation where the band and everything around it was arranged to be under Axl’s control. Starting with the name issue and moving on to the fact that he wanted every player under a contract that could be terminated for “bad behavior”—this really wasn’t a healthy thing. Nor was the inconsiderate treatment of the people who came by the thousands to see us, and the crew and everyone in our entourage who had to work overtime every single night that we went on late and later. It became really humiliating for me to continue because as much as we were always considered a brash rock band, we were always known to take care of our business. It sucked for the band and the crew that we couldn’t always do our best because we were handicapped by situations that the rest of us weren’t directly responsible for.
There is probably no better way to build up resentment or to make a touring ensemble or any other kind of collective endeavor hate-heavy than by promoting a lack of respect. I’m not one to get angry that easily—you have to really push me—so I remained as elastic as I could going through this tour, but it started to wear on me. There were so many great band opportunities that were shot down left and right because Axl refused to take them—usually those decisions were made between him and Doug and sometimes the rest of us were just informed later. Yet, at the same time, the band was amazing, and anyone who went to one of those magic Guns nights during the two and a half years that we toured was blown away. We were an unreal band with an unreal singer; Axl was just amazing. Despite all of this tension going on behind the scenes, I still had some onstage chemistry with him that was incredible: we did amazing things every single night that were godlike. There were nights when certain moments we would hit gave me goose bumps.
All in all, it was a very tough up-and-down cycle to deal with. That’s my side of the story; there’s Axl’s, of course. I’m sure he’d say that we drank too much and did too many drugs. That’s true, of course; I can only vouch for myself when I say, yes, I did, but all things considered, never once in the history of the band was a show ever canceled or started late because of the guys in the band. Regardless of anyone’s habits, we back-line musicians were always there. There were a few close calls and a few shows that might have been pretty sloppy, but we are talking about a rock-and-roll band, after all. There were complaints throughout the tour from Axl’s camp about what we were doing—“we” being Duff and Matt and me—and Izzy complained about our ways, too. They can say what they like about how we were living; our habits didn’t affect the greater machine at all when it came to getting the job done. Of course that’s my point of view; I am quite sure that Axl and the other guys have theirs that might differ tremendously from what I have to say.
I’M NOT GOING TO EVEN PRETEND THAT I remember every detail of the two and a half years we spent touring Use Your Illusion I and II. Even if I did, I don’t think recounting
every gig, every highlight, every memory, and every milestone would do any of it justice: listing it all would make it seem way more boring than even the dullest day ever was. I’m just going to hit on the shows, the “incidents,” the conflicts, and the ultimate highs that stand out among a two-and-a-half-year run that was such a thrill and such a whirlwind of good and bad that I’m daunted by trying to relate the experience at all.
The start of the tour was intense and exciting; we were walking into an amazingly huge limelight and had thousands of people coming to see us. I had never experienced that feeling so directly. We had played to massive crowds at festivals before, which is one thing: usually we were second or third before the headliner, so the energy was high then, but it is quite another thing to go out and play an hour and forty-five minutes to three hours for eighty thousand people who are there just for you.
I used to spend my time after the gigs walking around the venue, checking out the size of the empty arenas and the scale of our stage and production, and I was never short of amazed. I had plenty of time to do that every night, because usually it took us as long to leave as it did for us to get on—but that’s another story. Let’s just say we couldn’t all go until the “time was right.”
In any case, I’d seen enough stage productions on a grand scale since I was a kid that I was rarely impressed, but I’d walk around and check out our setup with stars in my eyes: to be part of that reality was a dream come true. We owe thanks to the great crew, all of the amazing guys who put it all up and took it all down every day. I’d sit and watch them disassemble it; all the union people, loading these massive stage components into a fleet of semi trucks—it was fuckin’ bitchin’. We were on a run at that point, on such a high that even the negative stuff was overshadowed by how awesome it was for us every day. Unfortunately, that intense, routine high solidified a pattern: the pissed-off-to-elated yin yang we’d done for so long had gotten us there so hey…why change now? All things considered, we kept it up pretty well; it wasn’t until way later that it inevitably exploded.
After the Rio gigs, we started off with three warm-up club gigs—with Blind Melon in L.A., Faith No More in San Francisco, and Raging Slab in NYC. Raging Slab were amazing: those guys showed up in a VW bus that they’d driven down all the way from upstate somewhere with all of their gear; and there we were in our limos. I thought it was great that we had bands like that on our bill—one perk of being at that level is that you really can do whatever the fuck you want.
From there we set off on the main event—touring arenas with our massive production and stage. That whole tour was stadium after stadium. We had Dizzy Reed, Teddy “Zig Zag,” the horn section, and the girl singers. It was such a crazy setup compared to what we’d been used to. First of all there was no set list—we never did the same set on any night. We had our standards, like “November Rain,” “You Could Be Mine,” “Paradise City,” and “Welcome to the Jungle,” but the rest was up for grabs.
The girls—the backup singers and the horn players—had to be onstage the entire time, which posed problems that we hadn’t thought of, like, what if they had to pee? I’d made Ted Zig Zag the pit boss of that little support band—he’d actually recruited them—and it was funny to watch him deal with them. Those girls would argue over their outfits, who got to wear what; we’d never experienced crazy shit like that on one of our tours before. When the girls were having their periods, which somehow seemed to be synchronized, I found it was best to just stay out of their way altogether.
