Slash (51 page)

The next time I saw Renee she confronted me about what I’d been doing and was shocked to hear that I had no desire to work anything out—I just wanted a divorce. The next time I came home one night, I found a guy in bed with her and I told them not to get up; I’d let myself out. Despite her objections, I had insisted that she sign a prenup—maybe my overdose had something to do with forcing the issue. All of it was taken care of pretty quickly, and once it was, we never saw each other again. In retrospect, it’s kind of interesting that I suddenly had disconnected with the two most long-term, closest relationships I had had up to that point, just a matter of months apart.

ONCE I WAS DIVORCED, PERLA AND I
set off on a crazy, very exciting, and tumultuous relationship. Tumultuous because unlike any of the other girls I’d been around, she was very passionate about the obligations of a relationship and took it very seriously—she was not fucking around. So there was a bit of a clash between my ideals and hers, which made our relationhip much spicier. We forged on. Besides, this all made for a very intense sex life, so I really wasn’t going anywhere.

When Perla and I started seriously seeing each other, she introduced me to her mom, who is a colorful individual from Cuba. She came to the States the old-fashioned way, on a boat after Castro came to power. I liked her immediately, a sweet but tough lady who, like her daughter, is a very streetwise and observant soul. She liked me from the beginning, mostly because her daughter liked me—she is one of those people whose trust you have to earn. I met Perla’s father a couple years later in Miami. He was in his early seventies, a tall, gaunt fellow who didn’t speak much English. We hit it off right away. He was sort of like a tough Cuban cowboy with a checkered past. Perla and I took him to Disney World the day I met him. The morning before we went to the park, at about 8 a.m., he popped us a couple cold Heinekens from the fridge. He and I sat in comfortable silence watching
TV together, since neither one of us spoke the other’s language, until we had to leave for the park. We shared a camaraderie and a silent understanding of each other from that moment on. Unfortunately, he died a year or so later of heart disease. I wish I had been able to have spent more time with him.

She also introduced me to a lot of people with whom I’d become very close friends with, Charlie Sheen and Robert Evans among them, plus a whole slew of other people who may not be as high-profile but are just as cool. We spent most nights going out, socializing, and I was jamming in clubs at least three or four nights a week. I was finally starting to feel a renewed sense of musical inspiration.

I set about putting together a new band; I wanted to do something like Snakepit, but different. Teddy Zig Zag started getting me out on Tuesday nights to jam down at the Baked Potato in Hollywood. I sat in with a lot of blues players and did a lot of classic songs, some of which I’d never played before and I loved every bit of it. Then I got this call from a promoter to do this show, all expenses paid, in Budapest, headlining the jazz festival there. I agreed immediately; it was the kick in the ass that I needed to go out and form a band. I got Johnny Griparic, Alvino Bennett, and Bobby Schneck on rhythm guitar. We put together a cover set that included everything from B.B. King to Steppenwolf to Otis Redding to a few other R&B and blues standards. Then we went off to Budapest to headline and it was
great.
After that, the calls rolled in for us to do more gigs, and before we knew it, we became a touring band, doing whatever gig we were offered as much for the money as for the beer. We became the most extreme gigs-for-beer touring band I’d ever seen and we had a great time doing it. We’d travel with a huge entourage and generally take over wherever it was that we showed up. I was having a really good time playing in clubs with a great bunch of guys who were just in it for the music.

When our tour was done, I approached Johnny Griparic about forming a new version of Snakepit. We put the word out on the street that we were looking for a new singer. At one point I had some guy get in touch with me who said that he was the singer for Jellyfish. Since I’d worked with Eric Dover on the last record, I decided to meet him. What a strange trip that turned out to be.

This guy met me over at Perla’s house, and the moment I laid eyes on him I had my doubts. He didn’t look the part; he had no rock-and-roll fashion sense at all—he looked more like a construction worker. I invited him in and we sat down in the living room and I pulled out a guitar. Perla was in the bedroom upstairs while this guy started telling me about some song he wrote about this girl. I asked him to sing it while I played the music, and found that the guy couldn’t sing particularly well, so I was suspicious of his being in a band that did perfect five-part harmonies. And the lyrics were pretty naff as well. So I tried to be polite and saw him to the door.

