Welcome to My Jungle (13 page)

But the phone would ring, and I’d learn something was wrong with, say, the dressing room at the venue for that night. I’d light another cigarette, fix the problem, and move on.

Around noon, Axl would wander in with a menu—he’s hungry. He’d tell me what he wants. I’d order his breakfast, and I get a little something for myself. My second breakfast.

Then we’d all sit around and talk about crap—some personal stuff, something about the show last night, and why we’re all stuck in this hotel.

The food would arrive, and about 90 percent of the time the waiter noticed Axl sitting on the bed and asked for his autograph. Sometimes Axl gave it, sometimes I told the waiter that we’re doing that later. I’d sign for the bill. We’d all eat in my room.

Axl went back to his room to eat if the conversation was about baseball or golf. If it was about football, he stayed. He’s an Oakland Raiders fan and I’m a Kansas City Chiefs fan—a perfect match.

After breakfast/second breakfast (if Axl was back in his room) we’d all try to take a nap—each of us somewhere in my room, strategically placed at least ten feet from one another. But as soon as I fell asleep, the phone would ring and I would be presented with another problem. So, I’d light another cigarette, fix the problem, and move on.

At about 5 p.m., Axl would come back and ask what time the show was. Depending on the city, I usually told him a little earlier than scheduled. You all know why. Robert would go to the gig ahead of us to get Axl’s clothes and backstage area ready. He’d usually pick out about five or six outfits for Axl to choose from.

Axl would either then meet with his therapist or work out. I’d still be sitting on my bed, eating and waiting for something else to go wrong. Lucky for me, I didn’t gain a ton of weight, probably because of the cigarettes I smoked every five minutes, and the dip between my lip and gums.

Axl would then either get adjusted by Steve and/or get a massage from Sabrina. During this time Robert would call me from the venue and tell me that something was missing from Axl’s dressing room, either his red bandana or an article of clothing. Or he would share with me the fact that the promoter thought it would be a good idea to replace Axl’s bottle of Dom Pérignon with Mumm.

So, I’d light another cigarette, fix the problem, and move on.

About three hours before the show the band and the entourage would head over to the hotel to do sound check. I would stay behind with Steve and Earl, waiting for Axl to get ready. Axl rarely went to sound check.

During sound check I usually received another call informing me that because of the curfew, the time of the show had been moved up an hour and I needed to get Axl to the show as soon as possible. (Yes, there was an actual curfew on many shows—times when the show must end, or they would pull the power.)

So, I’d light another cigarette, fix the problem, and move on.

About an hour before we had to leave for the gig, Axl would jump into the shower and do his vocal warm-ups. After the shower, Steve taped up Axl’s ankles. This was because Axl ran around the stage a lot and he wanted to prevent turning an ankle or two—just like the professional ballplayers before a game.

On a good day, we then headed to the hotel lobby, got into the awaiting limo, and went to the gig. But sometimes, because we left so much later than everyone else, we lost track of either the limo driver or the police escort taking us to the venue, and we stood in the lobby scratching our asses.

So, I’d light another cigarette, fix the problem, and move on.

We’d arrive at the gig, Axl popped into his dressing room for a couple of minutes, met with the band for a minute or two, chose the first song, and then ran onto the stage and started the show.

Robert would be stationed at the teleprompter (more on that later) ready for the first song, which had been told to him about five minutes prior. But Axl would get onstage, and it wouldn’t be the song they had just changed it to, it would be an entirely different song.

So, I’d light another cigarette, fix the problem, and move on.

But no matter how we got to that point, it always ended up being an amazing show!

A NOT-SO-TYPICAL SHOW DAY

Everything went smooth, we showed up on time, and nothing went wrong during the show.

NEVER HAPPENED!

DIFFERENT SHOW SCHEDULES

There’s a rumor out there that Axl Rose is known for being late to shows. I know, hard to believe.

Truth is, Axl was, and still is, late for some shows. I never asked Axl why he’s late for his shows, but after living with him 24/7 for about three years I have my own theory and it’s quite simple. He wants to put on the best show possible every single night. But to do that he has to get into “the zone,” just like they do in sports. You have to get pumped up to put on a show like Axl does, and sometimes, I guess it’s just hard to get to that space. Sometimes it took longer than other times, and those were the times he was late.

I can say this for a fact: In all my years with Axl, he never showed up late or canceled a show “just because.” There was always a good reason, and I’ll just leave it at that.

So, when I took over from Blake I tried to do things a little different, and Axl started showing up on time a lot more than in the past. I’m not saying it was directly me, but I’d like to think I had a small part in it—by bringing a positive attitude to the table every day, and motivating his ass off.

Oh, and I did the following as well …

Every day that we had a show, John Reese or Bill Greer slipped a piece of paper under our hotel room doors to tell us what time the sound check was, what time the opening band went onstage, what time Guns N’ Roses was supposed to go onstage, and what time curfew was.

The promoters had started getting smart because they knew that GNR was infamous for showing up one to three hours late for shows, so they worked with the cities and began putting curfews on the shows. Truth be known, there was good reason for the curfews. Public transportation stopped at a certain time, so there were many stranded teenagers who couldn’t get home safely if a show went too late. I’m sure there were curfews for many other things as well, but GNR was known for testing those time limits.

