Slash (29 page)

Slash has had the thrill of sharing the stage many times with Alice Cooper over the years.

He also had a snake, which I was excited to see. But Alice wasn’t a snake collector; he didn’t have one at home, it was more of a prop as well. He did have a guy there to take care of it, a guy that wasn’t very knowledgeable about how to care for this poor boa constrictor as we traveled across the frozen Midwest, so I gave him some tips. Regardless, we kicked ass on that tour.

Because of the production, we were right up against the front of the stage, right up against the audience, and that was a catalyst. Those shows were dynamic, with minimal lighting and venues smaller than those on the Mötley tour; all in all, it was a huge and swift departure from where we’d just been. That was the one theme that characterized this time for us: we changed gears constantly. Drastic as they were, those changes forced us to learn a lot in a short amount of time. If we didn’t adapt we would fail; it was that simple. For a band stuck in its ways, it was good for us to be forced into all of these different situations with no warning.

WE WERE IN CENTRAL MICHIGAN IN
some nowhere town; I was having a drink at the hotel bar when our tour manager told me that the gig was canceled because something had happened with Alice. A few hours later we learned that his father had died; and for the next few days we waited in the hotel bar wondering if the tour would go on. The second night of that vigil, Steven Adler completely lost it. Steven could get very emotional at the drop of a hat, and his way of showing it was complete and utter defiance. In this little town, there was a sports bar, a restaurant or two, the hotel, and no other distraction for miles. Duff was with him that night; they had gone out drinking and for some reason Steven got so worked up that he punched a street lamp. He broke his hand entirely and was sidelined for something like six weeks.

Alan had booked us four headlining dates back in L.A. that were to follow the Alice tour weeks and we realized that Steven wasn’t going to be out of his cast in time, so we put out the word that we needed a drum
mer to sit in for a few shows. Within a day, we hooked up with Fred Curry, the drummer for Cinderella, and he was great in a pinch. Fred learned all of the songs right away, and we rehearsed with him in the lobby of the hotel in Michigan; Izzy and Duff and I on our guitars while Fred played along on drum pads.

After a few days, we heard that Alice had canceled the tour, so we flew back to L.A. and prepared for the Perkins Palace shows. We were all resenting Steve at the time; we had no sympathy for the fact that he’d woken up the morning after the street-lamp incident with a cast on his arm, knowing he’d gotten too drunk and done something stupid. He’d fucked up—he had to deal with the consequences.

When we got back to L.A., Steven and I moved into the Franklin Apartments, furnished short-term units on Hollywood and Franklin, for the few nights before we did the four Perkins Palace shows in Pasadena and for a while after that. When I checked in, I had Sally in tow. She’d shown up at the Drury Hotel in Missouri—which we called the Dreary Hotel in Misery—with a green card and was all set to stay with me for a while. She is from Sheffield and is a real English girl, so she was out of her element immediately, touring with us, but she survived. She and I moved into a place right next door to Steven.

We had a few weeks before those four Perkins Palace shows went down in Pasadena, and as usual, given a few days freedom in L.A., I dove headlong into lunar activities. One of those nights Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield from Metallica came over and we did some outrageous partying. Sally was there and I remember that there was a girl that James wanted to fuck and I let him take her into my bedroom. They were in there for a while and I had to get in there to get something, so I crept in quietly and saw James head-fucking her. He was standing on the bed, ramming her head against the wall, moaning in that thunderous voice of his, just slamming away, and bellowing, “That’ll be fine! That’ll be fine! Yes! That’ll be fine!”

Steven, Sally, and I caroused extensively every single night. One time we went to the Cathouse, which had relocated to Highland and Melrose, and that night we ran into the infamous Mark Mansfield as well as Nikki
Sixx. Our little group all got together: I was on an antiheroin kick for the moment, so I wasn’t interested, but Mark had some junk, and he, Steve, and Nikki wanted to get high. I wasn’t even privy—they left to head back to Steve’s place to go do it.

