It's So Easy: And Other Lies (26 page)

Again:
Is anyone going to show up to these gigs?

Vodka. Valium. Vodka.

As we began our descent, I was exhausted from the constant to-and-fro of getting plastered and coming to again, from trying to get hold of huge quantities of alcohol from the flight crew to quell my panic without appearing panicked or out of control.

We taxied in and I staggered off the plane, bleary-eyed. I felt like a fucking Martian after traveling for so long and feeding my body with mind-numbing intoxicants.

What are all these people doing here? Why are they screaming?

A crowd of 8,000 fans greeted us at the gate. I was overwhelmed; they were overjoyed. We shuffled out to a van. Lots of security guys in and around the vans.

Machine guns, really?

Hotel. Nowhere near the famous beaches. Swank hotel, for sure, but perched just below the city’s most infamous favela, a dense hillside slum called Rocinha.

Why here? None of the other bands are staying here.

Prince, George Michael, INXS—the other headliners—were staying elsewhere.

Why are we being kept apart from the other bands?

Next day. Rehearsal. Some shitty little space downtown. Guys with machine guns on our van again. A second van carrying more ex-military types with automatics. Following us everywhere. As we wound our way through the city, I had my first chance to see Rio’s inhabitants in their natural state—which apparently was screaming “Guns N’ Roses” at the top of their lungs.

During the next day there—a scheduled day off—I went to the hotel pool in my shorts and flip-flops to get some sun and drink myself into a stupor. The pool had a swim-up bar and was surrounded by dozens of toweled lounge chairs. Palm trees, exotic flowers, lush grounds all around.

No wonder there are so many gardeners.

People hovered around the periphery of the pool and gardens like flies.

Hang on—are those … I must be fucked up. Are those fans?

What I had taken for gardeners outside of the high fence surrounding the pool area were actually hundreds of fans. Now the security forces ran off the poor kids.

This city is on fire for GN’R.

Maracaña Stadium: 175,000 people and a river of sewage streaming right through the place. An actual river. Of shit.

People chanting, “Guns N’ Roses, Guns N’ Roses!”

The audience cried and sang along to every word as we launched into our set.

Fucking hell, there are a lot of people up here onstage.

We had two new keyboard players, backup singers, and horn players. The sides of the stage swarmed with crew and management and who knows who else.

Where my boys at?

I turned and looked toward the drum riser. Steven wasn’t there.

PART FOUR

I’D LOOK RIGHT UP AT NIGHT AND ALL I’D SEE WAS DARKNESS

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The shows in Rio should have marked the triumphant beginning of a new phase in the history of the band, but instead it felt as if Guns N’ Roses had somehow changed from a band into a traveling extravaganza in which we each just played a more or less independent role. We had added more people to the band, but there was much less sense that we were a unit of any kind, big or small. During that trip to Brazil, I sometimes felt completely alone and alienated even in my own band. I loved Guns N’ Roses, I loved all the members of Guns N’ Roses, including the new guys. But something still felt terribly wrong.

I drank every day prior to Rock in Rio, but I could still pull myself out of it at times and curtail my drinking. The shows in Rio were the beginning of a three-year headlong dive into drugs and booze—the darkest days of my life. For me, there was a difference between drinking a half gallon of vodka a day and drinking a quart or a liter. A liter was pretty good. Beginning in Rio, I drank half a gallon a day, every day.

Back in L.A., Mandy called me to say she was going to start dating.
Great, you should.
Her new boyfriend had a posse of friends. They showed up at the Rainbow one night and came up to me in the parking lot while I was waiting for my car. The boyfriend introduced himself, all puffed up and threatening.

“She’s always fucking talking about you,” he said, “and I want to let you know that I’m the guy now.”

I didn’t have a problem with that, I told him.

He confronted me a second time another night. Finally, the third time, at Spice club, I was drunk and pissed off that he kept doing this, so I said, “Okay, dude, you want to do something about it?”

We went outside through a side door. He had his friends and I had mine. He took a swing at me and I ducked. I got lucky—he missed. As I came up I swung and broke his nose. He went straight down.

I felt bad the next day. Someone called me and said he’d been taken to the hospital. I asked them to give him my phone number.

He called and said, “Hey, I can’t afford this hospital bill.”

