Slash (43 page)

We had a much more antagonistic situation on our hands with our other support band, Faith No More, once their front man, Mike Patton, started talking shit about us onstage. We let it go once, twice, but after that, that was it. We had to have a talk with him. Axl came in with me, as did their guitarist Jim Martin, because Jim was as fed up with Mike as we were.

“Listen, man,” I said. “If you don’t like it here, just fucking leave. It can’t be like this. Either let’s do this thing and make it great, or forget it, go home.”

They ended up finishing the tour and that was the last outburst we heard from Mike during their set.

We did three nights at Madison Square Garden (December 9, 10, 13, 1991), the same arena where Led Zeppelin filmed
The Song Remains the Same
. One of those nights we met one of Axl’s heroes, Billy Joel. It isn’t obvious until you think about it, but Axl loves all of the great songwriters: the Eagles, Elton John, Billy Joel—he knows his shit. I didn’t know anything about Billy Joel aside from the fact that my best friend’s mom played his breakout album,
The Stranger,
nonstop back in 1978. But it was great to meet Billy that night because he’s such an icon and also because he was very, very drunk—I had no idea that he was such a fuckup, and I loved it. Duff and I could certainly relate to him, and Axl was really fucking happy. Billy was led into the dressing room, where we had all of our booze, and he rummaged around the bar area, making all this noise.

“Where’s the Johnnie Walker Black Label?” he said, out loud, as much to himself as to us. “There’s no Johnnie Walker Black.” Needless to say, we sent someone out and they came back with a bottle for Billy in no time.

FEBRUARY
1, 1992,
WAS OUR LAST SHOW
with Soundgarden, at Compton Terrace, Arizona, and we decided to commemorate it with a little prank. We got ourselves a few inflatable sex dolls and Matt and Duff and I took our clothes off and went onstage with them. Come to think of it, I was the only one of us completely naked. In any case, Soundgarden was touring the
Badmotorfinger
album, and they came from a place where there was no fun to be had while rocking, so they were mortified. They looked around and there we were screwing blowup dolls all around them; I was drunk and I fell. I got separated from my doll, and at that point I was totally naked—it was a scene.

Slash the prankster, naked, embracing a blowup doll during Soundgarden’s show.

WE PLAYED THREE SHOWS AT THE TOKYO
Dome in Japan (February 19, 20, 22, 1992), which was something; in fact, I played five shows in a row in the Tokyo Dome—two with Michael Jackson and three with Guns N’ Roses. I experienced the biggest contrast you can imagine between those two audiences; I can’t think of a more surreal switch than playing one night for Michael Jackson, who was flying around the stage and had kids and toys backstage, to playing with Guns and everything that came with that world two nights later—all in the very same building. To top it off, I spent the day I had off between the two shows at Tokyo Disney.

I flew over early to play with Michael; I had recorded with him back in L.A. between the time that we finished the
Illusion
records and their release. It was while we were home between legs of the tour. I was staying
at the Hyatt on Sunset at the time when I got the call from our office.

“Hey, Slasher, Michael Jackson is trying to get in touch with you,” Alan said. “He wants you on his record.”

“Oh, wow,” I said. “Okay.”

The next call that came through was Michael.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello? Slash?” he said in his typically nervous, timid voice.

Off we went from there. I was flattered and I was intimidated, but it came off great. We did two songs: the first one, the cooler one, was called “Give in to Me,” which was kind of like a new take on his song “Dirty Diana.” When I went in to record it at the Record Plant Michael was there with Brooke Shields, who he was dating at the time. It was trippy: the studio was as dimly lit and as dark as Guns liked to have it when we recorded.

“Hi,” Michael said. “This is Brooke.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” I said. I think I put my hand out for a shake.

“I really want to thank you so much for being on my album,” he said. “I really can’t wait to hear what you come up with.”

And then they split—they went off to dinner or something. I recorded my solo and that was it. A few days later I came back and recorded the introduction to “Black and White.” They wanted something on the front end, which didn’t even make it into the album version of the song. You can hear my part if you watch the video: it’s what Macaulay Culkin is playing on guitar before the song starts. That was strange; to say the least, it wasn’t quite what I had in mind for that solo.

I think Michael Jackson liked me because of the animated element of my persona. I think he saw me as a caricature. But that’s just me. I still don’t know if he knows that about me.

I could feel it in my loins that she was having a look.

AS OUR ALBUMS CONTINUED TO CHART
worldwide, we toured Mexico in April, and like our South American fans the Mexican crowds were very dedicated. Then we did the Freddie Mercury tribute in London which was amazing—he was another of Axl’s heroes, so although it was a short set, we gave it our all: we did “Paradise City” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Later on I went up and played “Tie Your
Mother Down” with Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen, and Axl sang as well. At the end of the concert we all did “We Are the Champions.” It was a monumental gig, but the most memorable part of the evening was when I took my pants off in front of Liz Taylor: I was in the green room changing and she opened the door, her entourage in tow, and caught me in a T-shirt with no pants on at all. She didn’t have a look of embarrassment in the least; she was absolutely devilish—I could feel it in my loins that she was having a look.

IN MAY OF
1992,
WE ANNOUNCED THAT
we would coheadline a summer tour with Metallica starting July 7—there could not have been a bigger rock-and-roll bill at the time. It was too cool: they had just released
The Black Album
and we were riding high with
Use Your Illusion I
and
II
. We then headed off to start our headlining arena tour of Europe in Dublin, Ireland, in May 1992.

