My Appetite For Destruction (11 page)

He grabbed the cup out of my hand, took a sniff, and said, “That’s alcohol!”

I looked at him and said, “
Yeah
. . . ?” It wasn’t the first time I had booze breath on the job for chrissakes.

He looked at me like I just shot his mom, picked up the phone, and called Sid. Sid had no choice but to fire me, because it was clear that this nerd-detective cashier was determined to make a big deal out of it. I kind of understood. Sid just didn’t need the hassle. But I was really bummed to lose that job.

Within a couple of days, however, it was life as usual. I would just run the streets with these goofy young girls I’d meet at the exotic dance clubs. They were strippers, so they had money and a place of their own. I always had a place to crash, but I never fell for any of them; they were just fun to party with. I’d bump into Slash from time to time, but he was currently in a pretty serious relationship with that raven-haired hottie. During this entire time we weren’t playing together much, just loving life. And it wasn’t like we missed playing. The time would come when we felt like jamming again, and time was on our side.

I
n the fall of 1984, I scored another very decent gig. I moved in with a bass player and a guitar player, Jeff and Todd. Jeff played guitar and lived with his father, who owned a nice four-bedroom house in Granada Hills. Just playing with them was cool enough, but I had a bedroom there too. The garage was a converted studio where I just played drums with these guys and was able to practice every day and have a free place to live. I couldn’t have been happier.

I had all I needed. But the band failed to score any gigs. Nobody took the initiative. After about two or three months, it was time to move on. All I wanted to do was get out and jam as much as possible with other musicians. I began to feel frustrated and every day I felt a growing desire to play.

If I wanted to get good at it, I knew what I had to do. I got together with Slash again, and we decided to make our often discussed but not yet materialized Road Crew project happen. First we enlisted our old friend Ronnie Schneider on bass. He had a cool image, played well, and was my longtime bud-puffing buddy. There’s a picture of Ronnie in the
Live Era
album; he’s playing guitar next to Slash. He’s the one with the blond hair that’s all teased out.

Ronnie soon left to join another band, so we took out an ad in the
Recycler
under “Musicians Wanted.” We got a call from this guy who said he was from Seattle. He explained that he used to play the drums in a punk band, but since there were so many drummers in L.A., he took up the bass. It cost money to rent a studio so we figured we should save our money and just meet him first to see if he was a cool guy to begin with and what kind of look he had. Image was important, and if you thought someone looked cool and could play at all decently, that nailed it. You took him on. If he didn’t look the part . . . next.

We decided to meet him at what I personally consider to be the all-time legendary Guns N’ Roses landmark: Canter’s Deli on Fairfax. Slash knew the owner’s son, Marc Canter. He’s our age, and he runs the place now. Slash and I would go there every day to get meat knishes with gravy for a dollar, really tasty. The picture on the back cover of
Live!? Like a Suicide!
was taken in the alley behind Canter’s.

Mark ended up taking pictures of the band at our shows. He was a smart, artistic, compassionate guy. We felt comfortable trusting him to shoot all the behind-the-scenes images of
GNR
. We knew he wouldn’t compromise our trust, wouldn’t sell out to some rag-ass tabloid, or let anything out that we didn’t approve. Mark and I are still close to this very day.

S
o we’re hanging at Canter’s on a sunny afternoon in the winter of ’84, and in walks Duff McKagan. Right away I thought, “Well, he sure as hell looks like a rock star.” He was tall, six feet four, and had long, teased blond hair with a black streak running down the side. He had been calling himself Duff Rose and was all rocked out. I thought he was totally right for the look we were after. We hit it off right away, right down to the bands we liked, and just as important, the bands we hated.

Although we got along, we didn’t actually get together to play. We did hang out a bit, and during that time, we introduced Duff to Izzy, but nothing really got going. For a good amount of time there it seemed, once again, as though putting together a band wasn’t going to happen. There just seemed to be a lack of drive or purpose.

After admitting to myself that the Road Crew idea had fizzled out for a second time, I started having these depressing thoughts about what the hell I was going to do. College was out, and my gut still told me that being in a rock ’n’ roll band was my best bet.

