by Steven Adler
Fresh from the massive religious scandal involving televangelist Jim Bakker was the video’s sole female star, Jessica Hahn. She had single-handedly brought down that hypocritical Bible-thumper Bakker and his mascara-streaked wife, Tammy, and was now Sam’s current slutty girlfriend. Wonder how that played out on the religious right? Fucking hypocrites.
I thought Jessica was a pig. She had on so much makeup, she looked like a mannequin. But Sam adored her, so we went along and treated her sweetly because he was our hallowed host and friend. Her huge, rocket knockers really turned me off; they kept threatening to poke out our eyes. Sam was rolling around with her in this little love pit and everyone was pointing at them, cheering.
They had a keg of beer for us and we were all quaffing with a vengeance. As they shot the scenes we weren’t in, Slash and I camped out at the tap and became mightily shit-faced. I don’t even remember the shots we were in but I do recall that later, they insisted on doing some additional pickup shots, including one of a drunken Slash clumsily falling into a trash can. The video was in regular rotation on MTV through late 1988 right into 1989. It was a great idea and a great time.
The annual MTV Awards were held that year on September 7 at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. There was no question that we were the hottest band around. We were up for the Best New Artist award, which is now universally regarded as the “kiss of death award.” So many bands have gotten that award only to crash and burn on their sophomore album. They should outlaw that award. It’s like being on the cover of Sports Illustrated: instant jinx.
At this time, Slash had been hanging out with the notorious porn star Traci Lords. During the ceremony, when the envelope was opened and we were announced as the winners, the producer decided to have Slash and Traci be the ones to accept. As for the rest of the band, we honestly didn’t care who went up there as long as it was one of us.
“I’m Traci Lords,” she announced.
“I’m Slash,” he mumbled.
Traci continued. “Guns N’ Roses is very happy to accept this, thank you [giggle].” How profound. Later that evening we performed “Welcome to the Jungle” live for a less-than-enthusiastic audience. These days, MTV has smartened up; they pack the front of the stage with wild and crazy fans driven to delirium for the cameras. But back then, they set it up much like the Academy Awards, with all the biggest stars up front. At the end of the song, I threw one drumstick out as hard and as far as I could; the other I gently tossed right to Steven Tyler, who was sitting in the front row, hoping it would raise a smile. Tyler didn’t flinch, and the drumstick just lay on the floor with no one giving a shit. That hurt, but it didn’t surprise me.
After we performed, the host, Arsenio Hall, cracked a joke about drummers: “I’ll never understand, they throw their sticks into the audience, so there’s a big fan out there with a stick in his eye going, ‘I love them guys. I love them!’”
On September 17, 1989, we played the final show of the Appetite for Destruction tour. It was a big festival outing in Texas that also featured Australian pop icons INXS and reggae artist Ziggy Marley, the son of the legendary Bob Marley. We flew in the day before the concert. I recall sitting in my hotel room watching cartoons when I glanced out the window. There were a lot of big Jamaican Rasta guys walking around, and they looked kind of threatening, but that was just my sick head.
My eyes drifted to the pool, where Michael Hutchence, singer for INXS, was regally sitting. He was with a beautiful girl who looked like a supermodel. They were lounging in pool chairs, chatting with each other. I thought, “How cool is this? I’ve seen this guy in music videos for years, and here I am about to play a big concert with him.”
The show was the absolute worst we ever played. For some reason, the guys just weren’t into it and the reason was simple: they wanted to go home. I realized, “Hey, I want to go home. We’ve been on the road for ten lifetimes and it’s time to shut it down for a while.”
To add to our misery, it was raining that day. We were in Texas Stadium, a partially covered arena that had a huge opening over the playing field. From the stage, I could see rain pouring down on the crowd, but we were kept mostly dry, except when it would get gusty. It was the weirdest-looking setup. We played our set in record time, just wanting to get it over with. “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” our mid-tempo hit, was practically played at twice the speed.
Christ, we had actually been on the road for two years. It was time for a break. Sure, it was a really big show, but I never once thought that there wouldn’t be hundreds more big shows in my future, so there was zero nostalgic wistfulness as we bowed and got the fuck out of there.
Once back home, I enjoyed my much anticipated time off with Cheryl. She was with me every minute. She came over and from the moment we hugged it was quality time and quiet time. Fresh sheets, pull the blinds, we’re sleeping in. Looking back, at least up until that point, it may have been the happiest time in my life. I woke to Cheryl’s heavenly smell each morning and fell asleep to it each night. I finally had time for the love of my life and the life that I love.
Imagine having a secure, steady flow of income in your early twenties, becoming famous doing what you love for a living, and spending each day with the woman of your dreams while not having a care in the world. You can’t beat that. But you can destroy it.
I was experiencing things in life that were beyond my wildest dreams, like when we made the cover of Rolling Stone. But we were just taking it all in stride, like it was no big deal. I was wearing a shirt that Tom Mayhue had given me by way of Mick Brown from the band Dokken. Dokken was on tour with Van Halen, Metallica, and the Scorpions. It was called the Monsters of Rock tour (not to be confused with the Monsters of Rock festival in the UK). The shirt was a brilliant parody of that, a sarcastic play on words dubbing it the “Hamsters of Rock.”