Later on Sally and I went home; we had a few more drinks in our room and I passed out. Sally stayed up; I think she was aware of the scene going on Steve’s unit. I don’t know the series of events because I wasn’t there, but those guys had done their shit and at some point Nikki wandered into my place. Apparently, he had done one too many shots because he OD’d in my apartment.

Sally tried to wake me up when she found Nikki in a heap in a corner. I was so drunk and tired that she had to pull me into the shower to bring me around. That hardly worked: I got belligerent and thrashed about and broke the glass shower door. Meanwhile, the paramedics were hoisting Nikki out of the bedroom. Steven was there, too, all high, of course. Thank God for Sally; she was the one who called 911. Nikki might not be here otherwise.

A few hours later, Christine, Doc McGee’s assistant, came by to pick up Nikki’s stuff. We found out that he’d gone to Cedars-Sinai, been revived, and then he’d checked himself out a few hours later. I’m not sure what he did after that but legend has it that he did more smack and immortalized the evening in the song “Kickstart My Heart.” In any case, if looks could kill, Christine would have done me in. She treated me as if Nikki’s overdose was my fault; as if it had been my junk, my idea, as if I’d forced it on him. Christine was someone who was usually nice to me, but she was now sending me full-on daggers. I’ve never spoken to her again.

In spite of all of that, the Perkins Palace shows were some of the best shows we’d ever done…and Fred Curry was playing. It was awful for Steve: he was standing there in his Clint Eastwood shawl, with one of those batter’s helmet hats with the two straws leading into cans of beer and his arm in a cast. I sort of felt sorry for him. He played tambourine; he was so pissed off. He was nice to Fred, but barely. I could understand that: he had to sit there and watch us play that well—without him—to a homecoming, friendly crowd the likes of which we’d never seen.

I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH NIKKI’S
overdose, but the fact that it happened in my apartment was reason enough for the powers that be to punish me by exiling me, Sally, and Steven from Hollywood to a Holiday Inn down in Hermosa Beach. It was the first of a few times that management devised ways to get me out of town to locations with less activity in an effort to keep me in check. Their intentions were good but their execution never was. Hermosa Beach was certainly eons away from Los Angeles, and one thing was for sure—I was stuck there in that little one-bedroom with its little TV and two chairs because I didn’t have a car. There wasn’t a proper kitchen, there wasn’t a proper anything, and it was too far from a town that could fulfill those needs. There wasn’t even room service.

Steven was next door to Sally and me; and I have to say, this was the beginning of Steven’s downward spiral. The few times I saw him he had all kinds of shit going on in his room; he was doing tons of blow and always had one girl or another keeping him company. I can only say this in retrospect, because at the time, he seemed happy. I was there drinking bottle after bottle of Jack, as my relationship, such as it was, with Sally came to a dramatic head. We fought nonstop once we relocated to Hermosa Beach. She became progressively more belligerent, and once I finally lost my patience, I shipped her off to L.A. For the next few years, I’d run into her, and one time, she even materialized at the foot of my bed…but we’ll get to all of that in just a little bit.

We did
Lies
during this period; we got the acoustic stuff all down and I did my guitar over dubs. That kept me occupied for a fucking second, which was great, because every day that I spent in Hermosa Beach I was one day closer to exploding. The guitar parts on
Lies
took me exactly two days; if anything, I was so excited to be back in L.A. that I ripped through them too quickly—I wish it had all taken longer.

It seemed like my exile lasted an eternity; it was the kind of reality where twenty-four hours took years. I wasn’t real popular down there either: I’d go down to the local watering holes and there was nothing fun to do, and the locals’ vibe wasn’t all that welcoming. That place was a beach-and-surf scene, and when a town adopts that as its cultural identity there’s nothing interesting about it at all—at least to my gutter rat sensibilities at the time.

