Slash

THERE WAS A SPARE-NO-EXPENSE attitude on this tour, which was new for us. If we had days off, yachts were rented. In England, we had a five-hour go-kart rally arranged for us in West London. In Australia, taking a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef seemed to be something the band needed to do. It was all senseless spending. Doug approved one crazy idea after another to fill our free time at our expense. With the exception of Axl, the band wouldn’t have cared if none of it ever happened—we were more than capable of entertaining ourselves in any global locale on a shoestring budget.

Our mistake was never giving a thought to the cost of Doug’s expenditures, that is for sure. In the back of my mind, I knew that hiring a yacht or closing down a restaurant didn’t come free, but at the same time I wasn’t going to say anything because at times those events seemed to maintain the status quo. I know that was Doug’s motivation: he did everything he could think of to keep everyone happy, but at the same time every time he arranged one of his grand gestures, it was a strike against him in my mind. I resented Doug’s influence in that regard, but all the same, I couldn’t get too directly pissed at him. Doug was so far up Axl’s ass at that point that Doug saw whatever Axl was looking at, crystal clear.

I always found it suspect that Doug was our manager yet he was out on the road all the time. He found a million excuses to be there, and aside from the few legitimate ones, the truth is, in my opinion at least, he was there to try to keep Axl under his thumb and so protect his own job. By becoming tight with Axl when he was our road manager, Doug had secured himself his new position as our manager or so it seemed to me. I wanted to keep it all going too much to worry about extravagances, but I thought it was ridiculous that someone who was employed to guide our career was not only arrogant enough to let these wasteful expenditures happen, but was also arrogant enough to enjoy most of them himself out on the road as if he were earning his keep onstage every night.

AT THE END OF THE EUROPEAN TOUR, we returned to the States and Axl got arrested the moment we landed at JFK in New York on July 12, 1992. He was considered a fugitive, stemming from the warrants out for his arrest by St. Louis authorities in connection with the riot in 1991. Two days later, in court in St. Louis, he pleaded innocent to four counts of misdemeanor assault and one of property damage and a date was set for October. We were allowed to begin our tour with Metallica three days later, as scheduled.

While Axl took care of his business, I had five days off in L.A., and my first night in town I went out to dinner with Renee. After dinner, we had exhausted all the small talk we had in us and the conversation shifted to the subject of seeing each other regularly again.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to do that again.”

“Oh no?” I asked, completely into it now. “Why not?”

“I will only be with you if we get married.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Really?”

She’d handed me the ultimate ultimatum, because marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. I was emotionally needy and I don’t know if she sensed that, but under the gun, I folded. I told her I needed to think about it, and then I came back to her with a ring and we set a date.

THE METALLICA TOUR STARTED IN WASHINGTON, D.C., in July 1992. We had a meeting before it began because the Metallica camp was concerned: we were having major problems getting onstage on time, riding that high–low roller coaster. Metallica was not a band to pull that kind of shit at all, so they wisely opted to play first so as to avoid being pulled down by our bullshit.

I have so much respect for James—I think he’s one of the most prolific singer-songwriter-guitarists ever. I had looked up to the band since Master of Puppets, which came out just before Appetite. When we set out to do that tour, part of me was excited and part of me was worried about how it was all going to work and whether Axl was going to adjust. Metallica was a no-frills, hardworking road band; they did long tours, they never went on late—they were no bullshit. They were macho about their work ethic and dedicated to their fans, which I thought was commendable as well. They represented everything that mattered to me professionally, and I didn’t want to see it get fucked up; I didn’t want to let them down.

From the start of the tour, Axl was out to impress Metallica and everyone else—in his way. He brought up the idea of having backstage parties every single night—theme parties that would be a lounge for our guests, like the Stones had on their tours. Axl had hired his stepbrother Stuart and his sister Amy to be part of the management team, and they were put in charge of organizing these parties according to Axl’s vision. They had no experience doing so, of course. I saw their work in action and it was both uncool and yet another unnecessary extravagance. I never went to one of those parties during the entire tour. The whole idea of it was just too self-indulgent, too self- centered, and too showy for me to even think about participating in good faith anyway.

Actually, I’m wrong, I went into one, one time, to look for someone. As I recall, it was a “Roman bath” party, with a huge Jacuzzi in the middle of the room. I know they did a casino night, a Mexican fiesta, and a bunch of other things. For each of these parties, Axl’s siblings would be hustling every day to get it done. The Metallica guys, off the bat, disassociated themselves from that whole freak show. It was like no one wanted to even say anything about it. The subject of the theme parties and Axl’s behavior reminded me of the first Creepshow film and the episode about this thing under the stairs in a box that ate people that no one would talk about.

It was always a good time, but all the same, Axl and our inability to get onstage on time was like the big elephant in the room every night. No one would bring it up, but it was obvious that we were all thinking about it. Lars Ulrich never said anything to me, but he did to Matt, and it was humiliating and embarrassing how lame those parties were and how disappointed Metallica was that we couldn’t even get onstage on time. I think that the reason Axl went onstage so late, and never understood how offensive, selfish, and inconsiderate it was to everyone involved—from the fans to the band—was that he saw it as something other than what it was. That was why he felt like he was doing something that other people just didn’t get. I think somewhere in his mind he thought it was cool to keep people waiting, as if it just served to build anticipation rather than create frustration. I think it was all building up what Guns meant to him in his mind. And in the face of that, he simply could not comprehend how what he was doing didn’t make complete sense to us or the rest of the world. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Metallica was earning the exact same paycheck as we were every night, but while they pocketed the whole thing, we were blowing 80 percent both on union dues for all of the overtime we cost ourselves going on late and on these stupid theme parties. It was just bad.

Our chemistry onstage was beautiful despite the drama within the band.

IT’S TOO BAD, BUT, OUR ROLLER COASTER of dysfunction really peaked on tour with Metallica. When it all went off without a hitch, that double bill was the greatest thing going. When it didn’t, it was a nightmare. For us, for the most part, our chemistry onstage was beautiful despite the drama within the band, but there were times when it spilled over. Sitting around for a few hours waiting to go on… that really spoiled the music. It was like being an athlete who’d warmed up then cooled down, and then had to run the race: it took a while to get into the groove, but we always got there.

Offstage, however, our chemistry was awful, and it became harder to ignore as the tour went on. The tension was so tangible that Duff and I reached colossal levels of alcohol intake just to get through a day. It was no big deal for us to polish off a half gallon of vodka while sitting around backstage for two hours waiting to play. The disrespect and lack of trust that Axl’s behavior inspired was corroding the core of the band. Axl was becoming the quarterback who refused to throw the ball even when we started losing every game.

At the Giants Stadium show at the end of July, Axl barely made it through the set due to the state of his voice. He was advised by his doctor to rest it for a week, so we canceled our next three dates. The tour resumed in Canada, which came to be the infamous coup de grace of everything that was wrong with our band.

It all went down in Montreal, on August 8, 1992. Metallica went on, and midway through their set, James Hetfield caught on fire when a pyrotechnic malfunctioned. He sustained serious injuries to his arm and shoulder, and the band was forced to end their set immediately. We were still at our hotel when it happened, and we were asked to go on early—it was a nonissue; of course we agreed to do so. The band headed down to the venue right away and discussed what we’d play to fill up the remainder of Metallica’s slot and ours as well. We had plenty of time to