by Slash
At this point I could now see that his mental and physical health had become a bit questionable. Under the circumstances it was forgivable, but I think somewhere along the line we’d forgotten that Steven was the type who needed somebody to look out for him all the time. He was like a curious kid you couldn’t leave alone in the house, whereas the rest of us were the kind of people who had a sustainable way of doing things. You could do whatever you wanted to yourself, but you had to carry your own weight; you could make your own mistakes, but you had to deal with the repercussions. That was the way it worked with us.
Until our return from the Appetite tour, the years leading up to this had been casual fun drug-wise, more like recreational consumption. None of it had any real baggage or so we thought, but at this point it had taken its toll. Once I saw how dark it was getting, I pulled myself out. Steve didn’t have the wherewithal to see it as clearly or take steps to change it. He was in such denial, but it was tough for any of us to come down on him, even for Duff, who still did coke. Steven just didn’t have all his faculties and couldn’t maintain a line between his excesses and his productivity.
We did what we had to do to get him back on track, but you couldn’t tell Steven anything. He would argue and then throw it back in your face. (In fact, to this day he is still arguing about why he got kicked out of the band.) Sometimes I’d think that I’d gotten him to a place where he could understand…then he’d pull a stunt like not showing up for a rehearsal. It was impossible to reason with him—with anyone, I guess, in that state of mind. And, really, emotionally Steven wasn’t much older than a third grader, a sixth grader tops.
Now, trying to curtail Steve’s abuse was an awkward situation, to say the least: here I was, the pot calling the kettle black, me, Mr. Recently Clean, who still drank, laying down the law to Steven. I was doing nothing more than criticizing my mirror image from the other side of the mirror. I knew there was some hypocrisy involved, but I didn’t care—the difference between Steve and me, no matter what our chemical diet consisted of, was that I was aware of my limitations. Unfortunately he wasn’t, and Guns N’ Roses needed to move forward at all costs.
Like Izzy and myself, Steven had slipped and lost his footing in a pile of cocaine and heroin, but unlike us, he couldn’t regain his balance. We’d go over to his place in the afternoon to try to get him to come to rehearsal and his eyes told us all we needed to know: they’d be tiny black pin dots that were way too easy to see against the blue iris of his eyes. He’d sit there insisting that he wasn’t on smack, that he was just drinking and doing a bit of cocaine, but we knew differently. It didn’t help his cause that Duff and I always found his stash; he generally kept it either behind the toilet or behind his bed. There was no one else keeping tabs on him but us; he’d had a girlfriend but they’d split up, so he was living alone as he went off the deep end. We made a number of attempts at rehab, and we did get him to check in to Exodus more than once. Every time he did, though, we’d get a call that he’d scaled the wall or run off out some back door. Of course whenever he did that, he’d be predictably irretrievable for the next few days. It must be some kind of record: in total, during this period, Steven escaped rehab twenty-two times. Duff and I stuck by him, but we knew that it was a matter of time before he wore down whatever goodwill the rest of the band had toward him.
Meanwhile, somehow Axl and I had become civil again and were both excited about getting to work on a new record—I guess it was fishing season again. Axl knew I’d succeeded in getting off heroin, and was committed to staying off it. After so many false starts, Axl, Duff, and I started to regain our sense of unity and Izzy wasn’t too far behind. We were all glad to see him when he showed up at Mates. He wasn’t there every day, maybe two days on one day off, but we worked around all that. Izzy is just so easy to get along with.
He jammed with Duff, Steven, and me on a few new songs, and in those instants the old energy came back and it all became very exciting and electric.
We all gathered at my house, and wrote more than half of both Illusions albums on acoustics, literally in two nights. We started off by going through the stuff we had from the old days that we’d never done anything with. We reintroduced “Back Off Bitch” and “Don’t Cry”; we had “The Garden,” a song that Axl and Izzy wrote with West Arkeen. “Estranged” was a song that Axl had been working out on piano for a long time—he’d been playing the same parts over and over in Chicago and afterward; it was clear that it was working itself out in his head. I had started writing guitar parts for it back in Chicago, so it came together in no time once we focused on it.
