Slash (59 page)

I
t felt like a baseball bat to my chest, but one swung from the inside. Clear blue spots lit up the corners of my vision. It was abrupt, bloodless, silent violence. Nothing was visibly broken, nothing had changed to the naked eye, but the pain made my world stand still. I kept playing; I finished the song. The audience didn’t know that my heart had done a somersault just before the solo. My body had delivered its karmic retribution; reminding me, onstage, of how many times I’d intentionally served it up a similar loop-de-loop.

The jolt quickly became a dull ache that almost felt good. In any case, I felt more alive than I had a moment before, because I
was
more alive. The machine in my heart had reminded me of just how precious this life is. Its timing was impeccable: with a full house in front of me, while I played my guitar, I got the message loud and clear. I got it a few times that night. And I got it every time I was onstage for the rest of that tour, though I never knew when it was coming.

A doctor installed an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator in my heart when I was thirty-five. It’s a three-inch-long battery-powered generator that was inserted through an incision in my armpit. It constantly monitors my heart rate, delivering electroshocks whenever my heart beats too dangerously fast or slow. Fifteen years of overdrinking and drug abuse had swollen that organ to one beat short of exploding. When I was finally hospitalized, I was told I had six weeks to live. It’s been six years since then and this piece of machinery has saved my life more than a few times. I’ve enjoyed a convenient side effect that the doctor did not intend: when my indulgences have caused my heart to beat too dangerously slow, my defibrillator has popped off, keeping death from my door for one more day. It also shocks my heart into submission when it beats fast enough to court cardiac arrest.

It’s a good thing I got it adjusted before the first Velvet Revolver tour. I did that one sober for the most part; sober enough that the excitement of playing with a band I believed in to fans who believed in us moved me to my core. I hadn’t been that inspired in years. I ran all over the stage; I basked
in our collective energy. My heart raced with excitement hard enough to trigger the machine inside me onstage every night. It wasn’t pleasant but I began to welcome those reminders. I saw them for what they were. Strange moments of alienated clarity, moments out of time that encapsulated a life’s worth of hard-won wisdom.

Photograph by Gene Kirkland

1971, age six.

Photograph by Ola Hudson

Slash’s elementary-school photos.

Courtesy of Ola Hudson

Slash was roughhousing that day; he was being difficult for some reason.

Photograph by Ola Hudson

At the bike track in Reseda, practicing. The blond kid is Chris, Jeff Griffin’s younger brother. He thinks he’s beating Slash, but Slash has the inside lane.

Photograph by Ola Hudson

Slash and his mom, Ola.

Photograph by Perla Hudson

Slash and Axl onstage, July 1988.

Photograph by Gene Kirkland

Guns, circa 1987

Photograph by Gene Kirkland

Guns, circa 1992
.

Photograph by Gene Kirkland

Gilby Clarke, Duff, and Slash on the
Use Your Illusions
tour.

Photograph by Gene Kirkland

Duff, Izzy, Matt, and Slash at Mates rehearsal studio, jamming pre–Velvet Revolver. They may or may not have been working on a song called “Snafu.”

Photograph by Gene Kirkland