by Steven Adler
I remember at this one show, he left after the first song because the monitors (the small speakers that face toward the musicians onstage so they can hear what they’re playing) sucked. So he just split. As he stormed off the stage, he walked right by me. I shouted, “Why don’t you come to sound check? Then you’d know what the monitors are going to sound like. You could even get it straightened out before the show.” But no, that was asking too much.
Axl stood up thousands of fans without a second thought. One thing I’ve always respected is GNR fans, the most faithful, dedicated, fanatical audiences in the world. Unfortunately, Axl didn’t feel this way, and after we became famous, he kind of took the GNR fans for granted.
Whether it was monitors or royalties, I was the only one in the band to call Axl out on his shit. Later that night we were in a bar and he’s sitting away from the band with his latest bunch of “friends,” who were lately shaping up to be B-list actors and wannabe models. He’s shoving his smokes into a fancy cigarette holder, and he’s looking fucking ridiculous. The other guys wanted me to leave it alone, but I couldn’t, so I stood up and said, “Look at you, you pathetic little stuck-up motherfucker.”
Axl just laughed at me: “Ha. Stevie, you’re funny.”
I go, “Motherfucker, what the fuck’s wrong with you? You can’t just leave us onstage and take off like that.”
Axl just whispered something into the nearest ear, and all his sycophant friends tittered away.
When Axl was ridiculously late for a recording session or blew off an important gig, I felt I had to call him out on it. The other guys knew better than to draw the wrath of Axl, I guess. They would just look the other way and stow their feelings. But there were times when Axl treated me with twice the respect that anyone else in the band did, and I think it was because I was real with him. Somewhere in the depths of that tortured soul, he appreciated that. But eventually I would pay dearly for standing up to Axl, because I became the guy with the bull’s-eye on his back.
Now, Izzy avoided hanging with crowds, preferring to be on his own. But he was respectful. He would go off with a woman and just chill out, surfacing when he was needed again. Duff, Slash, and I, well, we were always together. The three of us had a blast every time we went out. We were just born to party together.
RELOCATION BLUES
At this point, we started moving around so much, it really was just a blur. For a while we were staying in the house with Alan Niven in Los Feliz, by the observatory in Griffith Park. Duff’s friends from Seattle and Axl’s friends from Indiana ended up staying there for a while too. Then we moved to Manhattan Beach because Tom Zutaut lived there. He gave us a white van to commute in, and Slash was always designated driver. Of course, it wasn’t long before our designated drunkard wrecked our ride. Good thing no one got hurt.
The time came for us to start recording at Rumbo Studios in Canoga Park. It was right next to the Winnetka Animal Hospital. It was close to my mom’s house, and she cooked us lunch almost every day. One thing about Mom, she just couldn’t stay mad at me for extended periods of time. I certainly took advantage of it, because I remember those meals came in handy. Mom brought us pasta, sandwiches, and salads, very tasty stuff. Then she’d ask if we needed anything and the guys would hint about running low on cigarettes, so she bought a few cartons for them. Then they went too far and gave her their laundry. And you know what? She even washed and ironed our clothes for us.
When we started working on Appetite we were in a hotel in Manhattan Beach, which was like a forty-five-minute drive to Rumbo. I have no idea why we were so far from the studio. One day my little brother came along with my mom to Rumbo. The band Heart happened to be recording their new album on the other side of the building. Their guitarist, Nancy Wilson, gorgeous and known the world over for her incredible songs, came by to say hi.
Nancy was very gracious. She lifted Jamie onto her lap and was very sweet to him. My little brother was smooth for a ten-year-old. He had the biggest smile on his face that day and soaked up every minute of it.
CLINK STINKS
Around this time our producer Mike Clink came up to me suggesting I change my drum setup. With all due respect, that’s kind of like someone coming up to you with suggestions for changing your internal organs . . . you just don’t fuck with what works. But I wanted to be a team player and when he got me a china cymbal and a second tom I was like, “Ah, what the hell,” and reluctantly agreed. But the trouble with giving an inch is what happens next. They’re not happy and they demand more. Maybe that’s why it’s better to be a miserable prick to people; they don’t mess with you as much.
