Welcome to My Jungle (11 page)

Gene, the victor, and $1,000 richer
.

MY TOWEL

Speaking of nudity …

Nudity was a huge part of the Guns N’ Roses tour. Every night there was a naked person backstage. Most of the time it was a woman, unless Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon or Adam Clayton of U2 were around.

Because we were really bored, whenever someone had a chance to get someone naked in public, they jumped on it.

And because we had our own floor 95 percent of the time, it was not uncommon for us to walk from room to room in our bathrobes or towels to say hi or to get something we needed. We all did it, and never thought anything of it.

So one day I walked down the hallway in my towel. I left my room door open because there was no place to carry my key. Like every other day I passed a few guys in the hallway and said a quick “hi.”

Then I saw Ronnie, Slash’s bodyguard, and Truck. But this time, unlike the other times, they wore an evil grin.

Faster than a hummingbird’s wings, they swooped in on me, grabbed my towel, slammed my door shut, and ran into their respective rooms.

There I was, standing in the middle of the hallway of a five-star hotel, in all my glory, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I had to assume that Ronnie and Truck had gotten on their walkie-talkies, informed everyone the situation, and instructed them not to open their doors for me. I even saw someone open their doorway down the hall and pull their used room service tray
back
into their room so I wouldn’t be able to use the metal dinner plate covers to cover my “parts.”

I stood there in the hallway thinking that this was a no-win situation for me. To make matters worse, there was no show that evening, so no one really had to come out of their rooms for hours.

So I just paced the hallway, trying to come up with some sort of plan, trying to figure out how to get to the lobby to get another key to my room.

I walked over to the elevator area to use the house phone, but it was missing.

“Damn, they thought of everything,” I whispered to myself.

There were some roses on a table that I thought I could strategically place but I ruled that out when I stuck myself with a thorn.

I thought about just walking over to knock on Earl’s door but I knew he was probably in on it so he wouldn’t let me in. I also thought that Earl wouldn’t appreciate a naked man knocking on his door no matter what the situation.

This was a very embarrassing moment, with no solution in sight.

It really sucked, but it was about to get a little worse.

I heard the elevator doorbell go off, meaning someone was coming onto our floor. I prayed that it was a sympathetic person from our entourage.

It was. It was Sabrina, Axl’s beautiful masseuse. I wasn’t really embarrassed that Sabrina saw me naked because I had known her for so long. But it was definitely awkward.

Instead of being sympathetic, she just laughed. I kept hoping that she was laughing because I was naked, and not for any other reason.

“I need a towel,” I said, stating the obvious.

And with that, someone stuck their head outside the door and said something; Sabrina acted immediately and ran into her room and closed her door.

Once again there was no solution in sight.

After about an hour of pacing, and patience running very thin, with nowhere else to turn, I finally came up with a great idea.

I pressed the button for an elevator, and I prayed really hard for this elevator to be empty.

The bell rang, and I took a chance, standing there naked as the door opened. It was indeed empty. Finally, something had gone in my favor.

I managed the courage to walk into the empty hotel elevator and I immediately hit the red STOP emergency button. I only had seconds until the dreaded alarm would go off. I feared that the elevator across the way would open and fifty people would stare at my naked ass.

So, in the elevator I looked down at the carpeting. I summoned all my superhuman strength, grabbed a little piece of the corner of the carpeting, and in one gigantic, superhuman pull, I ripped the entire piece up.

I felt like I had just won the lottery.

I have tried to do what I did that day in other hotel elevators across the country and I can never do it. That’s how much adrenaline was running through my naked body.

Anyway, I wrapped the carpet around me, and did what any normal person would do. I took the elevator downstairs to the lobby, wrapped in carpeting. I looked like a toilet paper holder. I got off the elevator, and among the crowded lobby I shuffled over to the front desk, and casually asked the front desk clerk for another key to my room.

“You don’t have ID with you, sir, do you?” asked the hotel employee.

I just smiled.

“Guns N’ Roses?” he added.

