Slash (63 page)

We did a pretty good job of behaving ourselves that tour, but Steven Tyler was convinced that we were high out of our minds all of the time. He was so inquisitive about what we were up to and what we’d done the night before. He’d come over to us every afternoon and say, in that rhythmic, rapid-fire delivery of his, “What’d you do last night? You get high? You fuck some girls?” It got hard to live up to his expectations.

The only near disaster that we had with Aerosmith was at a venue somewhere in the Midwest. There was a long drive from the hotel to the venue, Axl was running late, and the first car was full, so I decided to wait for him. The other guys got there fine, but we got totally stuck in a line of cars heading into the venue on a two-lane highway. We were fucked, just crawling along, and the clock was ticking. Axl was cool but I was completely anxious. We somehow managed to get a police escort and make it with five minutes to spare. I remember walking into the dressing room, throwing on a new shirt, and running up to the stage. I passed Joe Perry in the hallway and he was standing there with one leg out the way he does, just watching me, with this slight grin as if to say, “Ha-ha.
This
time you made it.”

In hindsight, it was clear that despite Aerosmith’s radio hits, we were soon the main attraction. It happened very fast for us, thanks to MTV’s chronic rotation of “Sweet Child o’ Mine”: within a few weeks of the single’s release in early June, it hit number one and we became the most popular band in the nation. We heard things from management, but it didn’t sink in with me until
Rolling Stone
showed up on tour: they’d sent a writer out to do a cover story on Aerosmith, but after a few days of
watching the crowds’ reaction and seeing us play live, the magazine opted to put us on the cover instead. By the end of the tour, we were absolutely fucking huge, generating the kind of excitement that pretty much baffled me night after night.

That said, we were still a scrappy group of gypsies without a clue, so Aerosmith’s manager, Tim Collins, sent us off with a parting gift that we desperately needed: luggage. They gave each of us an aluminum Halliburton suitcase that I still have today. Tim realized that we were each the type who might stay on the road for ten more years without a proper suitcase—and he wasn’t wrong. I remember how grateful and excited I was to have it; I ran over to Joe and Steven’s dressing room and thanked them from the bottom of my heart. They looked at me like I was crazy; now I realize that they probably had no idea that management had sent us a gift at all.

WE SHOT HALF OF OUR THIRD VIDEO
during our tour with Aerosmith. The live footage seen in “Paradise City” was captured in two locations; the first was Giants Stadium in New Jersey and the second was at the Monsters of Rock Festival at Castle Donnington in the English Midlands a month later on August 20, 1988. By the time we got to Donnington, “Sweet Child” and “Welcome to the Jungle” had charted around the world and our album had broken the Top Ten. At that show we experienced a frenzied reaction like nothing we’d seen before. The festival broke attendance records that year, surpassing the hundred-thousand mark. There couldn’t have been a better place for us to record live footage…except for the fact that two people were trampled to death at the front of the stage during our set.

The audience was crazy, just this sea of surging people. Axl stopped the set a number of times in an effort to control the crowd, but there was no calming them down. We had no idea that anyone was actually hurt let alone killed; after we’d done the gig and were celebrating in a nearby pub, Alan came in completely distraught and gave us the news. It was horrible; none of us knew what to do: something that had been a cause for celebration a moment before had become a tragedy. It was the first of many strange, surreal, and contradictory times.

LESS THAN A MONTH LATER, GUNS PERFORMED
“Welcome to the Jungle” at the MTV Video Music Awards and took home the Best New Artist Award. I’d like to know where that trophy is today; I think I left it in a cab, which, now that I think about it, is as much as it deserved. Then on September 24, 1988—nearly a year and month, to the day, after its release—
Appetite for Destruction
began a three-week sit-in at the very top of
Billboard
’s album chart. And so began our reign of terror. The truth is, all we ever cared to do was top the bullshit hair metal bands that enjoyed undue success for their subpar existence. We—well, I at least—never wanted to be Madonna; that kind of pop-star reality had nothing to do with what our band was about, according to me. But before I knew it, that’s where we landed almost overnight.

