My Appetite for Destruction

by Steven Adler

  One day, I had her chasing me around the classroom. I was crazy, running around the desks and stuff. She chased me into an adjoining classroom and the teacher in that room was in some other kid’s face, pointing and shouting. “You’re a loser, a bum, that’s all you’re ever going to be!” I thought that was amusing. “Hey, another kid who gets teachers to lose it.” We looked at each other and just kind of smirked.

  When the school day was over, we sought each other out. He said he recognized me from a few days earlier. I didn’t make the connection at first, but here was the kid who asked me if I was all right when I smashed my head.

  His name was Saul Hudson. And from the first fart, we got along great. That very day we started hanging out, climbing to the third-floor railing on the south end of the school. We were about six inches apart from each other, standing on one foot singing “King Tut,” which was the happening Steve Martin song. We were laughing and having a good time until one of the teachers came out, yelling, “Jesus Christ, get the hell off there!” So we jumped and ran off. I think we bothered to show up at school for maybe another week after that, but then we started ditchin’ every day.

  We had a routine. First, we’d go to school just in time for roll call in homeroom. After we were marked as present we would leave. Sometimes we’d come back for lunch. We would sit at a table with this cool kid who had a huge head of big blond curls.

  His name was Michael Balzary, aka “Mike B the Flea,” aka “Flea.” He played trumpet for the school band and later went on to form the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Turns out, he lived down the street from me. Most evenings in the fall, Saul, me, and a big group of kids would play football on my grandma’s street. She would sit out on the front porch and take it all in. Most times, Flea would break out his trumpet and play for her. She thought he was a “little angel.”

  SAUL WAS COOL

  Saul was the coolest, smoothest guy. He had already been scoring with chicks and had a definite air of confidence about him. Saul had many talents. We’d go back to the schoolyard where we first met and ride bikes. He was awesome on a bike, the best BMX-er around, and would even enter in competitions. Me, I had a Huffy that I hated. They were a joke to kids who took their riding seriously.

  Saul lived with his grandmother at Sweetzer and Santa Monica. I lived with my grandmother at Hayworth and Santa Monica, five blocks away. The first time he came over to my grandmother’s house, I showed him my guitar and little amp that my mom had bought me. I knew two chords and two scales.

  Some kid had shown me those along with the main riffs of Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” and Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down.” I loved Kiss, so I put Alive! on my record player, turned the volume all the way up, and started rocking out, doing my best Ace Frehley impersonation. He instantly fell in love with the blistering noise coming out of the amplifier.

  That’s all it was really, just noise. That same week, I gave him the guitar to work with, and I decided to be a singer. I bought a mike stand and a cheap microphone. We would sit in his grandma’s stairwell, and he would play guitar and write lyrics.

  Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had all these scarves on his microphone stand, so I got these bandannas at an army-navy store at Vine and Santa Monica and put them on mine. These little kids who lived next door to me thought I was Leif Garrett. I had hair just like him. When I would run into them outside, they’d ask me for my autograph. Sadly, it was a short career, because while I really tried to sing, I just couldn’t. I’d always sing to the radio and eventually I realized I wasn’t any good. I also came to the conclusion that guitars weren’t for me either. Drums gave me a primal thrill that a guitar could never touch. And I had been banging on Tupperware since I was two, so it was the drums for me.

  I thought drums looked so cool. My first drum set was comprised of books stacked in position, and for my first drumsticks I used the bottom part of wooden hangers. Around the same time, Saul’s grandma bought him a better guitar than the one that I gave him.

  Again we would sit in his grandma’s stairwell and jam for hours. Soon we became inseparable, like four people engaged in a lively conversation: Saul, his guitar, me, and my drums. I remember reading that when Clapton met Duane Allman after an Allman Brothers concert in Florida, their guitars talked to each other for hours. It was and always will be the music. The music bonded us for life.

  THE FIRST JAM

  The first time we actually performed a song, we were at some black guy’s house, a kid we met at the Granada Hills music store. He played the drums, his brother played guitar, and they performed the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” for us. I closely watched him play, sort of learning from his movements.

