Kitabı oku: «My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns ‘N’ Roses», sayfa 6

THE BIGGEST PRACTICE FACILITY ON EARTH

When I finally got the cymbals, I had an entire professional drum set that inspired me to practice until I was pretty damn decent. Every second I wasn’t working I was practicing. Hours and hours of exercises mixed with mimicking the drum parts from every great song I loved—Ozzy to Aerosmith, Stones to the Crüe. I set the bar pretty high for myself; I wanted it all to sound perfect. Finally I built up the confidence to call Saul and say, “I’ve got it together.” We arranged a rendezvous, and I packed the drums into the Gremlin and drove to La Cienega Park just north of Olympic. It felt like the perfect spot, playing in the big wide-open in an area the size of four football fields. I had everything set up before Saul arrived around eight o’clock. With Saul and some of my other friends there, it almost felt like an audition. Hell, it was an audition, for my friends, for Saul, and for the gods of rock. They were all there that day.

I was never so happy. I had finally gotten my shit together, and I set it up for Saul to check me out and let him take it from there. I played a few beats, executed a few licks, then dove in, really giving it my all. After about a twenty-five-minute salvo, Saul was impressed enough to say, “Cool.” From that moment on, we really locked on to “the Dream.”

I started to reach out to successful musicians because I wanted to surround myself with performers who were not only inspirational but possessed talent and drive. I met Robbin Crosby, rhythm guitarist for Ratt, at the Rainbow. After an eight-year battle with AIDS brought on by drug abuse, he passed away in 2002. Great guy. RIP, Robbin.

Robbin was huge, six and a half feet tall, and good-looking. He took me under his wing and decided one night to take me over to Carlos Cavazo’s house. Carlos was the guitarist for Quiet Riot. QR was amazing. They had the largest-selling heavy metal debut album of all time, until my band took that honor a few years later.

Carlos lived in Laurel Canyon, right behind the elementary school there. Ratt’s vocalist and drummer, Stephen Pearcy and Bobby Blotzer, were also hanging out there. It was a hell of a night. Seeing all the platinum records on the walls was awesome, and I never doubted that I would soon have my own. We just drank and partied all night. There were always freshly cut lines on this shiny, slick wooden table in the living room. I was freaking the fuck out. This was the famous debauched rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, and it was awesome.

After a night of partying I totally lost track of the time. I asked the guys, and Carlos laughed and pointed at a clock. It was six in the morning. “Shit. I have to get to work!” At the time, I was working for a poster shop where I would spray the glue on the backboard and they would mount the poster onto it.

On my way to work I walked through a garage for an apartment building. I was so tired. I needed to rest for a moment. I just went down the rows, and after two or three cars, I found one that was open. I got in the backseat and fell fast asleep. Nice, ahhh…then…“What the hell are you doing!?” The owner of the car was pounding on his window and shouting at me. He was going to work in a suit and tie. I was shocked awake and asked the guy what time it was. And again he shouted: “What the hell are you doing!” Then he looked at his watch. “Seven fifty.”

If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have laughed; it was a pretty funny scene, Mr. Hangover meets Mr. Suit. “Shit, I’m late for work.” I got out of the car in front of the startled businessman and ran to my job, only to find that it wasn’t waiting for me. I tried to explain what had happened, that I was exhausted and very sorry to be so late, but they looked at me like they didn’t know me. I was fired, gone.

OH WELL

While living at Big Lilly’s, I rarely saw my mom. Passover dinner was usually at my aunt Greta’s house. She was my mom’s sister and provided one of my few chances to be with the whole family each year. Visits with my relatives seldom lasted though. Some uncle would make a remark about my hair or my being fired recently, and I’d answer back with some over-the-top rude comment. They’d gang up on me, and soon I’d find myself being asked to leave. My relationship with my family continued to flounder, because I just wouldn’t shut up and take their abuse. I think that’s why I so enthusiastically embraced GNR as my family; they accepted me just the way I was.

If GNR was to be my family, then Saul was my brother. We were really getting into our music more and more, rehearsing all the time. We had been hanging out with a good friend of Saul’s, Matt Cassel. He lived on Sunset up by Carny’s Diner, the hot dog joint that looks like a train. His dad’s house was just above there. On his property stood this enormous tree, which grew out of the side of the hill facing Sunset. It had a makeshift swing, two ropes attached to a wooden seat. I would get stoned and fly right out, way above the Strip. It was awesome fun.