Axl was an entity unto himself on the road; after a while we only saw him onstage or on the plane. Izzy was much the same. Traveling between gigs, Duff, Matt, and I hung with the girls: there was Lisa Maxwell, the head horn player, who played tenor sax; Anne, who played trumpet; and this bisexual New York City chick whose name I can’t remember who played baritone sax. And there were the two background singers, these cute, racy little chicks who could usually be found arguing over their wigs. There was Roberta, this very pretty skinny black girl, and Tracy, who was this cute little mulatto, and they were very cool.
THE SHOW THAT SET THE PACE FOR WHAT was to ultimately unhinge the tour took place in Uniondale, New Jersey, at the Nassau Coliseum, where we went on late. That night, however, Axl apologized to the fans for being late, which, once it became a regular occurrence, he never bothered to do again.
The first major issue, of course, was in St. Louis, which is well documented in the press. Axl had a beef with a guy in the first few rows who had a video camera. Axl mentioned it to venue security and they did nothing about it. Their attitude and the guy’s blatant disregard really set Axl off, so he jumped out into the crowd to take his camera away. When he jumped down, it was great, we kept playing that suspenseful riff that starts off “Rocket Queen,” and I thought the whole moment was killer. When Axl got back onstage, everything felt triumphant for a second…then he grabbed the mike, said something like, “Because of the bullshit security, we’re going home,” slammed the mike down, and walked offstage.
The band kept going. We’d gotten good at improvising to fill dead space—drum solos, guitar solos, jams—we had a bag of tricks to keep things moving whenever Axl made a sudden exit. We kept jamming, and I went over to the side of the stage.
“Where is he?” I asked Doug.
He looked at me with a pained expression. “He’s not coming back.”
“What do you mean he’s not coming back?” I shouted, still playing the riff.
“There is no way he is coming back,” Doug said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
We were about ninety minutes into our set, which was our minimum, contractually, but the plan was to play a two-hour set and the crowd wasn’t close to satisfied. They knew there was a lot more left. I would have done anything to get Axl back onstage at that point.
“Ask him again!” I yelled. “Find out if he’s really not going to.” I should have known by Doug’s expression that there was no use.
Once it was final, we had no choice: the band put down our gear, and it was like pulling the plug on the stereo—the song just ended on a question mark. That entire arena sat there expecting something to happen, but instead we walked offstage without a word. And that set them off. We had no idea how much that set them off.
We all gathered in the dressing room, Axl wasn’t there, and the mood was pretty solemn, to say the least. And that’s when the racket started. We could hear this pounding; even through the doors, it sounded like mayhem. Axl suddenly came into the dressing room and said, “Let’s go back on.”
We went down the hallway toward the stage and it was like the scene in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine where they’re walking through a hall and it’s normal but every time they open a door there’s a train coming at them or a cat screeching: we’d open a door and there was yelling, we’d open another and see people on stretchers, cops with blood all over them, gurneys everywhere, and pandemonium. At the time we were shooting a documentary, so we have a lot of it on film.
The St. Louis locals weren’t having our cancellation—they tore the entire building apart; they did things that I didn’t think were possible. It was daunting, if anything—we learned not to fuck around with crowds to that extent. Axl, at least, should have been more wary from that point on not to take an audience to that level of agitation ever again.
We were trapped backstage, not knowing what to do. Doug suddenly appeared and said that he had to get us out immediately and that there was a police escort in the loading dock. We ducked down in the back of these two vans so that no one would see us and we drove straight on to Chicago. There was no way that we were going to be able to play that gig because every shred of our gear was trashed in St. Louis; that show was a very expensive fluke, to say the least—the crowd did over $200,000 worth of damage to the arena alone.
We crashed in Chicago for a while as the aftermath of St. Louis was added up. It was a major disaster for the people, and for the city, and Guns N’ Roses was banned fro
m playing in St. Louis forever.
When I returned to St. Louis with the Snakepit in 1995, the night before my show, I was walking from my hotel down to this row of bars nearby. I wasn’t going far, so I didn’t bring security because I knew that I was meeting our crew down there, but as I walked up this main drag, I saw five bikers in front of me and no one else around and for a moment I got worried. It was a pretty dark night on a pretty dark street, where tall streetlamps illuminated spots of ground every few yards. I got closer to them and they were looking at me; and I was looking at them. One of them got off of his bike and came at me and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go down.
“Hey, man,” he said, grinning wide. “I’m the guy who Axl hit.” Like I was supposed to pat the guy on the back. He had this attitude like, “Hey, we’re both anti-Axl, right?” He seemed to think we had something in common, but I don’t work like that; if any of you talk shit about Axl I’m going to get up in your face. Only I can do that; because I have that right, not some punk on the street who doesn’t even know him. Things got tense in that moment, but the guy started in with his own story, almost apologetically.
He had just won all of his money in the lawsuit; I think he’d been awarded his damages by the court like two days before. It was a tense situation: it was obvious to me that this was a guy who was riding high on that cash he’d just gotten and he wasn’t going to spend it wisely. His “friends” seemed to be enjoying his good fortune with him, that was for sure, because all of them were clearly out on the town. He was the shortest of the bunch, and as all small guys do, he was trying to impress everyone in sight. He had earned his bragging rights—and a decent amount of our cash—but as he told me in the few minutes I paused to speak with him, in the days after the incident, he couldn’t even leave his house. He received death threats by phone, hate mail, all of it. Only after the city won the lawsuit—after which he won as well—did the whole tide turn for him.