Slash: The Autobiography

My job involved comparing the waitstaff ’s checks with the corresponding cashier’s receipts so that Marc could quickly and easily figure out who was stealing. It was so easy; a job that the biggest idiot could do. And it came with perks: I’d eat pastrami sandwiches and drink Cokes the whole time, while putting those papers in two piles, basically. My job did have its place: through my sorting, Marc caught more than a few staffers who had probably been robbing his family for years.

After I left, Marc willed my job to Ron Schneider, my bass player in Tidus Sloan. Our band still played together sometimes, but we weren’t taking things to the next level in any way—without a singer, we weren’t going to ever gig on the Strip.

My job at the Hollywood Music Store was one of a few that I saw as stepping-stones to playing guitar professionally, full-time; I wasn’t in it for the fame and girls, I wanted it for a much simpler reason: there wasn’t anything else in the world that I enjoyed more. At the music store I was a salesclerk who sold—and played—every guitar on the floor, but that was by no means my only area of expertise. I also sold all kinds of shit that I knew absolutely nothing about. I could fake my way through explaining the ins and outs of bass amps, but when it came to drum sets, drumheads, drumsticks, and the wide array of percussion instruments I sold, I’m still impressed by my ability to put a shine on a pile of bullshit.

I liked my job in the music store, but it was a voyeuristic purgatory. I’d spend every idle moment staring through the front windows at Cherokee Studios across the street. Cherokee was a bit of a recording destination in the early eighties: not that I was a huge admirer, but every time I’d see the Doobie Brothers roll in there to cut a song, I can’t say that I wasn’t totally fucking envious. I was, however, totally fucking starstruck the day that I happened to gaze out the window to see Ric Ocasek walking down the street, heading to Cherokee.

Around this time Steven Adler returned from his exile in the Valley and we picked up precisely where we left off. Each of us had girls in our lives and the four of us became an inseparable unit. My girlfriend Yvonne was a senior in high school when we met; she was a disciplined student by day and a rock chick by night, and she managed those dual identities very well. Yvonne was an amazing girl: she was very smart, very sexy, very outspoken, and very ambitious—today she is a high-powered lawyer in L.A. After she graduated, she enrolled as a psychology major at UCLA, and since by that point I had begun to more or less live with her, on my days off she’d somehow talk me into accompanying her to school at something like eight a.m. I’d spend the morning at the UCLA campus, sitting outside, smoking cigarettes, and watching the yuppies go by. Some days, whenever I found the course or professor interesting, I’d sit in on her larger lecture classes.

I don’t even remember her name anymore, but Steven’s girl at the time and Yvonne became fast friends because the four of us went out every single night. I didn’t even want to most of the time, but there we were, out there hitting the Strip—and I didn’t even like the music of the day at all, though I tried to be positive. The coup de grâce came when a very hyped, overrated “innovation” known as MTV first aired. I expected it to be like Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, the live, hour-long program that ran on Saturday nights from 1973 to 1981. That show spotlighted an artist a week and aired amazing performances by everyone from the Stones to the Eagles to the Sex Pistols to Sly and the Family Stone to comedians like Steve Martin.

MTV couldn’t have been more of a polar opposite: they showed Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me with Science,” the Police, and Pat Benatar over and over. I would literally wait for hours to see a good song; and usually it would be either Prince or Van Halen. I felt the same way when I explored Sunset at night: I saw a lot, I liked very little, and I was fucking bored the entire time.

Steven, on the other hand, was in his element. He was all about what was going down on the Strip, because it was his chance to realize his rock-star dreams. He’d never exhibited such ambition before: he did whatever it took to get into a club, to meet people, to make connections, and be in the mix to whatever degree possible. Steven posted up in the Rainbow parking lot every Friday and Saturday night, and he kept tabs on every band that ever played as often as he did everything but give his balls to get himself inside.

I rarely cared to go along, because I could never do what most often needed to be done: I was incapable of humiliating myself to go that extra mile. I don’t know why but I had a problem hanging around parking lots and stage doors, looking for any way in that might present itself. As a result I was so infrequently present that Steven’s never-ending morning-after tales of incredible bands and hot chicks eventually got to me. But I never saw any of those mythical creatures when I decided to accompany him (against my better judgment). I witnessed nothing but a string of evenings that never achieved epic status.

I thought to myself just how hard it must be to be a girl.

One night that stands out started with Steven and me borrowing my mom’s car (I was seventeen at the time, I believe) to go the Rainbow to mix it up.

We drove down to Hollywood and walked up to the club, and discovered that it was ladies’ night.

“That’s fuckin’ awesome!” Steven shouted.

I had gotten into the Rainbow for years, thanks to my fake ID and Steady, the club’s bouncer. He’s still there, and he still recognizes me. For whatever reason, though, Steady wasn’t having it on this particular night: he let Steven in and sent me packing.

