realized that; they’ve been around forever, they have their crew, and what they do is what they’ve done for years. We were an American upstart band, all frayed at the edges, fucking with their very established system. Duff and I respected that and we hung out one night with them, and played darts and forged a momentary kinship and that was great. It wasn’t hard: they were amazing at darts and we weren’t, and we were totally cool with losing to them.
For a short moment there, it seemed like we had found common ground between Maiden and us. But that didn’t last. A few dates later, Axl walked into the commissary, which was loaded with crew guys from both camps, and made a statement. The commissary is a kind of sacred place to bands on tour: it’s a neutral zone, it’s a shared area; if anything, it’s like the chow line in prison or the army. It is the one place on tour where everyone puts up with everyone. So we were halfway through this tour, and Axl walked up in there and fucking
There was already an uneasy tension between Maiden and Guns. This obviously sent the tension level to Yellow—Red being nuclear. The buzz went around the crew network, and from that point on, there was no socializing at all between the two bands. It was awkward but we were determined to hang in there and see it through.
The Maiden tour wound its way through Canada and headed south into Seattle and Northern California. I’m not sure, but I think that it was a Bay Area date when Axl refused to leave the hotel to do the gig. If I remember correctly, he was still in his room when the rest of us left for the venue, and Alan was with him. Not long after, we got the call that Axl wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t perform. The crowd awaiting Maiden was pretty large, so Alan insisted that Duff and I go out there and let them know that Axl was sick. When we first walked on stage, there was a ripple of excitement and cheering, until they heard what we had to say. It was a huge deal—it sucked; I wish that it didn’t have to happen. For better or for worse, when Duff and I delivered the news, it wasn’t well received —and that was the first time that we’d ever gotten such a reaction in our career. The crowd was upset to the point that it was obvious that they really did care—and we weren’t even the headliner. We hadn’t expected much from Maiden’s fans. We had no idea that we’d crossed over the way that we had. It was a nice surprise.
There were just a few Maiden dates for us to do in California to end the tour, and as much as none of us wanted to do them, we were all committed. There were two shows at Irvine Meadows, but Axl’s throat was such that he just couldn’t do those last two shows—there was just no way. I’m not sure how that went over, but it was registered early enough that Alan had time to scramble to fulfill the contract. In the end, L.A. Guns were hired to play the opening slot so long as enough of us showed up to jam with them. Duff, Izzy, Steven, and I showed up reluctantly—at best—to play at least a few songs. We got up there and our crew told me after that L.A. Guns had tried to sabotage our gear; they’d turned down all the amps to make us sound bad. I guess Tracii was worried that I was going to outplay him. Whatever it was, they tried to nip it in the bud, but our people caught it and fixed it. In any case, that show ended any sort of “civil” relationship between Tracii Guns and me.
THOSE SHOWS WERE THE LAST DATES ON our schedule. When we got back to L.A. I started hanging around with West Arkeen and there was a rumor and general worry in the band’s circle that I was back on smack. The truth is, I got high once and that was it. But their intentions were good: they were worried that I might do myself in if we had nothing to do. And they weren’t exactly wrong. I had a penchant for being unruly and they could never nail me down. With that in mind, Alan decided that Doug should take me to Hawaii to chill out for a bit.
Doug and I went to Maui and he’s a total golf head, so he was completely absorbed because we stayed at a premier resort that he picked for that very reason. I was supposed to soak up the sun and “relax”… it was a nightmare. The place was entirely bungalows; we had a rental car for the week and stocked our little huts with groceries. It was as expensive as a hotel but wasn’t like a hotel at all. We were scheduled for a two-week stay, but after five days I was ready to leave. I started calling Doug demanding plane tickets to somewhere more interesting. “I can fly anywhere, man!” I shouted. “Fuck this place, why am I here?”
“Slash, relax, it’s cool,” he said. “Okay, where do you want to go?”
“Anyplace!
