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Authors: Craig Duswalt

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Rich & Famous

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BOOK: Welcome to My Jungle
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Robert frantically, and very carefully, fixed the leak in the bag before he had to go through customs to board the plane.

As Axl and I got through customs unscathed, I turned to see Robert going back over his trail, shuffling his two feet over the white powder trail, blending it into the carpet. It was quite the dance.

I kept thinking of the movie
Midnight Express
and thought that Robert might get to experience that. But God was shining on us that day because Robert made it through customs and onto the plane. Disaster averted.

But those damn bags of white powder almost came back to haunt us again in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the last two days of the Use Your Illusion tour.

AUTOGRAPHS AT CUSTOMS

When we traveled abroad, between countries, we flew on the
MGM Grand
. And because the fan base overseas was absolutely crazy, airport personnel preferred that Guns N’ Roses didn’t stroll through their airports and go through customs the “regular” way. Most of the time the customs officers boarded the plane as soon as we arrived at the gate. They scanned the plane, did a quick head count, and stamped our passports.

Now, that’s how to travel overseas.

But when we had to fly commercially to foreign countries, it became an epic pain in the ass.

Case in point.

Pretty much every time Axl went through customs he was detained. Robert and I were let through pretty easily. Earl, probably because he was so big and looked mean (although he’s a teddy bear), got through easily as well. But Axl, the slightest built of all of us, with the least-threatening demeanor, got stopped pretty much all the time.

I’ve witnessed it—he didn’t act like a pompous ass—in fact he was always on his best behavior, because he wanted to get through without being detained.

The customs officials not only asked him a million questions at their podium, but also they sometimes asked him to step aside and eventually brought him to “the room.”

I never went with Axl into “the room,” but I’m pretty sure he was never strip searched while I was on tour. But he was asked numerous questions about everything.

Here’s the deal. They detained Axl, asked him tons of questions, and then started trying to be his friend.

Axl
hated
this.

To make matters worse, after they tried to joke around with him for about twenty minutes—with him playing along so it would go faster—they had the audacity to ask for his autograph.

This happened in London after the Freddie Mercury Tribute. I’m not sure if it was at customs (I’m pretty sure it was) or whether it was just a security guard who wanted to meet Axl, but they singled him out again, and after he was detained for a little while Axl released a press statement that went something like this: “Having just given what I consider to be the best performance I am capable of at this point in my career, I totally understand why someone in the UK would want to needlessly harass me in this way.”

Axl continued, “I don’t expect to be treated any differently from anyone else traveling in and out of Britain and I understand these people have a job to do. However, to be singled out by someone who just wants to score a few points and have a story to tell his friends over a beer is really out of order.”

And that pretty much sums it up right there.

Don’t get me wrong, fame has its perks. Amazing perks. But when it gets to the point where you can’t eat at a restaurant without someone taking your picture while your mouth is full, where you can’t go to a public event without everyone telling you how wonderful you are, and not letting you enjoy the event, and where you cannot travel without getting detained so they can tell their friends they met Axl Rose, it gets old very fast.

This is why you see rock stars in the news for “being bad” in public. There are days when they just want to be left alone, and it’s not possible.

So when people tell me that they want to be famous I always say, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

LIMO ACCIDENTS

One of the perks of traveling with Guns N’ Roses was that we traveled in limousines pretty much all the time. Big limousines.

Another perk is that you get to travel the world. Between Air Supply and Guns N’ Roses I have toured the world eight times. I’ve been on every continent except Antarctica, and to every state in the United States except Alaska.

Pretty cool for a normal kid from Deer Park, New York.

And sometimes you get to go to some really cool places. Places that you might not ever take your family on a vacation, but that you’re so glad you’re seeing—places like Prague, Czechoslovakia, which is an absolutely beautiful and interesting city. When we arrived there I thought to myself that I really wanted to see this beautiful city because I had a feeling I would never come back again. You see, we weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms. We had to switch hotels because our original hotel found out we were Guns N’ Roses, and not the John Reese Group, as noted on the reservation. Our booking agent always booked Guns N’ Roses under our tour manager’s name—the John Reese Group—for obvious reasons. When I went on trips with Axl, we always booked as the Craig Duswalt Group.

Most times, when the band arrived, it was the hotel staff who realized that we were Guns N’ Roses. And they were very excited to see and meet the band. Plus, it’s usually great publicity for a hotel to put up a famous band.

But not in Czechoslovakia. The hotel we booked did not want Guns N’ Roses to stay in their hotel. I guess they heard the stories of trashed hotel rooms and flying television sets. Not that any of those things ever happened (while I was looking). But we finally got booked into another hotel and all was good.

Anyway, I got the chance to explore Prague because Axl was busy and didn’t need me around for a few hours. I jumped on the opportunity. I called my buddy Kirt Klingerman, who worked as an assistant to Doug Goldstein, and asked him if he wanted to check out the city.

We met in the lobby and had every intention of taking a taxi around town. But as we walked out the front door of the hotel, we saw a few limos sitting in the driveway, each with a limo driver standing next to the car. Now Kirt and I knew there was no show that night, so we decided it would be okay to take one of the limos for ourselves.

We told the driver that we wanted to tour the city, and without questioning who we were he opened the back door for us and we jumped in. He spoke broken English and understood most of what we said. And we were off.

“That was easy,” I said.

The driver pointed out some buildings of interest, and we took some really cool pictures. After about an hour or two of driving around and checking out some amazing places on foot, Kirt and I decided to head back to the hotel. All the while, every time we got out of the limo, people looked at us to try to figure out who we were. Obviously they never did, because we weren’t anyone famous.

We jumped back into the limo and told the driver to take us back to the hotel. He seemed to slur his words a little as he confirmed our request.

