Slash

When were close to wrapping the album, it came time to discuss writing credits and publishing on the songs. We talked about it standing onstage at Burbank Studios, and someone proposed that as a band we should split the royalties evenly five ways—20 percent each.

Axl scowled. “There’s no way Steven gets twenty percent, the same as I do. Uh- uh,” he said. “I want twenty-five percent and Steven gets fifteen. He’s a drummer. He doesn’t contribute to the writing as equally as the rest of us.” That was the compromise we agreed to: Axl got 25 percent; me, Izzy, and Duff 20 percent; and Steven 15 percent. I think Steven was permanently scarred by that.

I’m not sure of the exact timetable, but it didn’t take long for Steven to violate the terms of the sobriety contract we handed him, and once he did, he was done for. It wasn’t easy for me to allow, because as I’ve said, the simple truth is that Steven never had the kind of strength to give that stuff up easily—if he’ll ever give it up at all. But at that point, everyone had tried to help him—girlfriends, friends, management experts—nothing resonated with him enough to work on the problem. At this point in particular, Steven was a Catch-22, because as much as I would have hung around long enough to get him together, if the band lost its momentum it might mean the end of us. We were too many variables and complex characters, and now that we were all getting along, the window of opportunity was open—but it probably wouldn’t stay that way for long. I couldn’t deny the fact that kicking Steven out of Guns N’ Roses for drug abuse was kind of ridiculous and excessively harsh. It was also so hypocritical. Think about it, it sounds like a joke: “He got kicked out of Guns N’ Roses for drugs? Are you kidding? How does that happen?”

All I remember is that the next time I saw Steve was in court, because he sued us, which seemed asinine. He was in such bad shape that I knew what he was doing when he headed to the bathroom in the middle of the proceedings. He sued us for a couple million bucks for a glitch in the execution of his sobriety contract. He needed to have an attorney present when he signed it, and he hadn’t had one. Of course, thanks to our attorneys, we didn’t know this. I was shocked when I found out that Steven won his lawsuit and we had to pay him two million bucks.

As difficult as it was, at least it was over. Now it was time to find a new drummer.

THAT ARDUOUS TASK FELL TO DUFF AND Izzy and me. We set up shop near Alan Niven’s office in Redondo Beach, in a little rehearsal studio, where I realized after the very first day of auditions how fucking difficult it was going to be. In the back of my mind I thought, “Sure, anybody can play drums.” Right… the three of us thought that finding a replacement would be easy considering that our songs were all pretty straight-ahead 4/4 rock rhythms with few fancy time changes—how hard could that be? After all, if we’d pulled it off with Fred Curry when Steven was injured, the prospects looked good. After a few horrible days of trying to play with uselessly inappropriate candidates, though, we realized the depth of our naivete. The way a drummer plays involves such a personal feel for the rhythm and inflections on the beat that affect the entire vibe of the song—and the entire band for which he keeps time.

We ditched Redondo Beach and returned to Mates to undertake a more thorough search. We tried out Martin Chambers from the Pretenders, who is a great drummer and a great guy, but we should have known that it wasn’t going to work out the minute he walked in with that huge octopus drum kit he used with the Pretenders. It was more, for want of a better word, fantastic than your average drum kit. That thing had round poles that came over the top of it with cymbals hanging from them—it was just ridiculous. He was setting it all up while Duff tuned up and got ready to play with him for a bit; Duff was the front line. He and the drummer had to click, first of all—if they didn’t, there was no point in Izzy or me even picking up a guitar.

I was in the bathroom sitting on the toilet, reading a magazine, when Martin and Duff started playing, and as I listened through the door, I thought, Oh boy. I was making something more appealing than what I was hearing at that moment, which just goes to show that putting great players in the same room doesn’t mean that they will sound great together. Making great music is much more complicated; it’s about chemistry and the commingling of the players’ stylistic ticks. It’s nowhere near as simple as the sum of the parts; it’s more like building Frankenstein’s monster: you need ingenuity… and lightning.

