Last of the Giants

by Mick Wall

  Walking on to an ear-splitting intro tape, ‘What’s That Noise’ by the Stormtroopers of Death, they would start with ‘Reckless Life’, reworked from the Hollywood Rose-era ‘Wreckless’, and then ‘It’s So Easy’, ‘Move to the City’, ‘Out ta Get Me’, ‘Rocket Queen’ (now complete with lyrics inspired by Barbi Von Grief, a girlfriend of Axl’s who also influenced much of their look and who would often dance onstage with the band), ‘My Michelle’, a slow and sinister new number called ‘You’re Crazy’, Axl’s overwrought ballad ‘Don’t Cry’, climaxing with ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and ‘Paradise City’. They would throw in Aerosmith’s ‘Mama Kin’ or Rose Tattoo’s ‘Nice Boys’ for flavour, and as a hat-tip to their influences. As a club band Guns N’ Roses were now at their peak.

  ‘The phone was ringing constantly for the guys,’ recalled Vicky Hamilton of the growing intensity that would ultimately lead to the band being signed. ‘Aside from all the girlfriends, club bookers were calling, industry insiders were calling, writers, A&R reps, publishers and agents were calling. Keep in mind that the cellphone did not exist. Everyone had a landline, and if someone was on the phone, you received a busy signal …’

  The band’s business arrangements were as casual and tangled as everything else they did. Before moving into Vicky Hamilton’s cramped apartment, they’d had another sort-of manager called Brigitte Wright, who also represented Jetboy, but after Vicky had hidden them from the cops, put them up, booked them gigs, helped Slash make flyers and small ads for BAM magazine, promoted shows, and taken a week-long job in the booking office at the Roxy ‘because Guns were bleeding me dry’, it seemed only fair that she should officially have the role of Guns N’ Roses’ manager. At least, to everyone in the band except Axl, who always somehow managed to avoid the conversation. Yet Vicky had a verbal agreement from Slash, and all of the band’s 10×8s and flyers carried her name and number, but she’d been bruised in the past by her experiences with Mötley Crüe and Poison, and when her friend John Harrington, one of the promoters at the Roxy, urged her to get something in writing, she knew that he was right.

  Hamilton called a well-known music biz attorney named Peter Paterno, who looked after a lot of first-time deals for bands on the Strip. He gave her a draft contract for herself and the band to sign, but ‘The band stalled in working out the agreement with me, so I started getting pissed. I felt thoroughly taken advantage of. They were living at my house for free … I was booking their shows, feeding them, clothing them … with my clothes. Getting them legal representation, getting Axl’s charges dropped, buying them cigarettes, helping them create their flyers and advertisements … I must be crazy. I told them that they had to negotiate and sign an agreement with me right then, or they had to move out … immediately. They agreed to negotiate.’

  But the wolves were circling … Kim Fowley, the legendary Hollywood sleaze-ball who’d made his name producing novelty hits in the Sixties for one-night-stand acts like Bee Bumble and the Stingers, then in the Seventies creating and producing The Runaways, arrived at Hamilton’s apartment and offered Axl a traveller’s cheque for $7500 and a contract to sign over the publishing rights to three songs. According to Hamilton, Axl actually thought this might be a good idea, as he wrote ‘hundreds’ of songs. She quickly dissuaded him. ‘The buzz got out,’ said Slash. ‘And we kept getting invited out to meet these idiots from record companies. One label we were talking to, I was saying, “It sounds kinda like Steven Tyler”, and the chick goes, “Steven who?” All of us just looked at each other and went, “Uh, can we have another one of those drinks?”’

  Hamilton took the band to meet with Paterno. Slash was so hungover that he vomited from the rail of the tenth-floor patio down the side of the building. A few days after the meeting, Paterno told Hamilton that he should handle the band’s legal negotiations and that she should find another lawyer to represent her in establishing a management agreement. ‘I was furious, but too naive to realize that I was being played,’ remembered Hamilton in her memoir. ‘Things were moving so fast and every day we were being wined and dined by different record companies. Yet I did not have a negotiated contract with the band, and apparently I did not have a lawyer any more either. The band told me not to worry, that they were going to take care of me. I believed them to a fault.’

