Slash

I WAS GETTING OUT THERE AND CIRCULATING a lot more, too, by this point. Duff and I ran into Iggy Pop during our down time and he asked us to play on Brick by Brick. We went down to meet him at the Rainbow, where we got into his car and listened to the demos, which was very cool. Iggy is Duff’s ultimate hero and there was a little bit of history there on my end because of Bowie—he and my mom had gone to visit Iggy at the Cedars psych ward. We showed up in Hollywood and laid down some tracks with him: “Home Boy,” “Pussy Power,” and a song that Iggy and I cowrote, “My Baby Wants to Rock ’n’ Roll.” It was one of the most fun sessions I’d ever done. Not long after that, we also did the video with him for “Home Boy.”

This was a real honor for us; it was another sign that Guns was getting back out on the scene and that we were being taken seriously as musicians. People wanted to see us plain and simple. At that point in 1990, Appetite and Lies had become huge commercial successes. This newfound attention also drew the spotlight to me as a guitar player, which took the form of a few calls to our management office. It was flattering to discover that other musicians had started to give me credit for being a fairly good guitar player.

One collaboration I did at the time was with Lenny Kravitz. I already knew him; he and I attended Beverly Hills High at the same time, and although I was in continuation while he was a regular student, we were the only two half-black half-white musicians in the school that I knew of. Duff and I were fans, and our favorite record of the moment was Lenny’s debut, Let Love Rule. When we were introduced at some awards function, I was ecstatic when he asked me to play on his next record, Mama Said, which he was in the midst of writing. Shortly thereafter we met up in a little studio on Robertson in L.A. where I put a solo on “Fields of Joy.” As I was warming up in the lounge that day, I played a funky guitar riff that I’d come up with recently but hadn’t found a place for in any of the songs I was working on at the time with Guns. It was just another of my exercises at the time.

“Hey man, what is that?” Lenny asked

“I don’t know… Just something,” I said. “It’s too funky for Guns, but I like it. It’s cool.”

“Yeah, man. Don’t forget it. Bring that into the rehearsal room,” he said. “Let’s work on it. I’d like to write some lyrics to it.”

When it came time to actually write and record the song, Lenny flew me out to New York. He lived in Manhattan but he’d set himself up in a studio across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was where he’d recorded his debut album, and where he was doing the basic tracks for his next album. We took the train there from his apartment, and he played drums while I laid the guitar down for what became “Always on the Run.” It was a lot of fun, very raw and stripped down, the way it should be done. There’s not a lot going on on that track, but it sounded really good; he put the bass and vocals on later. The studio was like Lenny’s castle; every instrument was in place —he could jump from guitar to bass to drums and get it all down as his inspiration dictated.

I had brought Renee with me on that trip and we were staying in midtown at a hotel close to Lenny’s apartment and had spent the night before, a Saturday, carousing extensively. It was summertime, it was hot as hell, and once I got to Lenny’s place that Sunday morning, I discovered that due to some outdated rule called the “blue law” on New York’s books, no bars or liquor stores were open at all.

It wasn’t exactly how I pictured this collaboration going down and it was about to be a problem. I remember hanging around Lenny’s apartment waiting for him to get ready. The place looked like the world’s biggest closet of vintage clothes had vomited all over the room: there were garments everywhere, covering every available surface. It was ten a.m., I was taking this whole scene in, and I was craving a drink.

“Hey man, do you have anything to drink?” I asked.

“No, man, I don’t think so,” Lenny said. “You want to smoke a joint?”

“That’s cool. I could really use a drink, though,” I said. “Can we stop by a bar or a liquor store on the way?”

“I don’t know, man,” he said. “I don’t think so. That’s all closed on Sunday.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, getting a little bit nervous. “Do your neighbors have any booze? I need a drink, man.”

Lenny did his best; he procured what seemed like a thimbleful of vodka from his neighbor. I downed it but it was like throwing a Band-Aid at a gunshot wound. As we hopped on the PATH train to Hoboken, which is a trip of about twenty minutes, I began to experience alcohol detox: my hands shook, I was light-headed, irritable, and anxious. It wasn’t some big mystery—I just needed a fucking drink, like now. My reserve of civility was equally dry.

