by Slash
DURING THE TIME THAT I RECORDED THE Snakepit demos and put that band together and went on tour, there were a few things going on simultaneously in the Guns universe. We put together The Spaghetti Incident, our record of punk covers, and packaged it for release. We’d worked on a lot of those tracks here and there over the previous two years. We’d recorded “Buick McCain,” “Ain’t It Fun,” and most of the others at the Record Plant, but a few, like “Since I Don’t Have You,” were recorded on days off on the road, probably during the Skin and Bones tour, because they feature Dizzy on piano.
That record was released in November 1993, and the single, which wasn’t the best idea at all, was “Since I Don’t Have You,” though it was a stellar version of that song. We did a video for it, too. Around that time I was partying a lot with Gary Oldman, and the day of my shoot, I took him with me to the set. After “November Rain” and “Estranged,” I was fed up with the band’s high-concept videos, and this promised to be another one—all of them masterminded by Axl. I nearly walked off the set when I was told that I needed to stand in a pool of water and pose while playing my guitar for something like fifteen takes. Gary was the one who intervened.
“No, no,” he said. “It will be fine. Just hold on.”
He disappeared into the makeup and wardrobe room for quite a while, only to emerge in a completely authentic Victorian costume, made up to look like the Marquis de Sade. He had a few props, too, and he decided that he was going to row me in a boat, across the river Styx, as I played my solo in the pouring rain. By the time we got to shooting, he lost the costume and ended up playing this white-faced demon in tight black shorts…he almost did too good a job. After that afternoon, I’m pretty sure that the next time I heard from him, Gary was in rehab.
DUFF, AXL, MATT, GILBY, AND I GOT together on and off to try to write new material, which didn’t prove inspiring at all. By that point, the support group I’d always enjoyed to help me deal with Axl was gone—Izzy was the last one in the band who’d been able to get through to him creatively. Between Duff and me…we just didn’t have the proper tools to communicate with him effectively.
After a few months during which everyone did their own thing and we got nothing done when we met, Axl fired Gilby without consulting anyone. His rationale was that Gilby had always been a hired hand and that he couldn’t write with him. Axl then insisted on hiring Paul Huge, this guy he knew from Indiana who, for whatever reason, also calls himself Paul Tobias. They had history: the two of them cowrote “Back Off Bitch” among other songs. I was open to the idea…until Paul showed up: he had no personality whatsoever and no particular guitar style or sound that I could identify with. He was, without a doubt, the least interesting, most bland guy holding a guitar that I’d ever met. I tried my best to work with him, but it went nowhere. It was even more awkward than it sounds because our stilted interaction took place at rehearsal with everyone else watching us.
I tried to stick with it, but I wasn’t alone in feeling like we were being force-fed some guy with no innate qualities who didn’t deserve and couldn’t handle the gig. But it was hopeless, we couldn’t talk Axl out of it at all. I did what I could: I tried several times to have a one-on-one with Huge to see if I was missing some deeper spark in his character that Axl had seen…No, it was useless; the guy was irredeemable. It was like talking to a wall, a wall with a bad attitude. He was totally arrogant and gave off the vibe that he was Axl’s boy, that he was in, and that everyone else had to deal with it. In a word, his vibe was “I’m great, fuck you!” And my response was “Yeah? Whatever!”
Duff and I hated him, Matt hated him, and Axl was left grasping for straws, yet determined to ride it out. I didn’t know why but I wanted him to be totally sure how we felt, so one day I took him aside.
“Axl, man, listen,” I said. “I’ve tried to work with Huge and I’ve tried to see what he could bring to the band, but I just don’t get it. We have no chemistry as players and he has no chemistry with the other guys. I just don’t see how it’s going to work with this guy…. I can’t even have a beer with him.”
Axl looked annoyed. “Why do you have to have a beer with him?” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
There really wasn’t any arguing with that point of view.