Mike asked me to change “Anything Goes” and that really hit a nerve.
“Fuck you, don’t tell us how to write songs.” I got so pissed because you don’t meddle with the music. I pouted, stomped around, and behaved like a real dick. Where did this guy get off?
But I can’t stay mad at people, and I couldn’t in this case particularly since I knew in my heart that Mike was coming from a good place. So we tried his idea, and to my surprise, it came out great. My resistance had just been from a deep-seated desire to guard our songs, and no one messes with GNR’s tunes. But I will be the first to admit when I’m wrong or out of line, and after we worked it out, I looked Mike straight in the eye and said, “I am so sorry.”
Mike’s change happens right when Axl starts singing the first verse. It was initially at a slower time, and his idea made it faster, and like I said, better. So we started tweaking other things, like the chord changes at the end of “Rocket Queen.” Also he had the idea to add a vintage Moog synthesizer to the beginning of “Paradise City” and again, that ended up sounding great. Those are the only changes I can recall that he made to the songs. At the time, “Mr. Brownstone,” “It’s So Easy,” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” were our newest songs, and we worked our asses off on them in the studio.
“Mr. Brownstone” was a thinly veiled warning from Axl to all of us, including himself. We all saw how drugs had been granted a permanent VIP laminate in our lives, but we also believed we were indestructible. Although we were arrogant bastards, we respected (and feared) heroin’s ability to weasel its way further into our lives, demanding increasingly bigger chunks of our daily routines.
So we did what we usually did with something that had become a part of us: we wrote about it. Same with the groupie scene, which was getting ridiculously out of control. We could just shove a fishing net out the window of any club and pull in choice catch after choice catch. The girl game lost its appeal; there was no longer a challenge to scoring the choicest snapper, and again, we chose to write about it: “It’s So Easy.” It was understood that Axl had final say over the lyrics, but we could all contribute, and at that point we all wanted to contribute.
Chapter 11
Building an Appetite
IN THE STUDIO
My contributions to the record took six days, start to finish, and I was done. On the other hand, Axl would insist on doing his vocals one line at a time, and that took much longer. Nobody wanted to be around when he was in the studio because his Talmudic recording methods drove everyone nuts. It was beyond what a perfectionist would demand. And it soon became obvious to us that it was obsession for the sake of obsession. Pretty soon the rest of the band just kind of slipped out to go to the bathroom and neglected to come back. We just preferred to be off campus drinking and partying while Axl was driving the engineers and techs out of their skulls.
While we were in the midst of recording, I remember Mike and Alan really didn’t think the album was going to do shit. They felt that our songs were pretty much standard been-there, done-that hard rock fare. They were surprisingly vocal about it and it got back to us that Mike didn’t think he was working on anything special. I remember a kind of ho-hum atmosphere in the booth at the time, and though I liked Mike, he certainly wasn’t kissing our ass by any stretch of the imagination. There’s a story about how when they shot our first
music video, “Welcome to the Jungle,” they felt the same way about it: nothing special. That might have changed because, as legend has it, when they were doing color correction of the final cut in the edit bays a couple of girls from the office slipped in to peek at it because they thought it was the “coolest video ever.”
DEATH OF A FRIEND
After my tracks were done, I wasn’t asked to get involved in any of the rest of the recording or mixing. Slash and Axl, however, went to New York to contribute to the final stages of the process. Joining them on the trip was our longtime friend Todd Crew. Todd had been part of the band’s inner circle from the beginning. He was a shit-kicking, hard-drinking, exceptionally cool guy. He played bass in another band called Jetboy that originated in San Francisco. When they kicked Todd out of Jetboy, we were the first band to tell them, “Screw you, you’re done as far as we’re concerned. You’re never gonna do shows with us.”