After the guy left, Perla told me that everything he claimed to be and said was bullshit—and she knew the girl he was singing about. I was skeptical; I thought she was jumping to conclusions or being paranoid. I wasn’t all that interested in working with him but I had him over once again just to see if Perla was right. She confronted the guy and every single thing she said turned out to be true. It was at that moment that I realized that Perla was a lot more astute than I gave her credit for. And, as much as I’d hate to admit it, this was one of many times that she saved me from potential disaster. In any case, the guy was a fraud and had lied to me, so I did the appropriate thing: me and Ronnie went to the guy’s houseboat and scared the shit out of him. Ronnie threatened to put a hole in the boat with the guy’s head, and told him to never call or contact me again.

Before, I alluded to how Ronnie became the Single White Female in my life; well, it was right about now when that happened. Over time, Ronnie became my shadow, and he seemed almost possessive of me. He did a great job helping move shit into my new house, and he was always loyal, but when Perla and I started hanging out together, it was as if he were listening in on our conversations. The last straw came when I discovered that he’d spun out in my car and totaled it without telling me. I realized that in a weird way he was both living vicariously through me and wanted to
be
me in a way. It all came to a head, and thankfully, he left quietly. I’ve since discovered that all the stuff I ever gave him—the gold records, awards, all that shit—he has sold on eBay. Nice.

Anyway, I continued my quest for a singer. When Johnny played me a tape of Rod Jackson, I knew we’d found him. I’d made demos of three or four songs for these different guys to audition with, and Rod did amazing
vocals on a demo track called “All Things Considered.” His voice was incredible. It was rock and roll, but it was more like acid R&B delivered at high velocity. So I said, “Let’s meet this guy.” Rod was a perfect misfit: he was tall, half black and half white, always wore shades, and he had dreads. Being from Virginia, he also had a real southern attitude and accent. And when he sings, he can belt out soul like Otis Redding or hit a higher range like Sly Stone, but he also has a softer blues voice like Teddy Pendergrass or Marvin Gaye. It was a different kind of voice than any I’d ever worked with before, but I had nothing to lose, so I went with my heart on that.

We wrote a bunch of bitchin’ stuff over at Mates—Johnny G., Matt Laug, Regan Roxies—everyone together, then I moved the band into my house in Beverly Hills and we rehearsed and recorded in my brand-new studio. We worked hard and we played hard and we’d written an album’s worth of material in no time.

DURING THIS PERIOD I KEPT A CLOSE
relationship with Tom Maher, who was the guy who’d been most on my side over at BFD management. When I left Guns, he led me to believe that he’d stopped working over there and would manage me, but I’m not so sure that was really the case. It is possible that he was a mole, letting Doug know my every move. But at this point he was acting as my manager.

At the time, in 1998, the music industry underwent a major change. Black Friday happened, the day that hundreds of music executives were fired; they literally walked down Sunset with their boxes of stuff. Most of the labels were consolidated, one of them being Geffen, which was folded into Interscope. It was the beginning of the end of the music business as I’d known it.

Once Geffen was restructured, I had to make the acquaintance of a handful of people I’d never worked with. I was working on a band that had nothing to do with the grunge sound or whatever you want to call what it was that happened in the mid-nineties: it was a very cool but short-lived moment. And it had been replaced by rap-rock limp crap and boy bands…and Interscope was more or less all gangsta rap. I had no interest in any of that, so I was completely unaware about the shifts within the business.

A new breed of executives had become the norm as well; they were much
more bland, much more PC corporate-guy types than any of the characters I’d worked with. My typical loaded charm wasn’t going to get me far. The only person that was a familiar face at the label anymore was Lori Earle, who’d worked publicity with me since Guns was signed.

