Slash

by Slash

  “So is this how you record guitars?” I asked Josh.

  “Well…yeah, usually these studio monitors are enough.”

  “I’ve never played that way and I can tell you right now that they’re not going to be loud enough.”

  At that moment I thought of what my wife, Perla, had told me over and over again: I like to do things the hard way. I could see that I was throwing Josh and his whole studio setup into a tailspin. I wanted to work on that tendency of mine, so rather than make a fuss and insist that we book a new studio and perhaps a new producer, I chose to adapt.

  “Listen, just call in some bigger speakers and we’ll make it work,” I said. Josh looked genuinely relieved.

  I can’t say that it was a pleasant experience. The studio engineers kept renting us new speakers but none of them did an acceptable job. That’s not true—they got exactly the right set on the very last day of recording. In the end, I was satisfied with my work on our debut record, but when I look back on it now, it was a very uncomfortable, confining session for me. All in all, my playing is pretty reserved on that record, which is why there aren’t as many solos as there could have been. I felt too restricted to improvise the way I usually do.

  I think Dave got a lot more out of the digital studio setup than I did when he came in to do his parts. He did great; he added all of these sound textures that really made the guitars complete.

  At the time Scott had been court-ordered to stay in a halfway house, a sentence that resulted from his arrest. He’d come in and do his vocals and then go right back. He was only allowed to work for three hours a day.

  DUFF AND I WENT TO NEW YORK CITY to sit in on the mixing sessions with George Marino engineering and then Contraband was finished. I had my first drink in over a year that night. I remained pretty quiet about my feelings on the GN’R/Axl situation up until Duff and I did a promo tour supporting the release of Velvet Revolver’s first CD. At that point, I hadn’t gone public about what had transpired between Axl and me, and I hadn’t planned on going there. But the media wanted to know my thoughts on the subject and I couldn’t help it. I had nothing pleasant to say. It was as if they had touched a raw nerve, and suddenly everything that came out of my mouth was bitter and spiteful—the complete antithesis of how I really wanted to react. When GN’R and I parted ways, I had honestly wanted to stay low-key and never bicker in the press, mostly because so many artists before me had gone that route and I thought it distasteful. But here I was, put in a corner with press in every direction, hungrily looking for controversy and prodding that raw nerve. I couldn’t control my responses. Everything I said about Axl was negative; it was almost emotional. This, of course, pissed off Axl and was definitely the catalyst for rant against me in his 2005 press release, not to mention complicating the GN’R lawsuit even further.

  While the CD was being packaged, Duff and I went on a press tour to promote it in Europe and Japan for a few weeks. The band went on the road before it even came out. Our first gig was in Kansas, and from there we hit every city in just about every state. We managed to generate enough buzz that when the album was released in June 2004, it went to number one in its second week. We were in Vegas for a show when Clive called us to let us know that we’d hit the top of the charts, and I have to say that after all I’d seen and all I’d done, getting a call from the legendary Clive Davis with news like that gave me goose bumps: it was an arrival, in my book. That was the start of a tour that seemed to keep going and going, building momentum the longer it went on. All in all we remained on the road for nineteen months, playing everything from clubs to festivals to stadiums.

  The band played to crowds of thousands around the world and our record sold three million copies worldwide. We worked hard on that tour; we’d often play five nights a week, a different city every night. We did it all on a bus, in close quarters. We did Live 8, we did the Donnington Festival, we put out three videos on that record. It was pretty successful; suddenly we were once again in a major band.

  Our last gig was in Orlando, then everyone went home and resumed their lives. And once we did, we got into all kinds of shit. There were rumors that we were breaking up, there were rumors that all of us were back on drugs and on the verge of self-destruction, and too many more rumors to name.

  I, FOR ONE, YET AGAIN, DID HAVE A very hard time readjusting to being home. When we were writing Contra-band, way before we went in and recorded all of it, my son London was born in August 2002. I had gone with Perla to get her ultrasound and at the time I was still getting my head around the fact that I had a child on the way—obviously this was going to be a new experience for me. That said, once I knew one was coming, I thought I wanted a little girl, figuring she’d be just like her mom and they would be inseparable, a notion that further fed my denial about my inescapable new responsibilities.