THE BIRTH OF “SLASH”

Matt’s father is a professional actor named Seymour Cassel. He’s been in some great movies, like Colors, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums. Saul and Melissa spent a lot of time hanging out with these guys. When I would go over there, I noticed how Seymour would always call Saul “Slash.” It was just his personal nickname for Saul and for some reason, that really stuck with me. I couldn’t forget it because it just seemed to fit Saul so well. The name “Slash” must have resonated with a lot of people, including the man himself. After a while, Saul made it known that he had taken a keen liking to his new name and the rest is history. He told everyone, “Call me Slash.” We were like, “Slash?…Done.” From that day onward, that’s how I, and soon the world, would know him.

By the early eighties, I had already been living a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle for several years. I was running wild in the streets of Hollywood, partying with rock stars, fucking all kinds of hot, crazy girls. I was in and out of dozens of odd jobs during this time and spent all my free time either practicing or going to as many concerts as I could sneak into.

By this point I had met a shitload of people. I just kept networking, meeting the characters who were living the life I wanted. I always had a mind to see if they could help me with my music. It wasn’t like I was looking to use them, but if they knew a club owner, or could get me a deal in a studio, or knew a pawnshop where I could get a break on a cymbal or something, I put them on my short list.

Slowly but surely, I was moving up. Armed with my Tama kit, a positive attitude, and a “new do,” now cropped and spiked, doors were opening left and right for me. It was because of the presence I could bring into a room. I acted and looked the part, and I could back it up with the best drumming in town.

WORKING ON THE DRUMS

In December ’82, I found a room to rent in the home of my friend Brad Server. He was one of those surfer dudes who love Southern California, the epitome of the Jeff Spicoli character from the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He lived with his mother down the street from my mom. She owned a big three-bedroom home. I would stay there a lot in the spare bedroom for only $125 a month. Brad’s mother was the daughter of Curly, my favorite of the Three Stooges. It was just the two of them there and I was allowed to set up my drums and jam. During the day, Brad would go to school, his mother would go to work, and I had the house to myself.

So I would just practice all the time. I remember I would play to Journey’s Escape. I loved that record. They had the greatest drum sound and Steve Smith was damn good. I had Ozzy’s “Over the Mountain” down by then too. This was the time that I made some of my greatest strides on drums. I stayed there for a few months and I appreciate Brad and his mom’s hospitality to this day. A rocker never forgets the people who help him out when he’s a nobody.

In January ’83, I took Lisa with me to the Rainbow. The Rainbow was to become our second home. It did not discriminate between big hair, short hair, rich, poor, famous, infamous, rock stars, roadies, drug dealers, record execs, wannabes, and hangers-on. The “Bow” welcomed us all.

Lisa was the closest thing I had to a steady girlfriend, but of course, I was fucking around a lot too. I had been going to the Rainbow for years, but never once had I brought a girl there. The Rainbow was a place to get girls, not bring girls. Lisa and I had the small booth in the back right corner. At one point I got up to go to the bathroom and I got stopped at every table. Chicks I knew and didn’t know all had me sit with them.

I was having a great time, just swinging from one table to the next. I literally made out with a different girl at every booth. So I didn’t get back to Lisa for a while. When I finally returned, Lisa was freaking out on me: “Where the fuck did you go? I’ve been sitting here for an hour.” Like I explained, I’d never once brought a girl to the Rainbow with me and now I realized why. It really cramped my style.

I’m thinking, “What? I was with some chicks.” I didn’t understand or even comprehend the idea of being in a serious relationship. She was upset and wanted to go right away. As we were leaving, she’s yelling at the top of her lungs. We’re walking out, and she’s screaming that I’m an asshole. I was pretty drunk, and I suddenly became very aggravated. I turned around and yelled, “Shut the fuck up.”

We were right at the main entrance by the cash register when all of a sudden some big-ass guy grabs me, turns me back around, and punches me right in the face. I don’t remember anything after that. But when I came to again, I had evidently gotten into my car and driven to Mom’s house.

Canoga Park is over twenty miles from the Rainbow and I had absolutely no recollection of the drive. The next morning, when I woke up, I was still in my car, which was parked in front of Mom’s place. As my mom was leaving for work that morning, she was shocked at the sight of me and started banging on the windows of the car, where I had passed out in the front seat.

