Slash

journey perfect.

Those Marquee shows were loud and hell-bent; what I remember, I remember fondly. We did AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie” and Aerosmith’s “Mama Kin,” and all of our original stuff. One of those nights was also the first time that we ever played “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which we put together at sound check on a whim. I’d always loved that song and loved that live version—it was much more raw than what ended up on Use Your Illusion. Those shows went over well enough that, from the start, we were never even considered part of the same league of L.A. hair metal bands who had come through England. We were seen as something else, which was what we’d been saying all along. Finally, it felt like we’d been justified.

AFTER THAT TRIP, WE RETURNED TO L.A. to put the finishing touches on the album. Axl had brought us a print of a Robert Williams painting that we all agreed should be the cover—it’s a manic scene of a robot about to avenge a girl who has just been raped by eating her attacker. We thought it was perfect; we even adopted the title of the painting as the title of the album: Appetite for Destruction.

Everything was great, the album went out as planned with the Williams print on the cover, and no one had a problem with it. That was until Tipper Gore and her lobbying group the PMRC got ahold of it. They were very effective at censoring music at the time, but we didn’t care—we welcomed as much controversy as Tipper could dish out.

Our wish was granted: Geffen got so many complaints that our album was banned before it was ever even properly stocked at the national chains. We were told that most retail stores wouldn’t carry it and most others required that we wrap the album in a brown paper bag unless the cover was changed. Faced with selling nothing now that we finally had something to sell, in a rare moment of common sense, we decided to compromise and agreed to redesign the cover: the Williams print was put on the sleeve inside. A guy we knew at Hell House did a painting of the five of us, as skulls, on a cross, which was incredible so we used it for the cover, and Axl had it tattooed on his arm as well. It was a cool enough design that as much as we were unhappy about eating crow, we ended up with something new that we loved. A first edition of that original cover is a collector’s item by the way.

Since I have some illustration skills, I had always been very involved in the design of the band’s art and posters. I remember the day when I took out a bunch of Guns & Ammo–type magazines back when I had my newsstand job and flipped through them until I found the perfect gun to copy for our logo. I took the picture home with me; at first I wasn’t sure how to tie it all together. I was living over at Yvonne’s and one night, after she and her mom had gone to sleep, I was sitting up at their kitchen table and it came to me. I took out that picture of the gun and drew it freehand, then I drew another one of them crossed with roses underneath. That simple design stuck; it became the logo for the band.

Anyway, once we agreed on the new cover design, I wanted to go to New York to oversee the new album art layout as well as to meet with our merchandiser about our T-shirts and our new booking agent, Bill Elson at ICM. It was going to be a very busy trip.

At the time I was “dating” a porn actress, Lois Ayres, whose work I appreciated, and while the shocking nature of her performance might have deterred other suitors, I was intrigued by it. We got together somehow or another in L.A. and I had been crashing at her place for a while. When I was scheduled to go to New York, it just so happened that she was scheduled to go as well because she had a few feature performances to do at a couple of strip clubs in Times Square. She had a room booked for her at the Mil-ford Plaza on Eighth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street so I crashed with her when I arrived.

My second morning there, I was awoken at seven a.m.

Ring! Ring!

Ring! Ring!

I picked up the phone and hung it up.

Ring! Ring!

Ring! Ring!

Obviously it wasn’t going away.

“Yeah? What?” I shouted.

“Hello, sir, there is a Todd Crew here to see you,” the voice said. “Is it okay to send him up?”

“Uh… yeah… sure,” I said hesitantly. I had no idea what Todd could possibly want at seven a.m., in New York, no less.

Apparently he’d come out on a last-minute invitation from an actor friend because he’d needed to get out of L.A. fast, for his own good: he and Girl had split up, which was a major deal—those two had been together for years and were more or less one person. He’d also been fired by his band, who hated the fact that he hung out with us so much. He was soon replaced by Hanoi Rocks’ Sam Yaffa with little to no discussion. At that point they’d not only kicked him out, but they’d kept all of his gear and were refusing to give it back. So Todd was not in a good way to say the least. He arrived at my door already fucking drunk, with a full liter of what we liked to call Toad Venom in one hand: vodka and orange juice disguised in a 7UP bottle. I had an entire day of meetings all across town, beginning at ten a.m., but I could see that Todd needed tending to. Girl wasn’t taking his calls, he didn’t have a band, and there was no way that I was leaving him alone.

I had no choice; I took him to all of my meetings, which was quite the endeavor. They were all within a few long midtown blocks of one another, which was fine with me; I’d planned to go to each of them on foot—it was a long way to go, but I was actually looking forward to it. It was one of those oppressively hot New York July days and Todd insisted that I first take him to a Western Union about ten blocks out of my way to pick up some money. He was so distraught that I agreed, and to this day I wish I hadn’t: if I had refused to go to Western Union with him, it might have ended differently because he wouldn’t have had any money on him.

We proceed to the street to get on our way and, as I said, Todd was already fucking wasted: he’d start to fall over every time we stopped at a traffic light. I was holding him but he was half a foot taller than me and just big all around. I’d try to lead him down the street and he’d collapse in the middle of the intersection while a crowd of people darting to work at eight a.m. forked around him where he fell. We got to the Western Union one step at a time like that, then we got his money, and got up to my first meeting at Geffen about ten minutes late.

I left Todd in the lobby and I’m sure whoever the secretary was that day still remembers him. He passed out cold on the couch the minute he hit the air-conditioning, so I left him there, this big, snoring long-haired tattooed guy, who scared everyone unlucky enough to be waiting in the lobby that day. When it was time for me to go, it took two assistants to get Todd into the elevator. Sleep had helped him a little, but not much. Still, somehow, I maneuvered him through the streets and got to the rest of my appointments on time: one was at Brokum to discuss the T-shirts and the other was at ICM. All the while I dragged a drunk bass player along with me, treating it like he was the invisible elephant in the room no one talked about. He was like the cop in Up in Smoke, trying to give directions on the highway with the hot dog stuffed in his face.

By the early afternoon my business was done. Todd was a little bit more coherent, but definitely in need of a nap, so I thought taking him to Central Park would do the trick—at the very least he could sleep it off on the grass in the sun. I managed to steer us up there, and just as we were heading into the park we ran into three musicians from a local L.A. band that we both knew. I don’t remember why they were in town, but they wanted us to head down to Alphabet City with them to cop some heroin. Todd was all for it, but I wouldn’t let him; I had just done my time in that pit of hell and the thought didn’t interest me at all. On top of that, I had a record on the way and the risk of arrest or worse wasn’t worth it.

I kept the party hounds at bay by suggesting that we buy a bottle of Jim Beam and take a carriage ride around Central Park, which we did. That was quite a scene: me, Todd, and these Goth-looking dudes with some tattoos and piercings taking in the summer sights. We chased it with some pizza and a round of drinks at this little dive bar afterward. And once we were on to the second round, smack came up again. I did everything I could to put the brakes on it, but I was overruled. My personal concerns at that point mattered less to me than Todd’s well- being: I didn’t like what I saw and I did everything I could to keep him from going darker. Todd had done heroin, but he wasn’t all that experienced; even if he had been, he was in no state to be messing with drugs. As I said, I was unanimously outvoted: Todd got them to agree to go get the dope for us so I wouldn’t be at risk of getting busted. To say the least, he really wanted some. We headed downtown and waited for them in a bar on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village while they scored the dope.