In my personal life, my girlfriend, Renee, and I broke up during the American leg because someone in our entourage told her how unfaithful I was being on tour. Cheating was the one thing I’d promised I’d never do. It was a weakness on my part that came out of a need to have as much of a good time between shows as possible, which, along with heavy boozing, was my way of self-medicating to get through all of the turbulent emotional activity, the yin-yang psycho-emotional ups and downs. Booze and girls—that was how I dealt. For the most part in our professional career I hadn’t taken full advantage of the exorbitant amount of women that were available
to me, so now that I felt unsettled about what we were doing, I took advantage of all of it.

Unfortunately, as is usually the case, it all came out in the wash. We were in Chicago when I got a message on my answering service from Renee’s stepbrother, who was a good buddy of mine. I was with a girl at the time, an actress—a real one—that I’d seen in a movie. We were in my hotel room when I called him up.

“Hey, man, it’s Slash,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“
Dude
,” he said, deadly serious. “I don’t know what you’ve got going on out there on tour, and that’s your business. But I think you should call Renee because she’s flipping out about something. She won’t tell me what’s wrong, but she sounds really pissed.”

I called Renee and she told me off very colorfully. Then in no uncertain terms she threatened me, letting me know that she had an uncle in Chicago—not knowing that I was actually in Chicago—who was connected and who would happily “take care of me” if she asked him to.

Slam.
She hung up.

I put down the phone. I looked at it for a second. Then I turned to the girl lying in my bed.

“Hey,” I said. “You better go.”

“Um,
okay
,” she said, annoyed. She sat up and started looking for her clothes.

Then I thought about it for a minute. “Well…not right
now,
” I said, and got back into bed. Needless to say, Renee and I were apart for a while after that.

THE EUROPEAN TOUR WAS AMAZING, AND
there were many memorable moments. We did this one show in Paris where Axl got this idea in his head that we should have people come out to play with us to record it for a pay-per-view show on some global TV network. Axl got Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, Jeff Beck, and pulled this move that seemed almost gratuitous to me because they were my favorite artists—as you know by now, Aerosmith was my favorite band, Beck my favorite guitarist, and I’d been on Lenny’s album.

I felt like this was an effort on his part to keep me satisfied, because he rarely made grand gestures aimed at keeping me happy—he’d have to have been blind not to know how pissed off I was as the tour wore on. He’d dumped all of the band responsibility personally on me, from finding Matt and Gilby to hiring the support musicians. I think in his mind, this pay-per-view concert was throwing me a bone, because when he ever did get around to making a peace offering, Axl never did it with words.

I wish that he did because that concert was very expensive for us, and although it was seen by millions, it didn’t seem entirely necessary. But once again, I agreed to it. Truth be told, I was excited to do it, as excessive as it was.

Whenever I get onstage to play with Aerosmith, it’s only because we happen to be in the same city at the same time—they usually invite me, but I’m lucky if they even send a car to take me to the venue. We gave every performer on that bill red-carpet treatment: first-class travel and accommodations in Paris—all of it. Everyone got in a day early and we set up rehearsals to go through “Always on the Run” with Lenny and “Train Kept Rolling” with Aerosmith, and Jeff Beck did “Locomotive” with us.

Everyone came out to sound-check…except Axl. I remember Steven Tyler coming up to me and asking—again—“Where’s your
singer
, man?” As I’ve mentioned, it’s the way he’s greeted me ever since our first tour together. This time the joke was too true to laugh at. Steven wasn’t the only one asking that question that day—in fact, it seemed to be the comment on everyone’s tongue. It wasn’t easy to stand there and take it; I never wanted to say anything bad about Axl, but it was pretty hard not to look stressed with Steven Tyler standing in front of me speaking the truth.

I remember doing sound check the day of the show, going through “Locomotive” with Joe Perry and Jeff Beck, and talking through the guitar parts. Jeff was standing there playing while he talked to us…it was so cool, he was just laying out these amazing licks nonchalantly.

“So you’ve been practicing?” Joe Perry asked him. I thought that was a weird thing to say. It was Jeff fucking Beck!

Jeff blew his ears out at sound check however…well, actually Matt blew Jeff ’s ears out: Jeff was standing up near the drum riser playing when Matt slammed on a cymbal and just knocked his head off. It sucked—it was the
day before the gig and Jeff couldn’t play; he couldn’t hear and do it at all, so he went home. It wasn’t cool, he’d sustained some real damage. Years later Matt told me he saw Jeff doing an interview about it and he summed it up like this: “He hit the cymbal and it went
crash
and that was it. Nothing.”

He was missed but the show came out really well: Lenny came on and did his thing, and so did Joe and Steve. Unfortunately, their part was at the end of a two-hour set, which was already an hour late going on, so they had to wait backstage all night. I still can’t believe that Axl didn’t show up for that sound check, let alone go on an hour late. I can count on one hand how many times Axl came to sound check on that tour; he was always careful about his throat, which is fine. But I don’t think that’s quite why he didn’t sound-check for that show. Although, all things considered, I have no idea why Axl didn’t sound-check for that show…or any of the others on that tour for that matter.

BY THE TIME WE GOT TO ENGLAND TO
play a few dates, I got lonely and called Renee, and flew her out to meet me. I made that decision on one of those nights when all of the fucking sordid, lunar, promiscuous stuff I’d been doing had caught up to me and left me feeling empty and entirely alone. It’s something that musicians do on a regular basis when they’re on the road for too long: they get a soft spot in their heart, and in a moment of weakness, against their better judgement, they act on it, usually engaging the wrong person.

So anyway a day or so later, there she was. I waited for her in the hotel bar, and when she showed up I was totally distracted and starstruck because Jonathan Winters was there—he is one of my comedic idols, so we ended up having drinks with him and his wife, which was great.