  They let Saul and me have a go at it. For the first time I actually played on a real drum set. From watching the guys play, we mimicked what they did and played as best we could. We made some kind of whacked-out sound. But for kids who had no idea what they were doing, the seeds were there. We were born rockers.

  Although Saul had just started playing guitar, he was really amazing from the very beginning. Saul was also writing kick-ass original songs, cool ones that had great hooks. In comparison, I wasn’t very good on the drums. That wasn’t going to stop us though. After that jam, Saul and I were all psyched to come up with a name for our band. After kicking a few around, one of us just blurted out “Road Crew.” It’s like when Robert Plant wrote the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven,” and he said that two-thirds of that song just poured out of him in like twenty minutes. He felt like he was channeling more than writing, and that’s how we felt with “Road Crew.” It was just sitting there in the cosmic realm, waiting for one of us to pluck it out.

  God, we loved that name. It summed up our warrior attitude about bringing great rock ’n’ roll to the masses. That was going to be our thing. Taking music from the streets to the streets. And when you think about our later success with GNR, that’s what helped us click with our fans. They immediately recognized that this was their music, their own street brand of rock ’n’ roll.

  BLOOD BROTHERS

  I had a skateboard and Saul had a bike. I would shred over to his house or he would ride his bike to mine. I was pretty much with Saul every day now, all the time. The music was our sacred bond, which is why I had drifted away from Ricardo and Jackie. I still loved those guys, but I loved rock ’n’ roll more. Saul and I were slaves to the beat, hanging out on the stairway at his grandma’s apartment building, writing music and lyrics. We were such good friends, so close, even doubling up to make it with chicks.

  When we were both fourteen we said, “Let’s do that blood brother thing.” We got a knife, slit our hands, pressed them together, and said, “We’re going to make it in a rock band and we’re going to be huge.” That promise formed an unbreakable bond between us. After that we felt we had sealed our success as a team.

  STONER GIRL

  Saul and I believed in sharing. Everything I had, he wanted. Ha! One time I was running over to his place when I passed by this guy and girl who were sitting out on their porch. The guy was rolling a joint, and the girl asked if I wanted to smoke it with them.

  The girl introduced herself as Kerry. She was so beautiful. She had dark hair, big lips, blue eyes, and was extremely pretty, very exotic. I don’t even remember the guy’s name, but he was her roommate. This girl was twenty-three years old, and we just started hanging out every day while I was on my way to Saul’s. I was only fourteen, but it didn’t matter. After about two weeks of seeing her every day, I decided I was going to try to fuck her.

  One night we just started making out, and I was so into her. I mean, right when my cock would touch her hot, wet pussy, I would pop. Three times it went like that. I just couldn’t hold out. I had only fucked my little windup Marcia by then, and this older woman really rocked my world. My balls actually ached. And I was hard again in like ten minutes. Afterward, I went over to Saul’s house and told him about it, all the facts in minute detail. Saul just got this odd, pinched-up look on hi
s face, then disappeared for about fifteen minutes.

  When he got back, I asked him where he was. He said he forgot to take out a load of garbage for his mom. I started laughing. “Yeah, sure. You had to get rid of a load all right.” Saul got mad. He flipped his guitar pick at me. Stuff like that could really set him off. Then the next day, just to make peace, I introduced him to Kerry. Within just a few visits, he managed to score with her too. But unlike me, he knew what he was doing.

  Chapter 4

  Learning the Hard Way

  ROLL IT OVER

  Saul’s main squeeze at this time was a beautiful young blond girl we’ll call Melissa. We used to go over to her house all the time. I could just walk out the back of Grandma’s house and I’d be on Melissa’s street.