  That was my little idyllic vision of fatherhood until I realized something I’d been ignoring: I have a hard enough time with grown women, forget about little ones. A daughter would probably be my undoing. I breathed a sigh of relief when Perla delivered a beautiful, healthy nine-pound baby boy. We named him London not only because he was conceived in the U.K. but because I’d had a friend with that name in grade school and never forgot how cool I thought it was.

  I didn’t have any experience raising children, obviously, but I did get some training. Perla felt an overwhelming rush of the maternal instinct when she got pregnant, and one day she brought home a Pomeranian puppy from the pet store. The dog immediately became my responsibility, especially once Perla was ordered to a few months of bed rest. I was forced to raise this dog and that was my preparation for fatherhood. It was the only experience I’d had raising anything, because one thing is for sure—having cats and snakes doesn’t really count. All things considered, I must have done something right because our dog was very well behaved by the time London was born.

  Having a child forced me to be present; it insisted that I honor my sobriety. When I wasn’t with Velvet Revolver, I was home with my wife, raising our son. I was the dad, assembling the nursery, shopping for toys, putting together the electric mobile sets. And then Perla got pregnant again. We found out that it was another boy, and I breathed another sigh of relief. Our new baby was a breech as well, though the complications didn’t develop until later on in her term. It was rough on Perla once again.

  I was on tour when my second son was delivered. I managed to fly home regularly to visit Perla in the hospital, but the day that my second son was to be delivered I had a show the night before. I had to fly from the hospital to Atlantic City on a red-eye then fly home on a red-eye to be there in time for his birth the next morning. I missed my flight back to L.A. and was lucky enough to get another one. They had to hold up Perla’s C-section until I got there. I went right to the hospital and arrived just before he was born. I spent that night and the next morning with Perla and my perfect new little eight-pound baby boy, then I flew back out and met the band at the next gig. Such is the life my two sons have been born into.

  We didn’t know what to name our second son until we remembered what our good friend movie mogul Robert Evans told us we should name our first son. As usual, he had a strong opinion that I couldn’t deny.

  “Give him the coolest name that a man could ever have,” he told us in that signature baritone. “Name him Cash.”

  “Robert, it’s too late,” I said. “We’ve already named him London.”

  “All right. But if you get a second chance,” he said, “do the right thing.”

  The family Hudson: Slash, London, Perla, and Cash on a Disney cruise in 2006 where they were undoubtedly the local outcasts.

  After a very short period of deliberation, we decided that he was right. And so our second son is named Cash.

  AFTER TWO YEARS AT THE FEVER PITCH that is nonstop touring, I was once again dropped into the real world, and as familiar as I was with the condition, it hadn’t gotten any easier to bear—if anything, it had become a harder adj
ustment to make. When all you care about is the grind of going from gig to gig, when the next show is the only thing you’re looking forward to for an extended period of time, when room service and your hotel room are your reward, you exist in a very stylized mode of living.

  Home, no matter who you are, is nothing like that. When you are home you have to get off of your ass and do things yourself; when you are home you become as normal as you’ll ever be because you have to rely on your own faculties. In the past, I’d relied on booze and drugs to offset that transition and make it a bit easier to take in the short run. Once you have kids, if you intend to be a dependable parent at all, that option goes out the window: when you come off the road and you’re a parent, you get home and you have to deal. You go from a situation where you’re taken care of to one where you’re taking care of.

  It wasn’t easy on either Perla or me when I got home. I had started drinking wine—a lot of wine—on tour, and she’d been watching me slip into my old ways once again. For whatever reason, when she came to visit me on tour, I chose that day to sit at the bar drinking, under the guise of waiting there for her. All that I accomplished was getting myself smashed to the point that I was useless when she finally arrived. I’d say hello and go pass out. So we had some issues to deal with.

