Slash

obstacles and produce music. When you’re always there, you’re the one that holds all the cards.

Keith inspired me; I felt like I had to try harder. The next day I tried to refocus my outlook and I showed up at the Complex ready to make it work at all costs. And that’s when I got slapped in the face once again: Axl never showed up to rehearse, and the attorneys’ negotiation of our “employment contracts” had taken a really insulting turn. God bless Keith for trying, but there was nothing I could do—I had to go.

Our “rehearsals” always went really late; even later by the time Axl showed up. Whenever he did, it was usually around one or two; we’d play for an hour or more and then finally get bored and go home, leaving him in the studio. I didn’t hear him sing the whole time we were at the Complex; I’m not sure I’d heard him sing since the last show in 1993, and at this point it was 1996. So I didn’t even know what we were working on. We were supposed to jam and jam until he said, “I like this,” or, “I like that.” Nobody was having a good time, so nobody was inspired. Generally I’d get home about three a.m. And it was one of those nights that prompted me to get out.

I got in bed and went to sleep. Two hours later, about five a.m., I woke up with cold sweats and in the blackest of moods and felt really suicidal. I wanted to end it; I was so miserable that I wanted it all to disappear. I’d never felt that way before, I’d never wanted to snuff myself—I’d gotten really close a few times but never intentionally. For a half hour, I looked around my bedroom; I had nothing to do it with; I wanted to kill myself quickly; I didn’t want to go on. If there had been any dope lying around, I would’ve done it all in one hit and that would have been that.

For the next hour I stared at the ceiling and thought about my life from start to finish. I was weighing whether or not it was worth living, sorting out how I’d gotten where I was and deciding what I could do about it all. By six a.m. I was exhausted and fell back asleep. Two hours later I woke up with one crystal-clear thought in my head: That’s it. Other than that, my mind was silent.

Up until that moment, one part of me wanted to push on; the other part saw no future. In the early-morning light, I went over all of the angles once again and every single one of them pointed to the same conclusion. The band wasn’t what it had once been and I didn’t want to be there anymore. Once I said that to myself, there was nothing else to think about.

I got out of bed and called our management office, BFD, and told Doug that I wouldn’t be coming back.

“That’s it,” I told Doug. “I’m done. I quit.”

I hung up before he could say anything.

IN RETROSPECT I WAS NAIVE ABOUT THE whole thing: I didn’t protect myself legally because I didn’t think I had to. In my mind, what was the name without the players? I didn’t think I had given Axl anything, because to me, what could he do with the name and nothing else to show for it?

I didn’t have my attorneys get on that situation as well as I should have; I was so over it and so worn down that I just couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t want to do a press release, I didn’t want to raise a brouhaha or stir up a lot of fanfare. I wanted to go quietly. I didn’t want it to be one of those situations where you have two guys bickering at each other through the press. I didn’t see any reason why something so simple should turn into a big legal battle either. I thought I’d take my share and go.

In the short run, no one in the Guns corporation actually believed that I was done. Axl contacted those closest to me, telling them that I should change my mind. He called my dad, my security guard, my wife, Renee, and told each of them that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. He said that I was pissing away so much money because of my decision. But none of that mattered to me. I was done. The camel’s back had been broken and there was no going back.

To tell you the truth, none of the people in Axl’s camp believed I was really gone for the next couple years. I was kind of taken aback by their deep sense of denial: I never behaved as if I intended to return, but that didn’t matter to them. They just didn’t believe that I would rather not be in Guns N’ Roses than deal with the reality of being in Guns N’ Roses.

I’D DONE EVERYTHING IN MY POWER from the day we got together to make Guns N’ Roses the best band in the world. I’d put my heart and soul into everything we did and I regret none of my contributions in the least. We did things other bands only dream of; in just a few years, we surpassed goals that took bands like the Stones decades to achieve. I don’t like to brag, but if you research it at all, you’ll see that what we did in the time frame we did it is something unsurpassed in the history of rock and roll.

