My Appetite For Destruction (6 page)

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.

T
he 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.

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.

T
he managers of the Starwood were these men in their midtwenties. All they wanted was to do drugs, fuck, and party. They were extremely smart, eccentric hippie white guys. They were all gay, and I was this cute blond-haired fuck-boy. They just loved me. I wasn’t into that, but I was young and naive.

They would give me quaaludes and have their way with me. I just wanted to hang out, be with people, and enjoy life. But when you’re young, doing your own thing roaming the streets, crazy shit happens. I ended up doing a lot of things that I didn’t understand or really have any control over. In retrospect, a lot of things happened to me that probably messed with my head and hung over me for years, particularly when I found out that these young men later died of
AIDS
.

Just walking down Santa Monica to the Starwood or to Saul’s house, people would pull up beside me in their cars and ask me if I wanted to smoke a joint. I’d be like, “Hell, yeah!” The next thing you know you’re completely baked and they’re touching you all over and you don’t know what the fuck’s going on. All you know is that an orgasm feels good. Anybody can make you come, and in that state I didn’t have the presence of mind to give a damn. I was used, abused, whatever. Let’s get high. Let’s party.

One time I was walking along Santa Monica Boulevard and ran into two clean-cut guys who must have been in their twenties. We started talking and they said they had some bitchin’ weed back at their pad, so I went with them to smoke.

We arrived at this dumpy little apartment and there was another guy there, only he was in his forties, a completely scruffy-looking loser. Right away, I felt uneasy. Something wasn’t right. This guy got up and locked the door behind me. “You want some grass, kid? Well, I want something too . . .”

The younger guys weren’t friendly anymore. They slipped behind me while the loser walked up to me and ran his hand through my hair. I’ll spare you the ugly details, but they hurt me pretty badly. Part of my mind just kind of shut down, and that day my reality became a bad dream. They didn’t beat me up, but they did everything else and it was pretty devastating.

I was just fourteen at the time. I went home, stripped, and got in the shower. It was only then that I realized I was shaking pretty badly. After cleaning up I went out and got real high. Party, laugh, onward . . . and never tell a soul about it, until now.

I
t was a time in Hollywood where the overriding attitude about sex and drugs was to be free and out in the open. There was no panic over herpes or
AIDS
, no worries. Saul and I would hang out at Osco’s Disco on La Cienega just across the street from the Beverly Center.

Of course, it wasn’t normal for fourteen-year-old kids to hang out at a disco, but we had an older look to us. And even if we got carded, Saul, who was an expert artist, had taken our IDs and changed the date to make us of legal age. We never had a hard time getting alcohol or getting into the place. We went there just about every weekend of 1977 and 1978. There were like ten different theme rooms in the place. They were mostly sexual in nature, with settings like the baths of ancient Rome, open deserts with rolling dunes, a fully equipped dominatrix chamber, the wildest shit.

Upstairs and downstairs, everybody was doing coke and something called “rush,” the popular drug fad at the time. It came in a bottle, and you were supposed to remove the cap and inhale the vapors from the liquid while you were having sex. By raising your heartbeat to insane levels, rush was supposed to intensify the orgasm experience. Throughout the night, we would go through all the rooms. It was an eye-popping experience. We never got bored, and if things started to lag, we’d just pop to another theme room. It didn’t matter; they were all saturated with booze, drugs, and blaring disco.

It seemed like the more crazy the spectacles we witnessed, the more we hungered for wilder, more perverse thrills. Nothing could shock us anymore. Our nerves were deadened to the point that we stood there watching a three-on-one with the girl servicing every sick whim, only to be manhandled to the point that it was a borderline rape, and we’d be like, “Whatever. Next.”

A
ll the gay bars were along Santa Monica Boulevard, and most of the area’s neighborhoods were predominantly gay too. I remember hearing Queen’s song “Another One Bites the Dust” a dozen times every day. The Boulevard was definitely the primo gay hangout.

And the Starwood was the number one gathering spot for everyone. We goddamn lived there. We saw a lot of things that I wouldn’t have seen back in Cleveland—guys getting sodomized in alleys or getting blow jobs from other guys in public bathrooms. Everything was out in the open and people were so into it. Saul and I were witnessing the raw, unbridled climax of a very narcissistic, very adventurous, experimental time.