  When Velvet Revolver got signed, got our album together, and set about preparing to tour, we underwent a change in management that I didn’t agree with at all. This eventually led me to find my own manager separate from the band. That sounded like a logical solution to me, but all that it did in reality was alienate me from the other guys and cause a great degree of animosity among us and among the management teams whenever a business arrangement came up. This situation added an extra level of stress that two years on the road did nothing but escalate. The tension never affected our chemistry onstage or creatively, but on a day-to-day interpersonal level, things were touchy, and by the end of the tour, everyone was at one another’s throats. I stand by my decision, but I understand now that it made me the pain in the ass of the band in the other guys’ eyes. I get why I drove them nuts.

  It was around this time that Axl chose to send out a press release that did nothing but add fuel to the fire. It’s been widely documented, so I won’t do it justice by going into it all, but in short, Axl released a statement claiming that I’d come by his house, extremely coherent, early one morning to ask him to please settle the lawsuit between us that had been ongoing for years at this point. It also claimed that he and I talked for a while and that I had nothing but disparaging comments to make about Scott Weiland and everyone else in my band.

  The truth is, I haven’t spoken a word to Axl personally since I left the band in 1996. It’s sad but true. I did go by his house one night but I was drunk—Perla wasn’t and she was driving. I walked up to the door and delivered a note that read something like “Let’s work this out. Call me.—Slash.” But I didn’t give it to Axl, I gave it to his assistant.

  In any case, Axl released his statement, and it was a big deal in the press because it was the first time Axl had gone public with his opinion about me, the lawsuit, or anything like that.

  As I’ve said, this incident was widely reported in the press and on the Internet and anyone who is interested can go read all about it if they so choose.

  The fact of the matter is, this incident and the resulting negative effect it had on Velvet Revolver was very unsettling to me; I can barely even talk about it still, let alone re-create it in detail here. I thought I was going to see everything I’d just finally gotten together fall apart.

  First things first; the lawsuit was a nightmare that had gone on too long. For fear of further litigation, the easiest way to explain it is to say that since 2001 we were involved in a lawsuit over the rights and profits stemming from licensing and merchandise. It was a typical broken-up-bands litigation where one party complains of underpayment by another party. The road of rock and roll is littered with that kind of shit.

  But what hurt the most was that I had to defend myself to my band. I showed up and insisted that what was alleged wasn’t true, but the way that Axl had written this thing made it sound so matter-of-fact that everyone seemed to think it was.

  The guys were very dubious about accepting my story. At the same time I was very sincere about telling them the truth. At first I thought I should respond publically, and told my band I would, but later decided it would only complicate the issue and prolong it.

  I wasn’t sure what to do; I still wanted to proceed—my credibility was riding on it. We had a band meeting a few days later and Scott didn’t show; it was obvious to me that since I hadn’t made a move, I’d let him down.

  Then Scott released his own rebuttal. He attacked Axl on every level. And my instinctual reaction wasn’t “you’re right,” it was “you can’t talk shit about Axl!” I can talk shit about Axl, I can talk shit about Axl all day if I want to—that’s because I’ve had to deal with him for years. But neither Scott nor anyone else has that right.

  Tensions in the band escalated as a result and I got my gear out of Matt Sorum’s home studio, where we’d been writing and rehearsing.

  Word on the street was that I’d quit Velvet Revolver to rejoin Guns N’ Roses. I don’t know who started that rumor but it had legs long enough that it caused an exhausting internal battle. The media took a particular liking to that story: that Slash had ditched his former Guns bandmates to rejoin Axl in whatever his idea of Guns N’ Roses was going to be. At that point I think Chinese Democracy was still thought to be on the way any year now.

  It looked like what I was doing was a fact, but for the fact that I wasn’t doing it. If you picked up any music paper around that time or listened to the radio or checked out blogs on the Internet, there was no avoiding it. It was etched in stone: I’d left Velvet Revolver, I was going back to Guns. The reality was that neither happened: during those few months I was just at home, recording musical ideas on my digital sixteen-track.

