Slash

became my only guitar for a while, and has become my mainstay in the studio ever since. It has sounded different on every record I’ve done, but it is the same exact guitar. It just goes to show how volatile recording is: the size and shape of a room, the soundboard used in recording, as well as the molecular quality of the air all play a part— humidity and temperature affect a recording tremendously. Where the guitar and amp is placed, how it is miked; all of these things can drastically influence the result.

I didn’t know any of that at the time, but I am glad that we didn’t move the amp or guitar one inch for the Appetite sessions—it was just fine where it was. But now I understand why I have never been able to re-create my exact sound on that record ever since. It is more than just setting up the same equipment in the same booth, because believe me many have tried. There has been a lot of interest in the equipment and the exact technical specs of the amp that I used for Appetite but it can never be replicated. I’ve actually played a modified Marshall amp that is supposedly identical, but even with that original guitar, it didn’t sound the same. It couldn’t—because I wasn’t in the same studio under the same conditions. Those sessions were one of a kind.

I DID ABOUT A SONG A DAY; I’D SHOW up, make myself a coffee and Jack Daniel’s—or was it a Jack Daniel’s and coffee?—and get to work. Izzy’s stuff was one take—there was no way he was going to come down and rerecord it, and he didn’t have to: his playing is so here and there, just the essence of great rhythm guitar, that spending too much time on it, or recording it on top of the live track, is just silly. Basically, what Izzy played was the simple heart of the songs, no matter who wrote them; if everything else was taken off one of our songs, you’d hear the grace of Izzy’s simple scratch rhythms.

As a unit, the entire band had a simple but effective way of playing together. Steven would watch my left foot to determine the tempo, and he’d look to Duff to cue every drum and bass fill. Those two had a really cohesive relationship—they would communicate the changes and subtleties of every single song through eye contact. Meanwhile, Izzy played all around the riffs that I’d be playing beside Duff: he and I would do Led Zeppelin–style single-note riffs while Izzy brought simple chord patterns that fell around the beat instead of on it. For every downbeat, Izzy had an upbeat. It made for a pretty complex-sounding rock-and-roll band, but at its core it was very simply executed.

The first song I worked on in the studio with my new rig was “Think About You” and the very last was “Paradise City.” Duff came down there and hung out every day, because now that I wasn’t doing dope, I’d switched to booze again with heartfelt abandon, so he and I were drinking buddies. I would pick Duff up at the apartment that he shared with Katerina on Crescent Heights and he and I would show up at the studio around noon. He’d hang out, listening in until I wrapped it up sometime in the evening, then we’d go out looking for trouble in Hollywood every single night. At the time, trouble was most easily found at the Cathouse.

The Cathouse inhabited the building that used to be Osco’s, the ridiculous disco that was featured in the movie Thank God It’s Friday. I remember Osco’s being the spot for all of those “crazy” people when I was a kid, but I never went in there. It was enough for me to see it from across the street: all of their matching slacks and coats, silk shirts and thin belts, shiny shoes and flashy girls in red, blue, or yellow silky dresses, bouncing all around. By then the space looked different, and now it was ours; it more or less became our club, though we didn’t realize it at first. It was as if we already had a table there in the VIP, but nobody had told us so.

We were sort of shy and meek when we first started hanging out there until we realized how much the owner, Riki Rachtman, really wanted us there. Once we discovered that we could get away with anything at that place, we exchanged shy and meek for crazy and out of control; it was as if we’d been given psycho carte blanche. I was known to break a beer bottle over my head for no reason when the mood caught me and I thoroughly enjoyed stair-diving headfirst down the long flight of stairs leading up into the Cathouse, so long as it was packed with people filing in. Whenever I watch Jackass it makes me nervous. I never put a fishhook through my cheek but I definitely had that mentality back then.

I remember one night Mike Clink politely asking if he could come down and hang out with us, and he showed up on a first date with the girl that he eventually married. I did my best to behave and make conversation, but as I walked away from them, in a very Sid Vicious type of move, I stumbled into a huge plate-glass window, which shattered all over me.