Eventually, I had enough. It wasn’t any one event, just the culmination of too many sick, beyond-the-limit nights. I needed to slow it down. I had weathered too many mornings waking up in someone’s backyard with no recollection of how I got there or what led up to getting there. I did what any fucked-up Jewish boy would do once he’s realized how empty and pointless the whole world has gotten. I moved back to my mom’s to give home life another chance.

I called my mom and told her I was feeling homesick, that I wanted to come home. Things got very emotional. At first she hardly even recognized my voice, but when I heard hers it was like this wonderful oasis had come back into my life. She said very little, because I don’t think she wanted me to hear her break down. She told me to come right home, and that was all she had to say.

I
want to say this right now about my mother. I have never hated or loved a person as much as I’ve hated and loved my mom. I have never put another human being through the torture and abuse that I’ve heaped on my mom. I have never hurt or disappointed anyone on this earth as much as I’ve devastated Deanna Adler.

And yet I have never experienced anyone with a bigger heart or a more immense capacity to forgive than my mother. To this day we have our conflicts, and I continue to harbor a hatred for her that is all out of proportion with reason. And yet I’ve never depended on anyone or loved anyone so deeply. Deanna Adler has come through for me again and again and again.

My mom has said, “I love Steven, but I don’t like him.” And I believe I’ve given her no choice in that matter. I’m not a good son, and I’m not always a good brother, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give it another shot.

That day I called, my mom took a bigger chance on me than she ever had before. She sure didn’t have to. She had peace in her home. She had a loving husband in Mel and a sweet joyful son in Jamie. She had a happy home and a stable, decent life. And yet she risked it all for me. Although she knew it would upset him and probably lead to a bitter argument, she talked to Mel about me. It had been several years since I had been kicked out, and I was hoping time had softened some of the harsher memories. Using what I can only imagine was a lot of pleading and love, she convinced my dad I deserved one more chance to be back in their home.

S
aul had found a pair of leather pants in a Dumpster by his grandmother’s building. We cleaned them up, and he let me borrow them. I was the only kid wearing leathers at that time. I thought it looked very cool, especially with my long blond hair.

It was a look, however, that could not have been less popular with my parents. I tried to be optimistic about my return home, and so did they. Jamie was so happy I was back and for that first day, for that first meal together, I knew how much a family’s love could mean.

Their demands were minimal and, in hindsight, pretty reasonable. They just wanted me to be a normal son. They asked that I be in by six o’clock for dinner and stay home evenings during the week. They asked me to keep my room in decent shape and clean up after myself in the kitchen and bathroom.

Almost immediately there were a few ominous signs. I was forty-five minutes late for the second dinner we had together. I blamed it on Saul. I told them I didn’t have a watch and had asked Saul to let me know when it was five thirty, but he spaced and by the time I remembered what they said, it was already six thirty.

But hell, I was used to not coming home at all. When I walked in, it was very uncomfortable at the table. Mom had insisted they wait until I came home to eat and had tried to keep dinner warm in the oven, but the chicken ended up being all dried out. It tasted like sawdust and only served to increase the tension in the air.

Mom kept saying, “Why can’t you come home on time? That’s all we ask. Why can’t you come home on time?” And Mel was all, “Stop hurting us. Stop hurting your mother. Look what you’re doing to her. This has got to stop.”

I
was fifteen now, and despite pissing off my parents by being late for dinner, I sincerely wanted things to work out at home. So when Mom told me she had enrolled me at Chatsworth High School after I settled in, I did my best to be a model student. It all came down to my ability to get along with people, whether they were in the dining room or the classroom.

During my hitch at Chatsworth, I met Dan Scheib. He was the grandson of Earl Scheib, the famous auto paint guy. Dan was a decent guy who played guitar but because he came from money, he had every other instrument in creation lying around his house. So I talked him into selling me his drum set. I even tried to jam with him when I went to check the set out. It was my very first time behind a real drum set and it didn’t go too well.