  From living in a garage and fucking girls for food and rent, Guns N’ Roses were now taking meetings with record company representatives who were talking giddying sums of money. ‘The Chrysalis fucking brains came along and said we’ll give you guys $750,000, and we just said, yeah, but have you ever heard us play?’ Duff related. ‘And they were like, “No, but …” So we were like, “See ya!” Suddenly there was this little label war, everybody trying to get us to sign – we had a lot of great lunches.’

  After the Roxy show, Hamilton took a meeting with Peter Phil-bin at Elektra, where Axl warned him ‘not to take too long’ in offering a deal. Although Chrysalis had not struck a chord with Duff, they began to edge further along the road with an executive there named Susan Collins. After an extravagant lunch at the Ivy, Collins took the band to meet her boss, Ron Fair. It was a meeting that became one of the most infamous in the history of the era, and one which illustrated both the ambition and the attitude of W. Axl Rose.

  Vicky Hamilton’s eyewitness account is vivid: ‘Axl sat and propped his legs up on Ron’s desk, sporting his snakeskin cowboy boots … with fresh duct tape so the sole would stay together. Ron smiled at Axl and then introduced himself to the whole band. His hard sell began with why the band should sign with Chrysalis. He then took out a pad of paper and drew a big dollar sign on five sheets of paper and handed each band member a sheet. “This is what you will get when you sign with Chrysalis.” Axl looked at me and whispered in my ear, “Is he fucking kidding us?”’

  Vicky asked exactly how much money Ron was talking about. But Ron didn’t have a number, just sputtered, ‘A lot!’ Then told them he’d get back to them after he’d spoken to the label’s legal-affairs department. Unimpressed, Axl blew out his cheeks, turned to Collins and told her with a straight face: ‘If you’ll run down Sunset Boulevard naked, we will consider signing with you.’

  Susan Collins said nothing as she showed the band the door. But when they played the Troubadour again on 28 February, Hamilton counted 16 A&R representatives in the audience. The day had begun inauspiciously, when Axl and Steven had got into a fight in Hamilton’s apartment over who should clean up, but the show was as taut and frenzied as usual. Outside the venue, Paterno introduced Hamilton to a young A&R man from Geffen named Tom Zutaut. He looked anomalous amongst all the rockers, short-haired and cherub-faced, still young. Geffen had taken him on after he’d persuaded Elektra to sign Mötley Crüe, and he’d come up with their first significant hit, a cover of Brownsville Station’s ‘Smokin’ in the Boys Room’. Now the Crüe were poised to go multi-platinum, and Zutaut’s ear for a hit was zinging again. He later claimed that he knew Guns N’ Roses were going to be the biggest band in the world after just two numbers: ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and ‘Nightrain’.

  In fact, Zoots, as he was known, had already been tipped off about the band by his pal Joseph Brooks, the influential KROQ radio DJ and former owner of the hip Hollywood record store Vinyl Fetish. ‘I dragged A&R people to their gigs and played the ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ demo on my [KROQ] show,’ he said. A memory Zutaut shares. ‘Joe at Vinyl Fetish was like, “There’s this new band called Guns N’ Roses – you should check them out.” I went to see them at the Troubadour and there were a lot of A&R people. So I left after two songs … On my way out I said [to one of the other A&R people], “They suck – I’m going home”, knowing full well I was going to sign them to Geffen come hell or high water.’

  The day after the Troubadour show, Zoots called Axl and invited the band to his house, where he cut straight to the chase and offered them a deal. At first Axl did his best to play it cool. The more they talked, however, the more Axl warmed to the kid
-faced Geffen exec. Zutaut made two smart moves. The first was to let them know how much he loved Aerosmith, and how Geffen were about to resurrect their career (which they went on to do, in spectacular style). If Guns N’ Roses signed to Geffen, they would be label mates with their heroes. The second was to throw the name of Bill Price into the mix as a possible producer. Price had worked with the Sex Pistols, which both excited Axl and proved to him that Zutaut saw the band in the same way that they saw themselves.

  Impressed by Zutaut’s knowledge of music and his obvious passion, Axl made him a bravura counter-offer: ‘If you can get us a check for $75,000 by Friday night at six p.m. we’ll sign with you. Otherwise, we’re going to meet with some other people.’