“Naw, not you,” he said. “Not tonight, go home.”

“What?” I asked. I had no right to be indignant but I was anyway. “What do you mean? I’m here all the time, man.”

“Yeah, I don’t give a shit,” he said. “Get out of here, you’re not coming in tonight.”

I was so fucking pissed off. I had nowhere else to go, so I followed Steady’s orders and went home. I drowned my embarrassment in alcohol, and once I was good and drunk, I came up with the crazy idea to return to the Rainbow dressed as a girl. It made complete sense in that special way that drunken plans do: I’d show Steady—I’d get in the club for free thanks to ladies’ night, and then I’d fuck with Steven. Adler hit on every girl in sight, so I was sure that he’d hit on me long before he realized who I was.

My mom thought my plan was hilarious: she outfitted me with a skirt and fishnets, piled my hair up under a black beret, and did my makeup. I couldn’t wear her shoes, but the outfit worked—I looked like a chick …no—

I looked like a Rainbow chick. I drove back up to West Hollywood in my outfit; I parked a few blocks away on Doheny and walked to the club. I was both drunk and on a mission, so my inhibitions were nonexistent. I sauntered up to Steady and nearly laughed in his face when he waved me in with no pause for ID.

I was on top of the world; I had won—until I realized that Steven was nowhere to be found. It was like reaching the end of the roller coaster before the car had even gone over the first hill. The reality of the situation hit me square in the face: I was dressed as a girl, in the middle of the Rainbow. Once I saw the light, I did the only sensible thing—I left. On the long walk back to my mom’s car, I thought that every shout was directed at me, I thought every laugh was at my expense; I thought to myself just how hard it must be to be a girl.

STEVEN’S GIRLFRIEND RAN INTO TOMMY Lee out on the town one night and Tommy invited her down to Cherokee Studios to hang out and watch Mötley record Theatre of Pain, the follow-up to their breakthrough album, Shout at the Devil. Steve’s girl thought nothing of inviting Yvonne, Steven, and me; I guess she figured that Tommy’s invitation included a “plus three.” Steven and I should have known better. The four of us headed down there, all ready to hang out and watch the proceedings; when we arrived, we were informed, in no uncertain terms, that the girls could go inside—which they did—but Steven and I could not. It was suggested that we go home. We were fuming: we watched our girlfriends head into the studio, and spent the night in the two lounge chairs in the lobby trying to be cool while we discussed what they might be doing in there. It was not a good scene.

I’m not sure how, but somehow that experience didn’t scar me enough to desert the notion of getting a job at Cherokee. I had been pestering the studio’s day manager to hire me for an entire year. I’d stop by daily, like clockwork, during my lunch break at Hollywood Music across the street. I continued to do so, business as usual, but a few weeks later he finally gave in and offered me a job. In my mind, it was a milestone; I was now just one step away from becoming a professional musician. I was very wrong, but my plan was that once I worked in a studio, I would make connections because I would meet musicians and producers every single day. In my mind, a studio was the place to meet other players who took it seriously and by working there at the very least I’d get free recording time once I got a band together. With that kind of bullshit in my head, I quit Hollywood Music feeling like I’d just won the lottery.

I was hired at Cherokee to be a gofer to the engineers, no more no less. I didn’t care; I showed up to my first day, ready to run errands, take out the trash, whatever, whenever. Or so I thought: I visibly wilted when I discovered that my job for the week was to fetch whatever Mötley Crüe might need, day or night. Just over a week before, these same guys had refused to let me into the studio and might have had my girlfriend (I believed her when she said nothing happened, but still…), and now I would have to spend the next few weeks as their errand boy. Great…

The studio manager gave me one hundred bucks to fill Mötley’s first order, which I was sure was just the first of many: a magnum of Jack Daniel’s, a magnum of vodka, a few bags of chips, and a couple of cartons of cigarettes. I looked down at the money as I walked outside into the sunlight, debating the pros and cons of swallowing my pride. It was a really nice day. I stopped when I got to the liquor store to think about this for a minute.

I squinted up at the sky; I stared at the sidewalk, and then I started walking again—toward home. That was all she wrote for Cherokee and me: considering how many hours I’ve spent in professional recording facilities over the years since, it’s almost ridiculous that I’ve never again set foot in Cherokee Studios. At this point I have no intention of doing so—I owe those guys a hundred bucks. The one day I did spend there taught me an invaluable lesson, however: I needed to pave my own way into the music business. It didn’t matter that any idiot could fulfill the duties of fetching for Mötley Crüe, or anyone else for that matter—that job was something that I refused to do on principle. I’m glad that I did; it made it that much easier when Mötley hired us to open for them a few years later.