I was feeling so down about nothing happening that I dropped in on the local navy recruiter. I figured what the hell, I had nothing to lose. See the world on someone else’s dime. I took the test, and the guy there told me they’d get back to me in a few days. He shook my hand and smiled. Leaving the place I felt that I would soon be setting out on a whole new adventure.

Well, I must have sucked on the test, because I never heard back from them. Admiral Adler was not setting sail in this man’s navy. Sometimes I shudder when I think that I could have been swabbing the deck on some boat in the North Sea instead of touring with
GNR
.

W
hen I was nineteen, I found a job working for a computer chip company in a warehouse in Chatsworth. I was a packer and a shipper, making $5.35 an hour. The secretary there was a dirty-blond hottie in her late twenties. She and I would go to lunch together every day at Chatsworth Park. I would do her in her backseat during our break. Love those power munches—er, lunches. She partied and sold a little weed on the side, so we would sit under a tree in the park and take rips off of her bong. One day while we were getting stoned, these two guys came walking toward us. They were about twenty yards away when she covered the bong and the weed with her hat. They walked right up to us and flashed a badge. I was like, “Fuck!”

One of the cops lifted her hat, exposing the multiple bags of weed. They arrested her and, for some reason, just let me go. But of course, word got back to our employer so I could extend my streak of getting fired from every damn job.

G
etting canned didn’t upset me that much because ultimately all I really wanted was to be in a band, and playing the drums was the one job I took very seriously. I would drive anywhere, meet anytime, sit down with anyone just so I could play. I met a bass player named Gary who had a recording studio out in Burbank, so I started jamming with him. Bobby Chouinard, the drummer for Billy Squier, played on one of Gary’s demos, which was great because he had his very own recording studio and tapes of his fully produced music.

Bobby’s studio was in Laurel Canyon, up in the Hollywood Hills. I felt like I was finally making some headway with the music, performing and listening carefully to the playback, picking out my strengths and what I needed to work on. Of course we were partying too. These guys loved to smoke weed and jam. It was a great vibe all around, solid musicians, great studio, kick-ass weed.

I
played with them about a month or so and then one night Slash called me up. He sounded excited and told me that Izzy had resurfaced and wanted us all to play together again. Like I said, that’s how it worked back then. Things just had to take their own natural course. Something would pop up, a booking, a festival, a fucking keg party, and a few phone calls later, we’d be getting together again. This time, however, my heart really started pounding because Slash told me that they had committed to doing a show Thursday night. And Friday they were planning on heading up to Seattle to play a couple of shows. Since we had introduced Duff to Izzy and Axl, he had been playing with them too. In fact, Duff was the one who booked the upcoming shows.

So it was “Dude. Cool. I’m there!” The next day I got together with them, and they told me the band was now called Guns N’ Roses, after the band’s founders: Tracii Guns and Axl Rose. So I guess technically, the very first Guns N’ Roses lineup consisted of Rob Gardner on drums, Tracii Guns on lead guitar, Izzy on rhythm guitar, and Axl.

Tracii was someone Slash and I knew from Bancroft Junior High School. He used to have the total surfer-boy look with the straight blond hair that all the girls liked. Now he sported jet-black hair and tattoos. We didn’t really hang with him that much and never jammed with him. Axl and Tracii had a place together, and it was there that they came up with the name for their band.

For one reason or another, however, Tracii and Rob weren’t up for the trip to Seattle. I guess it wasn’t hard to see why they felt that way. The thought of humping their asses nearly a thousand miles north for a couple of gigs that wouldn’t even cover gas money probably struck them as pretty fucking dumb.

So Izzy called Slash and Slash called me, and for us it was “Hell yeah!” from the start. It wasn’t even something I had to think about. I loved playing in a band and I loved rock ’n’ roll so much that it was a no-brainer: “Where’s the gig? Siberia? Okay, I’m there.” Simple. After that epic road trip, we were pretty much inseparable and became the founding members, the classic
Appetite for Destruction
lineup.

