Slash

by Slash

  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.

  Renee and I had a very civil time. She travelled through England with me and we discussed getting back together. But she came out there in the same frame of mind that she was in when I first met her—not giving me any. There was no way she was staying on tour very long.

  We headed back to Europe after that, and when we got to Germany, a few of us shot a video with Michael Jackson for the song I’d played on his Dangerous album, “Give in to Me.” It was released as a single in Europe, though it wasn’t in the United States. Gilby, Ted Adriatus, aka Teddy Zig Zag, and I shot the video with Michael: it was a live club gig in Munich, complete with fans. We had the guy from Living Colour on bass, Muzz Skillings, and the concept was “Michael fronting a heavy metal band.” Unfortunately, it only aired on MTV Europe.

  THERE WAS A SPARE-NO-EXPENSE attitude on this tour, which was new for us. If we had days off, yachts were rented. In England, we had a five-hour go-kart rally arranged for us in West London. In Australia, taking a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef seemed to be something the band needed to do. It was all senseless spending. Doug approved one crazy idea after another to fill our free time at our expense. With the exception of Axl, the band wouldn’t have cared if none of it ever happened—we were more than capable of entertaining ourselves in any global locale on a shoestring budget.

  Our mistake was never giving a thought to the cost of Doug’s expenditures, that is for sure. In the back of my mind, I knew that hiring a yacht or closing down a restaurant didn’t come free, but at the same time I wasn’t going to say anything because at times those events seemed to maintain the status quo. I know that was Doug’s motivation: he did everything he could think of to keep everyone happy, but at the same time every time he arranged one of his grand gestures, it was a strike against him in my mind. I resented Doug’s influence in that regard, but all the same, I couldn’t get too directly pissed at him. Doug was so far up Axl’s ass at that point that Doug saw whatever Axl was looking at, crystal clear.

  I always found it suspect that Doug was our manager yet he was out on the road all the time. He found a million excuses to be there, and aside from the few legitimate ones, the truth is, in my opinion at least, he was there to try to keep Axl under his thumb and so protect his own job. By becoming tight with Axl when he was our road manager, Doug had secured himself his new position as our manager or so it seemed to me. I wanted to keep it all going too much to worry about extravagances, but I thought it was ridiculous that someone who was employed to guide our career was not only arrogant enough to let these wasteful expenditures happen, but was also arrogant enough to enjoy most of them himself out on the road as if he were earning his keep onstage every night.

  AT THE END OF THE EUROPEAN TOUR, we returned to the States and Axl got arrested the moment we landed at JFK in New York on July 12, 1992. He was considered a fugitive, stemming from the warrants out for his arrest by St. Louis authorities in connection with the riot in 1991. Two days later, in court in St. Louis, he pleaded innocent to four counts of misdemeanor assault and one of property damage and a date was set for O
ctober. We were allowed to begin our tour with Metallica three days later, as scheduled.

  While Axl took care of his business, I had five days off in L.A., and my first night in town I went out to dinner with Renee. After dinner, we had exhausted all the small talk we had in us and the conversation shifted to the subject of seeing each other regularly again.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not going to do that again.”

  “Oh no?” I asked, completely into it now. “Why not?”

  “I will only be with you if we get married.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “Really?”

  She’d handed me the ultimate ultimatum, because marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. I was emotionally needy and I don’t know if she sensed that, but under the gun, I folded. I told her I needed to think about it, and then I came back to her with a ring and we set a date.

  THE METALLICA TOUR STARTED IN WASHINGTON, D.C., in July 1992. We had a meeting before it began because the Metallica camp was concerned: we were having major problems getting onstage on time, riding that high–low roller coaster. Metallica was not a band to pull that kind of shit at all, so they wisely opted to play first so as to avoid being pulled down by our bullshit.

  I have so much respect for James—I think he’s one of the most prolific singer-songwriter-guitarists ever. I had looked up to the band since Master of Puppets, which came out just before Appetite. When we set out to do that tour, part of me was excited and part of me was worried about how it was all going to work and whether Axl was going to adjust. Metallica was a no-frills, hardworking road band; they did long tours, they never went on late—they were no bullshit. They were macho about their work ethic and dedicated to their fans, which I thought was commendable as well. They represented everything that mattered to me professionally, and I didn’t want to see it get fucked up; I didn’t want to let them down.

  From the start of the tour, Axl was out to impress Metallica and everyone else—in his way. He brought up the idea of having backstage parties every single night—theme parties that would be a lounge for our guests, like the Stones had on their tours. Axl had hired his stepbrother Stuart and his sister Amy to be part of the management team, and they were put in charge of organizing these parties according to Axl’s vision. They had no experience doing so, of course. I saw their work in action and it was both uncool and yet another unnecessary extravagance. I never went to one of those parties during the entire tour. The whole idea of it was just too self-indulgent, too self-centered, and too showy for me to even think about participating in good faith anyway.

  Actually, I’m wrong, I went into one, one time, to look for someone. As I recall, it was a “Roman bath” party, with a huge Jacuzzi in the middle of the room. I know they did a casino night, a Mexican fiesta, and a bunch of other things. For each of these parties, Axl’s siblings would be hustling every day to get it done. The Metallica guys, off the bat, disassociated themselves from that whole freak show. It was like no one wanted to even say anything about it. The subject of the theme parties and Axl’s behavior reminded me of the first Creepshow film and the episode about this thing under the stairs in a box that ate people that no one would talk about.