After nurturing us through making the record, then waiting a year for it to take off, Tom Zutaut wasn’t going to let this upswing lose momentum: he convinced us to package the acoustic recordings we’d just done with the
Live! Like a Suicide
album and release it immediately. We called it
G N’ R Lies
and it was released on November 29, 1988. The album hit the top five a week after it was released, and suddenly this band that Geffen had nearly dropped was breaking records: we were the only act to have two albums in the top five at the same time during the entire 1980s.

We had broken in America and the U.K. already, so Alan booked us on a tour of Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, where the record was just starting to take off. Japan was such a culture shock; the first morning that I woke up there and looked out of my window, and all of the Japanese toys and every
Godzilla
movie that I’d been a fan of suddenly took on a whole new meaning. Izzy had it worse than I did: he’d gotten really strung out the week before we left, so to get through the ten-hour flight without a hitch, he took a bunch of time-release Valium the moment we got on the plane. He slept all the way there and was so out of it that we had to carry him through immigration. We did our best to hold him up the whole way through the process, but it didn’t seem like he was going to make it.

When he woke up in his hotel room, he had no idea at all where he was,
so he called the front desk, unsure if any of us were even in the same hotel. They transferred him to Steven’s room.

“Hey man, it’s Izzy,” he said. “Uh…where am I?”

“Hey man!” Steven said. “You’re in Japan!”

“No.”

“Yeah, man! We’re in Japan!”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Izzy said. “No way.”

“Yeah, man, look out your fuckin’ window!

Like every other hard-rock or heavy metal band that plays Japan, we hung out in Roppongi—we stayed at the Roppongi Prince Hotel, actually. Between the watered-down drinks and the bad blow, I burned out on it immediately because I had no idea where else to go. I stayed locked in my room for most of that tour, a room that I should mention was about ten feet by ten feet, but just
so
incredibly
efficient
. There was the language barrier, of course, but above and beyond that, I couldn’t deal with the Beatle-mania element of Japanese music fans. They met us at the airport, they followed us to our hotel, and they pretty much waited in the lobby or hotel hallway in case any of us thought about leaving. I was flattered, but I thought it was pretty strange. The few times I cared to go out, I was escorted to the Hard Rock and a few other clubs, and found no reason to make that effort again: the pseudo–dance club/rock scene full of exported American models did nothing for me at all. Luckily, I did run into a girl that I knew from L.A., and that made things more bearable. Otherwise, my memories of that tour come down to three things: sticky rice, sake, and Jack Daniel’s.

We did five dates total and took the bullet train to the shows outside Tokyo. Our promoter throughout Japan was Mr. Udo, who was famous for handling all of the big hard-rock acts in those days; he saw the rowdiest of bands from Van Halen to Mötley safely through his country without a casualty. As is customary, Mr. Udo hosted a dinner for us, which included executives from our Japanese record label and important promoters—who, we were told, were members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. We were instructed not to show our tattoos that night because our Yakuza hosts would be offended: in Japan, tattoos carry much more weight than they do elsewhere, and tattooing is elemental to Yakuza culture. Of course we didn’t listen: Axl wore short sleeves and I took off my jacket and rolled up
the sleeves of my T-shirt without thinking about it. The dinner ended up being very pleasant, and Mr. Udo gave each of us cameras as a parting gift at the end of the meal. Those cameras were a kind gesture that turned out to be a problem in the end: none of us were savvy enough to declare them as gifts when we passed through customs, so the Japanese authorities detained us when they found them. Some of us, at least: I’d lost mine by the time we got to the airport, and I think Steven had as well. Duff somehow got through, but the other guys got held up. After an hour of questioning, Izzy made the camera a moot issue by smashing it in front of the guards. Axl, however, did not, and he was searched to the maximum degree; I believe he was strip searched—everything. In any case, we missed our flight waiting for him.

