by Steven Adler
Huh? Although I knew the song, I didn’t know that would be the title. So I looked at Duff and I was like, “Dude. What’s goin’ on?” He was kind of being a dick, maybe disgusted with my wipeout on the stage, so I just sat there, and when I heard Slash play the opening riff, I caught on. Although we didn’t even have that song completely down and had never rehearsed it with Axl, it played pretty well. I kind of sighed with relief to have gotten over that hurdle, but the damn surprises kept coming.
Next Axl says, “This is by a punk band called the UK Subs. And this song really rocks; it’s called ‘Down on the Farm.’ ” I’m like, “What the fuck?” I yell over to Duff, “Dude! How does it go?” He just claps his hands, providing me with a tempo, and then walks away. So I just played the tempo with my bass drum and winged it. I’d never once heard that song before. But I kicked ass, and that made me feel proud, not mad.
Looking back, I realize that this may have been proof positive that their plan to get me out of the band was already in full motion. They weren’t cluing me in to new songs or even telling me what they were playing. I believe their strategy was to make my playing sound like shit. I believe they wanted me to fuck up on live TV; that would be their evidence. By branding me as an ill-prepared, crappy drummer, they’d be armed with a sound reason for kicking me out.
GETTING OFF THE STUFF
When we came back to L.A., we again went our own ways. I had gotten to another one of those junctions where my body was warning me to stop partying. I hit the brakes for about a week, then I suddenly became very ill. I had no idea what was wrong with me. I had been smoking heroin regularly and I was giving it an indefinite break. Now, I was shaking all over, feeling very hollow and cold. I was experiencing the full-on blunt force of withdrawal, as my body ached like it never had before. I lived in the bathroom, constantly having to throw up.
I called Dougie and told him what I was going through. He told me he wanted to take me to the doctor right away, and I immediately calmed down, thinking, “Good ol’ Dougie, looking out for me.” So we went to a medical facility at Olympic and Fairfax. The doctor there broke off about a quarter of a small pill and had me take it with water. He explained that it was an opiate blocker and told me, “This will make you feel better, because even if you try to cheat and take heroin, you won’t feel a thing.” What they didn’t tell me (and what the fucking MD didn’t bother to check out first) was that you needed to be completely clean to take it. Patients needed to detox fully in order for the drug to work properly. If you had opiates in your system when you took it, it would fuck you up. God, did I discover that the hard way.
Within hours after returning home, I became deathly ill, even worse than before. I called Dougie and told him, “Whatever the fuck they gave me isn’t working. I’m sicker than I’ve ever been in my life!” He sent a registered nurse over who was qualified to examine me. After she left, I remember sitting down, momentarily relieved that I’d be okay now. But as the sweat began to pour down over my face, I suddenly became incredibly scared and honestly thought I was going to die. This feeling lasted an eternity, because as I said, I hadn’t completely detoxed. You’d think they’d ask you your status before giving you pills and injections. I was terribly sick for weeks. Then came the deathblow: Slash called me and told me that we were going into the studio to record “Civil War.”
“Dude, haven’t you talked to Dougie? I’m sick as hell.”
Slash didn’t want to hear it. His voice was strangely detached, zero emotion. “We can’t waste any more money,” he replied.
Was I really hearing this shit? From my dearest friend, the guy I was instrumental in getting into GNR, for fuck’s sake? Where was the loyalty, the compassion? “Fuck that, Slash. Listen to me. We both know someone in the band who’s wasted a helluva lot more time and money than it would cost to postpone this one lousy recording session. It would just be for the week or so that it would take for me to get better.” We hadn’t done shit in over a year and now they wanted to record one damn song, and they couldn’t wait for me to feel better. It was such bullshit, and I could only hope that it was someone else pushing their buttons. I didn’t want to believe that Slash really had it in for me.