  It was always a good time, but all the same, Axl and our inability to get onstage on time was like the big elephant in the room every night. No one would bring it up, but it was obvious that we were all thinking about it. Lars Ulrich never said anything to me, but he did to Matt, and it was humiliating and embarrassing how lame those parties were and how disappointed Metallica was that we couldn’t even get onstage on time. I think that the reason Axl went onstage so late, and never understood how offensive, selfish, and inconsiderate it was to everyone involved—from the fans to the band—was that he saw it as something other than what it was. That was why he felt like he was doing something that other people just didn’t get. I think somewhere in his mind he thought it was cool to keep people waiting, as if it just served to build anticipation rather than create frustration. I think it was all building up what Guns meant to him in his mind. And in the face of that, he simply could not comprehend how what he was doing didn’t make complete sense to us or the rest of the world. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  Metallica was earning the exact same paycheck as we were every night, but while they pocketed the whole thing, we were blowing 80 percent both on union dues for all of the overtime we cost ourselves going on late and on these stupid theme parties. It was just bad.

  Our chemistry onstage was beautiful despite the drama within the band.

  IT’S TOO BAD, BUT, OUR ROLLER COASTER of dysfunction really peaked on tour with Metallica. When it all went off without a hitch, that double bill was the greatest thing going. When it didn’t, it was a nightmare. For us, for the most part, our chemistry onstage was beautiful despite the drama within the band, but there were times when it spilled over. Sitting around for a few hours waiting to go on…that really spoiled the music. It was like being an athlete who’d warmed up then cooled down, and then had to run the race: it took a while to get into the groove, but we always got there.

  Offstage, however, our chemistry was awful, and it became harder to ignore as the tour went on. The tension was so tangible that Duff and I reached colossal levels of alcohol intake just to get through a day. It was no big deal for us to polish off a half gallon of vodka while sitting around backstage for two hours waiting to play. The disrespect and lack of trust that Axl’s behavior inspired was corroding the core of the band. Axl was becoming the quarterback who refused to throw the ball even when we started losing every game.

  At the Giants Stadium show at the end of July, Axl barely made it through the set due to the state of his voice. He was advised by his doctor to rest it for a week, so we canceled our next three dates. The tour resumed in Canada, which came to be the infamous coup de grâce of everything that was wrong with our band.

  It all went down in Montreal, on August 8, 1992. Metallica went on, and midway through their set, James Hetfield caught on fire when a pyrotechnic malfunctioned. He sustained serious injuries to his arm and shoulder, and the band was forced to end their set immediately. We were still at our hotel when it happened, and we were asked to go on early—it was a nonissue; of course we agreed to do so. The band headed down to the venue right away and discussed what we’d play to fill up the remainder of Metallica’s slot and ours as well. We had plenty of time to go over our options but it couldn’t happen because Axl did not show up.

  Not only did we not go on early enough to fill the void left by Metallica, we went on three hours later than our own scheduled stage time. In the end there was something like four hours between the time Metallica were forced to stop the show and the moment we took the stage. And once we did, Axl ended it early, after we’d done just ninety minutes out of a scheduled two hours. I’m sure he had his reasons, but neither I nor the crowd, as far as I know, knew quite what they were.

  I can’t say that I was surprised when the audience started rioting. Being old pros at this, we sat in our dressing room, which was underneath the hockey rink, basically in the locker rooms. We could hear the stampede overhead, and knew that there was no going back on. The crowd destroyed everything in the outer arena, from the skyboxes to the vending booths. At one point we went upstairs in an elevator and looked out into the hallway and saw kids throwing rocks at the display cases, when one broke, they’d scrambled to snatch the merchandise.

  As we made our escape, we saw overturned cars in the parking lot, we watched kids pulling down the giant light poles, lighting bonfires, breaking everything in sight—the whole deal. It was a fiasco.

  Axl did have an excuse for quitting the show early; he did in fact have a reason, and he did go public with it. He had canceled our Boston show and two others because of his throat, and he said that his vocal cords were damaged and that was why he couldn’t perform. To us, it was crying wolf, because in Montreal he didn’t mention that he was in pain or anything that night before the
show. It was a very tense time—a major straw on the camel’s back for me and for everybody in our camp. It was actually a huge issue for me because I’d lost face with everyone in Metallica. We didn’t keep our promise to them, the fans, or to ourselves to put on the best show possible, come what may. When it had mattered the most it felt like we’d given even less. I felt like an ass. I couldn’t look James, Lars, or anyone from their band in the eye for the rest of the tour.

  We postponed the remaining dates for nearly a month until James recovered enough to continue. Apparently that was enough time for Axl’s vocal cords to recover as well. When we set off again on August 25 in Phoenix, James had one of their techs play guitar for him while he sang; he was right out front with a big cast on his arm. That’s how cool they were. It was frustrating to me, because we prided ourselves on being a kick-ass, hardcore rock-and-roll band, but we had a weak spot in the group that was making us vulnerable. We had become larger than life and legendary, so this petty bullshit was very trying.

  I was pissed off at myself for having died.

  WE RESUMED OUR TOUR WITH METALLICA and made up the dates we’d been forced to cancel. In September, we had an incident with opening act Faith No More and they opted to leave the tour earlier than they were supposed to. They broke up shortly afterward. We replaced them with Ice-T’s Body Count, who were about as infamous as you could be following the release of the single “Cop Killer.” We had our good friends Motörhead out with us as well. I got up and played “Back in My Car” with them at the Rose Bowl.

  When we got to the Bay Area to play the Oakland Stadium on September 24, 1992, I got into a bit of trouble. We were staying in a hotel in San Francisco, and before I went to the venue that afternoon to sound-check, I got into a huge argument with Renee over the issue of our prenuptial agreement. It descended into a screaming match and a fight so abrasive that I was beside myself pissed. I went to the gig so angry that I was determined to do what I do when I want to act out: get some smack. I hadn’t done any in so long because, as unhappy as I was with the band, I was not about to cripple my professionalism. But this gave me a worthwhile excuse as far as I was concerned.