Once the final leg of the
Appetite
tour was over, I was back in L.A., pretty shiftless and uncomfortable; for the first time in two years I had no predetermined place to be, job to do when I woke up. I had been away so long that nothing was satisfying and the everyday business of life seemed alien to me. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to go to the store for groceries after I’d played arenas in Japan the week before. I’d been on tour long enough to forget that I once bought my own liquor and cigarettes, and what I really couldn’t shake was the thrill of playing every night. I expected each day to hit that same dizzy climax. I had to fill the void. With the band on break, I embarked on a solo tour that never left L.A. I was more decadent than I had ever been; because when things stop, when things slow down, and when I don’t know what to do with myself, I’m the most self-destructive person I know.

I don’t see it as some kind of fault. I see it as a natural side effect. After two years of touring, it will take anyone at all a long time to wind down. I had been living at breakneck speed wherever I lived; I had no idea of what was going on with me. I’d done nothing at all to slow or calm down, so I sure as hell wasn’t prepared to stay in one place. Our career had meant working constantly just to make it take off. And then it kept on. It was five years, it was eight years…I was eighteen, I was twenty-three. I’d done it; we’d done it. And now I was home; I smacked up against the wall.

A
t one point in my life I was so obsessed with heroin and opium and anything derived from poppies that I went to the library to study the culture and the science of them every day. I read what I found; from the textbooks that explained the chemical makeup of the drugs to the history books that chronicled the evolution of the Triads and the other Chinese gangs who ruled the trafficking and smuggling of it. I also read about all of my rock-star heroes…all junkies. All things considered, I did manage to come into that part of the drug culture without an image in mind that I was trying to portray or mimic. It was a simple contradiction that made complete sense to me: everyone in town was doing heroin, and because of that I wasn’t interested in it at all. But once I actually did it, I was
very
into it…I just felt no need to advertise my interest.

The first and last rock-and-roll books that I ever read were loaded with heroin and drug use, and were much too sensational. I read
Hammer of the Gods
and
No One Here Gets Out Alive,
histories of Led Zeppelin and The Doors, respectively. They mention the drugs throughout, and I was so obsessed at the time that I read them for the drugs only; I wasn’t interested in whatever else they had to say. To me, those books were basically written for the authors’ own entertainment; they seemed inaccurate and full of shit. And after that I never read another rock-and-roll biography again.

In that way I never did my “homework”; I never studied the lives of other junkies in rock and roll. But at the same time I didn’t have to: I got hip to Keith Richards and Eric Clapton and Ray Charles later on in life. I think that anyone who is a true junkie has an innate kinship with other junkies. Somehow I knew that we shared mutual interests; that addiction speaks to you. Without knowing it, you’re attracted to them.

Heroin was novel to me then, it was an adventure, it was a private hideaway in my own body and mind. After I’d been through withdrawal and gotten clean more than once, the inescapable discomfort never discouraged me. I may have realized how crippling addiction was whenever I got clean, but after I was clean awhile, I’d reminisce about how much I loved to get high.

IT HAD BEEN A WHILE AND I WAS ABOUT
to discover it all again. It was 1989: We’d toured most of America, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia. We’d watched our album sit around and do nothing for a year before breaking the Top Ten and having a number one single; we’d shot three videos that became mainstays on MTV, a channel that helped us out, but that we didn’t care for. We performed at the American Music Awards, playing “Patience” with Don Henley on drums. We’d toured with our friends and heroes. Finally and suddenly we were the band that we’d always known we were…just better.

When we landed in L.A. at the end of the
Appetite
tour, each of us, one by one, set off to rediscover whatever we’d left behind: Duff went home to his girl Mandy (whom he married in 1988), Steven headed to his chick’s place (whoever she was at that point), Doug took off to San Diego, Alan returned to Redondo Beach, Axl went to Erin’s, and soon enough Izzy and I were sitting there alone at LAX, with our brand-new Halliburton luggage and no particular place to go. Each of us became a boy in a bubble at that point. We had taken home enough money from touring and now money was starting to roll in off the sales of
Appetite,
so that the need to survive was no longer a motivation. Everyone was, I suppose, stopping to smell the roses; I’m just not sure that any of us knew how.