“November Rain” had been ready to go on Appetite for Destruction, but since we already had “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” the majority of us agreed that we didn’t need another ballad. Besides, the original demo of that song was eighteen minutes long give or take, and none of us cared to conquer it in the studio at that point. It had been a song that Axl had tinkered with for years, whenever there was a piano present; it had been around forever, and it was finally getting its due. Axl had been annoyed when Tom Zutaut suggested that we hold it until the next album, because that song meant a lot to him. He let it go, though he resented that decision for years.
We’d had the rough framework for “Civil War” kicking around since that first tour of Australia; I wrote the instrumentals, and Axl had written and revised the lyrics for it several times, but everything fell into place when we brought it out again. “You Could Be Mine” was another track that wasn’t new: it was written during the Appetite sessions and I always felt that it should have been on that album, because it is more reminiscent of that time than anything else on the Use Your Illusion albums.
We had spun our wheels for a long time, but over that couple of nights at the Walnut House, the creativity at the base of our band chemistry came back to us: Izzy and I both brought out a few rough ideas, and before we knew it, we’d all contributed to developing them into complete songs. I had a track called “Bad Apples” that was fresh from Chicago, along with “Get in the Ring,” which Duff had written the music for. Everyone jumped on those right away, as well as a long, heavy guitar-riff mantra I wrote when living with Izzy that evolved into the song “Coma.” The song was eight minutes long; it was just a repeating pattern that got increasingly mathematical and involved in its precision as it progressed. Axl loved it but at first it was the one song that he couldn’t come up with the lyrics for. He was very proud of his gift for lyrics, so he was pretty frustrated by it…until one night months later when the words just came to him. We finished another epic number I’d begun with Izzy called “Locomotive.” And there was “Dead Horse,” a tune which Axl had done the guitar and lyrics for years earlier before we’d ever met. Duff brought in “So Fine,” complete with music and lyrics. Before long, we realized that we had more than enough songs for an album. In a few sessions, we managed to pull all of that material together quickly and relatively painlessly.
I still had no idea why it had taken us this long, but it was clear that as soon as we took a second, put the bullshit aside, and got together without animosity, we fell naturally right back into the band vibe.
The thing that’s funny about the Illusion records is that aside from a couple of songs there are no really dramatic arrangements on them at all, because we threw them together real quick. The ones I brought in, like “Locomotive” and “Coma,” were fully arranged from the start when Axl wrote lyrics to them. With the exception of the piano epics, the rest of the songs were really simple and didn’t need much working out. We didn’t spend afternoons debating how many times a bridge was needed in a song or coming up with tricky chords for a breakdown. Once we got together again, we were in such a good mind frame as a band, just hanging out together for the first time in quite a while. We were all getting along really well, so it was all fun again.
Of course nothing’s perfect. The funny thing is that whenever everything was going well, Axl always made it interesting. One of the sti
cky spots in the re-formation was that once we got into full gear, Axl wanted to add keyboards to our sound. He wanted to hire Dizzy Reed, the keyboardist for the Wild, the generic L.A. band who had practiced next door to us in our dingy storage unit studio at Sunset and Gardner. Dizzy was a nice guy; I just didn’t see any reason why we needed a keyboard player in Guns. I was adamantly against it and felt that it diluted the sound of what was already a great rock-and-roll band. Piano or electric is cool, but I’m old-school and I was never into phony synthesizer sounds.
Axl, on the other hand, felt passionate about the artistic evolution the band needed to make. Our conversations weren’t too heated because we were making an effort…so sometimes we’d crack jokes about it, and he knew the rest of us didn’t want to do it. All the same, as adamantly as I was against it, he was for it.
So in the spirit of keeping things happy, I finally and reluctantly gave in and so did the other guys. It wasn’t worth going backward. Dizzy became a hired gun and we proceeded to pick on him relentlessly. He was like the Ronnie Wood of Guns N’ Roses.
