by Steven Adler
So I went into my need-a-little-space, time-to-regroup-and-preserve-my-sanity mode again. Across the street from the Hell House was a duplex, which had two little apartments on one floor. My friends Julie and Tracey lived there. Julie would later appear in our “Welcome to the Jungle” video. She’s the girl who catches Axl’s attention in the beginning, wearing fishnet stockings walking down the city street. She’s also seen lying next to me on the bed.
So I rented a room from her, and talk about a totally cool landlord. The room was just their washroom, where there was an outlet, a splash sink, and hot and cold water faucets where you could hook up a washer and dryer. I put a piece of wood over the sink, and I put my TV on top of there. I even tapped into the building’s cable, which was kind of cool for me because I never had cable before.
I had a futon mattress that didn’t fit flat riding up on part of the wall. I had a blanket and a couple of pillows. There was a private door on the side where the driveway was. I’d go in and out whenever I wanted to. But more important I had a steady place to get away, sleep, and fuck.
There were three girls I loved having over regularly. One in particular, Adriana Smith, was a hot Native American chick with a hard body and such a pretty face. Izzy introduced me to her and we became close. She was in a gang of crazy biker chicks.
Then there was Gabby, or “GabaGabaHey.” She was a short, hot rocker who could jam all night. And finally Adriana Barbour, a cute, timid Valley girl who could drink any man under the table. They worked at the Seventh Veil gentlemen’s club on Sunset. Their apartment was right above a pool where we would get so fucking drunk. We named ourselves the Naked Skydivers from Hell, and we would jump from the balcony into the pool. We somehow avoided getting killed during one of our many insane diving stunts.
PRACTICE MAKES PERVERTS
GNR continued practicing in the space behind the Guitar Center. Jane’s Addiction rehearsed in the same studio, and I would see them every day, because I would always set up early while they would be breaking down. We had parties there too, because we would always end up at the studio after kicking it at the clubs. There were so many girls who wanted to hang out and be with the band.
Slash and I would get these girls and fuck them back and forth. It became sex everywhere, anywhere, anytime. It just happened. If I saw a girl I liked, I’d approach her, and that would be it. “You and me, right now.” There was no such thing as warming up to the situation. The situation was “Hey, bend over the washbasin!”
Girls also knew to show up at the studio. I remember one time Izzy and I got a blow job from some girl after one of our shows. It was about two a.m. She sucked one of us off while she jacked off the other, and then she would alternate. We were outside by the back door looking up at the sky going, “Oh my, oh fuck, oh shit.” She swallowed Izzy’s load at the moment I came, and I shot all over her face. I couldn’t leave her like that, so I went in and grabbed some tissues so she could clean up. Shit like that happened all the time.
BIG LILLY ROCKS
The band developed a strong following early on, and over the years, these fans would prove to be very loyal. They embraced our reputation as badasses who tore up everything in our way, because that’s exactly what we were. GNR was a fucking whack-job gang that was ready to rumble. We would fight tooth and nail to get a gig. We started playing the Troubadour on Tuesdays, then we moved to Thursdays, and then we began playing weekends as headliners. This all happened pretty quickly, because we never stopped bugging them about booking us better times and days.
My mom went to a few of our gigs. She really liked being a part of it, and Jamie loved going to the shows too. It would always be a special night when I saw members of my family in the audience. Even my grandmother made it out with Mom and Jamie one night to see me play at one of our shows at the Troubadour. The place was packed.
My mom told her, “Stay right here, I’m going to get a soda.” When she left, my grandmother, feisty little groupie that she was, pushed herself way up to the front of the stage. The show was a sellout, and I remember looking down and seeing her with a big smile on her face pointing at me and telling anyone who would listen, “That’s my grandson, that’s my grandson.” I never saw her looking so proud.
As fate would have it, it was one of our performances where Axl was wearing his black G-string with his bottomless chaps. He was dancing around shaking his ass right in front of her. I was cracking up, yelling to my grandma, “Get out of there, Grandma. Better clear out of there!”