  It literally was a waiting game: it took all of us a while to get past all of that bullshit. Finally, when it all went away, we got back to work. I just went over to Matt’s house one day like nothing had ever happened.

  “Listen, man,” I said. “All of that was ridiculous and all of this is ridiculous. Can I tell you what really happened?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  I said my piece, relating the story once again as it had gone down. Clearly, time had proven that I had had no reunion with Axl and that I wasn’t rejoining Guns N’ Roses—because nothing had happened! That fact seemed to convince the guys that my version of events was the truth. I never felt that I’d needed to explain myself to those guys, but I had, which always pissed me off. But I got over it and so did they. After I had a one-on-one with Matt, I had one with Kirschner and then Duff and Scott. All in all, it was completely unnecessary drama, whether it was unsaid or not. I just didn’t have the time for it. But we got through it. And we’re all better for it today.

  THE BAND FINALLY GOT TOGETHER AND started rehearsing at Matt’s house, in his recording studio in his garage. Everybody was getting along again and we started to work on new material for our next record. It was at this time that I tore my rotator cuff working out in the gym and went to see a doctor. He prescribed a few theraputic exercises and gave me a bottle of Vicodin. I knew damn well what Vicodin was and what effect it has on me, but in the form of a prescription from my doctor, it all seemed okay and actually necessary. I took the Vicodin as instructed, one every four hours. It soon became two every four hours, then one every hour, then one every fifteen minutes—that’s just the way it works with me.

  Not only was my band situation in jeopardy, Perla and I were at odds like never before. I was heading one way with the Vicodin and she was heading another way: after the birth of our second son, Perla wanted to lose all the weight she’d gained having children, and in doing so got addicted to prescription diet pills. Diet pills are basically a gourmet form of speed and she’d been
taking them long enough indiscriminately that it had altered her personality. She was already a superattentive, superassertive person who was always a few steps ahead of me. Adding speed of any kind to that equation accentuated those traits to the point that she became too intense for me to deal with.

  Our interactions were getting increasingly agitated, so I went to Las Vegas to take part in VH1’s Rock Honors in 2006, where, along with my buddy Tommy Lee, we did a set of Kiss songs. While I was there I met up with my Oxy-connected friend and got more pills than I could handle. My friend had beaten cancer but in the interim he’d allegedly gotten into a near-lethal car accident and had a newly unending prescription for them. When someone tells you they have a prescription like that, you don’t ask questions.

  By then I’d gotten familiar enough with the drug that I wondered what would happen if I crushed them up, liquefied them, and melted them down to inject. I was quite pleased to discover that it worked. I had a great time in Vegas; it was the perfect place to face the fact that that’s where I was heading. I stayed there for a few days more than I needed to. I just got high. I was just chipping; I didn’t have a habit. (Chipping is a here and there relationship with smack.)

  I came back to my home and as my relationship went further downhill, I was self-medicating; I had a stash of Vicodin and OxyContin. Perla and I split up abruptly; we were apart for a day: I went to a hotel out near the airport. I packed up our Hummer with my clothes and my cat and in my mind I wasn’t ever coming back. I wasn’t at all a saint, but I couldn’t handle where she was at. I told her that she needed to go to rehab.

  She agreed. “If I’m going in, take care of the kids” was the last thing she said to me.

  WHILE PERLA WAS IN REHAB IT GOT bad—our nanny took care of the kids while I maintainined a healthy Oxy habit. I found an L.A. connection and bought about a three-month supply. And while I didn’t do it every day, eventually I did it every night. I kept it from the band like I kept it from my family. But then eventually it crept in: I’d do a shot before rehearsal. I’d pursued the creative vibe with the band in a clear mental state, but eventually there I was again…foggy. It was so out of hand that I was shooting up in Matt’s bathroom, and it was obvious to everyone that I was high. All the same, no one said a word, at least for a while, and it says a lot about our collective tolerance. I wasn’t even trying to hide my habit from a band of guys who’d had their share of problems and a singer who still had his. I was so obnoxious about it that Matt even found blood on the wall. If my nodding out at rehearsal didn’t give it away, that surely did.