That was really the only creative glitch. Writing the songs for Illusions felt like the way I’d always pictured an early Stones session to be back in the day; just hanging out up in a house in the Hollywood Hills working out ideas together. It was good to have Izzy, Axl, Duff, and me in the same room again. And more or less sober. I mean, I always had my cocktail, but I wasn’t into heavy tipping-the-bottle-style drinking. It was sad, though, that Steven wasn’t really there for any of it.
As I feared, he had become the odd man out. At rehearsals, Duff and I had the tedious job of dealing with him. While Axl was aware of the situation, he wasn’t obligated to watch over Steven 24/7 like we were. And as for Izzy, he would have nothing to do with it at all. Steven was becoming a heavier burden every day.
I couldn’t deny the fact that kicking Steven out of Guns N’ Roses for drug abuse was kind of ridiculous and excessively harsh.
WHEN WE STARTED REHEARSING THE material that’s when Steven’s house of cards came crashing down. He was utterly useless when put to the test: most of the time he’d fade away from the proper time signature somewhere in the middle of a song or just forget where he was altogether. He was just incapable of locking in with Duff or me like he used to do. It was pretty dire; something had to be done. The band finally had momentum; we’d finally written new stuff and we needed to start recording and not stagnate. We couldn’t have it be an undertaking just to get through a song at rehearsal.
That’s not to say we weren’t really patient with Steven. We tried everything we could think of, though we probably should’ve taken further action…though I’m not sure what that could have been. We’d gone so far as to bring in people like Bob Timmons, the rehab specialist who had helped clean up Mötley Crüe, and others who were experienced in dealing with extreme cases. Their efforts were futile.
We got an offer to play Farm Aid in Indiana on April 7, 1990. That gig got us fired up in the same way that those gigs with the Stones had done for us not too long before. These kind of jump starts would kick the band into gear and get it all flowing again because when the band was working, we fired on every cylinder.
We put together a few songs just for the show; we worked up a cover of the U.K. Subs’ classic “Down on the Farm” and we fine-tuned “Civil War.” I was really excited to get out there and play together again, but things went south quickly. The second we walked out onstage, Steven took a run up to the drum riser, which is a pretty big platform that’s hard to miss, and took flight. I assume he was planning on landing next to his kit, but his depth perception and reflexes were clearly impaired, so he ended up landing about four feet short. I watched it as if it were happening in slow motion…. It was more than embarrassing. Steven hobbled through the show, and our performance was dodgy at best, though well received by the Farm Aid crowd. We all knew why we weren’t happy: the timing was all over the place. There’s a certain groove and rhythm that Guns and Steven had, and when that went missing the band lost its confidence because we had to use guesswork. That’s not what the band was ever about—it was based on a ton of cocksureness.
There couldn’t have been a better way for Steven to reveal to us that he’d been lying about being clean—even a full confession wouldn’t have come off as honestly as his playing at that show. It was obvious we had a real problem. He was using, and had probably been using in his room up until the minute before leaving for the venue. Afterward, he was still in denial, and as open and social as ever. It was so awkward and uncomfortable talking to a guy who you know in his mind is thinking the exact opposite of what he’s saying. His whole presentation was drowned in bullshit.
At this point the truth was that if his playing had been fine, I don’t think anyone would have cared what he was doing to himself—at least I wouldn’t have. If you can handle both the music and the drugs, more power to you. We weren’t really concerned for Steven’s health as much as we were pissed off that his addiction was handicapping his performance, and therefore the rest of us. Since the bass and drums are the foundation of any rock band, the situation was very disconcerting all around.
