by Slash
This leg, in my mind, was our chance to show the world the Use Your Illusion records as I’d always heard them. The day that I’d finished recording my last guitar part for those records I left the studio with a mix of them that was simple and raw, before any synths or horns or backup vocal tracks were layered on. I’ve never forgotten how cool they sounded in that stripped-down, simple, powerful state. I wish that I still had a copy of them; or that they were floating around the Internet somewhere. Believe me, they sounded so cool; they were entirely different beasts altogether from the versions that got released. I’m not going to get into hindsight about what could have been, but all in all they were two wholly different bodies of work. In any case, we got a chance to do the songs scaled back and straight up with the band reduced to its normal size…I was elated.
The tour started in Austin, Texas, in late February and that first show went fine, but we immediately ran into trouble. Over the first few weeks we had to cancel four shows due to inclement weather. In Sacramento in early April, someone in the audience throw a bottle of Jack and hit Duff square in the head, knocking him unconscious. That was so ridiculous, not to mention dangerous. Anytime people throw shit onstage to get a reaction—I assume because rock bands seem larger than life—is just insane. I’m never sure what they’re after when they throw something that can do actual bodily harm. We’d done about ninety minutes at that point, but that was the end of the show because Duff was really hurt.
I volunteered to be the one to tell the audience that they’d fucked up. They cheered when I came back onstage, but they weren’t happy about what I had to say.
“That bottle of piss knocked Duff unconscious and now he’s on his way to the hospital,” I said. “There is no way that we’re coming back out. The show is over. Please leave peacefully and don’t fuck with anyone. Don’t fuck with the building.”
We canceled a show in Atlanta both to let Duff recover and because Axl had been arrested there during the Appetite tour for kicking in the head a security guard whom he’d supposedly seen roughing up audience members. Doug didn’t trust either Axl or the venue’s security and he was probably right on both counts.
Then at the end of April, when we were back in L.A., Gilby broke his wrist in a motorcycle accident. We weren’t sure how bad it was until he showed up at a band meeting in a very serious-looking cast.
“Wow,” I said. “That looks pretty bad.”
“How long is that gonna take to heal?” Axl asked him.
Gilby looked truly depressed. “Two or three weeks.”
“Aw, fuck!”
“I know, man,” Gilby said. “This fucking sucks.”
We had a European tour booked, starting with two dates in Russia—our first ever—two weeks later.
“Fuck it,” Axl said. “Let’s call Izzy.”
I was surprised and happy to hear that Izzy went for it…though I was completely confused to hear that Izzy didn’t want to rehearse at all—not that we had much time to anyway. As it turns out, the political situation in Russia in May 1993 was too unstable for us to play Moscow, so we flew to Tel Aviv, Israel, to rehearse with Izzy before we launched the tour there at the Hayarkon Park Arena. We booked a rehearsal space studio in Tel Aviv and it was a trip: this place was a recording studio as well and I think that the engineers didn’t believe the band booked was actually us until we walked through the door. We got together in this cheap old spot that was homey—in a foreign way—and run by these old people who were really cool. It was an average rehearsal space with midrange recording equipment and they’d clearly never had anyone like us in there, so we totally blew them away and for that reason alone it was worth it. Izzy showed up…with dreadlocks…and hadn’t practiced one song. So we did what we could.
We played to fifty thousand people in Israel for the first time two days later, which was the biggest concert that the country had ever seen. Sadly, it was a pretty loose set, because Izzy wasn’t up to speed and hadn’t been conscientious about practicing. The press criticized us pretty harshly, saying we had used the opportunity as a warm-up date, which was not true at all; we wanted it to be great, but with a rhythm guitarist who was still unfamiliar with the material, there was only so much we could do. We did the gig, we hung out there for a couple of days; we saw all of the sights.