“Listen, man, I’m real sorry about decking you,” I said. “How much is the bill?”

“Four hundred and fifty bucks,” he said.

“Well, I can help you out,” I said. “How about I pay half?”

“That would be great, man, thanks,” he said.

Then he added, “That was a great shot you put on me, by the way.”

I told him to come up to my house to pick up the money, but warned him not to come with his dudes. Come alone. It took him a few days to swing by, but finally he showed up. I could see his mom in the car. Cool. I went out to the front gate and handed him an envelope with $225. At the same time he handed me an envelope and started running back down the street. Huh? I opened it. He had served me. He was going to try to sue me. For $1.25 million.

I had given my word that I would pay half his bill, I had apologized, and that’s what I got. It pissed me off. I was paranoid, as usual, from all the cocaine. I called management and told them. In the end it went to arbitration and we settled for a few thousand dollars. From then on, I wanted to kill anyone who crossed me at any club or concert. In my mind I was still fighting for righteous reasons—not just to hurt people but to
protect,
to make bullies stop doing bad things. But it’s pretty clear in retrospect that I was taking out aggression about the situation with the band. I would find offense in the stupidest little things and then I’d just flip and go street. Management quickly set up a security detail to follow me around all the time. Even so, out every night and for days on end, I managed to get into a few more scraps between Rio and the start of what would be our first-ever headlining tour.

As the first tour dates approached, Slash and I would periodically drive down to an industrial area in Compton to check on the construction of the massive stage set that would be our home for the next two and a half years. When it was complete, the set was moved to an airplane hangar over in Burbank where we commenced our full-production, full-set rehearsals. Lights. Monitors. Full PA. Full crew. All the additional musicians.

In May 1991, we had three warm-up shows. We were ready to go, but the tortuous process of mixing the
Illusion
records was still dragging on. We were forced to start the tour—a tour meant to support these albums—several months before there was even a release date for the records. Though I am sure it would have been better for our fans to know some of the songs we were playing, I found myself feeling that it was a very GN’R move. The
old
GN’R.
Fuck expectations. Fuck doing things by the book.

It put us back in the position of having to win audiences over. And that played to our strength. That would draw us together, make us a team again.

We leased a 727 jet from the MGM casino to use for the entire length of the tour. Prior to setting off, we got to pick out our flight attendants from a sort of catalogue. We certainly had a nice-looking crew as a result. Stellar, in fact. The first thing I noticed upon entering the MGM Grand jet was a fully stocked bar that stretched from the door back toward the middle of the plane. Cream-colored chairs and bolted-down tables fanned out from the bar, creating the party room. To the left, running from the door to the cockpit, were big captain’s chairs and a movie screen. I hardly went up there for whatever reason—it was too exposed and open. In the back were staterooms reserved solely for the band members—except Izzy. Izzy traveled on his own. He was still keeping his distance.

Each stateroom had a door, curtains, a fold-out bed, a dresser with a mirror, and a TV. As the plane taxied out onto the runway for our first flight, Slash and I repaired to one of the staterooms and smoked crack. I remember watching the smoke curl up into the air vent and thinking this just seemed logical.
Of course we can smoke on here, it’s our plane.

I looked at myself in the mirror in the midst of a rock-fueled rush:
This is going to be awesome.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At Alpine Valley Amphitheatre in Wisconsin, my sense of anticipation for the first gig of the tour was overwhelming. Our intro music came on: the theme song from
The Godfather.

The crowd roared.

Here we go.

My game face came on. I felt we represented something, something primal and animalistic. I felt that fire and anger—I was ready to kick someone in the head. All the background noise of life began to recede. We rushed the stage and I played the first few bass notes for “It’s So Easy.”

Total fucking bedlam. Tens of thousands of people absolutely losing their shit. I could see the first few rows of people. I could see how far back the masses of bodies went. Everyone was on their feet and the roar was almost louder than the band.

Again I thought:
This is going to be awesome.

During the first month, we flew to amphitheatres and racetracks and basketball stadiums across the Midwest and Northeast. I did not have one panic attack aboard the MGM 727. It must have hinged on the fact that I had some level of control. With our own private jetliner, I knew I could go to the pilot and say, “Land, now.” Of course, it didn’t hurt that I also had ready access to as much booze and as many pills as I wanted, at any time.