WE GOT UP THERE AND DID OUR GIGS every night on that tour, but the truth is that I never felt satisfied doing those shows. We had yet to become a solid touring entity; we weren’t seasoned pros just yet and that ate at me. It probably made us entertaining because we were so loose around the edges: we showed up with no experience; just the clothes on our backs, the gear on the stage, and a handful of songs to play for people who had never heard of us. I think we were the only ones who knew we had a record out.
We played hockey rinks, theaters, and a few small festival dates with a handful of bands on the bill. And as much as I was happy to be out there touring, which I thought was the greatest thing ever, I couldn’t get over the fact that it wasn’t quite as good as it should be. We never got there in my mind because our presence on a large stage just wasn’t up to par. But that’s just me being overly critical, which is definitely a part of my character. I was unable to write those gigs off like I imagine the Sex Pistols would have.
That said, it felt like a homecoming when The Cult tour arrived at the Long Beach Arena. I remember rolling in there late the night before and staring at the building, completely starstruck. I’d seen Ozzy, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Billy Idol, and countless others there and for so long, I’d thought playing there meant you’d
I’d even seen Ratt there against my will: as I mentioned, Yvonne had dated their singer, Stephen Pearcy, back when they were still called Mickey Ratt. When she and I were together, the group headlined there and she was still so proud of him that we had to go, even though he was a complete moron. She was thrilled that Ratt had made it from living together in one cheap apartment to headlining the Long Beach Arena. And now I had and I can’t lie; when we got that gig, I had a tremendous feeling of accomplishment. To a big touring band, in the grand scheme of things, playing to five thousand or so at the Long Beach Arena didn’t mean shit—but to us at the time, it was
It was an appropriate homecoming, too. We pulled into the arena and parked the bus on the street outside of the hotel. Somehow we managed to pick up two girls who were right there on the sidewalk, and a couple of the guys took them into the back of the bus. Then we checked in to the hotel and I remember sipping my drink while looking out across the parking lot at the arena, where that building loomed on the horizon, larger than life. The next day our friends from L.A. came out, and when we went on, they gave us more attention than all of the Canadian crowds combined had done. It was great, we were
These were the type of any-band-anytime equal-opportunity groupies that were down to fuck everyone all the time.
WE TOOK TO THE TOURING ROUTINE PRETTY naturally; we were off to the races, right away. We were built for it; we went through the paces without trying too hard. When we got to Arizona, I believe it was, we experienced groupies for the first time; not the kind that wanted to fuck us because they were fans of ours—we’d already had our share of those back home. These were the type of any-band-anytime equal-opportunity groupies that were down to fuck everyone all the time.
Overall, groupies were usually between seventeen and twenty-two; if they were in their mid-twenties, they’d most likely been around the block a few times—maybe too many—and there were those older than that, which often involved some bizarre mother-daughter combos. But in a way, the groupies in the sticks were more understandable than the groupies in L.A.: culture was at a minimum where these girls lived, and they had devoted themselves to getting as big a piece of it as they could when it passed through town. It was almost respectable.
Whenever we weren’t performing, Axl holed up in the back lounge, resting his voice and sleeping. Sometimes when we’d have a day off, he’d sleep back there instead of checking in to the hotel. Still, he’d come out every so often to hang out with the rest of us and that was always cool. Everything was really good at this point—put it this way, we got on stage on time. The camaraderie was high; we were the perfect bunch of guys for touring together… not that I had anything else to compare it to. But we were all quite content.
Until the compressor on our shitty bus broke down, taking the air-conditioning with it, somewhere in the middle of Texas. As we sat there sweating bullets in the heat, it occurred to us that there had to be a class above touring on the level we were at.
West Arkeen came out to Texas for a few days, which took the party up a few notches in spite of the Sahara-like conditions on the bus: West left us four or five days later looking like a shadow of his former self. I estimate that he lost about eight pounds in sweat. We had three days off in Texas after that, in this resort hotel in the middle of nowhere, and during those three days we fired our bus driver and a tour manager we’ll call “Cooper.”
Cooper was a character; he wore a newsboy cap all the time and drove a yellow Lotus. He was this skinny, wiry English guy with a very jumpy demeanor—I guess that was due to all of the coke he did. The problem with Cooper was that he had turned into a self-centered rock star and forgot that he was a tour manager. We’d gotten sick of Cooper luring the chicks we’d picked up to his room with the promise of coke, and keeping them there in the hopes of getting laid. He’d even lie to us when we’d call his room, asking where the girls were. He’d say they’d split and we believed him until the one time we stormed down there and caught him red-handed.
He also had a bad habit of promising Izzy and me a gram of coke if we got up in the morning to do interviews. He’d give us the smallest taste, but once when we were done at the radio station or on the phone or whatever, and demanded the rest, he usually tried to back out of his promise. That was just stupid—if you promised us drugs and didn’t deliver, we were the kind of people who’d kick your ass.
The last straw was a situation where Alan had entrusted Cooper to take care of the band and he just lost it and got us to a gig very late. It was a big-time fuckup and that was it for him; Alan sacked him and the bus driver at once. They were just gone. The next we heard was that Cooper was selling phone books door-to-door.
I was impressed when Alan booted Cooper without so much as an explanation—that’s when I knew that he was serious. It was an example of the overly protective, paternal, and possessive stance he took toward us. It was comforting because we were such hell-raisers that someone needed to give a shit.
It was great that Alan trimmed the fat; but the reality was that after those days off, we needed to get to the next gig in Houston and we had no tour manager and no bus driver. We had to seek out other transportation on the spot. I don’t remember what the other guys did, but Duff and I drove in this Trans Am with this girl I’d picked up. All was fine until we got caught in a torrential rainstorm because her car had no windshield wipers. The rain was coming down so hard that I had to lean out of the passenger-side window and use my upper body as a shield to keep the rain off one half of the window while I wiped the other half with my arm so that she could see well enough to drive.
Our Houston gig was killer, and after that we saw more of the South. Louisiana was right up my alley, especially New Orleans, with all of the voodoo and the presence of African religion and black magic. We went to a really authentic bayou restaurant in the swamplands where I ate rattlesnake and blackened alligator. It was such a great time for me; I came to realize that there was no other place that I’d rather be than on the road and that I’d hit it right in terms of a career.
WE LOCKED OURSELVES INTO A SET road crew for this tour as well, a cast of characters that became our team for years. We’d rehearsed before the tour with Mike “McBob” Mayhew as the rhythm-guitar-and-bass tech; and “McBob” used his keen sense of humor to remind us of just how low we were on the food chain by constantly pointing out the pedestrian nature of our traveling accomodations. He had years of experience on the road, and his little comments here and there were all the reminders we needed that the Shangri-la of our tour bus was a mirage.
McBob has been with Duff and me to this day—he is part of the Velvet Revolver crew—and after all this time one of the more entertaining aspects of having him around is his still endless supply of road stories. Many of them end with Mike landing himself in the hospital due to all sorts of ailments and injuries that are typically self-inflicted or an unforeseen effect of partying. One of the most memorable stories in his arsenal is about the time he got so drunk that he fell out of a car, skidded on his head down the pavement, and woke up in the hospital with a metal plate in his skull. Sometimes it sets off the metal detectors in airports. McBob was like Robert Shaw—Captain Quint—in
Our crew was rounded out by Bill Smith, my guitar tech, whom I soon realized was in it solely for the beer.