A few days after the RS cover hit the stands, I was in the shower when Cheryl came running into the bathroom. “Steven, guess who just called?”
I shut the water off. “Who?”
“Eddie Van Halen,” she said.
“No shit! What did he want?”
Cheryl said, “He was pissed. He was like, what is this shit with you wearing ‘Hamsters of Rock’?”
I couldn’t believe Eddie would take something so minor so seriously but was nevertheless very excited that a rock god had called me. “Oh, no way . . . Did he leave a number to call him back?”
“Nope,” she said, “he just hung up!” I had heard that Eddie’s temper flared when he drank, so I let it roll off my back pretty quickly.
In late November, our EP GNR Lies: The Sex, the Drugs, the Violence, the Shocking Truth was released. The cover was a send-up of English gossip rags, labeled with all sorts of sensationalistic, over-the-top headlines, like man sues ex-wife, “she took my sperm without permission” and severed head found in topless bar.
Again, I was given a few photographs to choose from that would be featured on the cover. The package included three new songs, an acoustic remake of “You’re Crazy,” and a rerelease of our original Live?! Like a Suicide EP, which on the vinyl and cassette releases was the G side (aka the A side). The B side was labeled R. We recorded the new tracks at the Record Plant recording studio off Sunset by Paramount Studios. The entire process was done over a single weekend. I played on three songs and didn’t stay a second longer than I needed to. I couldn’t wait to get back to Cheryl and party with her.
Now, I regret how quickly I took off. I think I missed out on some special band moments. But there’s no way I could have known that at the time. To me, my work was complete, done. I never left the studio without everyone signing off on my work. It’s just that some songs, like the single “Patience,” really needed no percussion whatsoever. I was familiar with the song, and I actually thought it was a great idea to keep it strictly acoustic with no drums.
That’s how I am with a lot of stuff. Pretty mellow when it comes to artistic interpretation. No ego with the drums
. If they don’t belong, they don’t. Can you imagine the Stones’ Charlie Watts trying to wedge a drum part into “Lady Jane”? I was fine with not playing the drums on every track until GNR said I couldn’t play the drums on any track . . . ever. But more on that in a bit.
“One in a Million” featured the wildly controversial lyrics about “police and niggers” and “immigrants and faggots.” I thought that it was a great song that needed strong words. It expressed a heavy sentiment that had to be delivered with no punches pulled. I knew that the words weren’t directed to the majority of blacks, gays, or immigrants. It simply described the scumbags of the world. That’s what Lennon did when he wrote “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.” “Nigger” to him meant “slave.” And we meant “lowlife.” The song explained the shit that Axl, a naive hick from Indiana, had gone through.
Nobody thought twice about it, not even Slash, although I later learned that his mom was offended. I thought when Axl sang, “Immigrants . . . come to our country and think they’ll do as they please, like start a mini-Iran,” he meant, “Look how fucked up Iran is. Don’t bring that shit over here.” That was my interpretation. Also, because we loved that song, we wanted it to get a lot of attention, and this was the way to fan the flames.
The only shows played in support of Lies were in Japan and Australia. We had only had a ten-week break since our last concert opening for INXS at Texas Stadium outside Dallas. Japan was awesome. Especially for a blond like myself. I got the impression that they just worshipped blonds over there by paying them special attention. When we arrived at the hotel, I went straight to my room. I opened my bag and threw everything all over the bed like I always would. We went out on the town for a little while, and when I returned to my room, I was pleasantly surprised. I discovered that all my clothes had been folded so neatly, so perfectly. I didn’t even want to touch them and ruin the artistry. I went, “What the hell?”
Then I heard the cutest-sounding giggles. There was a petite Japanese hottie hiding behind the curtain. She had her hands over her mouth, suppressing her excitement. Then I heard laughter from within the bathroom. There, another young girl was hiding in the shower. Together, they welcomed me to their country in their own special way. Japan: Land of the Rising Buns.
The man in Japan, the top promoter and a formidable leader in numerous business ventures, was a distinguished gentleman named Mr. Udo. He would take our entire crew out for fabulous dinners. The lighting guys, the sound techs, everybody benefited from his extreme hospitality. On one such occasion, they brought us twenty entrées. They set a bowl of soup in front of me. I said, “Domo arigato,” which means “Thank you very much.” They all smiled and bowed respectfully. Even the band was impressed. This, however, was the extent of my grasp of the language. I learned it from the Styx song “Mr. Roboto” in which they sing, “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.” I looked at my dish, and I was taken by the sight of many tiny fish swimming around in the broth. It threw me for a loop, but I didn’t hesitate to indulge.
FOOD FROM HEAVEN
The absolute best meal I had there was Kobe beef. It was explained to me that Kobe beef was made from cows that were fed copious amounts of beer their entire lives. They were raised to have soft muscles by being massaged for hours a day. I was told that when they kill it, the cow is pretty out of it. This meat is so tender. It’s cut into little squares. They put a steaming hot rock in front of you, and you set a piece of meat on it, cook it, flip it over, and do the other side. It just melts in your mouth, definitely the best meat I’ve ever eaten.