We rehearsed with Huge and I tried to write some new songs at my home studio with him and it only grew more tense in every way. Renee hated the fact that we were there because the negative vibe permeated the entire house. She wasn’t even in the studio trying to work: It was so uncomfortable and awkward there that Duff and I actually got into it, which had never happened in the studio ever. And that was the last straw for me: the next morning I told Doug to let everyone know that we’d have to rehearse elsewhere because there would be no more getting together at my studio.
Axl was disappointed and a bit pissed off. The next time I saw him he confronted me. “Why can’t we write at your place?” he asked. “What’s the problem?”
“I’m at my wit’s end, man,” I said. “The whole vibe there is so negative and that’s my house. Everything we are doing right now is just bad energy.”
That was the last time that Axl and I spoke for a while. After that, I focused on Snakepit, and I wasn’t surprised, when I sent him some demos, that he wasn’t interested in the music I was writing at all.
IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED WHAT THE sound of a band breaking up sounds like, listen to Guns N’ Roses’ cover of “Sympathy for the Devil,” which was recorded for the Interview with the Vampire soundtrack in the fall of 1994. If there is one Guns track I’d like never to hear again, it is that one.
Tom Zutaut arranged the whole thing and it was a great idea: it’s an amazing, classic song, the movie was going to be huge, theoretically, it would get us all in the same room working again, and it would give the public “product” to tide them over. We weren’t touring The Spaghetti Incident and we had no plans to start writing the next album, so Tom was being practical—this might be our only new release for a while. I’m amazed that Axl even agreed to do it, because by then he had stopped talking to Tom Zutaut altogether. All in all, Axl had eliminated and replaced everyone who had helped the band build from the ground up back in the day. He always had a reason: I believe in Tom’s case, Axl claimed that he caught him trying to pick up Erin at some point. But don’t quote me on that.
Anyway, I was up for the idea of doing this cover because I was very familiar with the Anne Rice books; I thought they were great, which is why I had a hard time imagining Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise playing those roles. Anyway, Axl and I went to screenings of the film separately, and completely disagreed on what we saw. I hated it; I thought it was crap.
I called Tom right afterward. “Hey, Tom, it’s Slash,” I said.
“So what did you think?”
“I thought it sucked. I hated it,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It was that bad. Tell the producers to license the Stones’ version because we’re not doing it.”
Axl, on the other hand, loved the movie; he thought it was brilliant and he wanted to do the song. I couldn’t have been more disappointed, pissed, frustrated, and confused. The only upside I saw to signing off on it was that it would accomplish what we’d been unable to do to any degree in the past seven months: it would actually get all of us into the studio.
We booked time at Rumbo; we did the basic tracks with Mike Clink over a few days. Duff, Matt, and I showed up together every day, basically going out of our way to do something that only Axl wanted to do, and not once did he show up to a session. From the basic tracks through to the final overdubs, we never saw or heard from Axl. We were already recording against our will, so his disregard for our time and commitment definitely inspired a very uninspired instrumental track. And needless to say, the level of bitterness and resentment reached an all-time high. It added insult to injury that after we’d completed our thoroughly ave
rage version of “Sympathy for the Devil,” it took him more than a week to even show up to the studio to do his vocals.
Once he got around to listening to the track, he had some constructive criticism. Via a lot of communications between middle people, I was told that I needed to rerecord my guitar solo so that it sounded more note for note like the Keith Richards original. Now that really pissed me off, most of all because the message reached me three times removed like we were playing a game of telephone.
My first reaction, of course, was “no.” I stood behind what I’d done, because why would I copy Keith if the song was supposed to be our version? The reply, through handlers, was: “If you don’t change it, I won’t sing.” I swallowed my pride—yet again—and went in to record a more Keith-like intro, though it was the last thing I wanted to do: Keith’s playing is so awesome on that song that I didn’t want to even come near it, but I did. And doing so left me feeling even more pissed off and put out than ever.