When I came out of the bathroom, Duff was still playing but he shot me a look that said it all, so needless to say, Martin didn’t work out. We were fucked, because at the time, Martin was our best bet at the end of a short list that we’d already exhausted. To Steven’s credit, and unbeknownst to most, the feel and energy of Appetite was largely due to him. He had an inimitable style of drumming that couldn’t really be replaced, an almost adolescent levity that gave the band its spark.

All at once the momentum we’d built over the last few months came to a standstill and although I didn’t show it, I was panicked. I thought, This is it, we’re done. I was convinced that Guns N’ Roses would break up because we couldn’t find a drummer. And I was worried about what I would do with myself if we did.

DURING THIS TIME DUFF AND I WERE pretty inseparable. He had split up with Mandy, so we’d go out when the band wasn’t working—more often than not, to Bordello’s, a club owned by former Cathouse founder Riki Rachtman. That place was great, there was a little jam room in the back where a blues band would get up and play, and I would usually end up sitting in on a few songs. That place was so much fun—we’d just go there and drink and jam. But the truth is, even if you’re famous and everyone loves you and this and that, after a while that scene or any scene, to me at least, becomes sort of miserable, dull, and monotonous. After you’ve done it twice, maybe three times, it is nothing but boring. Even to this day, the Hollywood rock-club scene does nothing for me; it’s all there, and as much as times and styles have changed, it’s all still the same. If you’ve just played a gig and you need to blow off some steam, it’s great, but if you’re just hanging around town, it’s like being in some blown- out cliche: from the chicks on down, it’s a cliche of what all the kids think life is going to be like if they become rock stars. It’s not a mirage that I want to be a part of.

What I’m getting at is that generally I preferred to stay at home, drink all day, listen to records, and play guitar and write music. I wasn’t reclusive in the way I’d been on smack, but in my mind, I had switched over to work mode, so going out and socializing was the last thing on my mind—I had committed to being productive and getting our band to the next level. On one of the nights that Duff coaxed me out to this place Peanuts to jam with this great little blues band, we ended up hanging out with this girl, Pilar, that he picked up. Pilar was a sexy Middle Eastern or Latin girl—I’m not sure which. She had a friend with her that I barely spoke to whose name was Renee. And Renee had this too-cool-for-school attitude; she held her head high, with this mightier-than-thou stance. She was really good-looking and she knew it, and that whole vibe locked me in like a tractor beam, because any girl that was going to fucking make my life difficult, any girl that was hard to get, was the girl to go for in my mind. In Lemmy Kilmister’s infamous words, “The chase is better than the catch.” Renee had no interest in what I did or any of the notoriety that came with it; she wasn’t a rock chick by any stretch of the imagination.

She was a model and aspiring actress and very independent. Within a couple of weeks I had ditched the Walnut House and was living in her place full-time. She had a great spot that her dad, before he passed away, had bought for her down on Valley Vista—I think there was a dinette set, a bed, and a couch in the whole place. Here’s how we spent our time: I’d get up in the morning and fucking lie on the floor and drink vodka and smoke cigarettes until she got up. She’d go do what she had to do that day and I’d do the same and that was our life. I watched a lot of cooking shows; The Galloping Gourmet, Great Chefs of the East and West, and The Food Network. It was the start of a lifelong obsession with cooking shows, though to this day, I don’t cook at all. At night we’d order out.

That was my home life. Meanwhile, we still had this quest for a drummer going on.

ONCE WE’D EXHAUSTED ALL LOGICAL possibilities, I for one was not going to let the hunt for a drummer end the band. Duff, Izzy, and I racked our brains. We discussed the best drummers we’d seen lately, but nobody appropriate came to mind… until one night, I had an epiphany. I recalled seeing The Cult a few months before at the Universal Amphitheater and being mesmerized by their drummer. He was fucking amazing; I was standing at the soundboard and was completely captivated by his playing. I didn’t pay attention to the rest of the band at all for the whole gig. His playing was extremely tight and his sound had enormous presence; it was big, bombastic, and delivered with intense authority. The moment I remembered him, I couldn’t believe that I’d sat through so many shitty auditions without realizing that I knew just the right guy.