SO I’D DITCHED HOLLYWOOD MUSIC, thinking that my studio job would be the last day job I’d ever have before I made it. Hardly. Things weren’t looking too good for me at that point: I hadn’t graduated high school, I wasn’t going to college, and as far as I knew, I’d walked out on the only job that might have helped me on my way.

I was unemployed and undirected there for a while, which was a perfect moment for my mom to get me into school again—any school. God bless her perpetual commitment to getting me educated. This time she did the only thing that made sense—she knew that I loved music, so she enrolled me in some weird vocational music school.

I’m very disappointed in myself that I can’t remember the name of this place, though I do remember how unfocused our teachers were. I’m now pretty sure that my mom found out about this place via a flyer at the Laundromat. In any case, I enrolled, I showed up, and within weeks my teachers had me out in the field laying cables and putting filters (“gels” they’re called) over lights at various live venues. This place educated its students in the arts of sound and light engineering for live performance in a very hands-on fashion. There were about six of us in my class and almost immediately we were assisting techs on-site at venues like the Country Club, the FM Station, and various others in L.A. Actually it was a total sham: the school was clearly funded or run by the production company that put on these shows, so we, the students, were not only working for them for free, they had also taken our tuition money. Shady as it was, I did learn to run light and sound for live concerts. I enjoyed it, too, until the night I did the light show for a group of Duran Duran wannabes called Bang Bang. I realized two things as I watched their set: 1) it wasn’t possible for a music performance to be more ridiculous, and 2) this sound-and-light gig was taking me nowhere fast.

I WAS DESPERATE TO BE IN A BAND; SO I combed the ads in The Recycler—L.A.’s free musicians’ paper—every week, looking for an invitation to something that appealed to me. For the most part it was futile: the ads were nothing but shredders seeking shredders. But one week, I saw an ad that intrigued me: it was a singer and guitarist looking for a fellow guitarist in the vein of Aerosmith and Hanoi Rocks. And more important, it expressly stated that “no beards or mustaches” need apply.

I called the number in the ad and made arrangements to meet them at this guesthouse that they were renting on some street up in Laurel Canyon. I showed up there with a girl that I was dating and recognized Izzy immediately from the day he came into the music store with my Aerosmith drawing. I then realized that the other guy must be that high-pitched singer I’d heard on the tape. I thought, Cool, this might actually go somewhere. Their little shack was more like a closet: there was room enough for a bed, with space to sit on the floor in front of it, and room enough for a TV—which was the only source of light in there.

I talked to Izzy for a while, but Axl never got off the phone, though he nodded his head in acknowledgment when I came into the room. At the time I thought it was rude, but now that I know him I understand that wasn’t the case. When Axl gets into a conversation, there’s no stopping him. In Guns, we used to call it a Twain Wreck: when Axl started telling a story, he was as long-winded as Mark Twain. That first meeting, though, was pretty uneventful: either they’d decided that they were no longer interested in a second guitar player or I just didn’t look the part. Whatever the problem was, it went nowhere at all.

THE MINUTE STEVEN GOT BACK TO HOLLYWOOD, he proudly informed me that he’d learned to play drums at his mom’s house out there in the Valley, which I am sure contributed to his being kicked out again. Steven was ready to start our band, even though at the time I was still halfheartedly playing with Tidus Sloan and answering the odd ad in the paper looking for a guitar player. I didn’t take him seriously; to me Steve was my social director—and a bit of a nuisance: he started coming to Tidus Sloan rehearsals, and every chance he got, he insisted that he was a better drummer than Adam Greenberg. When I eventually found myself without a band, Steve had annoyed me so much that I wasn’t even willing to watch him play, let alone play with him.

Steve’s grandmother had given him her old blue Gremlin; a car that looks exactly like it sounds—stout and boxy. Apparently, every day, since he couldn’t practice in his grandmother’s house, he’d been loading his drum kit into this thing and driving out to the public park on Pico across the street from Twentieth Century-Fox studios that includes a swimming pool and a golf course. I knew it well; I used to play soccer there when I was nine. As weird as it was, Steven would set up his drums next to a section of the walking path and just practice all afternoon and evening. I’m sure the seniors, joggers, ducks, and dog walkers were happy about it; a blond rock kid with teased-out hair playing a full-size double-bass-drum metal kit as hard as he can is bound to be a crowd pleaser in any setting.

I eventually agreed to check him out, though I continued to wonder what the hell I was thinking as I drove out to meet him. It was completely dark when I got there. I parked next to his car and wandered out to the jogging path and there he was, drumming away in the dark. He was back-lit by the distant floodlights, while the huge expanse of the park and the golf course loomed behind him. It was a very weird scene. I took that in for a while before I even paid attention to his playing. But once I did, I forgot about the backdrop. Sitting there in the dark, watching Steven play, I wasn’t convinced of his abilities, but I was satisfied. Besides, I didn’t have a better option open to me anyway.

