Welcome to My Jungle (23 page)

Steven started singing “Train Kept A-Rollin’” a cappella, and it sounded great.

I was such an Aerosmith fan, and for the first time on tour I actually felt like one of the Guns N’ Roses fans that I encountered every day. I was so entranced by listening to his amazing voice, that I forgot to continue writing after about the third word of the song.

He finished the first verse, and he asked, “Did you get all that?”

I looked down at the three words on my pad of paper and told him, “I’m a slow writer. I got ‘Train Kept A’ … and then I lost you.”

Now I’m thinking he’s going to quickly get impatient real soon, but instead he said, “Okay, here it is again.”

And he started singing the song again from the beginning.

This time I frantically wrote down the words as best I could, all the time thinking:
I’m getting a free concert, in a five-star hotel room, in Paris, from the lead singer of Aerosmith
. And it all hit me at once:
This is awesome!
And:
How in the hell did I get here? How did all this happen?

And while I wrote the words down, I looked back on the day, nine years before, when Robert Street asked me if I wanted to go on tour with Air Supply. The day that changed my life forever, and I thanked God at that moment for all the blessings in my life.

All in all, Steven Tyler sang the words to “Train Kept A-Rollin’” about eight times until I had the entire song on paper.

Steven Tyler is a true rock star. But more than that, Steven Tyler is a great person, one of the best, if not the best, people I met on the road while touring with Air Supply and Guns N’ Roses.

And this is why I believe that he remains successful to this day—twenty-two years later. Great things happen to great people.

Steven, thank you for the memory.

UFO NICK

Most of the celebrities I met on tour were really nice and very respectful. Most of them really wanted to meet Axl Rose, and I had the pleasure of being the guy they had to see first to see if Axl wanted to meet them. So, most of the celebrities were really nice to me, probably because they felt they needed to suck up to me to meet Axl. Unless he was sick, Axl agreed to meet pretty much every celebrity that came backstage.

But this is a different kind of star story.

We were in Las Vegas, and Earl, Blake, Axl, and I were staying in the MGM Grand bungalows behind the MGM Grand Hotel on the Strip. We each had our own bungalow—first class all the way. And even though we had these great rooms, we were bored again.

We were tired from traveling, and we had no desire to gamble because Axl would just be prodded there anyway, so we were stuck, as usual, in our hotel bungalows.

Then, out of nowhere, Axl said, “Let’s get UFO Nick.”

We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. We had no idea who UFO Nick was.

“UFO Nick?” I asked.

Axl had learned that there was some guy in Las Vegas that was apparently abducted by aliens and that he still has a direct link to them.

We met all kinds of people on the road, and we heard all kinds of weird stories, but this UFO guy intrigued Axl so much that he wanted me to get him.

This was typical Axl. All I had to go on was a name. I get no other information—no telephone number, no address, no hint of who he is or where he might be. Just “UFO Nick” in Las Vegas.

Just like in Czechoslovakia: “Craig, find me an English-speaking ear, nose, and throat doctor in thirty minutes.”

“Okay.”

And I did.

I remember Axl asking Robert, the day before our show in Istanbul, Turkey, that he wanted Classic Cokes in his dressing room the next night. This was when Coca-Cola was trying out New Coke. However, Axl loved Classic Coke, but everyone was supplying New Cokes backstage.

So Axl told Robert to get him a six pack of Classic Coke for the show the next night. Well, no one in the entire city of Istanbul had Classic Coke, so we had to fly out some Classic Coke from the United States by the next day. We flew in cans of Coke all over the world.

And that’s what we did, every day.

We would do the research, and we would be very resourceful, and we would use money and our connections in each city to get things done, fast.

Well, somehow I found a number for a guy named Nick who was known in the area as UFO Nick and dialed it, and sure enough a guy named UFO Nick answered the phone, and yes, he was the one abducted by aliens.

Amazing.

I told him that Axl Rose wanted to hear his story, and he immediately said he was a fan and that he would be there that night.

Anything you want you can get, especially if you’re working for Axl Rose.

So UFO Nick arrives that evening, just as it’s getting dark. UFO Nick was a regular-looking guy that seemed very nice right away.

He was very excited to meet Axl.

The bungalows at the MGM are kind of in a U shape, creating a middle courtyard grassy area. That’s where we all congregated to watch UFO Nick perform his “magic.”

It was a beautiful night, and tons of bright stars filled the sky.

Or so we thought.

Nick started telling the story of how he was abducted by aliens, and that because he lived among them for a while, he had a direct link to them. He added that they follow his every move, and that they continually watch him on monitors on their spaceships because they love to study humans. He added that their spaceships are all hovering over earth at all times, “just in case.”

We never asked, “Just in case what?” Probably because we didn’t really want to know the answer.