There was blood all over the seat, my face, and my clothes. It was the first time I had had my nose broken and the feeling was terrible. I couldn’t breathe and at first I had difficulty focusing my eyes on anything close up. I looked like Marcia Brady in the Brady Bunch episode where she got hit square in the nose by a football.

My mother knew just what to do. She muttered something about needing to fix it right away, and I was damned lucky I was under eighteen years old, because her health insurance policy still covered me. She rushed me to the hospital and got the doctors to look at it right away. Within twenty-four hours they had operated, and somewhere there’s a photo of me smiling from my hospital bed with my nose all taped up. Mom should have gotten a two-for-one rate, because it wouldn’t be long before I’d whack my schnoz again and need another nose job. That was just one part of my body that would be mangled and fixed repeatedly over the next twenty years. I’d like to thank all of the doctors, nurses, family, and friends who have carried me off the battlefield and treated me a lot better than I ever treated myself. It’s a miracle that I’m alive, but in my early teens I believed I was indestructible and probably didn’t even notice the self-abuse until my first overdose.

6 THE BIRTH of GUNS N’ ROSES
BACK TO THE SKINS

Gardner Park used to be a big empty storage warehouse where they held auto shows in the 1930s. I found a place to set up my drums there and would play for hours inside, where the acoustics produced a big John Bonham sound and the echo effect was like the intro to “Misty Mountain Hop,” massive, very awesome. The place had been deserted for years and grass had squeezed up through cracks in sections of the cement flooring. I could play, but the set would wobble; it was so unstable my cymbals would rock back and forth. I had two giant Asian gongs, more than three feet in diameter, an idea I ripped from Carmine Appice, who had the coolest setup when he played with Beck, Bogert, and Appice.

While I was practicing one afternoon, one of the gongs must have shifted because of the uneven flooring and came flying down. I looked up at exactly the worst moment and took the full brunt of thirty pounds of metal in the face. It knocked me clear off my stool and onto the hard floor. I took off my T-shirt and wrapped it around my head over my nose, then found myself back at the hospital getting my schnoz rebuilt again.

During this time I was working at the O’Neal Motorcycle Shop warehouse, where I printed the O’Neal logo and numbers on T-shirts for bike riders. The floor manager there was a guy named Mark Marshal, a cool guy and a great guitar player who looked like a musketeer with his goatee, long black hair, and long thin pointy nose. Eventually, I got fired from O’Neal for always being late. But by then, Mark and I had become good friends, and we agreed to form a band. So with a bass player, a guy I think was of Russian descent, we all got an apartment together. But even though we really wanted to start a band, our schedules didn’t allow us much time to get together.

I found another job, but we were all basically broke, living on nothing. I remember eating melted butter over steamed rice every day for a week. We didn’t even have soy sauce. No one’s going to go out and buy a bottle of soy sauce when you’re saving up for a Def Leppard concert.

In April ’83, Mark and I went to see Def Leppard at the L.A. Forum. Even though we were skimping and saving for weeks, we still didn’t have enough money for tickets, so we just went to the back entrance where the trucks went in. I have this great memory of hearing the song “Photograph” being performed. After the show, we just started helping the roadies load shit in the trucks, and the band came out and stopped by the first truck. They were standing right next to me.

I thought they were going to kick us out, so I figured, “Now or never, I gotta do this.” I said hi to Rick Allen and shook his hand, which at the time was definitely the biggest rush of my life. I didn’t get to see the show, but I got to meet Rick. I told him the story when we had dinner together years later.

Mark and I also saw a lot of cool bands at Chuck Landis’s Country Club in Reseda, which was right down the street from our apartment. We saw the Christian metal band Stryper there a couple of times. They were so hot, really had their shit together, and drew huge crowds. I borrowed a couple of moves from their drummer, Robert Sweet, who had this huge drum set and was set up sideways so you could see him playing.

“The Visual Timekeeper,” he called himself. He was the coolest-looking motherfucker up there. Their music was so loud and clear that they sounded like a studio recording; it was that perfect. Oz Fox was incredible, playing guitar and singing backups. They looked huge, like Kiss, larger than life, with matching yellow and black outfits. There must have been some serious cash put into their show. I saw them three times and I loved them. Hey, I was a fan.