Axl, Slash, and Todd flew to New York to oversee the mixing on Appetite. Todd never made it back. I don’t know what happened exactly, because I wasn’t there. I heard that he and Slash were partying, shooting heroin, and Todd passed out. Slash and Todd must have gotten separated at some point and Todd overdosed and died.
No one could believe it when we got the news back in L.A. It was the most terrible shock that I had ever absorbed at that point in my life, beyond devastating. I didn’t want to eat, talk, or get out of bed. No way there could be justice in a world that would let a sweet beloved friend like Todd slip away. The band had friends who were so close, so devoted, that we considered them to be members of GNR who merely didn’t appear onstage. Todd was one of these, and I truly felt I had lost a brother.
A week or so later, Slash and Axl returned. Their mood was beyond dark, and they avoided all calls. It was a horrible, bleak time for all of us, and it wouldn’t go away. Each day there would be about a millisecond after I woke up where I’d smile at the sun; then it would hit me, and I’d spend the rest of the day reeling from my feelings over Todd’s death.
Eventually, the dark clouds lifted because they had to. There was intense pressure from the label to get on with completing the album. If it were up to us, I think we all would have preferred to just lay low for a couple of months, but we were learning that many decisions were not entirely ours to make anymore. Massive amounts of money were pouring into the launch of the album, dates had been set, and commitments were carved in stone. But this is what I loved about my band at this stage in my life. Guns N’ Roses was a living, breathing presence that knew how best to survive. No attitude, no petulance, just an organic desire to live and prosper. We didn’t get rebellious or negative about the pressure; we just found a way to harness the love that Todd had shared with us and decided that rather than wallow in sorrow and self-pity, we could use Appetite to climb out of our depression. It worked, and I will tell you this: it worked because we honestly thought Todd would have wanted it that way, and no amount of bribery or bullshit from Geffen would have worked to make us finish Appetite if we hadn’t believed that to be so. Death had knocked at the door, made us feel mortal for the first time, and GNR used Appetite for Destruction to rage against it.
APPETIZER FOR APPETITE
Slowly the work carried us through our painful recovery. To this day, when people come up to me and tell me that Appetite is the greatest record in creation and is the soundtrack for their lives, I believe that some of the magic in that album is owed to our love for Todd. The agony we had to work through pushed us further than any musicians had ever pushed themselves to deliver their absolute best onto that vinyl. And somehow we knew it; we knew we had cooked up something very special.
We got ahold of everybody who was anybody in our lives to get together at the Hell House for the “unofficial world premiere.” It was to be our first listen to our new album. Wes, Del, the Naked Skydiver chicks, Jo Jo, everybody was there sitting around like kids waiting to see The Wizard of Oz.
Slash cued up Appetite for Destruction for the first time ever and as soon as “Welcome to the Jungle” came on, everybody cheered. Slash and I turned to each other and hugged; we were so happy. We listened to both sides, pretty much saying, “Oh yeah, that’s working, that sounds cool,” throughout. Everybody, everybody, was very impressed with what Axl did with his vocals. Funny thing though, I don’t think Axl was even there. God knows what he was doing. Actually, I don’t even think God knows what Axl is doing half the time.
“Paradise City” came on, and at the end of it, where it’s got my drum fill that sounds like a double bass, I noticed something different. I know I did that fill only once in the studio. But Slash had the idea to repeat it somehow. I asked him right then and there, and he admitted the idea came to him in the studio. The second fill is actually the first fill played backward. There was a moment of tension as Slash looked at me like, “So I did it and it’s done.”
I smiled. “Dude, cool. Totally fucking cool.” I had always played it, live onstage, with just the one fill. But it worked and it was completely all right with me because I respected Slash’s call, and I knew in my heart that he did it to make the album as awesome as it could be, and that was my wish too.