After working to make that band all that it could be for the better part of my life, saying good-bye to the institution I helped build was as alien as being launched into space. But once I’d done it, a weight was lifted from my shoulders and the lead was out of my shoes. It was like decompressing after a deepwater dive. The day I made my decision, I woke up early and called the powers that be to deliver the news, and went back to sleep. I don’t remember anything else of that day aside from the fact that when I woke up again I was refreshed. I felt as if I’d just slept for a week. Later that night I called Duff, Matt, and Adam Day and let them know. Duff accepted my decision without any question, and Matt wasn’t surprised either. I was satisfied but it was bittersweet; I had never really given up before in my life.

I enjoyed a period of peace for a while. I started to go out and just jam whenever I had the chance. My attorneys asked me if I wanted to sue for damages and just go after as much stuff as possible, and I said no, in good faith. I can’t get into it; aside from saying that they were trying to protect my rights and I probably should have listened, the truth is, I was in denial about just how mercurial and untrustworthy the relationship between the Guns institution and me had become. I didn’t see it as such, but when you leave a company you have to protect your interests. At the time I still had a silly amount of trust in what Guns meant to me, so I didn’t dwell on it. And to this day there are still issues that remain to be resolved that cause me grief.

All things considered, I stand by my decision, and I stand by the way I did it. Even my dad had told me earlier on, when I was in a state of duress, “Don’t go down with the ship.” I consider leaving GN’R one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made. There’s no doubt that if I’d stayed with the band under those circumstances I’d surely be dead by now because of too much unnecessary drama. I definitely would have found junk again or it would have found me. If I knew then what I know now, had I been more experienced and more self-protective and more suspicious of the players involved—and I’m not even talking about Axl so much as the people he hired to guide him through this—it might have been handled differently. He hired people who had nothing but making money off of him in mind. If it had been otherwise, or if he and I had been able to discuss it face-to-face, there might have been a greater degree of preservation in regard to our mutual interests as a band. But I don’t believe in “ifs.”

It just wasn’t meant to be. The road that Axl chose to travel forced me away. And once I left, Duff was next—he split of his own accord less than a year later. Not too long after that, Matt got fired. Apparently, he stood up for me when I was slandered at rehearsal and that was the end of him.

By 1998, Axl was the only one of the original five still in the “band” he’d legally arranged to be able to call Guns N’ Roses. By then, Izzy had released a handful of solo albums and toured the world and Gilby had done the same. Duff had formed a new band and put out two records, and I had, too: my second incarnation of Snakepit was alive and well. Matt, for his part, had rejoined the Cult, recorded a record, and was on tour. Steven was crippled by drug addiction, but Axl didn’t have that excuse. I found it morbidly ironic that, out of all of us, the one guy who’d basically browbeat and pressured us into submission into retaining the name had done nothing much with it whatsoever at that point.

IN 1996 IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING MY last days win GN’R, I did everything I could to stay inspired by music. It was the best way for me to cure my disillusionment with what had become of my band. I toured the world with players as skilled and diverse as could be and I learned as much as I could from all of them. I went to Japan for two weeks with Nile Rodgers and the original lineup of Chic—and that was one hell of a musical education.

I have all the respect in the world for Nile; we had worked together on the soundtrack for Beverly Hills Cop III, so when he called me to go out on tour with Chic, there was no way I was turning him down. He had gathered all of the original players: Omar Akeem, Bernie Worrell, Bernard Edwards, and at least one of the original background singers. They had Stevie Winwood, Simon Le Bon, Sister Sledge, and me out with them for the duration, making cameo appearances during their set.

At rehearsal down at S.I.R. in NYC, during one of the jams I did a dive bomb kind of thing with my Les Paul (this is where that aforementioned crack happened), which is when you push the back of a guitar’s head stock forward while pushing the lower part of the neck, where the neck and the body meet, inward instead of using a