So, we’re all listening to this ridiculous story, but we’re all being respectful because he seemed like a nice guy, and he was really good at telling a story. We’re all nodding, as if we were interested in what he’s saying, and we’re all looking as if we’re hanging on his every word. Even Axl is really “faking” his interest.

UFO Nick finished by telling us how he was probed and that he has a chip installed somewhere in his body—the typical alien stuff.

And with that, UFO Nick asked, “Are you ready?”

We all nodded in agreement, figuring the faster we agreed, the faster we could get back to our bungalows.

UFO Nick told us to look up in the sky and to look at all the “stars” in the sky.

“Yes, beautiful stars out tonight, Nick,” I quipped.

“Well, Craig, not all of the bright lights you see in the sky are stars.”
What are they, UFO Nick?
I thought to myself. “Some of those bright sparkles in the sky aren’t stars at all, but in fact, they are alien spaceships.”

We all just smiled, continuing to play along.

UFO Nick added, “Now, I’m going to have one of the spaceships move. Watch closely.”

UFO Nick pointed up to the sky, and picked out one star and said, “You see that ‘star’ just to the right of that really bright star?”

“Yes,” we all said in unison.

“Watch this.”

While still pointing to the “star” he moved his index finger to the left, and this is going to sound crazy, but the “star” began to move, following the path of his index finger.

“Do you see the red trail?” he asked.

And sure enough, we saw a little red tail trailing the “star” while it moved. We all looked at each other in disbelief.

UFO Nick smiled.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

None of us knew what to say. We were stunned.

As God as my witness, this “star” moved. And we looked at each other like what the hell was that?

We were all thinking that this was some elaborate Las Vegas light show.

We continued to watch him move “star” after “star.” Axl was eating this up. How could he not, we were now believers as well, as crazy as that sounds.

And then UFO Nick added this little nugget, “Now that you’re with me, you’re now on their monitors as well, and you can do this for your friends, because they are now tracking you guys as well.”

What?
I thought to myself. “I’m being tracked?” I said.

“Yup,” Nick said enthusiastically.

As if this was a positive.

I thought to myself that I didn’t want to be tracked by spaceships, and then I came to my senses and realized that this was ridiculous. But then I looked up to the sky and he’s moving these damn “spaceships” everywhere.

This went on for a little while, and after he was done, UFO Nick rode off into the sunset, and we never saw him again.

We all talked to each other about what we had just witnessed, and we agreed not to mention this to anyone else in the band or the entourage until we figured out exactly what had just happened.

A few months later, we were in Santiago, Chile, hanging by the pool one night. On one side of me was Axl, and on the other side of me, in a lounge chair of his own, was Carlos Santana.

We were talking about the music business dating back to when Santana got in it, and out of nowhere Axl said, “Carlos, let me show you something interesting.” And yes, you guessed it, Axl started pointing at the sky. And you can guess the rest.

I’m here to tell you that Axl pointed to the sky and started moving stars with little red trails shooting out.

I remember Carlos Santana looking up at the sky, and just saying, “Hmmm.”

That’s it. He seemed very interested, but just said, “Hmmm.”

It gets worse. Earlier I shared about how Natasha and I met because James Hetfield of Metallica got burned badly at a show in Montreal, and because of that Natasha and I eventually got married.

On my second date with Natasha, I did the “star” thing for her. And sure enough, the star I pointed at started to move.

Within minutes, everyone in the restaurant was looking at me as if I were nuts. And Natasha immediately thought I was crazy as well, and she was tempted to climb out the bathroom window to get away from me.

Luckily for me, she came back.

But this happened time after time. Every time I showed someone the “stars,” they moved.

Over the years I have come up with a theory on how this works, because I refuse to believe, in my now completely sober mind, that there are spaceships tracking human beings at all times. Bottom line: I think it’s an optical illusion.

When you stare at a specific star (light) for a period of time, a little red edge appears. And if you move your index finger over to the left or to the right, our brains, because the sky is so vast, think the star is actually moving. But it’s really not. It just looks like it does for a quick second or two.

Me and Slash at Axl’s Halloween party at his home in Malibu. I had knee surgery that morning, but there was no way I was going to miss that party. I think I dressed as an old man because I was in a wheelchair and on crutches
.

And although this is what I believe now, I have a little piece in me that still might believe that UFO Nick might have actually been abducted, because his “stars” moved way more than our “stars” did.

I haven’t seen or heard from UFO Nick since that day in Las Vegas, but if you’re ever in Vegas, look him up. He wasn’t really that hard for me to find. But if you do have trouble finding him, just ask any alien where he is, because remember, they’re tracking him every day.

Axl (corn) and me at one of his “famous” Halloween parties at his home in Malibu, CA.