STEVEN AND I WERE IN A SITUATION that was familiar and unwelcome—we were looking for a singer, and this time, a bass player as well. Steven was an asset in that regard, because he knew all the players: he was out so much that he had seen nearly every band there was to see in the L.A. rock scene at the time. Steven was also up on the gossip: once Mötley Crüe took off, Steve heard that Lizzy Grey, Nikki Sixx’s cofounder in London, intended to put that band back together. That was huge—Steven and I had seen London when we were younger and they blew our minds. Izzy Stradlin was in that second version of London, but once he left, things fell apart a bit and there was a vacancy for a guitar player and a drummer. Steve and I auditioned for them at the space where the legendary funk band War used to rehearse and record on Sunset, down the street from Denny’s. By this time that spot was nothing but a bombed-out hovel; today it’s where Guitar Center Hollywood is, by the way.

So we rehearsed there with London for four days; we learned a ton of their songs, and even though it was a step up from nowhere, nothing ever came of it. If anything, the experience was interesting because I saw firsthand just how pompous those who believe themselves to be rock stars can be. The guys in London behaved like they were larger-than-life, as if Steven and me and everyone else in the world existed on the other side of an invisible fence. It took me back to my childhood and all of the rock stars that I’d met back then through my parents. Growing up around my mom and dad’s clients and friends, I’d seen it all and had learned how to act and how not to act. I’d seen real rock stars throw temper tantrums and watched my mom deal with them. I’d learned through observation just how delicately to treat those personality types.

At the time I thought the guys in London were worldly and I was intimidated and impressed. Not so much now. I saw the guy who was singing for them at that time on the street in early 2007 while I was driving to the studio to record with Velvet Revolver. There he was, cruising down Sunset Boulevard wearing the same getup, still looking for a gig.

After that fruitless endeavor, Steven and I struck out on our own. We needed a bass player and a singer, but we figured we’d go about things logically and land ourselves a bassist first so that when we began auditioning singers, we’d actually have a whole band for them to sing over. We took out an ad in The Recycler; it was in the “Seeking” section, and it went something like this:

Bass player needed for band influenced by Aerosmith, Alice Cooper. Call Slash.

We got a few calls, but the only guy we wanted to meet was someone named Duff. He’d just moved out from Seattle and he sounded cool on the phone, so I told him to meet us at Canter’s Deli at eight p.m. Steven and I got a corner booth right near the front; we had our girls with us—my girlfriend Yvonne had a big bottle of vodka in a brown paper bag in her purse. She was the one who introduced me to vodka, actually; before I met her, I drank nothing but whiskey.

No one remotely resembling a musician came into Canter’s for a long while and the girls were definitely drunk when Duff did show up. I think the four of us were debating what he might look like when this bone-skinny, six-foot-plus guy with short spiked blond hair rolled in wearing a Sid Vicious–style chain and padlock around his neck, combat boots, and a red-and-black leather trench coat in spite of the seventy-five-degree weather. No one had predicted that. I kicked Steven and hushed the girls.

“Check it out,” I said. “This has to be him.”

Duff had been in a series of punk-rock bands in Seattle: the seminal but mostly overlooked outfit the Fartz, for whom he’d played guitar, the legendary pre-grunge power quartet the Fastbacks (drums), and a few others. Just before moving down to L.A., he had taken up bass. Duff was as musically versatile as he was driven: he didn’t leave Seattle because he wasn’t creatively satisfied; he left Seattle because he knew that the scene (at that time, at least) was a losing proposition and he wanted to make it. He knew that Los Angeles was the West Coast music capital, so without a plan and with no friends waiting to take him in, he packed up his beat-up red Chevy Nova and drove down to L.A. to make a name for himself. I respected him immediately for his devotion: he and I shared a similar work ethic. It established a kinship between us right away that hasn’t faltered at all over all of these years.

“So you’re Slash,” Duff said as he squeezed himself in beside me in our booth at Canter’s. “You’re not what I expected at all.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Well, what were you expecting?”

“With a name like Slash, I thought you’d be much scarier, man,” he said. Steven and the girls and all laughed. “I’m not even kidding, I expected you to be some kind of punk-rock psychopath with a name like that.”

“Oh yeah?” I said smirking. We shared a laugh.

If that hadn’t broken the ice, my girlfriend Yvonne made sure to smash it a few minutes later. We’d sort of settled into small talk: Duff was getting to know us and vice versa, when, apropos of nothing, Yvonne leaned across me and put her hand on Duff ’s shoulder.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” she said, louder than necessary.