In addition to the Troubadour, there were two Madame Wong’s nightclubs, Madame Wong’s East, downtown, and West, in Santa Monica. When we played there we would draw anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred people. The Roxy was a bit more prestigious, and you really had to hustle to bring in people at the Roxy.
After the Whisky reopened (it had been closed for a year from ’84 to ’85), we played the second night of its reopening, and it was packed. It felt so cool to play a famous landmark.
BOTTLE ROCKET
Every year in L.A. they held what was called the Street Scene. There were ten or more stages set up, all featuring free shows. It took up a few city blocks, and by the time we were asked to participate in 1985, it drew about a hundred thousand people. We were pretty familiar with the festival and felt that the gig could potentially get us some good exposure.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a very fucked-up show. I was on a stage setting up my drums, putting the bass drum in place. All of a sudden, this empty Jack Daniel’s bottle comes flying past my face and nails my cowbell. It missed my head by an inch! Some dumbass really tried to hurt me.
During our set, people were actually spitting at us. It was pretty ugly. I think this was some sick remnant of the masochism and self-abuse of the punk era. It was odd, and it was dangerous, but most of all it was sad; the punk kids were in the death throes of a has-been era. Shove a nail through your dick and parade it in front of your friends, because, well, punk is fucking lame.
We didn’t stand for shit like that and the band was spitting right back at them. It got so ridiculous it became funny. I remember seeing Duff looking all pissed as he hocked a big loogie into the crowd. It definitely was an unforgettable performance.
Poison played the Street Scene that night too. We saw them play clubs, get signed, and become huge. They started out about a year before us in 1984. I would help Rikki with his drums from time to time. They had this really cool guitar player, before C. C. Deville, named Matt. I was hanging out with them one day, and they asked me if I could run the spotlight for them for a show at the Country Club. Why, sure.
They told me that whenever Matt did a solo, I should put the spotlight on him. So I was up on the balcony running the spot and I have the light smack on Matt during a guitar solo. During this, Bret goes dancing off the side of the stage. After Matt’s solo, I’m maneuvering the spotlight back around in search of Bret. Bret wasn’t singing anymore. He was nowhere to be found. The guys in the band looked bewildered. Next thing you know, someone’s calling for an ambulance. Bret had fallen off the stage. There was a big square hole on the side of the stage used for storage that wasn’t clearly visible during the show. When Bret toppled in he broke three ribs, so they had to stop playing, and the show was over. I felt so bad and wished I could have prevented that from happening.
The four guys in Poison shared a one-bedroom apartment. It was disgusting. Now, for me to say it was disgusting, you know it had to be pretty sick. The place was crawling with cockroaches. They had four queen-size mattresses set up in the bedroom, so the floor was like one big mattress. They had chicks there all the time. Poison had girls bringing them food and money and they were all hot. So when I saw what they had going on I thought, “Oh yeah, this is going to start happening with us.”
Matt was my buddy. He always invited me along with the band to gigs. He ended up leaving Poison in 1985, and I was like, “You’re crazy. What’s wrong with you? You guys are gonna make it big.” But h
e was done with it. He just wanted to go home and get married, make babies, and ride into the sunset.
Matt faded out about the time GNR came back from our first trip to Seattle. With Poison’s guitar spot now open, Slash went to them for an audition. They acknowledged Slash’s kick-ass ability, but they didn’t think he was pretty enough to fit in with their glam image. They had their own image to maintain, their own way of doing things, and you had to respect that.
In fact, whenever Poison played it was tough shit for whatever band was going on after them. Bret would announce to the crowd that they were all invited to an after-hours party and hand out flyers with directions to their apartment. By the time the next band was on, the place was nearly empty.
I thought Poison was just a cool rock ’n’ roll band that was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I remember Bret and Rikki were at one of our shows at the Troubadour. We could see them standing right in front of the stage, a few feet back. At times, Axl could get mean talking to the crowd, and that night he said, “Some guys from another band are here tonight. Don’t they know that nice boys don’t play rock ’n’ roll?” That was our cue to launch into the song. But he said it so seriously that night, it was an obvious jab at Poison. They didn’t give a shit though; they were the top band at that time. In comparison, I could not imagine Bret ever being a dick like that to anyone.