Our next stop was Australia; we did a short tour that hit Syndey and Melbourne, and since our record was just barely cracking their consciousness, we resuscitated a few covers, like “Marseilles” by the Angels and “Nice Boys Don’t Play Rock ’n’ Roll,” which is by one of Australia’s greatest rock bands, Rose Tattoo. We made a point of getting in touch with them and arranging to meet, and I must say that the leader of their band, Angry Anderson, was everything I thought he’d be. Angry had more tattoos than anyone I’d ever seen, and he was every bit as real and honest as I’d hoped for.

By this time, we were showing signs of wear and tear from the physical demands of excessive touring. It was taking its toll. We’d also been spoiled by the sheer enthusiasm of the crowds in America, so Australia was a little bit of a letdown when we needed a lift. The chicks were standoffish and independent. They weren’t clambering all over themselves to meet us the way they did everywhere else. At this point, heroin started to rear its ugly head again: Izzy and I ran into someone who had some and we copped a little. We soon discovered that there is a long-standing heroin culture in Australia. We kept it together, though, just a taste here and there, so it didn’t evolve into another full-time habit.

We did manage to get the most out of it and did some good writing while we were there. “Civil War” was an instrumental that I had written just before we took off for Japan. Axl started writing lyrics to it and we worked it up into a proper song at sound check in Melbourne, first the beginning part then the heavy section. That song came together very quickly.

After our five dates in Australia, we popped over to New Zealand, and at that point I realized that I was completely burned out. It had been two long years on the road. At the same time I didn’t want to go back home because I had nowhere to go.

When we got back to L.A., I treated myself to a rare indulgence: a guitar. Somehow this collector got in touch with our management because he wanted to sell me Joe Perry’s 1959 Les Paul—the tobacco-colored sunburst he’d been photographed with countless times. Joe’s ex-wife had sold it back when he was still on drugs and they had come upon tough times. And this was it—the guy had pictures of it and all the documentation. I knew that guitar well—Joe was holding it in the Aerosmith poster I had on my wall growing up. It had a distinctive nick in it; this was the real deal.

The guy wanted eight grand for it, and though I had never spent eight grand on anything before in my entire life, I had to have it. It was a pretty amazing moment when I finally held that guitar in my hands; the same instrument that played an essential role in the path I’d chosen in life was now in my possession (and I would use it on the “November Rain” video). I truly felt like I’d arrived.

If memory serves, it was around this time that I finally retired to storage the guitar that I’d used on
Appetite
and the “Welcome to the Jungle” video, my Les Paul replica (and the backup for it that I’d bought). I abuse my guitars when I play live, and by this point it was severely banged up after all of that touring.

In any case, I was in need of new touring guitars, so I asked Gibson for two Les Paul Standards. They appreciated my dedication, but since I wasn’t very high-profile at that point, they wouldn’t give them to me for free; they’d only sell them to me wholesale. That was fine: I got two red-and-orange Sunbursts and I immediately got them refinished so that they’d look less brand-new and brightly colored. I wanted them to be a bit duller and weathered. I used one through the rest of our
Appetite
tour, through the entire
Use Your Illusion
tour, and on both Snakepit tours. It also appeared in the “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Paradise City” videos. The other one remained a backup.

They saw some living to say the least. When Velvet Revolver started, those guitars were so banged up that I decided not to retire them but to
use them minimally on stage—I call upon them whenever we play “Fall to Pieces.” To fill that void, I asked Gibson for a couple more and this time apparently I was a bit more high-profile so they gave them to me, no questions asked. They actually took it even further: they made me a Slash model Les Paul that is an exact replica of those 1988 Standards that I’d bought from them way back when. I now use those onstage and they are such exact replicas that the first time I opened the case to look at the prototype, number 001, I thought that I was looking at my original guitar that they were returning to me. The replica has every single nick, scratch, and cigarette burn that my guitar has. It even has a crack in the neck from that time when it exploded in my face and was rebuilt—we’ll get to that story in just a little bit. In any case, it’s called the Slash Signature model and it’s every inch exactly like mine. Considering that they did the same for Jimmy Page—they replicated the guitar he used for
The Song Remains the Same
and all of the greatest Led Zeppelin albums—I’m honored that they did that for me.