A week or so after that I heard that Axl had finally scheduled time to go in and record his vocal tracks, so I went down to see him in person. I waited for three hours. When he finally showed up, he came into the lounge and proceeded to talk to me from behind a magazine, without looking me in the eye, for about fifteen minutes…. I couldn’t deal with that at all, so I took off.
When I got a DAT of the song with Axl’s vocal on it, I noticed that there was another guitar layered on top of mine in the solo. Axl had gotten Paul Huge to double over me. In other words, that guy copied what I was playing on another track and they layered them. It was like really bad plagiarism.
That was it—having another guitar player record over me without telling me was as much disrespect as I was willing to handle. I washed my hands of that song, I washed my hands of Guns for the moment, and I focused my energy on my own songs and my own project, Slash’s Snakepit’s debut, It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.
ONCE THE SNAKEPIT GOT GOING, I WAS completely content. For the first time in years, touring was easy, my bandmates were loads of fun and low on drama, and every gig was about playing rock and roll—not proving something or putting on a huge spectacle. Everything rolled on: the record sold, the tour was fine; I was on the road with no end in sight. We were in the midst of booking another leg when I was informed by Geffen that they’d sold a million copies of It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere and had turned a profit so they saw no reason for me to continue our tour. I was to return to L.A. because Axl was ready to begin working on the next Guns N’ Roses record. They’d thought it through: in case I objected, they made it clear that the financial tour support for Snakepit was over.
I returned to L.A. dreading what lay in store for me and I had good reason to; what lay in store was the beginning of the end—the conclusion of unfinished, unpleasant business. All things considered, the end had begun long ago; I was just coming home for the funeral. It’s funny, when fans ask me, as they do almost every day, whether Guns, in its original form, will ever reunite, it is hard to take them seriously. That question is so asinine to me; if they knew the real story, they’d already know the answer. But my response is always the same: “Take a look at what everyone is doing now. Duff and Matt and I are part of a really successful band. Izzy’s content doing his thing; Steven, too. And Axl is touring with the ‘new Guns.’ No one is making phone calls to see when we can get the band together again.”
That’s the lowdown of where we’re all at. Once you take that into consideration, the answer to the reunion question should be pretty clear, if you ask me. Are we cool?
12
Breakdown
Sometimes the truth lies is in front of your eyes and makes so little sense that you just don’t see it; it’s like confronting your reflection in a fun-house mirror—it’s hard to believe that the twisted figure staring back is you. Guns had become a similar monster; we were such a bizarre version of what we once were that I could barely recognize us. But unlike the fun house, I couldn’t escape; when I turned away from the glass, the reflection was still there.
I was ordered to come back off the road; I was told to stop something that I was enjoying in every way. I was reluctant to do that. I wanted to keep the tour going beyond Japan; I wanted to take it to Australia, I wanted to finish what I’d set out to do. It might seem inconsistent, because Snakepit was seen as an in-between project and a bit of a party band, but I was ambitious about it. When I set my mind to achieving something, I put blinders on, I put my head down, and drive ahead until I get it. And I hadn’t quite gotten what I’d aimed for on that one.
I had been that single-minded and determined when I brought the record to Geffen. I didn’t consider and didn’t realize what was going on with the label in 1994 when I showed up for my meeting. The entire record business was on the verge of a massive shift; all of the majors would be combined, sold, or dissolved within the next few years. At the time I didn’t know or care. I played Snakepit for Zutaut, they agreed to put it out, and that was all I cared to hear. I didn’t sense the confusion that was going on up there or in the industry at large and I didn’t acknowledge the very obvious anxiety that was circulating about the next Guns N’ Roses album. I had no idea that David Geffen was about to sell the company, and that the prospect of a new Guns record might have changed that, but even if I did, there wasn’t much I could have done to deliver it “on time.”