Chapter 9
Ruling the Strip
FEEL THE LOVE
When GNR started getting popular, we had lots of chicks hanging around us all the time. And just like with Poison, they were making us meals and giving us money. I fucked them all, fat chicks, skinny chicks, plain chicks, shy chicks—it didn’t matter. I was just showing them my appreciation.
It got to the point where there would be lines around the block wherever we played. I heard so many club owners tell me that we were going to be huge; they hadn’t seen such crowds turning out for a local band since the rise of Mötley Crüe. During our show there would be hundreds of camera flashes going off, and while the guys clearly dug us, the fucking babes would become hysterical. The drummer always has the best seat in the house, and at every show I’d notice hotties shove their way to the front and scream nonstop. That was the clearest indication that we would make it, and I never once doubted it.
I’ll never forget one of our shows at the Troubadour. I was getting ready to go out and play. My hair was teased up to the fucking ceiling, and I had on a sleeveless ruffled white tuxedo shirt that I had tucked into my black leathers. There are these windows in the dressing room, and I was sitting out on the ledge of one of them, smoking a cig, looking at the marquee with “Guns N’ Roses” spelled out in big block letters.
Down on the street level was a long line of people waiting to get in. Some fans looked up and saw me. They yelled, “Guns N’ Roses rules!” Everyone looked up and cheered. A thrill ran through my body like I had never experienced before in my entire life. I was a part of something that felt incredibly exciting, something that got people whipped into a frenzy. Something I had helped to create was taking on a life force all its own.
To this day, I get the same rush when I drive by the Troubadour, something no one can ever take away from me. It’s one of the last places on earth I’m guaranteed a natural high to this day. That night I knew that exciting things were about to happen and the burn in my gut told me it was going to be huge.
In 1985 the Sunset Strip was like a nuclear reactor approaching critical mass. Heavy metal bands flooded the scene, and since there weren’t enough clubs to accommodate all of them, a pay-to-play rule was put into effect in the most popular spots. This was basically an insurance policy put in place by the club owners. If a band wanted to play a certain spot, they would have to buy a minimum number of tickets off the owner, and then it was up to the band to sell them.
This amounted to a pretty shitty deal for the bands. And as far as I can remember, we never agreed to this. We would never buy into their pay-to-play policy. Even in the beginning when we’d have only like fifteen fans show up, we never paid for anybody. I remember from time to time I’d wind up with a stack of tickets shoved into my jacket. But I was like, “Fuck this.” I didn’t sell any. I really don’t think the other guys did either. But I think one of our more enterprising techs used the money he got from the tickets to buy drugs. Now, why didn’t I think of that?
GLAM GETS SLAMMED
We were unaware of it at the time, but we were carving our own path to glory and it was about to look as well as sound like nothing else out there. At first our look just followed along with the glam scene. We all wore makeup and teased our hair up to the clouds. A look that had started innocently enough with Marc Bolan of T. Rex had gotten way out of control, and we didn’t even think about it. But the whole glam look could take over an hour of preparation before a show, and something had to give. I am proud to say that I’m the one who put an end to the pretty-boy bullshit.
It happened one night after a steamy show at the Troubadour. I came backstage before the encore and couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like I was suffocating and honestly wanted to jump out of my skin. I grabbed a towel off the counter and rubbed my face raw.
The boys looked at me. “What are you doing, Stevie? We got to go back out!” I exploded and yelled that I was done with the whole makeup bullshit. I just couldn’t bear it anymore. Drummers sweat the most and the shit would run all over, down my neck and chest and onto my clothes. The worst was getting makeup in my eyes. It burned like a mother. Plus, I’ve got body hair like fucking Wolverine, so I was already running hot out there and enough was enough!
I tossed the towel over a chair, and Izzy pointed to it. It had this bizarre imprint of my face on it. It was like that story where Veronica, some random woman who took pity on Christ, wiped his face while he was carrying the cross, and all his blood and sweat left a lasting impression of his features on it. Or maybe I’m confusing it with the sheet they wrapped around him when he died. Anyway, I think it’s still around today in a church somewhere in Italy. The Shroud of Turin. For me it was the Shroud of Touring.