The guy assigned to deal with me was Jordan Schur and I remember coming home from my meeting with him thinking that I did not trust him one bit. He promised me the world and I’d only known him for twenty minutes. His was a kind of whitewashing bullshit: “We’re going to sell millions of records, get new cars,” all that crap. I knew right away that the guy was not for real. But he was Interscope head Jimmy Iovine’s boy, so I had to deal with it. I played him five demos from my next Snakepit record and he told me he loved them and couldn’t wait to put it out. I then met with Jimmy Iovine, and he suggested that I have Jack Douglas produce my album, which I thought was a great idea because Jack had produced Aerosmith’s
Rocks
and worked with John Lennon and other great artists in the seventies. Jimmy also commented that he had his doubts about my singer because his voice was too soulful, but I stood up for Rod and I told him, “Rod’s got an amazing voice. It’s just not what you’d expect.”

At this point Izzy had been dropped by the label, as had Duff; so I had my doubts, but Jordan appeared to be genuinely excited. Jordan scheduled another meeting, then bailed on it, and then suddenly did an about-face, claiming that Snakepit wasn’t the kind of music that his label produced. I wasn’t shocked; I felt, “Now, that’s more like it”—I could tell from the first time I met him that he was completely two-faced. With that, I decided to leave the label, and having already dumped a lot of money into recording the album myself, I offered to buy it back. In my mind, I had the house, I had the studio, I’d just record it all there and sell it elsewhere. I was very stubborn about the whole thing.

At the same time, Tom Maher hadn’t done anything to help me in the situation, so I decided to look for a new manager and I was introduced to Sam Frankel by Jack Douglas, who in turn introduced me to Jerry Heller. The idea was that Heller would manage me while Frankel would be my day-to-day guy. I was meeting a few people, but when I get my mind locked into accomplishing something, I’ll do whatever it takes with whoever can do it to get things done—right away. Jerry was
that guy,
but a
very suspicious character, and I’m still unsure of that whole arrangement, Considering that I was a full-blown alcoholic, and not exercising clear judgement anyway, I didn’t care—I just wanted to get things moving forward. I had a handshake deal with Jerry and Sam, and Jack Douglas commenced producing my record.

I felt like I was back in the early days of Guns, trying to get a band off the ground while working with subpar players: Jack was great but he hadn’t done anything recently, and while Jerry Heller had made his home in the hip-hop world, he hadn’t done anything of merit in the rock world; Sam was a nice Jewish attorney from the East Coast who visited his mom regularly and seemed to know nothing about the music business whatsoever. It was the carnival all over again, amid a music industry that was completely alien to me.

As far as the band went, it was no better: the singer, Rod Jackson, turned out to be unmotivated and a junkie, Johnny Griparic was and is a great bass player but didn’t have the touring experience he really needed for the long haul, and Ryan Roxie, whom I met from Alice Cooper’s band and hired as a second guitarist, was only interested in getting as much of the publishing as possible. The drummer, Matt Laug, was the most experienced and even-keeled of the bunch, and, of course, there was me, playing the role of boss, which wasn’t a role I was comfortable with. I split all of the publishing and advance equally with everyone, so it seemed more like a team effort than it really was, so in the end it was just a mess. All I wanted to do was get the record done and get back on the road. I took a deal with Koch Records because they made the most solid offer, which was a huge mistake due to the fact that they dropped the ball soon after the record was released, which did nothing to help the situation at all.

Jerry Heller proved to be a true cannibal manager; he tried to take me for everything given the chance. I’ve since heard stories to that effect from others in the business as well. The only thing that Jerry did do was get us the opening slot on the AC/DC tour for
Stiff Upper Lip.
And that is how he bought my confidence as a manager.

Meanwhile, Jerry tried to get me to sign a contract that granted him 20 percent of all the money I’d make with Snakepit plus 20 percent of my future earnings from Guns…for eternity. Perla didn’t trust him and sug
gested I shouldn’t sign it, and when I showed the contract to my new attorney, David Codikow, he told me it was suicidal. He got into it with Jerry and straight up called him an asshole, so Jerry fired him, which was surreal because he had no authority to do so—my manager can’t fire my attorney—but not wanting to give him the pleasure regardless, David quit anyway. In hindsight, it’s all pretty laughable, but at the time it was tranmatic—it was all I could do to keep it together.