^{Guns rocks the Cathouse.}

The Cathouse became our haven during the final stages of making the record. I got to know Nikki Sixx really well at the Cathouse, because he was there a lot. I ran into Yvonne on occasion over there, too. It was such a spot for us that Axl even went, which always brought us added attention—even we’d get excited because he didn’t often hang out with us at the clubs and bars. Duff, Izzy, and I were gutter rats, but Axl was more sophisticated, and always brought a different edge to the proceedings. At the very least, he usually wasn’t passing out like we were.

Almost every night after leaving the Cathouse, I ended up at someone’s house—usually someone I didn’t know. Most often, they were girls, and if I was fortunate, they’d let me shower there in the morning before I headed out in the rental van to pick up Duff on my way to the studio to work on the next song. That’s the way it went—I had no money at the time but I got by. I got lunch on the studio budget—it was always Taco Bell. Duff and I were so broke that before we headed to the Cathouse to scam free drinks all night, we’d head to McDonald’s for dinner, where we’d use these game coupons to cobble together a meal. If you bought anything you’d get one of these scratch-off tickets and receive free fries or a free Coke or a hamburger. There was some kind of McRib promotion called Mac the Knife, so I developed a taste for those. We’d pool our resources into a meal, then whip back over the hill into Hollywood.

Another pastime of mine was taking my frustrations out on the rental vans that Alan provided for us. There was no rhyme or reason, I’d just kick the windows out, break the mirrors—anything glass was in danger. I drove one of them through an industrial-strength fence and destroyed both the fence and the van’s front end. I treated those things as if they were battering rams. I would walk up to a brand-new one and smash the headlights out before I even got behind the wheel. One night I drove this girl home, all the way up to Edinburgh and Santa Monica, thinking I was getting some for sure. The next thing I knew it was eight a.m. and I was double-parked, slumped over the wheel, with the lights on and the passenger door wide open. Apparently she’d left me there passed out at the wheel. It was hilarious—only because I didn’t get caught. I remember waking up, taking stock of the situation, and hightailing it out of there. I can’t imagine how the fuck I got away with that.

One of those vans is immortalized in a great picture that Robert John took of me. It features the one other guitar that I used on Appetite—a 1960-something Gibson SG that I managed to borrow from Howie at Guitars R Us, that sounded great once I got it in the studio. It was really heavy-sounding, so I used it on “My Michelle.” Anyway, that afternoon I decided to stick it through the hole I’d kicked in the windshield (from the inside) of the van I was driving at the time strictly for Robert’s entertainment.

My van abuse demanded that we became familiar with a few different rental companies and a few different locations; Hertz, Budget, Avis, we knew every franchise within a five-mile radius. What I would do is pick up the van, destroy it over the course of two or more days, then return it in the middle of the night—I’d just leave it in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition. Then I’d go to a different location and pick up a new one. Eventually Alan had to take me aside.

“I got a call from Budget,” he said. He was pissed off. “The manager of the location insisted that I come down there. I kept asking why and he said that I needed to see the damage that had been done to the van to understand the scope of the problem. And I have to say that he was right.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, almost proud. “Was it really bad?”

“It was but that wasn’t all,” he said. “The manager chewed me out for an hour as he showed me every inch of damage that had been done to the van. Then he asked me if I had any idea what kind of psychopathic horrible people I was involved with. After seeing that, I’m not sure that I do.”

What can I say? Those vans were mobile hotel rooms—they got a lot of wear and tear. At the time I didn’t even have a hotel room: all of my belongings were in an empty storage room at Take 1. Every day when I’d return from whatever I’d gotten into in Hollywood the night before, I’d head in there to change my clothes; I’d be happier if I’d managed to get a shower wherever I’d crashed. That place was the biggest closet I’ve ever had—it is actually where we took the photo on the back cover of Appetite. I loved it in there; it was all nice