  I learned how to roll joints from Melissa’s mom, Carrie, who had a big bowl of pot and papers ready for me when I visited. One afternoon we were the only ones in the house. She was a very pretty lady, about thirty-six years old. She was twenty-two years older than me but as we were getting stoned I thought, “Y’know, I’m horny, what the fuck.” I went for it. I started making out with Carrie, and she started moaning softly. I gave her a big wicked smile, then pulled out my cock and stuck it in her face. She started sucking on it, and it was incredible, a real blow job from an experienced lover. Although I was still learning, I felt like the hero of eighth graders everywhere. I wanted to get up on the roof and scream it out to the whole world. “I’m Steven Adler, the fuckmeister of grade-schoolers everywhere. Kneel before me!”

  Without ever discussing it, we agreed it would be our little secret, once and done. There was no awkwardness between us, and the proof was that we remained good friends after our horizontal tango. It was natural, it was fantastic, and neither of us regretted a thing about it.

  THE THREE OF US

  But when it came to hanging out, it was just Melissa, Saul, and me. The three of us were inseparable for nearly four years. If you saw one of us, the other two weren’t far away. I wouldn’t come home for days. I slept over at Saul’s grandma’s house sometimes and at his mom Ola’s too. Ola was incredibly talented, a lovely, artistic black woman who lived near Olympic and Crescent Heights.

  Melissa had a friend, Michelle Young, who became a part of our tightly knit little group. She was a thin brunette with attitude. Michelle would be immortalized in the song “My Michelle” years later.

  I remember the first time we went over to her pad, I was surprised by the stacks upon stacks of pornographic videotapes. She said her dad made his living as a producer in the porn industry and asked if I wanted to watch one.

  I’d never seen one, so why not? This one took place in a jail cell, which was actually a really terrible set. These guys were getting their dicks sucked through the bars of this woman’s cell. I was a horny young kid and found it difficult to hide my boner. But it was so damned cheesy, I had to laugh.

  Every so often, we would visit Saul’s dad, Tony Hudson. His dad hung out with a lot of rock ’n’ roll people. He was a well-known album cover designer who did art for sixties folksingers like Joni Mitchell. I remember he took us to a couple of parties up in Laurel Canyon. It was so cool, a beautiful hippie house, everyone smoking pot, munching mushrooms, and it was the first time we ever tried wine coolers. The wine coolers were too lightweight for us. But everything else was just right. It was just nonstop sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

  WEED VERSUS WINE

  Saul didn’t like smoking weed as much as I did, so we would mostly drink when we hung out together. One week we’d have peppermint schnapps, another we’d switch to Jack Daniel’s, and then another it would be vodka. Every week it was something different, depending on whatever struck our fancy (or what we found in the cupboard).

  My grandpa always had a couple of bottles in the liquor cabinet, so we’d skim a little from there, or we would have someone buy a bottle for us. I’m pretty sure Melissa’s mom would’ve gotten it for us if we really needed it.

  I didn’t smoke cigarettes at the time, but Saul loved his cowboy killers, Marlboro Reds in the hard pack. He’d always be like, “C’mon, smoke with me. I don’t have anyone to smoke with.” So without giving it much thought, I started smoking too.

  We would roam anywhere and everywhere. At first he would ride his bike, and I’d hitch my skateboard behind him. Then we decided that since all the people we associated with were older than us, it was time to ditch the bike and the skateboard and just walk instead. Back and forth between all the popular Hollywood clubs: the Starwood, the Whisky, Gazzarri’s, the Roxy, and our favorite, the Rainbow Bar and Grill. Everybody ended up at the Rainbow after the nightly club crawls. Saul and I had so much fun there.

  Before going in, we loved to get primed by drinking in the parking lot of a nearby bank. One night we were pouring 151 Bacardi in the cap, lighting the rum on fire, and downing the mini shot. After a while, we were pretty toasted, and as Saul did his umpteenth shot, he missed his mouth completely and spilled a purplish-blue fireball onto his chin and cheek. All of a sudden the left side of his face lit up like he was the Human Torch. Saul didn’t immediately realize what he had done and just looked at me like he was confused. I was shocked shitless but instinctively reached out to smother the flames with my bare hands before it did any real harm. Booze would definitely mete out its fair share of damage to us over the next decade, but not that night. Saul got away with a nice healthy glow on his face, and I didn’t notice any burn marks on my hands. I’m sure we had both forgotten about it by the time we ordered our first round at the Rainbow.