Looking back, I realize that while they thought I was putting the future of Guns in jeopardy by pursuing Snakepit, they decided that it was more important to humor me, so they went the whole nine yards to let me get it out of my system. They were biting their nails the whole time but if Zutaut or anyone else had voiced their concerns, I would have told them the truth: I had no intention of quitting Guns N’ Roses. As pissed off as I was, I always thought that I’d go back, after some time off, when the time was right.
So Geffen released and supported It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere. They publicized it, and they gave us financial tour support…until they didn’t. As I mentioned, once Axl informed the label (or so I was told) that he was ready to begin writing sessions for the next Guns record, my leash was yanked and I was ordered to come home because the way they saw it I’d sold one million records and they’d turned a profit and didn’t need me out there supporting it anymore. The funny thing was that even after all these years, I still never looked at touring as album promotion—to me it was still just an excuse to play.
I landed in L.A. and settled into the new home that Renee and I had rented above Sunset Plaza, in West Hollywood. I’d moved all of the snakes over there and we’d been there awhile, just renting month to month indefinitely. I might have been married but I didn’t have the married homeowner mentality at that point. I knew that I was “supposed to” own a house, but I really couldn’t get my head around the concept. I had leased a place for a decent price right above Sunset that had everything I needed. It was my hang pad: I had my snakes, I had Renee, I had my pinball machines—it was a great bachelor pad…for my wife and me.
So I got into town loathing what I had to do because in the back of my mind I knew it was going to be so many things, none of them easy. Doug had set us up at a studio called the Complex, which we later dubbed the Compound. I went down there and Axl had already set up shop. The place had a big rehearsal room and an insane amount of outboard gear—literally a room full of synths—as well as an arsenal of Pro Tools recording rigs that Axl had rented. Axl and I hadn’t spoken directly at all since my return, either by phone or face-to-face: I got my working orders from Doug. I showed up at the scheduled time and I found my tech, Adam Day; Duff ’s tech, McBob; Duff, Dizzy Reed, and Matt and Paul Huge. Axl was nowhere in sight. I got down there that first night around eight p.m.
My immediate thought was that this scene, which was supposed to be our band, reminded me way too much of recording for Michael Jackson on Dangerous. When I’d done those sessions for him, I was blown away by how much money was going down the toilet: there was rented equipment ever
ywhere, and I was told that he had multiple studios identically set up around the country, booked, incurring day rates, in case he was inspired to record there at any given moment.
I’m a frugal guy, so that didn’t appeal to me at all. I found that kind of recording environment to be a waste and I found Michael’s scene to be way out of control. When I showed up to record, the staff was as hospitable and robotic as a bunch of bellboys at a five-star hotel.
“So what would you like to play on?” I remember some guy asking me.
“What do you mean?”
“We have a wide selection of guitars here,” the guy said. “Which would you like to use?”
“I brought my own,” I said. “I’d like to play on that.”
That whole thing was a disjointed and cold musical scenario. The last place I ever expected to encounter that vibe again was at my band’s writing/rehearsing/recording sessions. I can put up with a million and one things, but the one thing I can’t stomach is a lack of integrity. At the first whiff of bullshit, I get wary. And what I walked into had me worried.
There were rows and rows of Pro Tools servers and gear. Which was a clear indication that Axl and I had very different ideas of how to do this record. I was open to using Pro Tools, to trying new things—but everyone had to be on the same page and in the same room to explore new ideas. The band managed to do a little bit of jamming and come up with some things. A couple of the ideas I had come up with Axl apparently liked and they were recorded onto Pro Tools and stored for him to work on later.
We’d show up at different times every evening, but by eight p.m. generally everyone in the band would be there. Then we’d wait for Axl, who, when he did come, arrived much, much later. That was the norm; it was a dark, miserable atmosphere that lacked direction of any kind. I hung out for a bit; but after a few days I chose to spend my evenings at the strip bar around the corner, with orders for the engineers to call me if Axl decided to arrive.