  When Zutaut returned to his office and spoke to his boss, the label’s president, Eddie Rosenblatt, he once again played his hunch and tried to convince Rosenblatt that, although the request was highly unconventional, W. Axl Rose had the kind of potential that you tore up rule books for. Rosenblatt, who had been around the block enough times to own the building, resisted. So Zutaut asked for a meeting with David Geffen himself, and, amused and impressed by his desire, Rosenblatt agreed. Putting his case all over again, Zutaut watched helplessly as Geffen laughed out loud at his urging that Guns were going to be the biggest rock’n’roll band in the world. ‘David, I swear to God,’ Zutaut insisted. ‘I have no doubt about it, and you have to make this happen. I have to have this cheque for $75,000 by Friday at six.’

  Geffen, who had created a corporation out of playing his own immaculate hunches, nodded his head. He was entirely unaware that he’d just agreed to cut a cheque for the same little kid, Saul Hudson, he’d once babysat up in Laurel Canyon.

  Zutaut called Axl, only to be told that should Susan Collins walk naked down Sunset Boulevard before 6 p.m., Guns N’ Roses would be signing with Chrysalis. Tom Zutaut sweated until 6.01 p.m., constantly peeping through his office blinds and half expecting to see some kind of traffic pile-up on the Boulevard below.

  Later that night, Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff and Steven dutifully showed up at his office and signed the deal memorandum that Zutaut shoved their way across his desk. By midnight it was done: Guns N’ Roses had signed a major, long-term recording contract with Geffen Records. Kim Fowley recalled Axl swanning into the Rainbow that Friday night brandishing a photocopy of the Geffen cheque. ‘He said, “Look, we got our deal.” I said, “Congratulations”, and he said, “Buy me a drink – I don’t have any money.”’

  Vicky Hamilton would be left behind in the wreckage. The months before the band signed with Geffen had been a whirlwind, and came at some cost to her. She had borrowed $25,000 from Howie Hubberman, who owned a store called Guitars R Us, and used it to buy equipment and clothes and to help finance a couple of cheap demos that had been handed around to A&R scouts just before the feeding frenzy began in earnest. She worked every contact she had to do so. She got a tape to John Kalodner, Geffen’s chief scout, long before Zutaut had fallen for the band. She’d helped to get Kiss mainman Paul Stanley in front of Axl to talk about producing them – a meeting that went south almost immediately when Stanley had suggested rewriting a couple of songs. She’d given them everything she had to give and more. And they took it and never even said goodbye.

  Except for Axl. At the end of March 1986, Guns had played a show in support of another of their long-time heroes, Johnny Thunders, out at Fender’s Ballroom in Long Beach – a druggy, unpleasant experience. It just after that when Axl invited Vicky out for dinner – just the two of them – at the Rainbow. She told me how Axl had explained that he planned for Guns N’ Roses to be bigger than Queen, bigger than Elton. And that for that they needed ‘a real heavy hitter as a manager, and that wasn’t me. I was okay with that if that’s the way they wanted to go. But what about all the time and effort I’d put into them? Didn’t that count for something? What about all the money I owed?’

  Axl told her: ‘I really intend to pay you back, and give you a bonus on top of that, but I am not sure that you will be our manager once we sign a deal. You are really great on a local level, but I don’t know if you have what it takes to take us to the top, to worldwide success.’

  Hamilton countered by offering to go into partnership with a more experienced manager, and set up a meeting with Doc McGhee and Doug Thaler, who were managing Bon Jovi, the Scorpions and now Mötley Crüe. It was a disastrous morning, with a couple of the band, red-eyed and hungover, nodding out on the McGhee Entertainment office sofas while Doc and Doug asked them about their plans. McGhee had enough of that on his hands with Mötley Crüe, and passed.

  As Tom Zutaut upped his efforts to sign the band, he offered Hamilton a job as an A&R scout at Geffen. ‘He said to me, “If you come to work at Geffen, you will be too busy scouting talent to manage Guns N’ Roses, so we will have to find them a new manager. I will get you an office, somewhere off campus, not on the Geffen lot. You can still manage and scout, but you will have to give up Guns N’ Roses and let me find them a big-time manager,”’ she recounts in Appetite for Dysfunction. ‘I told him that I would think about it. Meanwhile, he was courting the band and inviting them to his house to party. Sometimes I would come home in the middle of the afternoon and find Tom in my living room with the band. I was sad and depressed at the thought of letting GN’R go, but continued to mull over my options. I came to the decision that I should take the deal that Tom Zutaut was offering.’