Izzy made a call and we went over to a friend of Seymour Cassel’s who we’ll call “Bill.” We’d gotten a taste of smack again in Australia, so the craving was there by the time we got home. Besides, after two years of touring, subconsciously, we both felt that we deserved it. Anyway, Bill had a taste for drugs and always had plenty of every variety; he was also very generous.

When you start to get famous at all, a few typical things start happening: in Hollywood, if you’re out at a bar, everyone wants to buy you a drink, you can get into any club; whether you like it or not, you are suddenly a figure on the nightlife circuit. When that started happening to us, there was nothing less interesting that I could have imagined doing with my time. That Hollywood scene was the same old shit, and the more recognizable I was, the less I liked it. The amount of “dudes” who wanted to “party with me” had quadrupled, so I became entirely insular. Even on the rare occasion when I wanted to go out, I
found that the Hollywood scene we’d known was dead: the Cathouse was closed down and there was nothing else in L.A. that I found interesting at all.

Everyone in the band needed time to decompress; looking back, it makes complete sense to me that I allowed myself to slip into that seductive heroin comfort zone. It was the one aspect of success and fame that wasn’t vapid to me; there was really nothing else. I didn’t want to go to strip clubs or look for hot chicks or otherwise exercise my newly found status. All I wanted to do was hang out at Bill’s and do drugs.

The only stability that I’d enjoyed in my life up until then was the constant traveling, which was a contradiction not lost on me. I was twenty-three and I hadn’t had a stable life or home since I was thirteen; home for me was living with girlfriends or being on a bus with the band. I lived for playing my guitar and being on the road, plain and simple.

Like I said, Bill wasn’t a real dealer, he just liked to get high casually. He always smoked heroin and he had lots of self-control about everything he did. Meanwhile I was the opposite: I had a fiendish, obsessive/compulsive attitude toward heroin and was always eager to get around it and get more of it. That first night over at Bill’s I didn’t have any gear to shoot it with, so we all smoked it. But I couldn’t wait to grab a bit and leave the next day in search of a rig. It turned out to be the start of a long and nightmarish obsession with heroin that lasted from 1989 through 1991.

BILL’S PLACE WAS ON FRANKLIN AND
Western in East Hollywood way off the beaten track; he and his wife and their friends were really cool. Izzy and I hung around there on a daily basis and fit in just fine. Bill never allowed shooting up at this place, so I would smoke a little there, pocket some for later, and shoot it up at my leisure when I cut out to do my errands or go to appointments.

One of them was a photo shoot with Izzy for
Guitar World
with Glen La Ferman. We were both so high; we’d spent at least a week over at Bill’s. I remember that we showed up with our guitars, and that we passed out on the floor…not much else. It wasn’t on purpose; I’m not sure that were even aware that we’d done it. I just remember that afterward we went back to Bill’s.

For the record, that shoot contained the famous picture of me that is in the Rainbow, where I’m laid out with my hat on the ground and a bottle of Stoli, my guitar, and the rest of it at my side. If you have decent vision and you take a look at Izzy and me in those frames, you will easily see how out there I was. I was high off the entire success of touring and we were both in search of the kind of excitement you will never find walking around Hollywood playing rock star. I was in search of someplace dark.

Eventually Bill got arrested and was sentenced to thirty years to life for being caught three times with illegal drugs in large enough quantities that they qualified for “intent to sell.” In the end Bill served eleven years and got out. But at one point before his arrest, he was under surveillance from his phones to his home; every move was monitored. Two of the people who made regular appearances, of course, were Izzy and me, and Bill told me later that the cops were particularly curious about us. Supposedly they were willing to bargain with Bill if he dropped a dime on us because by then we were famous, to a degree. But Bill wouldn’t do that. God bless him.

EVENTUALLY I DECIDED THAT, IN LIGHT
of the band’s success, I should rent a place of my own. My apartment on Larrabee was the first that I’d ever had to myself, under my own name, and I was proud of that. It was just one room, a fully furnished, perfect studio, laid out exactly like a hotel room—and that’s exactly what I liked about it. Unfortunately, like every other apartment I’d lived in before then, I was pretty quickly evicted.