Here’s a typical schedule:

That’s what all of us received the morning of a show. This was the
real
schedule. It was said that GNR would be charged $10,000 for every minute they went over the curfew in some cities. Yikes. Now that’s motivation. And it worked, because to my knowledge I don’t think we ever went over for a long period of time.

But again, I like to think I had a very small hand in it. On certain show days when I thought getting Axl onstage on time would be an issue, I would re-create the show schedule by moving the times up thirty to sixty minutes, and slip it under his door.

So,
my
show schedule for just such a night would read like this:

Doors Open: 7:00 p.m.

Brian May (Opening Act): 8:00 p.m.

Set Change: 8:50 p.m.

Guns N’ Roses: 9:30 p.m.

Curfew 12:00 a.m.

Axl would think the show was at 9:30 p.m., so even if he was a little late because of “unforeseen circumstances,” we would still be okay.

I’m pretty sure that the schedule that John or Bill put under our doors also had a little buffer in it as well for these reasons, so my extra little buffer was an added insurance policy that the show would finish on time and the band wouldn’t get fined.

I never told anyone on the tour that I did this. I didn’t have to because I knew that Axl wouldn’t discuss show times with anyone else but me. He relied on me to tell him when he had two hours before the show, one hour before the show, when we had to leave, and so on.

No one ever knew I did this … until now.

On June 23, 1992, this “curfew thing” was tested.

Axl and Duff weren’t feeling too well for a show in Rotterdam, Netherlands, at Feijenoord Stadium. We even had a doctor meet us at the airport to treat Axl so he could do the show that night. But that took extra time.

Guns N’ Roses finally went onstage around 10 p.m., about two hours after the warm-up band, Faith No More, finished their set.

Problem was that Feijenoord Stadium had an 11 p.m. curfew. European curfews were much earlier than American curfews. As the deadline approached, the local authorities told the GNR management team that power would be cut at 11:30 p.m. The band was told about the potential dilemma, so Axl announced to the crowd, “You have a right to a complete show. You paid for it. If they cut the power, be my guests, do what you want.” With that, there was a meeting of the minds backstage, and the police decided to let the band play on until well after midnight.

No riot that night.

THE DREADED TELEPROMPTER

One of your jobs when you worked for Axl Rose was to run his teleprompter, which had the words to every Guns N’ Roses song ever written, as well as the words to some cover songs they performed on a regular basis. Axl wrote the lyrics to many of the songs, but when he was onstage, because there was so much going on, and because he was exerting so much energy, he felt more comfortable if the words scrolled down on a few monitors strategically placed on the stage. This way, if he went off on a tangent, like if he saw a beautiful woman flashing her breasts, he would remember where he was in the song, simply by looking down at the closest monitor.

When I first arrived on the tour, Blake ran the teleprompter. He was great at it. The key to being “great at it,” besides knowing the software on those early laptops, was to know all of Guns N’ Roses songs after hearing only one or two notes. Experts at the game show
Name That Tune
would have been perfect for this part of the job.

Blake knew all the songs. I didn’t.

I knew all their hits, but when I first joined, I didn’t know all their other songs. And although I listened to the songs to get up to speed as fast as possible, they sounded much different when they were performed live.

Because it was a thankless job, one of Blake’s first goals was to have me run Axl’s teleprompter, so he could just sit back and enjoy the show. Yes, there were other things to do during the show, like invite beautiful women backstage, but nothing as stressful as running the teleprompter.

Here’s why.

Back in 1991, the home computer was just starting to get popular. I had very minimal experience on a computer at that time. I had one at home, but it ran very slow. The software back then was very basic, and laptops ran even slower. To do the exact job today would be much easier than it was back then.

Before Guns N’ Roses hit the stage, the band members had a quick meeting backstage to decide what song they would open with. It was usually “It’s So Easy,” “Night Train,” or once in a while they’d open with “Welcome to the Jungle.” Axl or Slash would then tell Blake the opening song, so Blake would have enough time to load it up, and get it ready on the stage monitors. But, after that, it was a free-for-all.

Guns N’ Roses did have a set list—a list of songs typed in big print, taped on the floor of the stage at the bottom of all the band members’ mic stands. But they hardly ever kept to that list. So when a song was over, either Axl told Slash the next song he wanted to play, or Slash would start playing the next song of his choice. Because Axl was the singer, 99 percent of the time the choice of the song was his, and he would make that decision depending on how his voice felt that night. Blake would have to guess what that song was in a few notes, so he would have time to exit out of the last song, scroll down to the next song (they were in alphabetical order), choose that song, then wait for it to load and go live onto the monitors on the stage. But that process took about fifteen seconds, and that’s if Blake knew what the song was in the first two seconds.

A typical Guns N’ Roses set list—which was never adhered to.

Luckily most songs have intros, so Blake would usually have between ten and fifteen seconds to get a song up on the monitors. But a song like “Live and Let Die,” a Beatles cover, has a one-note intro and then the words start. And we were expected to get the words on the screen that fast.