Slash

the show, a sudden storm damaged some of our equipment. Despite more rain, people filled the arena and were lined up outside, where fights broke out, a few cars were burned, and the police had to use tear gas to calm everyone down.

When we took the stage sometime around eleven p.m., the place went crazy. We were playing really well, and the rain had held off throughout the first hour of our set until we played “November Rain.” As we started that song, literally on cue, the sky opened and it poured once again. It was one of those massive tropical downpours where one drop can fill a coffee cup. It was coming down in a black mist that mixed with the steam rising off of the audience. I could barely see through the clouds that formed in the arena; the people were a sea of silhouettes. It was very dramatic and very beautiful; it felt as if they and the band were one. The audience was as moved as we were—they were into it, truly passionate. It rained so hard that we finished the song then we had to break until the storm passed, and once it did, we came back on and gave it everything we had.

We had every obstacle possible befall us between our show in Venezuela and the shows in Colombia, and considering the band’s chemistry in the recent past, you would expect that we’d have fallen apart under such duress. But that was the thing about Guns: we’d self-destruct when everything was easy, but in those instances when every single factor seemed to be against us, everyone, Axl included, pulled together to make it happen. The extreme lows might have left me feeling like there was no tomorrow, but when we’d pull off these valiant rock-and-roll productions in the face of adversity, I’d feel like we were invincible; I’d think we were the strongest band around. Those moments renewed our collective faith and boosted morale like nothing else. Rather than be frustrated by what befell us in South America, we let the audiences at all of those gigs sustain us with their passion and drive us to be our best. Our playing was elevated; it was as intense as the fans were—we were carried away along with them. We reached that point that musicians talk about where you are immersed in what you are doing to the degree that you don’t even know who you are—you are part of the performance so fully that you aren’t thinking anymore. Those moments are magical and that whole tour was like that, every single night. It was the band at its best; it was something that anybody would have given their left arm to be a part of… if it occurred consistently. But it wasn’t ever that simple: when we weren’t being transcendent we specialized in self-inflicted disaster.

IN JANUARY 1993, WE SET OFF ON A tour of Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, with an eighty-person crew and entourage in tow. We ran into Ronnie Wood in Japan, which was great. He and I had been friends for years by then, so he joined us onstage at the Tokyo Dome for “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and Duff and Matt and I hung out with him after the show. That was a really good night. The rest of that tour was just more of the same—great shows, some drama—plus a lot of expensive go-karting, yachting, and dining. The theme parties might have been eliminated but the wasteful days off were not.

We returned to the States in early February and had a month off before we started the next leg, an American tour we called Skin and Bones. This jaunt in particular was aimed at making us money, because the production was stripped back to the bare essentials: we kept Dizzy Reed, but Teddy and the horn section were gone, as were the backup singers. This tour featured an acoustic section in the middle of the set that showcased the hits off of Lies as well as a few cover songs, such as “Dead Flowers.” I couldn’t have been happier: finally we were touring as a bare-bones rock-and-roll band again.

This leg, in my mind, was our chance to show the world the Use Your Illusion records as I’d always heard them. The day that I’d finished recording my last guitar part for those records I left the studio with a mix of them that was simple and raw, before any synths or horns or backup vocal tracks were layered on. I’ve never forgotten how cool they sounded in that stripped-down, simple, powerful state. I wish that I still had a copy of them; or that they were floating around the Internet somewhere. Believe me, they sounded so cool; they were entirely different beasts altogether from the versions that got released. I’m not going to get into hindsight about what could have been, but all in all they were two wholly different bodies of work. In any case, we got a chance to do the songs scaled back and straight up with the band reduced to its normal size… I was elated.

The tour started in Austin, Texas, in late February and that first show went fine, but we immediately ran into trouble. Over the first few weeks we had to cancel four shows due to inclement weather. In Sacramento in early April, someone in the audience throw a bottle of Jack and hit Duff square in the head, knocking him unconscious. That was so ridiculous, not to mention dangerous. Anytime people throw shit onstage to get a reaction—I assume because rock bands seem larger than life—is just insane. I’m never sure what they’re after when they throw something that can do actual bodily harm. We’d done about ninety minutes at that point, but that was the end of the show because Duff was really hurt.

I volunteered to be the one to tell the audience that they’d fucked up. They cheered when I came back onstage, but they weren’t happy about what I had to say.

“That bottle of piss knocked Duff unconscious and now he’s on his way to the hospital,” I said. “There is no way that we’re coming back out. The show is over. Please leave peacefully and don’t fuck with anyone. Don’t fuck with the building.”

We canceled a show in Atlanta both to let Duff recover and because Axl had been arrested there during the Appetite tour for kicking in the head a security guard whom he’d supposedly seen roughing up audience members. Doug didn’t trust either Axl or the venue’s security and he was probably right on both counts.

Then at the end of April, when we were back in L.A., Gilby broke his wrist in a motorcycle accident. We weren’t sure how bad it was until he showed up at a band meeting in a very serious-looking cast.

“Wow,” I said. “That looks pretty bad.”

“How long is that gonna take to heal?” Axl asked him.

Gilby looked truly depressed. “Two or three weeks.”

“Aw, fuck!”

“I know, man,” Gilby said. “This fucking sucks.”

We had a European tour booked, starting with two dates in Russia—our first ever—two weeks later.

“Fuck it,” Axl said. “Let’s call Izzy.”

I was surprised and happy to hear that Izzy went for it… though I was completely confused to hear that Izzy didn’t want to rehearse at all—not that we had much time to anyway. As it turns out, the political situation in Russia in May 1993 was too unstable for us to play Moscow, so we flew to Tel Aviv, Israel, to rehearse with Izzy before we launched the tour there at the Hayarkon Park Arena. We booked a rehearsal space studio in Tel Aviv and it was a trip: this place was a recording studio as well and I think that the engineers didn’t believe the band booked was actually us until we walked through the door. We got together in this cheap old spot that was homey—in a foreign way—and run by these old people who were really cool. It was an average rehearsal space with midrange recording equipment and they’d clearly never had anyone like us in there, so we totally blew them away and for that reason alone it was worth it. Izzy showed up… with dreadlocks… and hadn’t practiced one song. So we did what we could.

We played to fifty thousand people in Israel for the first time two days later, which was the biggest concert that the country had ever seen. Sadly, it was a pretty loose set, because Izzy wasn’t up to speed and hadn’t been conscientious about practicing. The press criticized us pretty harshly, saying we had used the opportunity as a warm-up date, which was not true at all; we wanted it to be great, but with a rhythm guitarist who was still unfamiliar with the material, there was only so much we could do. We did the gig, we hung out there for a couple of days; we saw all of the sights.

Izzy, Duff, and I saw where Jesus was born, and we went to eat in the square around the Wailing Wall, and while we were sitting at this outdoor cafe near the zoo I watched a busload of school kids get off for a field trip. At either end of the bus were parents, or teachers, or adult supervisors of some kind who were armed with rifles. They arranged the kids in a line for their tour of the zoo and one armed adult took the front, one took the back, and one walked in the middle of them, all with their rifles strapped around them. I’d never seen anything like that in my life. I’d had a friend from Israel who’d gone back to do his two years of mandatory military duty and I thought about him just then: he’d come back a completely different guy. He’d gone off as a nerd and returned as a nerd with combat experience.