Farm Aid was the last show we ever played with him. When we got back to L.A., Steven got even worse—I don’t know, maybe because he knew the end was near, or maybe because heroin is that shrewd of a devil. There were a few more rehab stints, but they were short-lived, maybe twenty-four to forty-eight hours at a time. The last straw came when we were asked to donate a track to a charity album called “Nobody’s Child,” which benefited Romanian children orphaned during the Romanian revolution in 1989. We thought it’d be a great forum for “Civil War.” By then we were completely alienated from Steven. In that session, there was us and there was him. After it was finished, before Mike Clink could mix it, he found that he had to cut and paste the whole drum track together. These were the days before digital recording, so Mike was working on tape and it took him hours and hours in the editing bay to get the song to function timingwise.
The writing was on the wall, and things quickly came to a head. Axl’s patience as far as Steve went was long gone, so we had the inevitable get-together to discuss the situation; with Alan’s support, Axl insisted that we give Steven a written ultimatum. It was a contract that Steve was forced to sign, that at best we hoped would scare him sober and at worst would orchestrate his departure from the band. The paperwork was clear; it said that if Steven showed up high to recording sessions, he’d be fined. If he did this three times, he’d be fired, or something along those lines. Steven signed it, he agreed to all of the terms, and like anyone caught in the throes of smack, he ignored all of the promises he made and continued the way he had been. He made one effort—he tried Buprinex, but he was too weak to kick the smack altogether.
In my eyes, it seemed to me that Axl didn’t like Steven. Steven had an unbridled enthusiasm for drums and rock and roll and life in general. He was hyper and totally fun to be around. But he was also blatantly honest and outspoken about his opinions to Axl or anyone else in the band. Oftentimes his opinion was in Axl’s face, which wasn’t the way that Axl operated. Steven was unfiltered, saying exactly what he felt and he didn’t pussyfoot around. Duff and I were used to it and took Steven’s comments with a grain of salt, so we could tune him out. But Axl was more sensitive than we were, which Duff and I also understood. With Axl, I didn’t want to slow things down at a rehearsal or a studio by confronting him with his lateness or whatever. But Steven would make a comment or get in his face and that never worked. But Steven could never be calculated; whatever he blurted out was always true; it was an innocent side effect of his personality. Unfortunately, up against Axl’s hyperemotional sensitivity level, I’m sure Steven offended Axl more often than not without even knowing it. I can see how Steven inadvertently pushed Axl’s buttons; but that said, I don’t think Axl ever really gave Steven his just credit for what he brought to Guns musically, which was a dynamic that I think hurt Steven. But
what do I know? There is probably much more to it than that which I can’t speak to.
Axl had made his feelings about Steven clear back in preproduction for Appetite. When were close to wrapping the album, it came time to discuss writing credits and publishing on the songs. We talked about it standing onstage at Burbank Studios, and someone proposed that as a band we should split the royalties evenly five ways—20 percent each.
Axl scowled. “There’s no way Steven gets twenty percent, the same as I do. Uh-uh,” he said. “I want twenty-five percent and Steven gets fifteen. He’s a drummer. He doesn’t contribute to the writing as equally as the rest of us.” That was the compromise we agreed to: Axl got 25 percent; me, Izzy, and Duff 20 percent; and Steven 15 percent. I think Steven was permanently scarred by that.
I’m not sure of the exact timetable, but it didn’t take long for Steven to violate the terms of the sobriety contract we handed him, and once he did, he was done for. It wasn’t easy for me to allow, because as I’ve said, the simple truth is that Steven never had the kind of strength to give that stuff up easily—if he’ll ever give it up at all. But at that point, everyone had tried to help him—girlfriends, friends, management experts—nothing resonated with him enough to work on the problem. At this point in particular, Steven was a Catch-22, because as much as I would have hung around long enough to get him together, if the band lost its momentum it might mean the end of us. We were too many variables and complex characters, and now that we were all getting along, the window of opportunity was open—but it probably wouldn’t stay that way for long. I couldn’t deny the fact that kicking Steven out of Guns N’ Roses for drug abuse was kind of ridiculous and excessively harsh. It was also so hypocritical. Think about it, it sounds like a joke: “He got kicked out of Guns N’ Roses for drugs? Are you kidding? How does that happen?”