That was the last time I wore makeup. You know what? By the next show, I looked around and the war paint was gone from all our faces. We were so over the eighties makeup scene and we all realized it wasn’t us. So good-bye to glam.
It was our sound that really mattered and set us apart anyway, and losing the makeup kind of accentuated that fact. Nobody was doing the kind of white-hot blistering pure rock that we were cranking out. A lot of our competition featured whammy-bar pseudo-Eddie guitar gods who had to have both hands ripping over the frets. I swear, every other band on the Strip featured these Van Halen/Randy Rhoads wannabes. They were fronted by castrated falsetto screamers like Queensrÿche’s Geoff Tate.
Slash didn’t go in for all that fancy guitar wizardry, and Izzy absolutely despised it. Izzy embraced the no-frills power chords that lent to the infectious gut-punch rhythms of a Keith Richards or Pete Townshend. Slash idolized Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, who combined incredible chord work with impeccable solos. So it was during this time that GNR evolved into a faithful rock ’n’ roll outfit. Duff and I laid down the foundation and Izzy and Slash built their masterpiece on top.
ADLER TO AXL
While other bands were singing about dungeons, wizards, and black magic or partying in the backseat of Daddy’s car, Axl was writing lyrics about life, his life and our lives. We all had lived through some pretty dark, twisted shit, but it was real, and the kids sensed it and responded. Axl excelled at capturing the mood, and whether it was “Nightrain” or “November Rain,” there wasn’t a soul in the audience who couldn’t feel what we were shouting about or living through. “It’s So Easy” also ended up being a song about our lives in the now, at that very moment. And nobody in the world sang with more intensity, more honesty, than Axl.
GNR just played the kind of rock ’n’ roll that everyone loved. We were the wanton offspring of Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones, delivering
the goods with a hard-core rock attitude. We were quickly recognized as the seediest primal band in existence. The few bands that were similar to our flush-the-fashion, don’t-give-a-damn look were also bands that often shared the same bill as us: Junkyard, Faster Pussycat, and the Joneses. The Joneses were these hip-looking street rockers who didn’t go out of their way to be too glam. Duff was close with them. There was also a cool chick band called Hardly Dangerous that Axl liked to have around. They were hot.
We also hung out with Taime Downe from Faster Pussycat. He started the Cathouse with another one of our friends, Riki Rachtman, who was in a band called Virgin. Their logo featured a cherry with a bloody knife going through it. It was quirky, whack, but funny stuff.
He and Taime really had the Cathouse jumping, and it became an extremely popular and successful rock club, with Guns N’ Roses playing no small part in its taking off. In fact, the Cathouse became Guns N’ Roses’ own personal hangout, where the DJ played our songs in a club for the first time.
THE CATHOUSE
The Cathouse started off over at the old Osco’s Disco building on La Cienega, where Slash and I spent a good deal of our early years. Across from the Beverly Center, it had an odd location for a rock club. Osco’s had been closed for quite a few years. It reopened as the Cathouse in 1986. Taime and Riki had an apartment together and they were business partners. “The World-Famous Cathouse” was the place to hang out, and we always got treated really well there.
I remember me, Riki, and Duff would stair-dive into the wee hours. We would get all drunk, climb to the top of the stairs, and dive off, sliding down the railings and bouncing off the steps. Occasionally, I’d slice my ass or crack a rib. Great times, but God, how my body would ache in the morning!
NEW DIGS
The “splash sink apartment” didn’t last and I found myself staying at yet another home, a little apartment on Martel, a few blocks from the Denny’s on Sunset. This time I was sharing it with my friend Monica. She was a tall, gorgeous blonde, extremely fetching, who had moved from Sweden. She made about $200 in tips each night as a stripper at the Seventh Veil and went on to do some work in porn. I’d walk her to work in the evening around six and pick her up at around three in the morning. She’d put the cash in my hand, and I’d go nuts shopping for groceries at the twenty-four-hour Ralph’s near La Brea on Sunset, known to everyone on the Strip as rock ’n’ roll Ralph’s.