Slash

AS OUR ALBUMS CONTINUED TO CHART worldwide, we toured Mexico in April, and like our South American fans the Mexican crowds were very dedicated. Then we did the Freddie Mercury tribute in London which was amazing—he was another of Axl’s heroes, so although it was a short set, we gave it our all: we did “Paradise City” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Later on I went up and played “Tie Your Mother Down” with Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen, and Axl sang as well. At the end of the concert we all did “We Are the Champions.” It was a monumental gig, but the most memorable part of the evening was when I took my pants off in front of Liz Taylor: I was in the green room changing and she opened the door, her entourage in tow, and caught me in a T-shirt with no pants on at all. She didn’t have a look of embarrassment in the least; she was absolutely devilish—I could feel it in my loins that she was having a look.

IN MAY OF 1992, WE ANNOUNCED THAT we would coheadline a summer tour with Metallica starting July 7—there could not have been a bigger rock-and-roll bill at the time. It was too cool: they had just released The Black Album and we were riding high with Use Your Illusion I and II. We then headed off to start our headlining arena tour of Europe in Dublin, Ireland, in May 1992.

In my personal life, my girlfriend, Renee, and I broke up during the American leg because someone in our entourage told her how unfaithful I was being on tour. Cheating was the one thing I’d promised I’d never do. It was a weakness on my part that came out of a need to have as much of a good time between shows as possible, which, along with heavy boozing, was my way of self-medicating to get through all of the turbulent emotional activity, the yin-yang psycho-emotional ups and downs. Booze and girls—that was how I dealt. For the most part in our professional career I hadn’t taken full advantage of the exorbitant amount of women that were available to me, so now that I felt unsettled about what we were doing, I took advantage of all of it.

Unfortunately, as is usually the case, it all came out in the wash. We were in Chicago when I got a message on my answering service from Renee’s stepbrother, who was a good buddy of mine. I was with a girl at the time, an actress—a real one—that I’d seen in a movie. We were in my hotel room when I called him up.

“Hey, man, it’s Slash,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Dude,” he said, deadly serious. “I don’t know what you’ve got going on out there on tour, and that’s your business. But I think you should call Renee because she’s flipping out about something. She won’t tell me what’s wrong, but she sounds really pissed.”

I called Renee and she told me off very colorfully. Then in no uncertain terms she threatened me, letting me know that she had an uncle in Chicago—not knowing that I was actually in Chicago—who was connected and who would happily “take care of me” if she asked him to.

Slam. She hung up.

I put down the phone. I looked at it for a second. Then I turned to the girl lying in my bed.

“Hey,” I said. “You better go.”

“Um, okay,” she said, annoyed. She sat up and started looking for her clothes.

Then I thought about it for a minute. “Well… not right now,” I said, and got back into bed. Needless to say, Renee and I were apart for a while after that.

THE EUROPEAN TOUR WAS AMAZING, AND there were many memorable moments. We did this one show in Paris where Axl got this idea in his head that we should have people come out to play with us to record it for a pay-per-view show on some global TV network. Axl got Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, Jeff Beck, and pulled this move that seemed almost gratuitous to me because they were my favorite artists—as you know by now, Aerosmith was my favorite band, Beck my favorite guitarist, and I’d been on Lenny’s album.

I felt like this was an effort on his part to keep me satisfied, because he rarely made grand gestures aimed at keeping me happy—he’d have to have been blind not to know how pissed off I was as the tour wore on. He’d dumped all of the band responsibility personally on me, from finding Matt and Gilby to hiring the support musicians. I think in his mind, this pay-per-view concert was throwing me a bone, because when he ever did get around to making a peace offering, Axl never did it with words.

I wish that he did because that concert was very expensive for us, and although it was seen by millions, it didn’t seem entirely necessary. But once again, I agreed to it. Truth be told, I was excited to do it, as excessive as it was.

Whenever I get onstage to play with Aerosmith, it’s only because we happen to be in the same city at the same time—they usually invite me, but I’m lucky if they even send a car to take me to the venue. We gave every performer on that bill red-carpet treatment: first-class travel and accommodations in Paris—all of it. Everyone got in a day early and we set up rehearsals to go through “Always on the Run” with Lenny and “Train Kept Rolling” with Aerosmith, and Jeff Beck did “Locomotive” with us.

Everyone came out to sound-check… except Axl. I remember Steven Tyler coming up to me and asking— again—“Where’s your singer, man?” As I’ve mentioned, it’s the way he’s greeted me ever since our first tour together. This time the joke was too true to laugh at. Steven wasn’t the only one asking that question that day—in fact, it seemed to be the comment on everyone’s tongue. It wasn’t easy to stand there and take it; I never wanted to say anything bad about Axl, but it was pretty hard not to look stressed with Steven Tyler standing in front of me speaking the truth.

I remember doing sound check the day of the show, going through “Locomotive” with Joe Perry and Jeff Beck, and talking through the guitar parts. Jeff was standing there playing while he talked to us… it was so cool, he was just laying out these amazing licks nonchalantly.

“So you’ve been practicing?” Joe Perry asked him. I thought that was a weird thing to say. It was Jeff fucking Beck!

Jeff blew his ears out at sound check however… well, actually Matt blew Jeff’s ears out: Jeff was standing up near the drum riser playing when Matt slammed on a cymbal and just knocked his head off. It sucked—it was the day before the gig and Jeff couldn’t play; he couldn’t hear and do it at all, so he went home. It wasn’t cool, he’d sustained some real damage. Years later Matt told me he saw Jeff doing an interview about it and he summed it up like this: “He hit the cymbal and it went crash and that was it. Nothing.”

He was missed but the show came out really well: Lenny came on and did his thing, and so did Joe and Steve. Unfortunately, their part was at the end of a two-hour set, which was already an hour late going on, so they had to wait backstage all night. I still can’t believe that Axl didn’t show up for that sound check, let alone go on an hour late. I can count on one hand how many times Axl came to sound check on that tour; he was always careful about his throat, which is fine. But I don’t think that’s quite why he didn’t sound-check for that show. Although, all things considered, I have no idea why Axl didn’t sound-check for that show… or any of the others on that tour for that matter.

BY THE TIME WE GOT TO ENGLAND TO play a few dates, I got lonely and called Renee, and flew her out to meet me. I made that decision on one of those nights when all of the fucking sordid, lunar, promiscuous stuff I’d been doing had caught up to me and left me feeling empty and entirely alone. It’s something that musicians do on a regular basis when they’re on the road for too long: they get a soft spot in their heart, and in a moment of weakness, against their better judgement, they act on it, usually engaging the wrong person.

So anyway a day or so later, there she was. I waited for her in the hotel bar, and when she showed up I was totally distracted and starstruck because Jonathan Winters was there—he is one of my comedic idols, so we ended up having drinks with him and his wife, which was great.

Renee and I had a very civil time. She travelled through England with me and we discussed getting back together. But she came out there in the same frame of mind that she was in when I first met her—not giving me any. There was no way she was staying on tour very long.

We headed back to Europe after that, and when we got to Germany, a few of us shot a video with Michael Jackson for the song I’d played on his Dangerous album, “Give in to Me.” It was released as a single in Europe, though it wasn’t in the United States. Gilby, Ted Adriatus, aka Teddy Zig Zag, and I shot the video with Michael: it was a live club gig in Munich, complete with fans. We had the guy from Living Colour on bass, Muzz Skillings, and the concept was “Michael fronting a heavy metal band.” Unfortunately, it only aired on MTV Europe.