Izzy, Duff, and I saw where Jesus was born, and we went to eat in the square around the Wailing Wall, and while we were sitting at this outdoor café near the zoo I watched a busload of school kids get off for a field trip. At either end of the bus were parents, or teachers, or adult supervisors of some kind who were armed with rifles. They arranged the kids in a line for their tour of the zoo and one armed adult took the front, one took the back, and one walked in the middle of them, all with their rifles strapped around them. I’d never seen anything like that in my life. I’d had a friend from Israel who’d gone back to do his two years of mandatory military duty and I thought about him just then: he’d come back a completely different guy. He’d gone off as a nerd and returned as a nerd with combat experience.
IZZY STAYED OUT THERE WITH US FOR a while, all through Greece and Turkey—places we’d never played before. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but Izzy was doing what he does best; he was checking out the situation, taking stock, observing everything, taking part while committing to nothing. He wanted to see what had changed and what hadn’t. He was taking note of how much drinking was going on, what Axl’s trip was. He was testing the water to see if he could deal with it. At the time I still thought he’d quit the band because of the riot in St. Louis and the near riot in Germany. I didn’t even realize that those incidents were the least of his reasons.
For the entire Illusion tour, all two-plus years of it, we had two camera guys with us documenting every single moment. Those guys were close friends, so we really let them in and they really got it all. They captured the kind of history that anyone aside from the members of the band would never see. They were out with us on this leg of the tour, of course, as was Del James, who became a de facto narrator at times, conducting interviews and telling the camera guys what was what. One night Del and the cameras caught Izzy and me jamming on our acoustic guitars, just hitting loose stuff the way we did when no one was around. We fell into the pocket so naturally, and it felt comfortable and so great, that I’d love to see a tape of that. We have two years of footage, in fact, all of which is in a vault that will remain shut forever unless Axl and the rest of us get our differences ironed out. That footage is the Holy Grail of Guns N’ Roses: seeing the film that would result from condensing the best moments into two hours would be the be-all and end-all of knowing exactly who we were and who we are.
Izzy remained on board until late May, ending his run with two shows at the National Bowl in Milton Keynes, England. Gilby flew out and hung out and the two of them got along great. There was no drama as the baton was passed, thank God.
From there we continued across Northern Europe; we did our makeup show in Norway, our second try at our first ever. We’d had to cancel the first time it because Axl got “held up” in Paris. Norway was a big one for Matt, since his family is Norwegian; he was pretty into visiting the roots of his Nordic history.
A particularly memorable night took place in Cologne, Germany; the kind of night that I might not remember completely, but one that I am remembered for. We had a day off, which Gilby and I spent sightseeing. Later on we met the band and some friends at this Italian restaurant, where we filled a huge corner banquette. We had tons of food, all of this wine, and at the end of the meal, Gilby and I decided to indulge in a few grappa shots. The first few went down fine and all was well. Then we did one more and suddenly it all went wrong: I puked everywhere. It was an Exorcist puke; I was sitting in the deep corner of the booth, so it went all over the table, and inexcusibly all over everyone around me. It flowed across the plates and everything and started dripping on the floor. I don’t know what was wrong with the owners of this place, but they found i
t charming. They were so honored to have us there that me puking up my meal at the table was A-OK. I commemorated the night by signing their guest book: “Of all the restaurants in the world, this is definitely one of them!” That line, by the way, was definitely stolen from Mike “McBob” Mayhew.
The tour continued through Europe and then returned to South America. We did our last date in Argentina on July 17, 1993. As I recall we played until about two a.m. and then commandeered the hotel bar until about six a.m. And when we returned to L.A. we had the honor of having done the longest tour in rock history. We’d played 192 shows in two and a half years, spanning twenty-seven countries. Over seven million people had seen us perform. I don’t really keep track of my achievements, but if I did that is the one I’d point out first and foremost.