In the end, instead of flying me out, he agreed to fly in this hot stripper I’d met in Toronto. Doug arranged it all and then I was happy. I was supposed to be chilling out, but I still got really drunk on that trip. One night in particular I tied one on with her and for some stupid reason I found it necessary to smash all of the glass louvers in the front door of our bungalow. I didn’t think about it at all; it seemed perfectly natural at the time. Suddenly there was a knock at the door that night as we sat on the couch and this enormous Samoan guy who was a guard at the resort was out there and he was not happy at all.
“Did you break all of this glass?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “So what?”
“You’ve got to clean it up,” he said ominously. “You’re going to clean up this mess.” He was right; morally, yes, I should have cleaned up the glass I’d broken. But I was paying nearly a grand a night just to be there, and at those rates, I wasn’t about to clean up anything.
“Why don’t
The guy stared me down for a second, then he grabbed me by the neck and slammed me up against the wall. I didn’t know what he had planned; all I knew is that I could hardly breathe and that my naked back was seriously feeling the stucco wall.
My girl went crazy and jumped on the guy’s back, totally raising Cain. It didn’t matter much; he was locked onto my neck like a pit bull: he swung at her with one arm, but the other one never loosened its grip on my throat. This whole scene was pretty loud; after a few minutes we attracted a crowd. This couple from next door came over, and when the Samoan guy saw them, it was like kryptonite: all of a sudden he straightened up and just ran away. The next day I tried to find him, but it was no use: he disappeared and never came back; he left his job and all of it behind, apparently.
WE DID A MINI-TOUR SHORTLY AFTER that: it was something that Alan booked to keep up our momentum. We played a theater in Phoenix with TSOL, and I remember that when I arrived there, everyone in our camp was happy and relieved to see me. I was suntanned, and Doug was very proud; according to him, he’d taken me down to Hawaii and straightened me out. I found that pretty funny.
We did the first gig and it was fine, but the second night Axl didn’t show up: he refused to leave his room. I don’t know how intensely Doug and Alan tried to get him out of there, and I still don’t understand why he wouldn’t come out, but it was a serious blow to morale in my mind. We in the band were beside ourselves; we were headlining and we couldn’t just forgive this. There aren’t too many reasons to miss going onstage—if there’s a death in the family, or you’re dead yourself, or sick or at best deathly ill, it’s excusable. Aside from that you crawl onstage if you have to. It set off a chain reaction—the floodgates of dysfunction were open from that point.
Steven found someone who was holding in Phoenix and I got loaded, he got loaded; I’m not sure what Izzy and Duff were doing, but Steve and I were three sheets to the wind. All that I remember of that night was that our hotel seemed cavernous; the distance from my room to Steven’s seemed like six miles. That hotel was dark and moody: there were a significant number of people who had gotten rooms there strictly to party after going to the show and they were in full swing, so there was a sinister, druggy vibe hanging about the place.
As the sun came up, Doug and Alan called a band meeting over breakfast. Duff, Izzy, Steven, and I filed into whatever restaurant and sat down with Alan and he delivered us the business. He told us that we were on the verge of ruining everything we’d worked so hard to achieve. It took all of my strength just to keep my head up for two seconds while Alan went on about how we couldn’t go on like this. We made a point of expressing our disappointment with Axl’s disregard and the fact that he didn’t even show up for the meeting. But we also knew that we couldn’t go out and just get a new singer. It seemed like Alan was with us and was going to talk to him. It didn’t make a difference, of course.
We returned to L.A. and canceled the rest of our tour. Next up: opening for Aerosmith. The controlled environment of being an opening band seemed like it would be good for us at the time. Their manager, Tim Collins, had spearheaded their sobriety and the band had spent millions getting themselves cleaned up and into a sober universe. And they’d hired an opening band that was falling apart at the seams. I can only imagine the lies that Alan came up with about how great we were doing to close that deal.
