by Slash
That wasn’t the only painful experience to come out of that night. Apparently, after I passed out, Tommy and Nikki made me the subject of a photo shoot: they took a picture of my face, with Tommy’s balls dangling above it, and the next morning made copies of it, had them laminated, and passed them out to everyone on the tour. I think the photo even became the official image for their All Access passes. I’d been tea-bagged for all the world to see.
Never before or since did Guns have that kind of a relationship with a band we toured with. And never was there the same level of debauchery going on. Mötley was the only group around with a like-minded self-destructive mentality, combined with a raging sense of competition and one-upsmanship. That entire tour we tried to outdo each other on every level and it made the shows that much better. The only thing I’ve experienced that came close was when Skid Row opened for Guns N’ Roses years later, and as much as I hate to admit it, I think with Sebastian Bach on board, we took it all a little bit further.
Mötley did have a great finale in store for us: they honored the age-old tradition of punking the opening band’s set the last night of the tour. Their crew kept it secret, and we really had no idea what was coming. As we launched into our last song, twenty pounds of flour fell from the rafters, and as cool as we might have thought we were, in an instant we looked ridiculous. It took me weeks to get that shit out of the crannies of my guitar.
All of it was definitely a learning experience. Mötley were at the top of their game and were a well-oiled machine, but I’ll never forget the look of terror in their manager Doc McGee’s eyes whenever I ran into him. He was dealing with a band on the edge: on that tour, at the end of every single night, Tommy was usually so fucked up that he looked like he was on the brink of dying. My last memory of that whole experience was watching Doug wheel Tommy through the airport in a baggage cart to catch their flight. Tommy was completely passed out at the time; he was a heap of lanky limbs that hung over the side with his head leaning all the way forward, his chin bobbing against his chest.
AFTER WE WRAPPED THE MÖTLEY TOUR, it was slim pickings—there weren’t too many appropriate outlets for an act like ours. But there was one perfect fit—Alice Cooper. It seemed like a marriage made in heaven. We’d done a show with Alice back in 1986 in Santa Barbara that, if it were another artist of his stature, would have disqualified us immediately. When we did that show, we were supposed to do the hour-long ride out there together, but Axl insisted on driving with his girlfriend Erin at the very last minute. We were all against it, as was Alan, but Axl convinced him that there was nothing to worry about. We got to the gig; Axl was nowhere to be found, but was apparently on his way. It came time to take the stage—no Axl—so Izzy and Duffy and Steve and I got out there and started playing without him. Izzy and Duff sang “Whole Lot of Rosie” by AC/DC and a few other covers. We were opening for Alice Cooper but basically that set was a drunken jam fit for a bar—except we were in an arena. It got so bad that at one point we asked the audience to sing lead and then asked if there was a lead singer in the house. We were friends with the crowd for a minute, but that quickly changed; we ended up insulting them and throwing things at them. It was ridiculous.
We stayed up there for the allotted amount of time and then retreated from a totally embarrassing disaster. We got out of there immediately and drove back to Hollywood, so pissed that we talked about kicking Axl out of the band that night and looking for a new singer. Izzy and I went right to West’s house and I was upset enough to use smack again; as we got high in the bathroom, Izzy and I talked about the fucked-up show and what we were going to do about it. It wasn’t the first time we’d had these talks; I’d say that the subject of firing Axl came up six times, very seriously, in the life cycle of the band. Izzy and I were in the middle of really strategizing how to do it when Axl showed up. He came into the bathroom and sat down on the bathtub and he started talking.
The amazing thing about Axl is that he didn’t understand, in situations like this one, that he had done anything wrong; it wasn’t within his frame of reference. He walked into that bathroom believing he had no reason to apologize as far as I could tell. All the same, he spoke at length and as much as the conversation left the subject of his absence at the gig, he did make a type of very vague apology. And when he did, he also explained, with much more passion than he lent to the apology, why he’d done what he did. His reasoning for his actions was so involved that all that I came away with was the impression that he was totally unaware of the implications of his no-show and what had transpired in his absence that he literally didn’t get it at all. There are certain protocols that Axl just didn’t heed; since he’s not in the same mind space as other people, the accepted norms just don’t occur to him.
Explaining those norms might or might not make a difference; you’d never know. Axl is superintelligent, yet at the same time he lives in a place where the logic that governs other people does not apply. He doesn’t ever realize what an inconvenience his choices might be for others. He means no harm; it’s just the way he is. It’s very hard to try to even explain it. He is as sincere as someone can possibly be, but it comes down to the fact that Axl, regardless of the world around him, insists on existing according to rules that hold true only in the universe that he has created around himself. That Alice Cooper show was a clear example: I remember being really angry and Izzy felt the same way that night. But as pissed off as we were, sitting there in that bathroom, discussing how we were determined to find a new singer, when he showed up, Axl still won us over. Slowly but surely, we found it in our hearts to just let it go. Of course it didn’t hurt that we’d been doing smack…we were so loaded that after a while none of the drama seemed to matter anyhow.
In any case, that was then and this certainly was now. Apparently, Alice had gotten a kick out of that performance of ours; I think he’d seen a bit of his younger self in us. Alice was supporting Raise Your Fist and Yell, and hadn’t had the best year: he’d almost been killed onstage when his famous guillotine stage prop malfunctioned and nearly decapitated him. Alice had cleaned up his act at the time, too, so aside from a few rowdy members of his band, we were the only obviously bad apples to be found on that outing. We set off on a leg of his U.S. tour with yet another entry-level, burned-out, unforgettable bus driver. This guy was a long-haired musician who liked to talk about the music he was always writing, and as much as he was “fun” to hang out with, he consistently did stuff that made life harder than it had to be for us. The biggest problem was that he always wanted to go out with us, so instead of parking the bus in one place and letting us find our way to wherever we wanted to go, he’d offer to take us there on the bus and inevitably got us lost on side streets. Needless to say, he didn’t last long.
When we first came on the tour Alice was superkind and supportive. He welcomed us on board with no agenda; there was no hierarchy and no bullshit. He genuinely liked our band and what we were about—and we completely looked up to him. We took lots of pictures with him, put it that way. It was an interesting transition: being around Mötley, we’d seen a large-scale production going on and a predictable performance every night. With Alice, it was the same at a whole new level. As much as we’d been fans for years, based on his records and lyrics and persona, it was something else to tour with him. He had a keyboard player, a weight-lifting behemoth of a guitar player, as well as Kip Winger on bass, another guitar player, and a drummer. He was backed up by a bunch of hired session guys and had all kinds of props, and it was interesting to watch how Alice interacted with all of it. He had an eight-piece band, backup singers, actors, costume changes,…it certainly was a show.
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 drummer 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 welcom
ing. 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.
9
Don't Try This at Home
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.