I RETURNED TO L.A. EXHAUSTED AND went straight to Renee’s stepmom’s house for some kind of family gathering. Her stepmom’s name was Dee, but everyone called her Ma, because she was a very sweet old lady of about seventy or so. Her house was cozy, with pictures of the family everywhere; it was just nice in every way. And in the middle of this quaint little gathering, a bindle of coke fell out of my pocket.
Before we’d set off on that last South American leg, Matt, Duff, and I spent a lot of our time out on the town doing blow. One of the nights before we left, we’d done as much as we had and I remember thinking that we’d bought more than we were going to do. I’d put that extra bindle in my jacket and forgotten about it. Actually, late that night, I tried to find it and couldn’t—I’d rummaged around in my jacket and jeans, and convinced that I’d dropped it somewhere along the way, I just went to sleep with Renee.
The moment I saw it on the floor, Renee saw it, too, and I immediately put my foot over it before Ma or anyone else noticed. Then I casually “checked” my shoe and picked it up. When we got home and started doing it, I realized that this thing had been in my jacket for the whole South American tour—I had actually brought coke into South America and back, which is ridiculous, because that is the last place where you need to bring your own coke.
It wasn’t my first time averting international disaster: the first time we’d toured South America, I was almost deported back to England: I didn’t have my U.S. or British passport and my work visa had expired. The entire band went through customs while I was detained by the authorities at LAX. The only person who stayed with me was my security guard, Ronnie. It didn’t look good: I was in the holding room surrounded by armed guards and I was wearing shorts, a leather jacket, a T-shirt, and a top hat. There was this one Asian-American customs officer really putting it to me, while his younger sidekick knew who I was, which only seemed to fuel his boss’s contempt for me. In the end we had to pay a hundred-dollar waiver to get me out and I didn’t have any money on me. Neither did Ronnie—so he went panhandling in the airport, at the arrivals terminal in LAX, to get it.
AMID ALL OF THE HIGH AND LOW POINTS, we did some amazing performances that, thinking back on it, rival all of the bands I looked up to as a kid. We had a very established chemistry and a dynamic that was priceless. We’d made history, but when it was over I was fried, and as hard as it was for me to admit it, I was glad to be home for the first time in my life. The controversy and the struggle to pull the tour off had gotten to me more than anything else: the chaos of that emotional roller coaster, with all of its instability, had worn me out. When I came home, I had to reacclimate, to say the least.
I’d sold the Walnut House and Renee and I had bought a place off of Mulholland Drive, where we tried to stop the wheels for a second, which once again was very hard for me to do. I installed a full-on reptile zoo over there; just a gazillion snakes and all kinds of stuff. I built a small studio over the garage, and when the nagging desire to work started to rear its head again, I began working on demos for songs that I’d written on the road.
I started hanging out with Matt and recording demos of that stuff just for fun, and Mike Inez from Alice in Chains and Gilby started to come around and play with us. The three of us just got into a groove of jamming and recording every night. We didn’t know what it was going to be. At some point I played it for Axl, who took a pronounced disinterest in it.
That was fine by me. I was writing for the hell of it, just doing music that was indicative of where I was at that moment. I hadn’t grasped the idea of doing a Guns record or what that might be going forward; I was just having a good time with no pressure whatsoever.
We recorded about twelve songs. I had just mixed the last of them the night of the Northridge earthquake in 1994. I’d finished at about four a.m., and I went downstairs to our bedroom. Renee was sleeping, the TV was on, and I put the DAT of the entire twelve demos for what would become Slash’s Snakepit on the nightstand and got into bed. The second I turned out the light, the earthquake hit. There was a TV in a cabinet that raised and lowered at the foot of the bed. At that moment it was up, and the TV was on, and as it was blasting up the bed between Renee and me it exploded, just as all the power in the house went out. The next five minutes were like Godzilla shaking the place. It took me a few moments to even realize just what was happening.