We traveled on the famous bullet train, where they had the best food in their dining car. During our journey, I met the granddaughter of the Kawasaki motorcycle mogul. She was beautiful and nubile. I felt that when I was on the road, it was okay to play. So I charmed her and managed to get her to make out with me.
FAN-ATICS
The fans in Japan were crazy. I have a picture of Dougie pulling me through a crowd of hundreds of young Asian girls. It looks like something right out of the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night. There’s one scene in that film where the guys are running down a street, chased by hundreds of fans. George Harrison trips, causing him and Ringo to fall. It was the funniest thing, but you could tell they really fell, no stunt bullshit.
Well, Duff and I experienced something similar. We walked out of the hotel one night, heading over to the Hard Rock for some dinner and drinks. We avoided the main exit and slipped out a side door. Walking around the block, from fifty yards away we could see about eighty kids waiting for the band, armed with records to be autographed. We had been signing shit all day, and I asked Duff, “You really wanna do this?” We just looked at each other and started running as fast as we could on the other side of the street, hoping not to be noticed. We were spotted, however, and every one of those kids started chasing us. We rushed into the Hard Rock and the security people there stopped the kids in their tracks. We sat down to food and drinks while the kids continued screaming for us outside. We waved at them through the restaurant window, not taunting, just friendly, and they went happily nuts. It was just another rock star experience.
We asked where the best nightclubs were in town. I wanted to go dancing and drinking. Many told us that the Lexington Queen was the place to be, so we took the advice and ended up there one evening. The owner of the establishment was a gay Asian guy who paid me special attention. It was a little embarrassing because he just loved me and treated us so well there. I was on the dance floor grooving with a few Asian girls, and I set my leather jacket down. After a minute or so, I went to collect my jacket, and it was gone. I ran over to the owner and said, “Hey, I was dancing here and someone swiped my jacket.”
He told me, “It must have been an American model. Asian people would not steal from you, Steven.” He said, “Wait here.” He came back with a brand-new jacket with the logo for the Lexington Queen embroidered on the back. Later, I gave that jacket to my dad, Mel, and he really loved it.
MORE TROUBLE WITH AXL
There were many American models hanging out in Japan. I learned that they would work there for a few weeks at a time. Their employers would put them up in their own little apartments. So naturally, I hooked up with one. A tall, thin blonde; nothing too special. She took me back to her place. We made love and I really thought nothing much of it. The very next day, Axl meets the same girl. She turns out to be a total troublemaking bitch. He fucks her and she starts telling him that I was talking all kinds of shit about him. Why would I share negative stuff about him with some random girl I didn’t even know? Axl was my brother and we were conquering the world together. If I had an issue with Axl I got in his face. That’s the way I rolled. Always.
So Axl comes up to me and says something like, “This here is my woman, and she told me that you said I’m an asshole.”
I said, “Your woman? You just met her, Axl. We fucked last night. That’s all. I didn’t say shit to that bitch.” The argument just kind of fizzled out at that point with Axl mumbling something as he walked off. He was usually okay as long as he got the last word, whether you could hear it or not. Unfortunately, incidents like this only served to weaken my relationship with Axl.
Chapter 16
Shooting Videos and Heroin
CONQUERING THE EAST
The shows in Japan were amazing, all sellouts. The Japanese created their own colorful posters announcing the concerts and the fans were great. Like the Germans, they knew all the lyrics to every song. On December 4 we played NHK Hall in Tokyo; the next day we played Festival Hall in Osaka, then went back to Tokyo for three shows starting on the seventh and wrapping up on the tenth. For that last show, we made a dream come true for the band. We played Budokan, a world-famous venue where everyone from Dylan to Clapton to Cheap Trick had played. Cheap Trick’s live album At Budokan was recorded there and we all loved that album. It was one of Slash’s and my first records. We must have listened to it a thousand times when we were kids. Axl even mentioned
that it was an influence on us all during the performance. I just remember playing and looking out over the crowd thinking, “Wow, this is where all those great songs went down.”
We were exhausted, and Axl’s voice was raw, but we rallied because it was our final show. Axl had actually apologized for “playing like shit” the night before at NHK. I got to do an extended drum solo during “Rocket Queen,” and we closed with a fucking epic version of “Paradise City.”
Tours in Japan usually lead to Australia, and that’s what ours did. Three days after Budokan we performed the first of two shows at the Entertainment Center in Melbourne. It was a huge outdoor arena. The first performance was a sellout. The second was at about two-thirds capacity. I recall those shows fondly because I was able to hone my drum solo until it sounded really tight, light, and playful at first, and then very explosive. We never really planned stuff like that, and I think the solo just grew out of the middle of the song where Duff slapped a cool bass riff and I followed with a flurry of drumming. No one broke back in, so I kept playing, and each performance I’d carve out a little more solo time. It was a natural, totally spontaneous development, and I smiled ear to ear.
We also played in Sydney on the seventeenth and then were off to Auckland, New Zealand, for our last show of 1988. We performed that show in support of Lies and ten thousand screaming kiwis loved every minute of it.