  Our afternoon strolls covered much of the same turf. We would also cruise up Santa Monica Boulevard, then head north past Barney’s Beanery, a great bar where you could shoot pool, play foosball, and order some great chow. It was also where Jim Morrison wrote songs for the Doors and Janis Joplin hung out when she was in L.A. In fact the artist R. Crumb immortalized Barney’s when he drew it on the Cheap Thrills album cover for Janis and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company.

  Saul and I would then head down Sunset to Tower Records, check out the scene there, and then wander up to Hollywood Boulevard. Tower isn’t there anymore, and it makes me sad every time I drive by the old brick building. Some things, especially record stores, should never change.

  Flipping through Tower Records’ racks, from Aerosmith to the Who, always set me to dreaming about putting a rock band together, making out with our groupies, and traveling around the world. That’s all Saul and I would talk about. He’d often have his acoustic guitar with him, idly strumming away.

  I remember walking out of the store just as Benjamin Orr, the bass player from the Cars, drove by in his Rolls-Royce. He was the coolest-looking dude on earth that day. He had the top down, music cranked, and a beautiful girl with him. He just looked like a rock star. You could tell when you saw a rock star back then. They really stood out. And I just knew in my heart and soul that one day, I would be that guy.

  LEARNING THE DRUMS AT THE STARWOOD

  The Starwood was a famous rock club at Santa Monica and Crescent Heights Boulevard. Van Halen and Quiet Riot played there all the time, as well as lesser-known acts such as Y&T and the Quick. Our first time there, we just slipped in the door. Once inside, we checked out the place and walked right up to the VIP room, pulled the curtain back, and saw a band called London playing. I vividly remember seeing Nikki Sixx onstage; his hair was spiked high up in the air. He was dressed in black leather, and he was playing a black-and-white-striped bass. It was the coolest thing I ever fucking saw, right up there with the Orr sighting.

  That experience was so amazing, so new to me, that I started going there every day at two or three in the afternoon. When the bands rolled in to set up, I’d help them move in their equipment. I just started hanging out and soon became a regular. Saul wasn’t into it as much as me, and it became sort of my private thing. When the bands played, I would go up this stairway that led to the backstage area that the bands used.
/>   In this area, between the back wall and where the drums were set up, was a small space about a foot wide. I could squeeze right in there because I was skinny. There was a little crack in the wall and from that vantage point I could look right down on the drummers. I’d study their every move, and that’s how I started to learn the techniques of playing, from watching the pros. I was just a couple of feet away, and I could see everything. Sometimes my foot would fall asleep, or my back and neck would start to cramp up. I didn’t care because this was the greatest possible opportunity for me. I honestly believed I was blessed to find this secret place where time seemed to stand still.

  MEETING THE BANDS

  I hung out and talked to everybody. I remember the Go-Go’s playing there in late 1978. Belinda Carlisle had a shaved head and was just a happy, chubby-cheeked girl. She definitely got her act together in the following years. I met a lot of musicians, but the encounter I recall best is meeting Danny Bonaduce. I was tripping my balls off on acid, which was a new pastime for me that Saul wasn’t particularly into, and I walked into the management office. He was sitting there with a bunch of coke on the table. I was at the point in my acid trip where there wasn’t any barrier between what you thought and what you said, so I just blurted out: “Dude, you’re Danny Partridge!”

  “That’s right,” he replied, totally deadpan. I was so happy to see this person I watched on TV all the time, and I just smiled at him like a blithering idiot. There may have been a long awkward period of silence, but I don’t remember. I know at one point I was back outside, probably leaving Danny to do his thing.

  After hanging out there every day, the owners got to know me and I had free rein in the place. It was the seventies, and I couldn’t help but feel that everybody was carefree, partying, and having fun. But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, some bad, traumatic things happened to me during this time.