Slash

I saw Doug’s true colors pretty quickly, I must say. When he stepped in and replaced Alan Niven in May 1991, just as we were beginning to tour again, I didn’t think he’d help mediate for the right reasons—the band’s best interests. Nonetheless, I leaned on him to help deal with Axl. He could get us over whatever obstacle was in our way as far as Axl’s demands were concerned, but it was a no-win situation, because it was clear that Doug wasn’t telling Axl what he needed to hear for our greater good. Axl needed to be talked down, if anything, not appeased. Because that had gone on too long. Doug was never going to do that, though; he was only going to say whatever worked in the short term. Again, that was my opinion, at least.

In two years Guns had become a whirling dervish of miscommunication that spent money like it was water. And every day Doug would tell the rest of us that he was going to stop it all, yet nothing changed. All the rest of us wanted to do was keep moving forward as a band, to have a good time and get things done. To me that never seemed like something that should be that hard to do.

A permanent shift in the mood of the band came at the first mention of the contracts and the ownership of the band name, all of which first happened when Steven was kicked out. Axl insisted that owning the band name was something we needed to litigate, and making our “identity” a “commodity” left us feeling dictated to—which was something that never went over well. That legal arrangement damaged our sense of mutual respect because it made the rest of us apart from Axl feel pretty taken for granted. We could tolerate a lot because we were so easygoing, but an unrecognized tension was building, and the contract issue brought it to a head. Even then, we never talked about it, because we’d gotten well into the habit of blowing things off, but I know Izzy felt it; I know Duff and I did, too—we’d all look at one another sideways whenever the subject came up.

THE EXPANDING GAP BETWEEN AXL and me and between Axl and the rest of us got pretty wide during the process of having the Illusion records mixed. As I’ve said, Axl would be at his house and I’d be down at the studio and I’d have the mix of each song sent out there to him once it was done; then I’d wait to get his input. All things considered, we were on a collective creative high, but there wasn’t exactly a spirit of solidarity in that arrangement; it was a one-sided relationship. Still, to me, it was tolerable. Subconsciously, I think I began to see the band as one guy sitting on a throne high above and completely apart from the crowd of people hustling around beneath him.

The first touchy situation I got into with Axl came after I got on the cover of Rolling Stone following the release of the Illusion records. The impression that I gave the writer, which was also true, was that we were a band who had exploded so quickly that three years later we were still trying to catch up to what we’d become.

Axl got ahold of the interview and he read it, and from what I understand, he was cool with it, or at least didn’t see anything wrong with it at first. But apparently, upon further review he found something I said insulting. At least that’s what I think… actually I don’t know what happened there.

The next time I saw Axl was at the Long Beach Arena, where our entire stage setup for the Illusions tour was fully assembled and he was not speaking to me at all. If I’d been so deluded as to think that it was just my imagination, he made sure that I knew he was pissed. I had given him this really cool straitjacket for his birthday not too long before and he’d brought it with him that day, just so he could make a point of leaving it on my amp when he left.

We didn’t talk to each other at all over the next few days as the band ran through those rehearsals. It was exactly the type of eggshell walking that being in Guns N’ Roses had become. The vibe was bad; I just tried to do my thing without issue each day. All things considered, I was very concerned because the truth is that I’m more sensitive than I seem to be. I worried about what was making Axl so angry because I had no idea what I’d done; he wasn’t saying anything, and no one else knew either. It eventually came to light as much as it could… and it took a huge discussion to work it out.

We did amazing things every single night that were godlike.

SO THAT WAS THE STATE OF OUR BAND as we set off on our longest tour with our most intense production to date. The touring was fucking exciting—it was what kept us together through the increasingly frequent rough spots. After we got our stage show together, backup singers, horn section, and all, and did a week’s worth of rehearsals with every element intact, suddenly we found ourselves in South America, before a crowd of 180,000 at Rock in Rio II, on January 20, 1991. We didn’t even have a new record out yet; we were there solely on the strength of Appetite and Lies, which by this point were four and two years old, respectively.

^{Duff and Slash enjoying the MGM Grand jet.}

We flew down there on the private 727 owned and leased by the MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas, and that was it—we had to have that thing for the rest of the tour. It was pretty ornate: it had all of these little private lounges and bedrooms; it was a great crash pad. And it was the best way to get from country to country because you took off and landed on your own schedule and you circumvented the standard entry procedure. The paperwork would be handled while you sat on the plane, and I don’t think customs officers ever boarded and searched us once in the two years we leased the plane. As much as I was glad to have it, like the rest of the guys in the band, I didn’t think we were nearly big enough to warrant that thing—I’m sure Axl told Doug we needed it at all costs, which probably sealed the deal.

That tour was a great time: Duff and I had our new party buddy Matt, and no matter how many days we’d stay up, we could always play the gig. We just felt like we were kings of the world; we had a good time with everything and we always did our job. Izzy, unfortunately, was shell-shocked; he was trying his best to keep far away from our whole partying scene, so that tour from the start wasn’t as much fun for him. And Axl… well, I don’t know where his head was at; I won’t pretend to understand what was going on with him then, now, or ever. But I do know that we all came together and enjoyed what we couldn’t have without each other: the mutual high of performing onstage every night.

All the same, we began to go on later and later as the tour progressed. That was an Axl thing and it wasn’t just one or two occasions, it was every night. That hit me, on a personal level, as his biggest betrayal ever. It’s not like a band has to cater to their audience or feel as if they are at their mercy, but it is a band’s job to play for the people who have bought tickets to see them. It became a major issue with me. When I’m asked why I quit Guns N’ Roses, I can think of three reasons: the first was the fact that on that tour we almost never took the stage on time; the second was canceling shows for no good reason; and the third is the infamous contract awarding Axl the band’s name should we ever break up. That contract was a real slap in the face. We’ll get to all that in just a little bit, but at the time I just thought, Take the fucking name and shove it.

All of those conditions pointed to a situation where the band and everything around it was arranged to be under Axl’s control. Starting with the name issue and moving on to the fact that he wanted every player under a contract that could be terminated for “bad behavior”—this really wasn’t a healthy thing. Nor was the inconsiderate treatment of the people who came by the thousands to see us, and the crew and everyone in our entourage who had to work overtime every single night that we went on late and later. It became really humiliating for me to continue because as much as we were always considered a brash rock band, we were always known to take care of our business. It sucked for the band and the crew that we couldn’t always do our best because we were handicapped by situations that the rest of us weren’t directly responsible for.

There is probably no better way to build up resentment or to make a touring ensemble or any other kind of collective endeavor hate-heavy than by promoting a lack of respect. I’m not one to get angry that easily—you have to really push me—so I remained as elastic as I could going through this tour, but it started to wear on me. There were so many great band opportunities that were shot down left and right because Axl refused to take them— usually those decisions were made between him and Doug and sometimes the rest of us were just informed later. Yet, at the same time, the band was amazing, and anyone who went to one of those magic Guns nights during the two and a half years that we toured was blown away. We were an unreal band with an unreal singer; Axl was just amazing. Despite all of this tension going on behind the scenes, I still had some onstage chemistry with him that was incredible: we did amazing things every single night that were godlike. There were nights when certain moments we would hit gave me goose bumps.

All in all, it was a very tough up-and-down cycle to deal with. That’s my side of the story; there’s Axl’s, of