Welcome to My Jungle (14 page)

Impossible.

I sat there every night and marveled at how great Blake was at running the teleprompter, but the thought of running that thing by myself was so overwhelming at first. That’s when I think I added dipping to smoking cigarettes.

But it was inevitable. I would take over the teleprompter in a few days.

Leading up to the day it officially became my job, I sat down and did a song or two with Blake loading the song, and me just scrolling down the words as Axl sang. As time went on, I did more songs, and Blake started to step away. I’d run a song, and the song would be about to end, so I would turn around to make sure Blake was there, and sometimes he wasn’t, and I’d start to sweat, and then he would appear, to save the day.

Well, the dreaded day to run the teleprompter by myself came. I was stressed, but I had a plan.

Slash had become a good friend of mine on the road. I went drinking with him, and kept up, oh, maybe for the first fifteen minutes, and then he drank me under the table.

The teleprompter room was located on the stage, under the stage-left ramp, right next to Axl’s onstage dressing room, and directly stage-left of where Slash stands onstage. So because Slash was my bud, and because he was standing only four feet away from me for 75 percent of the concert, I asked Slash to help me out with the songs until I got comfortable with them. I asked him to yell the next song to me through my tiny twelve-by-twelve-inch hole as soon as he knew what it was, and I would bring it up on the stage monitors.

He agreed. Bless his heart.

But then I found out soon thereafter that Slash loves a good prank now and then.

Earl had been on the road for a while and he knew the songs well, so as a backup, I asked him to also shout the name of the next song to me.

So, I was set. I had everything in place for the big night.

The first song was easy because they told me what it was before they hit the stage.

One down, about twenty-four to go. Ugh.

The second song that night was “Welcome to the Jungle.” It has a long-ass intro so even if I had made a mistake, I could have corrected it before Axl started singing. I got that one.

I thought to myself,
This is going to be okay
.

Next few songs were all good as well. Slash wasn’t yelling them out to me, because they were playing all their hits and I guess he assumed that I knew them. I didn’t even have to turn to Earl, because I knew all the songs.

But then it happened—an intro I had never heard before.

Panic. I immediately calmed down because I knew Slash would be there for me. And on cue, there he was. His face appeared in my little cut-out window, and he said, “Used to Love Her.”

So I brought up “Used to Love Her,” even as I thought to myself,
I kinda know this song, and it doesn’t sound like this
. But I trusted Slash.

I clicked on the LAST button to make the song go live to the monitors onstage, and there it was in all its glory: “Used to Love Her” on the monitors.

Phew. Disaster averted.

Axl started singing, and I looked at the screen on my laptop, and I noticed that Axl’s not singing the words on my screen, or more importantly on the screen he would probably look at in the next few seconds.

I stuck my head out of my little window and saw Slash cracking up onstage. He just looked at me and smiled.

“Oh crap!” I yelled.

I started looking around, while remaining seated, trying to find someone to help me. Earl shrugged his shoulders because he didn’t know the song. But he had a smirk on his face as well. I knew where this was going.

Then Axl looked down at the monitor, and you could see immediately the confusion and anger on his face.

He whipped his head around and stared me down from about twenty feet away.

I pressed a few buttons and took the song off the screen. Axl was now staring at a blank screen.

Luckily he still remembered the words to the song and kept singing, and even luckier, it was a duet with Duff. Every once in a while Axl would look down at the monitor to see if I had figured out the song yet.

Nothing.

And little did I know, Duff had a monitor in front of him, as well, also with a blank screen.

I remembered thinking that Duff would probably like the words to the song up there as well. I was going to have two people pissed at me after the show.

I decided to wait until the chorus of the song came, and get the words up in time for the second verse. But there was no definitive chorus.

I went the entire song without putting up the words.

Then, I started thinking how I was going to get home after I got fired. Would they pay for my flight, or would I have to pay for it? The name of the song that night was “So Fine.”

I never missed that song again.

The rest of the night went pretty smooth, and it got easier and easier the more I did it. Once in a while Slash would give me the correct song, and once in a while he’d try to mess me up. But when Blake left I knew I had to get another assistant so I could get rid of this responsibility.

And I did just that.

Me running Axl’s teleprompter.

“YOU’RE FIRED”

The joke on the road was that if you were the sound-monitor guy, your job would last about a week. I don’t know much about this because the monitor guy was in the crew, and while I knew most of them I didn’t have time to hang with them because I was with Axl and/or the entourage. But during the show I was near the monitor guy, and it seemed there would be a new one every month or so. Maybe some were fired because they couldn’t get the mix right onstage, or maybe some quit because they weren’t able to please the band because they couldn’t get the mix correct onstage.

I was also fired one night by Axl.

Axl and I were very close on the road. We basically lived with each other 24/7 for at least three years. I knew
everything
about him, and he knew
everything
about me. Yes, he was my boss, but we became very good friends, and remain friends to this day.

But in the heat of the moment, in the heat of a concert in front of 80,000 people, things can go wrong and someone has to take the blame.

And one night it was me.

Axl lost his place in a song. I think it was “You Could Be Mine.”

I had the song up on his teleprompter, and everything was going smoothly. He sang the first verse and the chorus.

I scrolled down. All good.