DUMPED FROM GNR
With no alternative, I attempted to do my job. I literally pulled my head out of a toilet, showered up, and got to the studio on time. I sat on the stool, staring at my drums, but another wave of nausea hit me and I was suddenly sick as hell, doubled over in pain. The guys looked at me, and there was no mercy in their faces. Nothing.
Instead, they were annoyed with me, and no one said a thing. I tried to play but my timing was off. The guys in the sound booth asked for take after take, and finally I couldn’t take the tension. “Guys, I’m fucked up. But I’m sick, not high. I’m just ill and that’s all.” I asked Dougie to clear the matter up for me. “Dougie, tell them. Tell them how sick this medication is making me.”
But like a waking nightmare, Dougie looked away. I pleaded with him: “You’ve got to tell them that even if I was partying, the medicine they’re making me take would block it.” Dougie didn’t say a word. My last buddy abandoned me. There was no love; he just turned and left the room. I had been set up, through my own stupid actions, and they wanted the absolute worst for me.
I never thought this could happen to me. It was always the five of us united, an inseparable team. But the Guns N’ Roses machine had become massive, and I could feel it shoving me aside. I couldn’t stand the idea of being pushed out of the band. I desperately didn’t want this to end, and I honestly thought I had done nothing to deserve having it taken away from me. I just did what we all were doing, living the rock star life.
I seemed to be suffering under an unfair double standard. Christ, we open for the Rolling Stones, and Axl falls off the fucking stage while singing “Out ta Get Me.” The whole thing’s treated like no big deal. But I misjudge the drum riser during Farm Aid and the response is total outrage; “Look at Stevie, that drugged-out waste of an irresponsible fuckup.” We had all worked so hard to get to the mountaintop and were just beginning to reap the rewards. In my worst nightmares, I never imagined that it could all be taken away from me.
I counted on Dougie to keep me in the loop. He had me believe that he had my back, that he cared for and loved me. Well, he fooled the hell out of me. I had been lured into having total trust in him and didn’t want to believe some conspiracy was actually going down.
The day after the “Civil War” recording session, Doug called me and asked me to come down to the office to sign some papers. He offered no explanation for his behavior the previous day, and I didn’t try to lay on any guilt. I just told him I was still very ill. There was a long silence on the phone, then Dougie told me that the matter was very important and wouldn’t take long. He told me he had been instructed by the GNR attorneys to tell me that my presence was absolutely required. In spite of what had gone down, I still wanted to believe that Dougie was my caring wingman, and when he promised I would be in and out of there quickly, I decided to rally. I cared more for his situation than my own. I could hear the stress in Doug’s voice and I didn’t want to bust his balls, so I got myself together and Cheryl drove me. When I walked in, Dougie and one of our lawyers, a professional-looking middle-aged woman, had a stack of papers for me to read.
Read!? I couldn’t even see. They told me all I had to do was sign at the bottom of all the pages with the colored paper clips attached. I asked what this was all about. Dougie told me, “It’s nothing to worry about.” In my condition, I wasn’t about to read all this shit, but I was a little freaked and my jaw just dropped. In essence, I thought I was agreeing not to party and not to screw up on any band-related activities for the next four weeks. If I fucked up, they would fine me $2,000. I thought, “What the hell, no problem. The band doesn’t even have anything scheduled during the next month, and even so, what’s two grand?” I signed everything. I just wanted to get out of there, go home, and lie down.<
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I discovered later that what I had actually signed away was my life. What the legal papers actually stated was that they were going to give me $2,000 for my contribution to Guns N’ Roses. Everything else, my royalties, my partnership in the band, my rights, was gone! Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. I’m sure with all these papers I naively signed, they thought they had my fate sealed. They had a signed, ironclad deal against me.
The next afternoon, I received another call from Doug. “The guys don’t want you to be on the next record. They are going to use someone else.”
I was still feeling like shit, and at this point I guess I saw it coming. “Yeah, whatever.” I just hung up the phone and started crying. I’d had enough, but I couldn’t help but be depressed. I didn’t even bother calling Slash. What was the point?