“Yes.”

And he handed me a key to my room. No questions asked. I guess he thought it was normal for a person touring with Guns N’ Roses to walk through the hotel lobby wearing only carpeting.

I went back to the elevators, and for some reason, no one waiting for the elevators wanted to get in with me.

So I pressed my floor button, I smiled, and the elevator doors closed.

I got up to my floor, shuffled to my room, dropped the carpeting, opened the door, and locked myself in my room for the next twenty-four hours.

By far, the most embarrassing day of my life.

DRUG SEARCHES & CLOSE CALLS

South America is a beautiful place. But for eighteen days in late 1992 so many weird things happened there that I was really glad when we came back to the United States for Christmas.

When we arrived in Caracas, the first thing that happened was Natasha lost her luggage. Oh, how we wished that was the worst of it. But not even close.

It poured the day before the show. In fact there was so much rain that the stage collapsed. They worked through the night to build a new stage and the concert was a huge success.

Two days after the Caracas show we were scheduled to leave for Bogotá. We made it, but because of a failed military coup by the Venezuela Air Force, half of the band’s equipment didn’t make the trip.

Glad we missed that event.

We were supposed to do two shows in Bogotá, but because the equipment didn’t arrive in time for the first show, they decided to let two sold-out audiences into the second show. In hindsight, not a good idea.

Although it ended up being a very special show, it almost didn’t happen.

Doug, the entourage, and the band were already at the venue in Bogotá, and reports came back that the stadium was packed beyond belief.

Earl, Robert, and I were waiting in my room for Axl to get ready. We were already about an hour late, but that was kind of normal.

Axl came into my room, still dressed in his shorts, and told me that he’s not doing the show tonight.

And after dropping that bombshell, he headed back to his room.

The three of us look at one another.

“Anyone want to tell Doug?” I pleaded.

No takers. Apparently, this was my job so I had to handle it.

I got on my walkie-talkie, dreading what I was about to say.

“Doug.”

“Go, Craig,” Doug responded on his walkie-talkie from the venue about five miles away.

“Axl doesn’t want to do the show.”

Silence.

“Again?” Doug said.

I repeated, “Axl doesn’t want to do the show.”

Longer silence.

I turned to Earl. “I think he just had a heart attack.”

Doug finally got back on the walkie-talkie. “Craig, call me from a landline.”

I did.

On the hotel phone, “Hey, Doug.”

Doug proceeded to tell me that there were about 80,000 people squeezed into a stadium that might fit 50,000. I might be exaggerating these numbers, and maybe Doug might have been as well, but you get the idea. If we cancelled at this last minute there would be a lot of pissed-off people.

Doug also reminded me that he’d just spoken with the police, and if Axl didn’t arrive in the next fifteen minutes, they would make an announcement to the audience that the show was cancelled, and that they would not restrain the fans from destroying the stage.

My stress level reached new heights.

I’m a regular guy from a small town in Long Island and suddenly I was responsible for getting Axl Rose to a concert, otherwise equipment would be destroyed, and there was a good chance that people would die.

I had never told Axl that he
had
to do a show. But I knew I had to do it that night. It was not going to be a great conversation. I could tell when Axl walked into my room that he was not in a good mood. Something must have happened.

Doug then added a little detail that changed everything. “Oh, and let me remind you, Natasha is here backstage as well. And we’re all not safe.”

Well, that’s all I needed to hear.

I grabbed the key to Axl’s room, knocked on his door, and without waiting for an answer, opened his door with the key.

Axl was sitting on his couch in his dimly lit room.

“Axl, you have to do the show. If we’re not there in fifteen minutes, they’re going to release the audience, and Natasha is backstage, and so is your sister, Amy. Let’s go.”

And much to my surprise, he only said, “Fine.” He headed to his bedroom to get dressed.

I walked out of his room, relieved.

I headed back into my room.

“Well that was easy,” I bragged.

Robert asked, “What did you say?”

