Slash

When I look back on it now, I can see the roots of the whole thing, but at the time I didn’t have that kind of perspective at all. It was always there, but in the post-Appetite era, the condition really came into its own: Axl became a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was one thing during the recording of the Illusion records when he was holing up in the recording studio and being excessively overindulgent; none of us liked that much, but we were willing to allow it. We certainly didn’t think it could get worse. Those sessions were the times when the rest of us began to let those things happen against our better judgment. It was tedious yet still fun, but we were kidding ourselves thinking that situation was all going to be fine once the album was released. It was really tough for me because I felt very close to Axl for periods of time when we were working together toward a common goal, and then, not much later, I’d feel like we were on opposite sides of a fence. It started a real love/hate situation between us.

Axl and I had a pretty rocky relationship from the very beginning, which continued until the very last time we spoke, for the simple reason that we have such different, different ways of looking at and handling things. I bear him no ill will; I know that his version of events is every bit as viable as mine… just different. It took me a long time to even sort of understand Axl—if I ever did at all—let alone predict what made him react the way he did. I wanted to know what made him happy, what pissed him off, what inspired him creatively; all of those things are essential knowledge when you work in such close proximity with someone in a creative endeavor.

Early on, when we first met, what he did would sometimes take me by surprise. We related to each other because both of us were rebellious and anarchistic, but I could never understand why he took rebellion to the point that it made his life difficult for no real reason. I could understand standing up for what you believe in and that conflict often results from that. But Axl took it to a degree of self-sabotage that I just did not comprehend. I spent a lot of time trying to sort that out, to just understand it intellectually in some way, until I realized that there was no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever.

I was drawn to Axl like everyone else is because he is such an amazing singer and performer and has such powerful all-around charisma. I also admired the fact that he always had a point of view that he felt strongly about and was always so sincere about it. He’s a brilliant lyricist and such a really tortured artist that he won me over because my mentality has always been to root for the underdog—and that was such a major part of his brilliance.

I learned to take the bad with the good as far as our friendship was concerned because Axl had a lot of stuff going on. We’d have these very in-depth, personal conversations, especially during the period when the band was starting out and we lived together. There were moments there when I loved him to death, when he was just so cool and we had really close, heartfelt talks that he would lead. It was cool to get to know someone like him, because I can go for years without saying anything about how I feel, but Axl is not like that at all; he needed someone to communicate his feelings to. We’d have these great, peaceful one-on-ones about what bothered him and what was on his mind when the static died down. We’d talk about personal stuff from his past, all the things that concerned him, interested him, his goals for himself and for the band, what he wanted to do with his life. It was a great insight into someone that I already admired, and I liked him a lot during those times because he was human and vulnerable and I felt like we really connected.

The flip side to Axl, the Hyde to his Jekyll, was that once you felt that you had a strong bond going with him he’d do something that completely defied what you knew. One of the great things about our band was that we always had one another’s back, regardless of the situation, but that became hard to do with Axl eventually. He never did anything directly to me; he did things that jeopardized the entire band and its standing among our peers and our fans. That was something that I could never understand. But that never mattered much because Axl was always there to explain it away and he always had a lot to say about why he did what he did.

The longer this type of behavior continued, though, the I more I harbored mistrust when it came to him, because the guy that I’d have those intimate talks with was not the same guy who would make what I considered inconsiderate decisions. It was a contradiction that became hard for me to handle. In some instances Axl’s reactions to certain things were detrimental only to the band—they weren’t huge at first; usually they were worth compromising over to further our collective progress. Izzy was always very calm about dealing with Axl and I’d hang with Izzy a lot during those times. Duff, too, had his way of dealing with Axl, which was also pretty mellow.

Steven, on the other hand, used to get irate, because as far as he was concerned, Axl’s behavior made no fucking sense at all. As I’ve said before, Steven didn’t understand him and didn’t have the capacity to understand him, so he’d react directly at Axl. But for my part I put a lot of hours into trying to understand Axl and where he was coming from, because for our band to succeed, it had to be us, united, against the world. We had to keep our ranks tight. Whenever Axl did stuff that belittled the rest of us, it put distance between us where there should have been none. In my opinion it weakened our foundation.

This situtation went back and forth for ages, where we vacillated between being unified and being compromised. During the making of the first record, these incidents with Axl weren’t so dramatic. As the band got bigger, though, his demands got bigger. And as time went on, we developed a habit of appeasing him. If it wasn’t that big of a deal in the short run, we’d let him have whatever he wanted; we’d tell him what he wanted to hear. But it established a pattern in which he got used to getting what he wanted.

One of the hard things about him back in the day was that when no one else agreed with him, Axl’s retaliation wasn’t easy: he’d throw something, knock something down, leave the building, or walk away, fuming, down the street and quit the band. In the heat of those moments, you couldn’t reason with Axl; he was like a kid having a tantrum. It made me wonder about the dynamics of his upbringing. I’m in no position to give away the details, but from what Axl told me of it, his childhood was very rough.

When we were starting out, his behavior was tolerable because we were all moving in the same direction and we could justify the compromises we had to make. When we got back from the final leg of the Appetite tour two years later and all through the business of getting together and eventually working together again in Chicago, I started to see the less sensible side of him come out more and more—that’s why I left those writing sessions. Axl never understood why I left Chicago because he thought we were getting so much done, but the truth was that his negative energy was just really hard to work with. I know I’m not the only one to feel that way; almost anyone who ever worked for us would say something similar. The reason that the people working for us hung in there was the same reason that the band hung in there: there were these great, endlessly amazing moments that made all of the negative, really dark, hard moments worth it. Axl was so self-centered at times that everyone was affected by it. I can only assume that the rest of us balanced it out. But what do I know? Well, I do know this: Axl definitely has his version of events that is every bit as valid as mine.

WHEN THE BAND HEADED INTO THE STUDIO to record the Illusion records, everything going on behind the scenes got much worse very fast: there was so much unnecessary money being spent, and no one addressing the issue, because no one wanted to go there; the mood was that touchy. The truth is, no one in the band graduated high school, let alone had a degree in psychology; none of us knew how to effectively get through to Axl. It could be easy to do sometimes if you hung out with him quietly in his space, on his watch; you could sort some stuff out under those ideal conditions. Actually, it was the only way to discuss anything with him. Any other approach wasn’t constructive; usually all it did was double the damage and set him off worse than he’d been before.

The problem that arose for me personally was a deep bitterness at having to deal with this situation at all; I stopped wanting to even try to reason with Axl anymore. I found myself working very hard to accomplish something very simple: I used to have to go and talk to him at length about things I didn’t want to talk about just to be able to address one simple band issue. It began to fall on my shoulders to handle these day-to-day decisions that required Axl’s input and after a while I just didn’t want to do it; I wanted to hand that responsibility off to someone else. I just wanted to play music.

Doug Goldstein took over that role once he spent enough time with us on the road. He watched how we all interacted very carefully, and stepped in to play the part of the guy who “dealt with Axl.” Doug played a lot of games to get things done: he’d have the necessary conversations with Axl… but not the way anyone in the band would have done it. The way I see it, Doug was intent on making things happen for the wrong reasons. He was there in the first place to make himself money and to work his way up the industry ladder by establishing his reputation as manager for Guns N’ Roses. He’d tell Axl whatever he needed to and do whatever it took to keep Guns together not because he cared about us at all, but because having us as a client was essential to his reputation—but of course that’s no more than my opinion.