“Hey Lenny, man, we have to find some vodka right away,” I said. “I can’t play unless I get a fucking drink.”

Lenny could relate to a degree, I suppose: he needed his pot to create and write music—the only difference was that his body didn’t malfunction if he didn’t have it. Every bar on the way looked like they’d not been open since 1955. When we got to his studio, Lenny sent his people out in search of booze. I’m not sure how they got it, but they returned with some vodka around twelve, and once they did, we settled in. We recorded “Always on the Run” in under an hour; the raw, spontaneous energy of that track is right there in the final product.

THE ACTUAL RECORDING OF THE GUITARS and vocals of the Illusion albums happened at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. This was a great time for me as a guitar player—we had so many songs and so many possibilities for sounds and techniques in our new material. I was really on top of my game at that point, easily coaxing out the sounds I wanted, all of it came to me so fluidly during those sessions. I had some cool guitars to call upon because, for first time in my life, I had the funds to assemble an arsenal of them.

At the time I had a 1958 Gibson Flying V, I had a 1958 Gibson Explorer, and a few Travis Beans, a few sorted acoustics—Martin, Gibson, Taylor, etc. I had this great Spanish flamenco-style acoustic and a couple of Dobros and a handful of vintage Les Pauls, plus my staple Les Paul replica with its Seymour Duncan pickups. I’d rented a load of guitars, but for most of the tracks I used a Les Paul. There were moments when I needed a Travis Bean, usually when I was doing extensive slides (“The Garden”), or a Dobro (“You Ain’t the First”), as well as when I needed to use a tremolo bar (“You Could Be Mine”). It was a gluttonous guitar experience for me (I even took twenty guitars on the road); I was determined to go to town on all of them, dead set on getting all of those sounds on our new album in some way, shape, or form. I had thirty-six songs to play on—that meant two straight weeks of recording guitar parts. I was in seventh heaven, just absorbed in my guitars, totally in my element. It was great, the room sounded great, and I loved the staff at the Record Plant.

One event that got everyone talking during the recording of Illusions I and II was the day there was a huge commotion in the alley. It turned out that the cops found a dismembered arm and a head in the Dumpster behind the studio. All I know is that we didn’t do it, but Izzy turned the event into a lyric on “Double Talking Jive.” And I got to do a great Spanish flamenco thing on that track, which was a gas to do. That song has a really cool electric solo, too, that morphs into an acoustic flamenco groove.

There were a few songs that were very involved guitar-wise on those albums. “Estranged” was a big, long song. I used a Les Paul Gold Top on it; I recorded all of the melodies on the rhythm pickup with the tone turned all the way down. “November Rain” was tough, too, as was another Axl song called “Breakdown.” Those were all piano driven and they needed accompaniment; the guitar and bass parts had to be thought out and done precisely. Those songs were all pretty fucking cool, I have to say, but they took some work.

“November Rain” was recorded in one day but we put in long hours ahead of time to get all of the arrangements just right. The funniest thing is that the guitar solo that ended up on the record is the exact same one that I played the first time I heard the song years before. That’s a consistent theme throughout Guns N’ Roses: pretty much every solo on the record is the same exact one I played the first time I ran through it. It’s just the way the song felt to me every time we got to that section. So throughout the band’s history, when we were playing the songs live or on record, give or take a few notes here and there, my solos, which have always been more melodies than flat-out busting moves, have always been the same series of notes I heard within the music from the very start. The end result was that there was always a sense of familiarity that I enjoyed when we’d play those songs and get to those sections.

Anyway, “Breakdown” was very complicated as far as getting all of the drum and guitar parts just right back at A and M, as well as the intricate piano changes. It’s a complex song, and as much as it sounds like we partied our way through recording, we were very focused when it came to work. That song was hard on Matt especially—he lost it a few times trying to get the drums perfect. Like I said, we did a song a day—but some days were longer than others.