And with that, he pulled out of his parking spot along the street curb, and slammed right into the back of a Czech police car.

I exclaimed, “Damn, he just hit a cop,” stating the obvious.

The cop got out of his car, and walked over to our limo. He looked pissed.

Our limo driver said, “Stay here,” and got out of the limo.

As if we were going anywhere. If we could’ve found a way to hide in the trunk we would have.

A discussion between our driver and the cop ensued, as we sat there trying to figure out how we’re going to get back to the hotel if the driver got arrested.

We were freaking out. As a foreigner, the last thing you want is to be involved in an accident with a police officer. So many things could go wrong. After a few minutes the driver got back in the limo, and we took off.

I asked, “Is everything okay?”

The driver said, “Not really.”

Kirt and I looked at each other, wondering if we were heading back to the hotel, or if the limo driver was instructed by the police officer to drive himself to the local jail and book himself. We made it back to the hotel, but over the next three days we never saw our driver. Maybe he really did get in trouble. But at least he got us back to our destination.

When I first started with Guns N’ Roses, Axl, Earl, Blake, and I were in a limo coming home from a concert in Boston, and it was snowing really hard. It was about two or three in the morning. We also had two female passengers with us. Not sure how they got there, they just kind of appeared.

The highway was very icy and the limo driver, while being very careful, was going about 50 mph. Suddenly we started swerving. And from my college days in Oswego, I happen to know that swerving on ice, on a freeway, is not good.

The limo driver lost control of the very long stretch limo, and we slammed sideways into the center divider. All of us went flying in the back of the limo because we weren’t wearing seat belts. But we weren’t done yet—we were still moving.

Now I’m not an expert on accidents, although I have been in a few, but time kind of stops when you’re in the middle of an accident.

We careened off the center divider, slid sideways back across the five lanes, and headed toward a ditch. What’s weird is that it probably took about three seconds to slide across the highway, but it seemed like five minutes. I remember looking out the window and how long it seemed I was waiting for the next impact. But then we hit the ditch and slid down a small embankment, and once again we were thrown around the back of the limo.

We finally came to a sudden stop.

Everyone asked one another if they were okay. I had a major pain in my left rib area, because I flew across the seat into Blake’s knee, but it was well worth it because one of the beautiful ladies landed face first into my lap.

I ended up breaking a rib and had to wear a sling for about two weeks. This was one way of not having to carry any extra luggage.

SHOTS FIRED: BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

On November 27, 1992, the day before my thirty-first birthday, we arrived in Bogotá, Colombia, from Venezuela. As we left Venezuela there apparently was a military coup and most of the stage equipment couldn’t get out of the country. I look back on this now, and I thank God that we made it out safely, because we found out later that we were actually in a lot of immediate danger and never knew it.

GNR was scheduled to perform two very large shows at El Campin Stadium. But because we didn’t have half of our equipment the production team had to decide whether to bring in new equipment from North America, or get their incarcerated cargo released from Venezuela. Both options were impossible for the first show on Saturday, so they decided to make Saturday tickets valid for Sunday and the two gigs were rolled into one. The band had wanted to play the second show on Monday, but because people had traveled long distances for the concerts, they felt that many couldn’t stay the extra two days.

Natasha, who was my fiancée at the time, was on the road with us in South America. And what an interesting first few days she had. She arrived in Caracas, Venezuela, and I met her at the airport. Unfortunately her luggage wasn’t there to greet me as well. Because we were on a tight schedule, she didn’t have time to go shopping for new clothes, so she lived out of her carry-on for the first two days. Her luggage arrived just in time to come with us to our next stop in Bogotá.

We arrived safely in Bogotá. As is policy with GNR, wives and girlfriends usually traveled in their own limo or an SUV, or in the case of Bogotá, an old school bus. Not exactly the first-class ride they were used to. Natasha was the only wife/girlfriend on the road with us at this time, so she rode the bus with Sabrina Okamoto, Axl’s masseuse, Amy, Axl’s sister, and a few other members of the crew.

As usual, I rode in the limo in front of them with Axl, Robert, and Earl.

As we left the airport in our cavalcade I kept looking to see if the bus was still behind us because the driver looked very suspect. He was probably a great guy, but he was carrying my precious cargo.

We started driving through the city streets, and about ten minutes into the ride I didn’t see the bus anymore.

I tried not to think anything of it. I was reasonably sure they were safe because we always had the highest security. But you just never know. And when I couldn’t see anyone behind us I thought I was just being paranoid.

Well, I wasn’t being paranoid. Something did go horribly wrong.

Our limo arrived at the hotel and I made sure Axl got up to his room safely, then I immediately headed back down to the lobby to wait for Natasha’s arrival. About fifteen minutes later their bus pulled up to the hotel.
Phew
. But as the bus got closer I could see that it looked a little different than it had about thirty minutes before. It had shattered windows and holes.

I took a closer look and because I have seen
Godfather
movies and
Scarface
, I realized that these were bullet holes. I panicked.

Thankfully, almost immediately, Natasha and everybody else got off the bus, laughing and giggling. They told us that they were shot at as they rode through the city streets, and that they all had to “hit the deck” while bullets pelted the bus. But they were fine. They were laughing because they were freaking out so much, and it was so insane that they just had to laugh.

No one knew why they were shot at or where the bullets came from. They all said it was very surreal. To the driver’s credit, he just kept driving, as if this was a common occurrence.

To say that they were shaken up is an understatement. Natasha and Sabrina were afraid the bus was going to stop, and if they weren’t killed, they thought they would be sold as sex slaves.

But, we’re all professionals, so we rose above it, and Guns N’ Roses went on and performed on that Saturday night, and it was an amazing concert. The people of Bogotá were amazing. Just wish we knew why someone decided to shoot at our bus.

BOOK: Welcome to My Jungle
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