My Appetite For Destruction (9 page)

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.”

A
fter 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 for 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.

O
nce, as I was leaving Izzy’s place, I bumped into this skinny, pale-as-a-ghost rock ’n’ roll dude with long orange hair. He was wearing a light blue, unbuttoned dress shirt, completely exposing his ribs, which were sticking out like a starving dog’s. We met in the middle of the street, and I didn’t recognize him at first, but when we said hey to each other, I realized who he was. “Dude, you’re that kick-ass singer I saw play Gazzarri’s. I thought you were great.”

He smiled and said, “Thanks.” He seemed very humble and gracious. That was the first time I ever spoke to Axl Rose. Apparently he was a regular at Sue’s place and hung out a lot with Izzy.

Rose was rehearsing across the street from Hollywood High School on Selma Avenue at Selma Studios, which offered the cheapest studios, like $5 an hour. Now, that’s a great deal, but it was one sorry shit hole. The building was ancient, with broken doorknobs, jammed windows, reeking bathrooms, creaky floors, and cracked walls, but you get what you pay for. I went to check out the situation without Slash because at the time, I didn’t think they wanted another guitar player. It was just Izzy, DJ, and me. The first song I played with them was a number Izzy wrote called “Shadow of Your Love.”

Axl sauntered in while we were running through it. Without missing a beat he grabbed the mike in the middle of the song and just started running up and down the walls, screaming and wailing like someone had lit his pants on fire. I had never heard such a sound in my life. It was like some otherworldly banshee cry. I was stoked. I remember my eyes bugged a bit and my pulse shot up; I was thinking this dude was so insane, so original.

I thought the session went off really well, and afterward we were sitting around talking and I said, “You guys gotta meet this guy Slash. He’s fucking great!” And that’s how it all started to come together, like we were each waiting in the wings of the cosmos, destined to discover one another, like it was meant to be.

I went back to the apartment and I told Slash, “Dude, these guys are great, they’re totally original, very cool, and they want to meet you.” Slash kind of made a noncommittal grunt, which you got to understand in Slash-speak is a very positive response. The next night, I brought him over to Izzy’s just to hang out and see if we would all get along. We were drinking beers, shooting the shit, talking more about bands we loved. Axl was more talkative than the last time we hung out. He was saying how he was really into Dan McCafferty, the lead singer from the band Nazareth. I was familiar with their albums
Razamanaz
and
Hair of the Dog,
which had some kick-ass songs on it. If you listen to McCafferty’s wailing, you can see why Axl was into him. He could really tear through a song and put a very distinctive brand on it, like his voice was another instrument. All the truly great vocalists do that; they make their voices a unique and indispensable part of the band’s total sound. How the fuck do you replace Robert Plant, Freddie Mercury, Steve Tyler? Or, as was later to be discovered, Axl?

Izzy was playing his guitar and he let Slash check it out. Slash just kind of looked at the neck for a second and then tore off some cool lead stuff, but nothing too flashy, just brilliantly, undeniably Slash. Izzy and Axl were impressed enough to tell Slash to go and get his guitar. This was worth looking into and we could all feel the temperature in the room go up. Slash did just that, and soon enough we were jamming for another couple of hours.

That night, we all just happened to walk into one another’s lives, with no idea what lay ahead. I wish I could say that it was like lightning struck, but the truth is that it was just a random get-together to see what could be germinating. Axl was the least vocal of all of us that evening, but when Izzy suggested we get together again, Axl’s body language definitely indicated he approved.

The next day we went back to the studio. Izzy was now totally into the idea of another guitarist because he wasn’t much of a lead player, nor did he want to be. Izzy could be freed up more by playing with someone like Slash. Like I said, Izzy’s a very rhythmic, chord-loving artist and Slash is naturally solo oriented, so they connected in a real beneficial, complementary way, strengthening their styles by allowing each to focus on what he loved.

We pretty much just played those same three songs: “Shadow of Your Love,” “Move to the City,” and “Reckless Life.” Then we jammed on some Aerosmith and Stones stuff too. We hung out for a couple days, and whenever we got some money, we went in and jammed again in the studio.

Rose, or Hollywood Rose as they were called on most flyers, had two dates they had already committed to, so Slash and I joined Izzy and Axl as the “New” Hollywood Rose without much fanfare. The first was at Madame Wong’s East in L.A. Then we played at the Troubadour on July 10, 1984. This turned out to be the first time my family saw me perform.

M
y mom, dad, and brother Jamie showed up for the big night. It was great for me to show them that I was doing something other than being a fuckup. Seeing the looks on their faces was an incredible experience for me. They told me they loved it and were excited for me, although Mom said she was deaf for three days afterward. And poor Mel, he wanted to leave after the first song but rallied and hung out for the whole set. As for Jamie, he told me it was one of the greatest nights of his life.

We played the Troubadour again on August 29, 1984. We also played locally at a couple of parties, one of them actually a fucking kegger, which was in a tiny little apartment off of Highland. Everybody was cramped into a room that was so small that Axl had to sing sitting on my bass drum. We also played an after-hours party at Shamrock Studios, which was located at Santa Monica and Western. They would have the most insane parties there. The late El Duce from the punk band the Mentors would hang out sometimes. Slash and I would trip out on him. He was insanely scary.