FOR THE BAND
I guess I can justify my going along with Slash because I felt the fill worked and somehow improved the total climax to “Paradise City,” or maybe it was because I was Steven, the smiling softie, the let’s-all-just-get-along member of the band. Or maybe my self-esteem sucked and I wasn’t willing to fight Slash in a battle I knew I’d already lost. Regardless, I didn’t spend much time thinking about it, because the record was done, in the can. While we waited for its release, we found ourselves with a lot of free time.
Slash took a vacation in Hawaii. He had been partying really hard and needed to dry out. Physically, he was torn up pretty badly. His hands were trembling, shaking all the time. The trip was a personal get-it-together thing for him. There are some amazing party stories about us, but the truth was that we were all starting to show the wear and tear. It ain’t the years, it’s the mileage, and we had been on an incredible journey, working and partying harder than any dozen men. It was really starting to take its toll.
The fact is, when it came to drugs, everyone in the band was very private and secretive. Nobody told anybody anything about their preferences. Plus, we were all pretty greedy bastards. So when we were holding, we wanted it all. It wasn’t like we were eager to turn one another on to our limited, or unlimited, supply. A few weeks later, Slash returned from the islands in considerably better health and spirits. We were a team again, ready to roll.
ALICE COOPER
In May, we were given a great opportunity to do a single show with Alice Cooper in Santa Barbara. We all were huge Alice fans, and it would have been our first really big show. Alan went out of his way to hook it up for us. The venue was a beautiful outdoor theater. The bill was officially booked, and we were so fucking excited. Imagine opening for one of your all-time favorite heroes. Killer is one of the greatest albums ever recorded: “Under My Wheels,” “Be My Lover,” “Desperado,” “Halo of Flies,” and the title track. I remember wearing out the grooves on both sides of that LP.
On the day of the show, we all piled into our new white van (we got another one after Slash totaled the first), while Axl was just standing there, outside. We were yelling to him, “C’mon, Axl.”
He was all like, “Naw, I’ll meet you there; some chick is gonna take me.”
“Fuck that chick. C’mon, for the band.”
That was our saying back then: “We’re doing it for the band.” That was our thing; we always said that. “We’re gonna get drunk tonight—for the band.” Or “We’re going to come on her face—for the band.” I don’t know what Axl’s issue was, but he insisted he get to the concert his own way, and what Axl wants . . .
Alice and his whole band were great. At the time Alice’s band featured Kane Roberts on guitar, this bodybuilder dude who dressed like Stallone’s Rambo. Eric S
inger played drums. He went on to join my heroes in Kiss. Kip Winger was on bass, and he did a successful solo project a few years later.
They were giving us a fantastic opportunity, a great break, by letting us open the show. Hell, our record wasn’t even out yet. We were ready to go, but sure enough, someone was still missing. Next thing you know, we’re supposed to be on in five minutes and everyone is screaming, “Where’s Axl?” We stalled as long as we could, but we really had to get out there out of respect for Alice.
At eight o’clock we hit the stage as scheduled. Without Axl, we just did our best and improvised. We did “It’s So Easy” and Duff sang. After that, we just performed blues jams. We would always include a blazing blues jam in our sets, so we still managed to rock out for the audience, and I don’t think they felt incredibly cheated. Izzy and Duff screamed a few words here and there. Duff’s tech, Mike “McBob” Mayhue, may have sung something too. Bottom line was, without Axl present, we didn’t deliver the true Guns N’ Roses as promised. We just played, packed up our shit, and got out of there. Because of my worship for Alice, and my feeling about what Guns N’ Roses was about, it was one of the most humiliating nights of my life.
Afterward, we were all pissed, and for one infuriating moment, we all considered kicking him out of the band. But we realized there was nothing we could do. The album had already been recorded and Axl was an integral part of our image and sound, so we never actually talked about getting another singer. I know this sounds like Axl got off easy, but we couldn’t even dwell on it for that long. Shit was happening with the album release and we had to keep a calm head to make decisions.