I kept it up for a while; well, Ronnie Stalnaker did, actually—one of his jobs was to keep drugs and trouble away from me and me from them. He’d regularly come through and clean the place up, probably as a way to see if I was behaving. I never did; it was much too fun of a challenge to figure out how to sneak my druggie friends into the apartment without Ronnie finding out. It was always a feat because Ronnie lived right next door.

It wasn’t going to end well with Ronnie—he got a bit obsessive about his job and went a bit Single White Stalker—but at this point he’d done nothing but prove himself to be a very loyal bodyguard, despite all of my efforts to fuck with him. For example, one night, while we were on tour somewhere, I decided
to end the evening by throwing my bottle of Jack into the TV set in my hotel room before I passed out. It exploded, of course, and Ronnie came in. We were a number of stories up, but Ronnie decided that we weren’t going to pay for that TV. He climbed out of my window, across the ledge of the building, and into an adjoining room, where he stole that TV and replaced it with the one I had broken.
That
is dedication.

Another time when we were in Dallas, Duff and I had adjoining rooms connected by a door and we invited over too many friends with piles of coke. Our party lasted all that night and well into the next afternoon. Things got out of hand, of course, and a big glass coffee table got smashed, and I walked all over it barefoot and bled everywhere. At some point someone kicked the dividing door off the hinges and tipped the beds over and smashed all of the lamps. There were too many of us behaving badly for Ronnie to deal with, so he came up with a plan to get us out of the hotel without the management noticing. He somehow herded us into a service elevator and snuck us out of a loading dock and onto the bus. The hotel had heard all of the noise and was very aware of the party going on, but Ronnie had kept security out of there somehow for an hour or so. We thought we’d gotten away, until the cops pulled us over a few miles down the road at a convenience store where, if memory serves, I’d actually just stolen a bunch of candy.

We were lined up against the side of the bus and taken in for trashing the hotel rooms. It was
expensive
and I can say in all honesty that it was the last time I’ve ever
really
destroyed a hotel room. Sure, I’ve been through a couple of TV sets and done a few other stupid things since, but that was the last time I engaged in total annihilation because
I
got the bill for that one.

Ronnie was clearly dedicated but regardless, it wasn’t easy keeping my first apartment in shape. The first blow came when my younger brother, Albion, or “Ash,” stayed there while I was away on tour. Ash is a great graffiti artist, and when I returned, I found that he’d covered every wall with an amazing mural that I had no interest in having in my home. I was so pissed off but I only told him that what he’d done was “inconsiderate.” He was only sixteen after all. Since then Ash has gone on to form Conart, one of the most cutting-edge T-shirt companies around; the designs are based on his art.

Ronnie painted over the mural, he cleaned up, he did everything else to keep us in there as tenants. That place was pretty simple: I had a microwave,
I had a refrigerator full of the usual bachelor-pad supplies and condiments. There wasn’t much, but even so it all got beaten up pretty fast. After all, West Arkeen came by all of the time and the two of us got to smoking a lot of crack together. We’d hit the pipe and listen to music and slowly climb the walls. In those tweaked-out days I spent with West, I fully realized what a great guy and an awesome fucking mess he was. To complement his influence, I had another musician friend, Jay, whose place I went to a lot to get high on smack. All things considered, slowly, despite my financial resources, but surely my living conditions became as gritty as they’d been when I was living in a storage unit.

I WENT THROUGH AN INTERESTING
succession of girlfriends at this time; just a handful that I’d see over at my place, each on different nights. At some point during these months my manager had the brilliant idea of having me present some award to someone or other at the MTV Video Music Awards. I can’t even remember who we gave it to, but my copresenter was Traci Lords, the porn star, and Alan thought that it would be funny for me to be up there with her. Obviously he saw the advantage of the sensational aspect, which was not a bad idea at all.