and quiet and the only sanctuary I had then. The studio wouldn’t let me sleep there, unfortunately. They said that it was an insurance issue, but you know what? I never believed them.
There were only two things that I found difficult while recording my overdubs for
My other issue was recording “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Steven watched my foot to keep time; and for that song I’d count him in because my riff kicked off the proceedings. There was no high hat through the beginning and we hadn’t recorded a click track for it, so when I went in to do the overdubs it was a guessing game: I’d be sitting there anticipating the start of the song, hoping that in my mind I’d timed it right so that when I started playing, my timing was right. This was years before digital recording, so there was no signifier to guide me in any way. It took a while, it took many takes, but we got it in the end. Other than that, the album came together so quickly and naturally that it felt like it was meant to be. Obviously it was.
Once I was done at Take 1, I had to find somewhere else to stash my shit, and theoretically myself, so I shacked up with my friend Todd Crew of Jetboy, who had moved down to L.A. from San Francisco. He was living with his girlfriend, Girl—that was her name—and their roommate Samantha, who had the biggest set of tits that I’ve ever seen on a petite girl like herself; that was enough to inspire me to be a one-girl guy for a minute. The four of us had a blast and were a complete and utter spectacle: we went to the Cathouse every single night, just carousing and making a general nuisance of ourselves during the few weeks that Axl took to finish up his vocals.
ONCE THE RECORDING WAS DONE IT was time to get it mixed. Tom Zutaut took me to New York—it was my first time there—to introduce me to a few candidates as well as some East Coast industry folk. Tom loved to show off: he liked showing his talent the luxury of business class, and showing his talent how important he was in the industry—that was the motivation behind this trip as much as finding us a mixing team. I met Rick Rubin, who was just hitting it big with Run-DMC and Def Jam and his new signing, the Beastie Boys. Rick took us out to his favorite spot to eat, White Castle in Queens. Rick was great; we talked about all kinds of records that we liked, and just shot the shit, because he’d already passed on mixing us. A lot of people passed on mixing us, and once again —all of them regretted it later.
The pair that took us on in the end was Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, whom I met on that trip. We had Thompson and Barbiero mix “Mr. Brownstone” while we were there and we sent it back to the rest of the band. At the same time Alan Niven did a mix because he wanted a shot at doing the album. Alan’s version wasn’t bad—I remember that Izzy liked it a lot, but the other guys’ take was much more in-your-face. They had a tight midrange to their sound that fit our band perfectly. Theirs was ballsier and meaner; there was good interaction between the guitars, while Alan’s was more linear, two-dimensional, and hollow.
We set two weeks aside to mix the record and then Axl, Izzy, and I, along with Alan Niven and Tom Zutaut, returned to New York and stayed at the Parker Meridien in midtown while it got done. Tom had his own room, Izzy stayed with Alan, and Axl and I shared the other room. At the time I had a broken wrist and a cast on my arm; an injury I’d sustained during a recent trip to Seattle with Duff. We were partying at his friend Donner’s place, which was as rowdy as ever, and somewhere along the line, I met some girl, and while she was on top riding me, the record player started skipping. It was ruining the moment, so I punched the floor, a bit too hard, obviously, to get it to stop.
In any case, my cast didn’t stop me from trying to wrestle Alan to the ground and destroying our entire hotel room during one of our first evenings in New York. I don’t even remember how it started—I’m sure it was nothing more than my being fearless, and drunk, and Alan being a big bear of a guy that I wanted to tackle. I woke up with rug burns all over my face and chest—apparently I lost the match.
Our stripper friend Adrianna Smith made an appearance on that trip as well; she was on the East Coast visiting friends who lived in Alphabet City. It was good to have her there, because Adrianna was a fun-loving, high- spirited individual, but once Axl coaxed her into his bed, I had to put up with listening to them fuck all night in the room we were sharing. Adrianna is a very vocal individual so I opted to spend most of my nights out, usually as late as possible.
I spent one of them with Steve Thompson, who took me to the China Club, which was the epitome of eighties New York nightlife—lots of coke, little substance, and much too expensive all around. I was in there in my top hat, leather jacket, and leather pants tucked into my cowboy boots amid a room full of the type of New Yorkers who say “Yo, how you doin’?” all the time and try to impress one another with their expensive Italian blazers and the sack of blow they’ve got in their pocket. Steve, of course, was pretty dialed into that scene—he was in the music business after all.
Once I decided that I’d had it with that place, I slipped out without telling anyone as I’m sometimes known to do. It has gotten me into trouble before—for example, when I opted to wander off in rural Canada—because usually I just get lost. Such was the case that night: the club was in midtown, less than ten blocks from the hotel, but at around four a.m. I set out the wrong way on an all-night journey in an unfamiliar city. It was very surreal: I wandered down Broadway all the way to Houston Street, over to Avenue C, and by nine a.m. somehow found my way back uptown to the hotel. New York isn’t really the city that never sleeps: I managed to find pitch-black stretches of street with no one else around aside from the occasional bum. As it did get quieter and quieter I began to feel more and more alone. A montage of New York City movies came to mind as I looked at blocks that were both familiar and totally strange to me. Once I finally admitted to myself that I had no idea where I was going, it came together and I started to recognize a few landmarks. Before I knew it, I found the hotel. As usual, there was hardly a welcoming party. I wandered in and found Axl and Adrianna asleep.
Mixing the record was an incredible experience. It was the first time that I learned the process of sound manipulation, and looking back at it now that digital technology has changed the recording industry forever, I feel privileged to have made and mixed that record in the days before things changed. There was no automated interface back then: Thompson and Barbiero manually worked the faders, making minor adjustments to each channel, as per our request, each time we listened back to each track. Those two guys were amazing; they had a system, pretty much an unspoken language between them. Steve was the energetic, in your face guy and Michael was the reserved, analytical, calculated guy. And they got on each other’s nerves constantly, which somehow fueled their creativity.
The way they’d work was that Barbiero would set up the basic mix—the drums, the bass, and all of the EQs. Then Steve would come in and they’d start taking passes, with Steve doing all of the frenetic tweaks to the guitars and the vocal jumps throughout the mix—he did all of the dynamic rocking parts, while Barbiero laid the sonic foundation. Since mixing was entirely manual, done while the song was playing, it was a one-take affair. When they took a pass, the song would start, they’d have all four hands on the board and they’d immediately start jumping around each other, adjusting knobs and faders in real time as the music played. If they got just one thing wrong, they’d start over. And on top of that, they had all of us in the room backseat-driving.
One of the funnier episodes was the day that Izzy got up bright and early to head down there and oversee the mixing of “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” He totally rode their asses. Usually they’d have a mix up by noon and would have it done by four. That day Izzy called us around one and told us all to come down immediately because it was finished and it sounded great. When I walked in, the first thing I saw was the traumatized look on Mike Barbiero’s face—the guy looked like a prisoner after a long night of interrogation. He played us the mix, which was ridiculous; it was nothing but Izzy’s guitar and Axl’s vocals with everything else faded into insignificance. I could hardly hear the drums, the bass was nonexistent, and my guitar was audible only in the intro and the solo. Let’s just say that Izzy has a sparse way of looking at things and that was very indicative of his point of view. Obviously we redid it.
As we mixed down the song “Rocket Queen,” Axl felt that the bridge needed something; some other element to elevate the drama. He suggested that Adrianna Smith, who was with us in the studio that day, fuck him in the live room so that we could record her vocals and layer them over the breakdown. We’d been drinking Jack pretty heavily all day, so it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I was all for it; I knew too well what she was