To blunt the pain, I went on a party binge, smoking weed, drinking Jägermeister, and popping whatever pills I could find. Cheryl was there with me, and she would never say anything to upset me. She was there by my side, but I didn’t care and wasn’t even aware of her. I just locked myself away in my room.
Cheryl didn’t fully understand what was happening. And with all this heavy shit going down around us, I couldn’t handle it, wouldn’t handle it. She wasn’t prepared to deal with all the crap either, and every day she cried a lot because she knew something horrible was occurring.
And I’m standin’ at the crossroads, I believe I’m sinkin’ down.
—“CROSS ROAD BLUES,” ROBERT JOHNSON
SUICIDAL SLASHING
I felt I had sold my soul for rock ’n’ roll, and the devil had just stopped by to stamp me “Paid in Full.” A couple of days of partying only put me in worse condition, and I came out of my stupor so depressed, I tried to kill myself. I slashed my wrists, suddenly became very light-headed, and collapsed onto the hard floor. My face must have hit a chair or a coffee table as I fell because Cheryl raced in to find me badly bruised, with my lip split wide open. The cuts to my wrists weren’t nearly what was required to do the job properly, but they left ugly scars that still remind me of this dark time.
I believe I was crying out for help more than actually trying to die. Cheryl called Doug and told him that I was very fucked up and had tried to kill myself. That afternoon, Doug, Slash, and a security guy named Ron came to my home. When I opened the door and saw them, I panicked for some reason and just took off trying to run away from them in my own house. I know that coke eventually makes you very paranoid, but there was no reason for me to be scared of these guys. In an even dumber move, Ron went chasing after me. I don’t know what he was planning to do when he caught me. I hopped out an upstairs window and ran along the roof to the top of the garage. They were yelling up to me: “Steven, come down. Come on, man, come down.”
“No. Fuck you, fuck everything!” Then I just dropped onto the roof, crying like a baby.
I heard a noise and realized they were going to climb up and get me. This gave me an even worse panic attack so I jumped off the roof of the garage. I plummeted into the cab of Slash’s black truck. Everyone was shocked and just stood there as I bounced, unhurt, then rolled off to the ground, a total mess.
The security guy was a supreme asshole. He dismissed the whole matter like I was a piece of shit, not worth the time. “The hell with him, let’s go.” It was as if they were looking for any reason to leave, so on Ron’s remark, they split.
The next evening, Slash phoned. Inwardly my heart thumped, and I felt like here was my old friend, reaching out. But no, he was actually pissed. “Dude, you dove on my truck, and it’s fucking dented. You dented my truck, and you’re paying for it.”
I was numb. “Whatever. Sure, I’ll pay for it. No problem, buddy. Take it out of my two thousand dollars, you heartless piece of shit.” But at that point, all I heard was a dial tone.
Fame puts you there where things are hollow . . .
—“FAME,” DAVID BOWIE
DEATH BY DEGREES
Looking back, I still cringe at this dark, torturous time in my life. Up to this moment, I had been high practically all the time and that made me careless, among other things. But in all honesty, I was the only member of the band who was held accountable for that carelessness. And now my situation was hopeless. I achieved the dream of a lifetime, and just as it was about to blossom fully, they stomped on it. I was riding high; the group that I had formed with my friends just five years before had become the biggest rock band in the world.
It seemed everyone wanted to know me, and I was very touched by the way I was treated by our fans. Everyone was so affectionate, and I tried to return that love in spades.
I really felt blessed and thanked God for my good fortune. People said, “Enjoy this. Take it in as it’s happening. Try to live in the moment.” That’s all I ever did. It was the way I welcomed each day naturally. I didn’t have to remind myself to try to live in the moment because that was simply the way I had always experienced my life.