“I told him, ‘Let’s go,’ and he said, ‘Fine.’”

I left out the other details because it just sounded so awesome this way.

I got on the walkie-talkie.

“Doug.”

“Go, Craig.”

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said proudly.

“Love you, buddy.”

And with that Axl came into my room, and we left for the concert. Not a word was spoken in the car, and that was totally okay. I had one goal—get Axl to the show, and we were on our way.

The show was great. And something really cool happened this night.

“November Rain” had been the number-one song in Colombia for sixty straight weeks. That is almost unheard of in any market.

So, during the concert the band begins playing “November Rain,” and it begins to rain.

The crowd went nuts. And although it’s not really that safe to play electrical instruments in the rain with no cover, the band played on. I had chills. It was a very special moment, and knowing that Doug and I and maybe three others knew that this night almost didn’t happen made it all the more special.

To top that? When the band finished playing “November Rain” it stopped raining.

Although the show was amazing, unfortunately a few injuries occurred. I don’t know how they happened, all I know is that Steve, our traveling chiropractor, was called on to stitch up a Colombian Army guy’s head, and also called on to stitch up Duff, who had apparently been hit by a bottle.

This is the ironic part. Steve couldn’t find anything to use as an anesthetic to numb the injuries he had to stitch. But because he’s on tour with Guns N’ Roses, and even better, was in Colombia, he asked around if anyone had any cocaine so he could numb his patients.

He couldn’t find any. Backstage at a Guns N’ Roses concert, in Bogotá, Colombia, and there was no cocaine? Steve was in shock. How could this be?

But there was none to be found. So, he stitched them up without numbing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Duff never felt a thing. I’m pretty sure he was liquored up pretty good. But the poor Colombian Army guy …

Ouch.

As if all of this weren’t enough, as we’re leaving Bogotá, we encountered one more life-threatening problem. A problem a million times worse than any of the other life-threatening problems we had experienced the past five days.

As the plane approached the end of the runway, we looked out our windows and saw that we were still on the ground. Panic set in. I already hated flying, and I did not need this.

Obviously the pilot decided that we weren’t going to get airborne anytime soon, so he hit the brakes. Crap flew around everywhere, but we stopped. Right at the edge of the runway.

The pilot turned the plane around, made what I guess were some adjustments, and tried again. This time we got up in the air.

I think I lost three years of my life during those three days in Bogotá. Hopefully, since I don’t smoke or drink anymore, I can get them back.

The next day we left for Santiago, Chile. And it didn’t get any easier.

Guns N’ Roses went on two hours late that night, and during the show, specifically during the song “Civil War,” bottles were randomly thrown on the stage. No one got hit, and normally Axl would have just left the stage, for fear of getting hit. He had been hit before with objects, as had most of the members of the band. But this night Axl did not leave the stage, probably because he knew something bad would happen. More than 85,000 people were there—the biggest concert ever in that stadium in Santiago.

However, unrelated to the show, something bad did happen. Fifty people were arrested outside the stadium, and through no fault of the band, a teenage fan sustained numerous injuries at the concert and died two days later. Rumor had it that she had snuck out of her house to see the concert, because her parents wouldn’t allow her to go.

So sad.

Chilean media reported that Axl was drunk prior to the show. They also reported that drugs were discovered in the band’s hotel rooms. This was not even close to true. Axl very rarely drank on the road. He might have had a glass or two of champagne on occasion, but that was it. Axl hardly drank on this entire tour. He was focused on getting his life straightened out.

Plus, both Doug and the manager of the Sheraton San Cristobal hotel denied the accusations.

But officials from the Chilean Department of Investigation came to our hotel floor and checked the rooms for drugs. Luckily nothing was found, but that was a scary moment for all of us on the tour. Specifically, when they were checking my room I kept envisioning that someone would plant drugs in my mattress, and that I would go to jail in Santiago for the rest of my life, and
Midnight Express
came into my mind again. Damn, I hate that movie! I swore the next time a drug search took place in my room, I would be much more prepared.