We saw Joe Perry at the Country Club too, during the short time that he was not in Aerosmith. Coincidentally I remember, years later, Axl told me that the first concert he saw was Aerosmith during the same year when Jimmy Crespo was playing guitar, and Axl thought his solo was one of the best he ever heard. The band Rose Tattoo opened up the show, turning Axl on to them and inspiring him later to have our band perform the Rose Tattoo classic “Nice Boys.”

DIGGING DOWN DEEP

After a few months of living in that little hovel, I decided to move back in with Grandma. It was great going to all those concerts, but the band I had intended to put together with Mark and the other guy wasn’t really going anywhere. So there’s Slash and me, both back at our grandmothers’ places now, working at any odd job we could grab. This was another low point for me emotionally, but it spawned a kind of simmering desperation deep inside, a fierce, burning desire to get it the fuck together. Slash and I reunited, drifting rogue musicians in search of the ultimate band. There was a dire immediacy in our playing now, and for the first time, we practiced together regularly. We started to gel more, and it was in those lean days that our sound and style really started to come together musically. We jammed nonstop, loud and proud. We would make the gods hear us; we would make the gods sit up and take notice.

One evening we were walking in front of the Roxy when I spotted a flyer on the ground and picked it up. There are a million band flyers floating around Sunset at any one time, but this one caught my attention. It was for a band I hadn’t heard of called Rose, and they had a gig at Gazzarri’s the following Tuesday. The flyer featured a picture of two guys standing together. They definitely had the look, the right image that was so important to the local rock scene of the time.

Although I had never heard of them before, I immediately felt in my gut that they had superstar potential. I showed the flyer to Slash and right then I said, “I swear, if we get these guys and a cool bass player, we will have a kick-ass band!” Slash nodded slowly, I think initially just to blow it off, but then he smiled. At that moment I believe he knew I might have been onto something.

The next Tuesday we went to see Rose perform. We arrived at about six o’clock. There were a lot of bands playing, so there was anywhere between fifty and seventy-five of each band’s faithful listening during each set. The stage was sectioned off so there could be three bands’ gear onstage at any one time. The guys in Rose were on the stage-right end.

It was a long event, band after band, like twelve of them. Rose got to play only three songs. I learned that the guys featured on the flyer who caught my attention were vocalist Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin, two childhood friends from Indiana. I thought they looked cool and that even their names were cool. They had a guy named Rob Gardner on drums with them, but I wasn’t that impressed with him.

The bass player’s name was DJ. I believe he helped write “Move to the City,” one of the songs they performed. He was skinny and had long black hair, good-looking rock ’n’ roll kind of guy. But he was only in the band for a couple of months.

Just a few days later, I met Izzy Stradlin through my friend Lizzy Gray. They lived in the same building. Izzy and Lizzy had played together in the band London for a short time. Of course London was already notorious for launching the career of Nikki Sixx.

Izzy looked like a young Ron Wood, with that gaunt, angular cut to his face, perfectly framed by straight black hair that hugged his jawline, making his face look even more thin and elongated. He was into heroin, just like Ron Wood and Keith Richards, his heroes in the Rolling Stones (Woody had taken over from Mick Taylor by the time the Stones recorded Black and Blue in 1976). He had thick-soled platform shoes and always wore black pants with some sort of super-tight shirt. He looked more like his shadow than himself and to me was the personification of cool. Izzy and I hit it off right from the start. We each saw something in the other; perhaps it was just the way we talked about music. Izzy was the consummate rhythm guitarist. I loved the solid power chords he built into Rose’s songs.

Izzy’s apartment was below Sunset on Palm Avenue near Tower Records. It was a square little studio with a small kitchen and a tiny bathroom. We were hanging out there for the first time when I asked him about getting together to play. He was fine with the idea and he gave me their demo tape to listen to right on the spot. The cover featured the same picture from their flyer, and the cassette contained three songs: “Shadow of Your Love,” “Move to the City,” and “Reckless Life.” I didn’t get to keep the tape because Izzy only had two of them.

Since Rose had just gotten rid of, or was thinking of firing, Rob Gardner, we made a plan to jam together so I could learn the songs. Later that evening, I split and headed over to my friend Sue’s; she happened to live right across the street. Sue was the sweetest girl, very accommodating, and her pad became a popular party pit stop.