There’s abundant proof of this. Look at the videos of me playing, I’m the only guy in the band smiling, loving every minute of it like no one else. I was constantly aware of God’s grace and was thankful for it. I hugged everyone who wanted an autograph, sat and talked with anyone, and freely reached out to the people who approached us. From anyone’s perspective, I honestly believe that it’s clear I was the one who truly savored our success the most.
When girls would say I was the cutest or the sexiest or the nicest boy in the band, I would just laugh. And I’d always be sure to spread it around, telling them Slash was much sexier, Duff was much nicer, Izzy was much cooler, and Axl was smarter.
Ronnie Schneider and I went out one evening to a club called Bordello. This was just before news of my getting kicked out of GNR was made public. Bordello was a popular hot spot located at Santa Monica and Fairfax. As with any trendy spot, there was a line with dozens of people waiting to get in. We got there and stood in line with everyone else. I noticed the door guy peer over the line in my direction. He walked over to us and said, “Steven Adler. Guns N’ Roses! What are you doing here? You don’t have to wait in line!” He put his arm around my shoulder, walked us to the front, and opened the door as if we had been buddies for years. I thanked him, shook his hand, and entered the club. Fact is, I hadn’t minded waiting in line. I enjoyed talking to everyone but was of course thrilled to get in. Ronnie and I had a great time that night.
By the end of the week, the news hit the world that I was no longer in the band. To add insult to injury, I was portrayed in the news as the consummate loser. “Band that glorifies drug use fires drummer for being out of control on drugs.” If that doesn’t make me sound like the most pathetic person on earth, I don’t know what would.
I felt that familiar chill cut through my heart again, that emotional emptiness that meant my family had abandoned me. And GNR was my family. Izzy, Axl, Duff, and Slash were my brothers; we loved and cared for each other, had each other’s back, and fought like hell to succeed together. Now, I was no longer welcome in my own family. Again!
God had given me a second chance and I blew it big-time. I desperately needed to be numb, to just take away the pain. By the end of that week, all I could do was sit in my house smoking coke and heroin.
Eventually, Ronnie, remembering the great time I had at Bordello a few weeks earlier, thought it would be nice to get out of the house and go to a place where I could feel wanted. Again there was a line at the door. Confident, I walked up to the doorman, the same guy, and greeted him enthusiastically. “How are you?” I asked.
He looked at me and seemed annoyed. I stood there for a second. “What do you think you’re doing? You gotta stand in line just like everyone else.” He pointed toward the end of the line, making a scene for all to see. I was shocked but waved him off and walked away. A block down the road, my emotions got the best of me. I had just been treated like a piece of shit, and that’s how I felt. It was harsh. I walked home with Ronnie and continued the assault
on my pain.
RAY OF HOPE
Shortly after, I stopped going out altogether. All I wanted was to be alone and even refused the love of my wife. Cheryl was having difficulty dealing with me and the entire situation as a whole. I feel horrible to this very day; putting her through so much drama was not fair at all. One of us, I think it was probably Cheryl, decided that it would be best for her to take a break for a few days and visit her family.
Just when I couldn’t have been more numb or depressed, hope appeared on the horizon. One of my lawyers called and told me that AC/DC was auditioning for a new drummer. “They are considering you, Steven. I am going to get you this gig.”
“Do it!” I shouted. I was so happy; at last, a chance at redemption.
But the stars were not lined up for me. That same fucking night, an interview with Axl aired on MTV. He spoke of how GNR was so much more than he ever expected. Then the topic of the former drummer came up, and Axl stuck a spike in my heart. “Steven is so fucked up on drugs. He can’t even play anymore. He’s someone I used to know.” My head was spinning; this was on MTV, national TV. Axl, the most popular rock star at the time, had just told the world I was a fuckup. It was unbelievably bad timing. I never heard another word about the AC/DC gig.
After a couple of weeks, Cheryl returned, taking a cab from the airport. She yelled and screamed at me when I answered the door: “I tried calling you. You can’t answer the goddamn phone? I thought you were dead!”