But all of a sudden he started singing the first verse of the song again, and because it probably didn’t feel right to him, he looked down at the monitor, and saw that I had completely different words on the screen than what he was singing. I was in the second verse. So, he continued singing the first-verse words, throwing in a few words of the second verse just because.

He became totally confused.

While he was singing, in full view of the crowd, he peeked into my little window, and said, “What verse are we in?”

I said, “Second verse, just do those words on the screen.”

“I just sang those words.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you sang the first verse twice.”

And with that, in the heat of the moment, he said, “Screw you, you’re fired.”

Up to that point Axl had never gotten mad at me. He got pissed at other people for things that went wrong, but he had never been pissed at me.

Apparently, I skipped right over pissed, and went right into FIRED mode.

So I left. At that point there was no one to run the teleprompter, and I knew that. Blake had already left, and I didn’t have another assistant yet. So for the rest of the concert that night there was no teleprompter. And the show went great, from what I heard.

I was pissed because I knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong. But Doug told me to go back to the hotel, and that it would all blow over.

I went back to the hotel and watched television.

To be honest, I was relieved for a while. The stress level on a tour like that takes its toll, and sometimes you needed a break.

So I just hung back in the room while everyone else was at the show, ordered room service, watched a movie, and relaxed.

It was awesome.

But I knew that Axl and I would talk, and I knew in my heart that everything would be fine.

And it was. Axl apologized for going off on me, I apologized for being right. We laughed and it was all good.

A few weeks later I hired another assistant, my best friend from California, Robert Finkelstein.

I had met Robert years before. We both worked as waiters at Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

I called him up and offered him the job and, of course, he was ecstatic. It’s not every day that you get a phone call where you’re asked to tour with one of the biggest bands in the history of rock.

I immediately told Robert that one of the jobs he needed to do right away was to run Axl’s teleprompter during the show. I told him it was easy, and that it would be the least stressful part of his day. He was all excited.

I told him to go out and buy every Guns N’ Roses CD, and to listen to all their songs, and to memorize them.

And he did.

But the first night he saw what I did on the teleprompter, he freaked out, just like I did, and he wanted no part of it. I told him that this was his gig, and that he had to do it. Now he was stressed, and I was going to be less stressed.

And that was good for me. Pay your dues, right?

So Robert took over the teleprompter position after about two weeks of training.

But just like it happened to me, Robert was fired one night for something to do with Axl’s clothes onstage, and I thought that I would have to run the teleprompter again.

After Robert was fired, John Reese felt that because Axl was so pissed that it would be a good idea for Robert to check into another hotel before he was sent home the next day.

But again, Axl was over it immediately after the show, and he asked me, “Where’s Robert?”

I told Axl that John had gotten Robert a room in another hotel, and that Robert thought he was being sent home the next day.

Tom Mayhue, Axl’s personal “roadie” and onstage technician, was in the dressing room with Axl and me. Tom was known for loving to play pranks on people, and decided that this would be a great opportunity.

Axl agreed.

And the “fun” began.

Tom called Robert and proceeded to tell him how pissed off Axl was, and that he has never seen Axl this pissed before, and that we’re going to be back in the hotel in five minutes, and that Axl is going to go off on him.

Robert hadn’t even started packing yet, and he didn’t know what hotel John was sending him to.

This went on for about fifteen minutes. Relentless.

And that’s what the tour was like. You had to be thick-skinned, or you’d be eaten up and spit out on a daily basis.

Tom let Robert off the hook, and Robert was welcomed back with open arms. Robert ended up finishing out the tour with me, and we both worked for Axl after the tour was over.

THE BANANA SPLIT THING

It wasn’t just Tom, everyone on the road loved to play pranks on each other, so I figured I would take my turn with Robert. I mean, what are friends for, right?

Remember, we all lived together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, so we were all really tight, and when a new person came along everyone was “on alert.” But since Robert was my friend he didn’t have it so bad with the rest of the entourage. It was just me he was really worried about.

One of the things I told Robert about was the so-called initiation process. I told Robert that whenever a new person joined the Guns N’ Roses entourage, there would be a time when he would have to deal with the “banana split thing.”

Of course Robert asked, “What the heck is the banana split thing?”

I told him, “At some point the band or the crew is going to tackle you backstage, or on the side of the stage, and they’re going to tie you up, and they’re going to bring you onstage, and in front of 80,000 people they’re going to take your pants down and they’re going to make a banana split in your ass.”

No response.

So I said, “I know, it’s horrible, but at least you get to tour with Guns N’ Roses, right?”

Robert came alive and said, “Dude, you’re not going to let them do that to me, right? Did they do it to you?”

“Not yet. But, I think it’s because Blake left, and they didn’t want to risk losing me if I freaked out, so I think I got lucky. But everyone else pretty much had it done to them.”

Again, no response. Just sheer terror in my poor buddy’s face.

Now, most people would have let their friend off the hook by now, but not me. Not after I saw the fear on his face. It was just too good.

So I went back to doing what I was doing and added, “Don’t worry, maybe they’ll forget about it, and it won’t happen to you.” And I went back into my hotel room.

I looked through my hotel room door peephole and saw Robert run into his room, I’m sure with his butt-cheeks fully clenched.

I milked this for the next few days, telling Robert things like, “I think I heard one of the guys say ‘banana split tonight,’ or ‘Axl wants me to buy vanilla ice cream,’ and that’s weird because I know he hates vanilla ice cream.”