  Guns N’ Roses played two sets at the Roxy on 28 March, shows that Hamilton had originally designed as showcases but that now became celebrations of the Geffen deal. She helped the band cash their advance cheque – the band ended up with about $7500 each. Vicky got nothing. ‘The guys were running around town buying clothes, getting tattoos, buying musical equipment, all the while partying to the extreme. I was broke, sitting in my destroyed apartment, not sure how I was going to pay that month’s rent, or buy groceries. Howie Hubberman handed me $500 and told me to go check into a hotel somewhere … I really needed a couple of days away from the band to get my head together.’

  As Hamilton was eased out of the band’s future, Guns N’ Roses met the press for the first time, and – perhaps as an augury – things went catastrophically wrong. Hamilton had organised a cover story with Music Connection magazine, a story written by Karen Burch, who met the band at Vicky’s apartment in North Clark Street and conducted an entertainingly spiky interview that began badly when she asked the band their ages. When the piece came out –‘Days of Guns N’ Roses: Face to Face with LA’s Friskiest Bad-Boy Band’ – it emerged with the warning: ‘This issue’s cover is running against the wishes of Guns N’ Roses, according to Axl Rose’, which was true. Having taken a dislike to the idea of the story, he’d waged a week-long campaign of harassing phone calls to Burch in an attempt to spike it, and once the magazine was published on 14 April 1986 composed a rambling letter of complaint about everything from the ‘insincerity’ of the photographer to the ‘unrecorded sexual prodding’ of Burch.

  It was an absurdly self-regarding missive, written floridly – ‘where the pen acts, and so often is in actuality, as the knife’ – and filled with concocted reasons why Burch had left a ‘foul stench’ with her work. It began a pattern that would persist through his dealings with the press, and was another sign of the mercurial behaviour that was about to assert its grip on the band and its running. It was strange, as the piece, read today, looks as fine a prompt as any for a band receiving its first cover story from a major American music magazine.

  Soon afterwards Hamilton received an eviction notice, and would move out of North Clark Street and down into a bungalow in West Hollywood, a blessed relief, even though she was still struggling to make the rent. It was now clear that she would not be managing Guns N’ Roses, although she still booked their shows while Zutaut used Geffen’s A&R resources to handle the band’s day-to-day needs. His first attempt at finding a new manager for them was Arnold Stiefel, Rod Stewart’s representative, which ended rap
idly when the band trashed a house Stiefel rented for them. Back to square one, and with their reputation already damaged with a couple of leading management companies (Doc McGhee having also passed), Zutaut organised another house on Fountain Avenue, a famous Hollywood thoroughfare that runs parallel with Sunset Boulevard. Axl didn’t like it and for a while kept breaking into Vicky Hamilton’s to crash on the couch, but once her eviction notice was enforced, the pair stopped speaking. She got her gig working for Geffen, and also a heartening phone call from Ola Hudson, Slash’s mother, thanking her for looking after the band, but although Slash, Steven and Duff publicly expressed their gratitude, she was never repaid the money she’d spent on Guns N’ Roses, and three years later would launch a suit against the band.

  Guns N’ Roses played the first show at the refurbished Whisky a Go Go in April 1986, a night that carried all sorts of significance. They were supported by Faster Pussycat, a band Hamilton was soon shopping, and who Axl had insisted go on the bill. He was also in the first throes of a serious, adult relationship – with Erin Everly, the 20-year-old model daughter of singer Don Everly – and was feeling the tension of it all. He and Steven Adler got into another fight on the afternoon of the gig. Nobody could remember exactly why.

  Tom Zutaut had invited Aerosmith’s co-manager, Tim Collins, out from New York to see the band with a view to handling their affairs. ‘I didn’t really want to,’ Collins admitted, but he was in a position where Aerosmith’s own relationship with Geffen was just developing and he felt that he should at least take a look out of courtesy. Along with Aerosmith’s ‘Toxic Twins’, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Collins had recently got clean, and after one look at Guns N’ Roses backstage, surrounded by dubious characters and barely dressed young girls, ‘I immediately felt the narcotic vibe of this band and knew that I was at serious risk of relapse if I wasn’t careful.’