T
he Thursday-night gig, before we headed north, was at the Troubadour. So we practiced Tuesday night and Wednesday. I still remember what it felt like when Slash and I walked in to set up for that Tuesday practice. There was zero awkwardness, everybody got along really well, and there was a distinct willingness to make it happen. To Izzy’s and Axl’s credit, there was complete respect for what we were each bringing to the table and none of that newcomers-versus-veterans bullshit. We jammed to a Stones song, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and an Elvis oldie, “Heartbreak Hotel,” and then kind of looked at one another. I definitely had a sense that something special was brewing.

I honestly don’t think it was just me who felt that way, because Thursday night, something permeated the show at the Troubadour and it went pretty well. I remember we played for only about ten people, and it didn’t matter. We were playing for the music, for the sheer excitement of performing live. There’s actually a photo from it in the
Live Era
record, and you can see Michelle Young standing to the side with her hand in the air.

That was also the first time in forever that I played with a single bass drum. And you know what? I loved it. Ever since that show, I decided to keep my drums set up that way. Now, maybe you’ve heard all about how Duff and Slash hid one of my bass drums on me before the show, forcing me to play with just one bass in my setup. And there’s a story out there that they knew in their hearts if they could just get me to play one gig that way, I’d be sold and never use a double bass again.

It’s a sweet little story, but at the time, the only thing Slash hid on me was his stash. The simple truth is that one of my bass drums was busted. Somebody had fucked it up by dropping it or stacking an amp on top of it. So I had to go on that night with a setup consisting of a bass, a snare, a floor tom, one ride, a crash, a high hat, and a cowbell. Necessity can be a motherfucker, but that night she did me right.

Now, we must have been deadly serious and not a little nervous about our first road trip the next day, because I don’t remember going out and partying that hard after the Troubadour show. Suddenly, it was Friday morning (late morning, natch) and the time had come to drive up to Seattle. We loaded all our shit into our friend Jo Jo’s car. Jo Jo was this raw-lookin’, rough-edged kind of guy with long stringy brown hair. His brother Raz was a buddy of ours too. Raz was confined to a wheelchair, and a greater, more enthusiastic soul you’ve never met. They were willing to do anything to help us out and were both really great guys.

Our friend Danny was coming along to give us a hand too. He was a cool kid with short blond hair that he had all spiked out with gel and hairspray. They all did their part and roadied up for us. We were all the same age, and we all busted ass to get the show on the road. There were no chiefs and no peons; we were all equals, all like brothers. We were on our way. Eight hundred forty-five miles to our first paying gig on the road. This was it, damn the torpedoes, no looking back.

We got as far as Bakersfield.

Our shit box of a car, I think it was an Oldsmobile, just died on us. We couldn’t believe it. But we decided we were going to get to the gig by any means necessary. Danny and Jo Jo agreed to stay with the car, get it fixed, keep an eye on our gear, and somehow get it all up there. I grabbed my stick bag, the guys grabbed their axes, and we started walking along the freeway with our thumbs in the air. Have Guns N’ Roses, will travel.

Five long-haired, cocky punks, each one in the best of moods, set out to fulfill their destiny. We hitched a bit, then while the other guys were taking a break sitting on the side of the road, I managed to snag a ride from an immense eighteen-wheeler. We all piled in and were able to get as far as a truck stop just outside Medford, Oregon. There, a Mexican farmer and his son stopped for us in a ratty pickup truck, and we all piled in the back. Unfortunately, we were way too heavy, and the tires started rubbing against the fender wells. We pretended not to notice that there was smoke everywhere (we’d rather have suffocated from the fumes than gotten back out and walked), but naturally, he couldn’t take us any farther. We thanked him and got out.

About an hour later, two wild hippie chicks blew by us as we waved our thumbs in the air. I yelled, “Shit!” But I could see they were checking us out as they flew by. I crossed my fingers and watched as they made a lazy U-turn, came back, and picked us up. They both had waist-length hair and were dressed in colorful commune clothes. We put our guitars in the trunk and piled in. They said when they were younger, they used to hitchhike everywhere and would get pissed when no one would pick
them
up. That’s why they came back for us.