Renee’s cousin was staying with us at the time; it was his first time in L.A., and when we’d had lunch down on Melrose earlier that day, he asked me what earthquakes were like. In the confusion I thought about him. He was asleep down the hall in the office, next to a room full of venomous snakes. I got Renee out of bed, and got her to the doorway of our bedroom. She was so groggy that she opened the door into her head about three times before she thought to move out of the way. After I got her situated, I went down the hall and knocked on the door. There was a giant armoire in that room and Renee’s cousin was sleeping at the foot of it on the floor. I panicked and called out for him but there was no answer. I thought that he must be trapped under the armoire until finally he responded. Like his cousin, Greg banged his head a few times on the door getting out of there.
The house continued to shake as the three of us huddled in the doorway to our bedroom. Renee was between us, with no shirt on, and she was pretty well built. Despite what was going on around us, I still found that pretty funny. We rode out wave after wave; each of them felt like something was attacking the house. The noise was deafening: glass was breaking, furniture was being tossed around, our eight cats were howling, and the mountain-lion cub that we had in the bathroom was squealing like crazy.
We waited there for what felt like a few hours until the last aftershock died down. The damage was unbelievable. There were TVs dumped in the middle of pinball machines, our fridge had flown across the entire kitchen, the huge floor-to-ceiling windows in the front of the house were shattered.
I was most concerned about where my three cobras, Gila monsters, and the other venomous and potentially dangerous reptiles might be. I waited until it was light enough in the house to open the door to the room where they were kept because looking for venomous snakes in the dark isn’t a good idea. Somehow none of the tanks were broken and all of the snakes were okay.
The house was completely totaled and too much of a mess for us to handle, so we drove to the Four Seasons in Marina Del Rey and made plans to fly with Greg back to Chicago. We had our mountain lion, Curtis, with us; we snuck him into the Four Seasons in his cage and locked him in our bathroom. Like most of my animals, he was an orphan that I’d adopted and was raising in my home.
We cleaned up a bit and headed to the restaurant, and were waiting for the elevator when I turned around and saw Curtis, who had opened both the bathroom door and the door to the room and was following us to dinner. I realized that we had to deal with him immediately, so I called a friend who is an animal caretaker who picked him up and took him up to canyon country, where a friend of mine had a facility that housed exotic animals.
The next day we took off to Chicago, where we hung out with Renee’s uncle Bernie, who turned out to be a very cool guy…not someone who would kill me for cheating on his niece.
W
hen we eventually returned to L.A. Renee and I decided to sell that house right away. It had to be torn down and rebuilt, so we leased a place and in the meantime I focused on recording. With Mike Clink producing, and Matt and Mike Inez playing, I properly recorded the demos we’d done. We found ourselves a singer—Eric Dover of Jellyfish—who fit the bill well enough at the time. He and I wrote lyrics for all twelve tracks and I think it’s pretty easy to tell which songs he wrote and which ones I wrote: all of my songs are directed at one person…though no one picked up on it at the time. I used that record as an opportunity to vent a lot of shit that I needed to get off my chest.
Matt and I got into a bit of a disagreement because I had chosen Eric without getting his express approval. He was really pissed about that, so we had issues for a while. Anyway, Dover finished recording the vocals and I brought it to Geffen and they got behind it. Everything was in place and we were ready to take the Snakepit on tour, had it not been for the fact that Matt and Mike Inez weren’t able to go.
I wasn’t going to be discouraged by that, so I enlisted Brian Tishy and James Lamenzo, who are in Zakk Wylde’s band, and rounded out the lineup with Gilby Clarke. We booked ourselves a tour across the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. We shot two videos and released the single “Beggars and Hangers On.” And we had a lot of fun: there was no drama; we just booked gigs, showed up, got up there, and played. We did clubs and theaters and it was great; it really helped me rediscover why I love what I do. That project was the essential soul-searching that I needed, because I felt like I’d forgotten myself over the last two years. It was a shot in the arm for me to rediscover what I always knew: being in a band doesn’t have to be so taxing emotionally and psychologically…it can just be all about the playing.