Slash

huge honor and a humbling experience. I didn’t think Ray had even heard of me, but there we were playing together.

Ray was involved with a benefit for underpriviledged kids with an interest in music—he’d let them record in his studio and use his equipment, and sometimes Ray even played with them. They’d work on songs, techniques, and arrangements while he coached them. I’d go down there at times to play some tracks with the kids. Helping them out was an incredible feeling.

I also contributed to certain parts of the Ray movie tracks; I played with guys way out of my league, big-band old-time blues jazz players. I played guitar on “Sorry Is the Hardest Word” on his Ray and Friends album, but after Ray died, the executive producer used a friend of his instead and took my part off, even though Ray thought I was more bluesy.

My period of rootlessness in the musical sense was about to come to an end. I had wandered and I had learned. I was ready to come back to my center and make a new start. It was time. I got together with Pete Angelus, who had managed the Black Crowes and had wanted to manage me. He got me together with Steve Gorman, the Crowes’ drummer, and Alan Niven turned me on to a bass player. We started to write and came up with the music for what became “Fall to Pieces.” All we needed was a singer—again. But then my good friend Randy Castillo passed away and I went to his funeral, and out of his death came a rebirth I could have never imagined.

13. Coming Up for Air

^{Velvet Revolver and some of their biggest fans on the Santa Monica Pier in July 2004 during the making of the “Fall to Pieces” music video.}

You can’t wait around for destiny to give you what you think you deserve, you have to earn it, even if you think you’ve paid your dues. You might have achieved what you wanted, but are you sure you learned the lesson?

In 2002, I went to Ireland and hooked up with Ronnie Wood to be part of the tour for his solo record. He called it the Not for Beginners tour. Perla came with me and we hung out with Ronnie and his wife, Jo, and had a great time. We’d rehearse in Ronnie’s bar: he has a building apart from the house that is a proper pub with a snooker table and Guinness on tap. We ran through great stuff: Woodie’s stuff, Stones stuff, Faces songs, a Guns N’ Roses song, and a Snakepit song. We had sixty songs rehearsed and a great band to play them made up of Ronnie’s son Jessie, two of Jessie’s friends on bass and drums, and a couple of other guys; plus Ronnie’s daughter Leah singing background. It was a really cool thing because we toured all of these little clubs all over the U.K. We had the Coors come up and sing and we’d play the Faces’ classic “Ooh La La” every night. There was a lot of fun and a lot of Guinness to be had. As Perla and I would later discover, that is where our son London was conceived.

After that tour we came back and headed to Vegas for New Year’s. Before we’d gone to the U.K., we’d spent a weekend down there at the opening of this resort called the Green Valley Ranch, and while we were there, in the Vegas magazine in our room we noticed an ad for Guns N’ Roses live on New Year’s at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. We decided that we had to check it out.

I called a promoter I knew and he said he’d get us in no problem. We got to the Hard Rock to check into our room a few hours before the show, and as we walked through the lobby, people were noticing us because Guns fans were everywhere. We’d been in our room for about ten minutes when there was a knock at the door. I opened it up to see hotel security.

“Oh, hi!” I said. “Is there something wrong?”

“Sir, we have come to let you know that you will not be allowed into the Guns N’ Roses show tonight.”

“Oh yeah? Why is that?”

“We have strict orders from Guns N’ Roses management not to allow you admittance under any circumstances. I’m sorry.”

“C’mon, man, that’s ridiculous,” I said. “Just sneak me in. I’m not here to cause trouble, I just want to see the show. I’m sure you can understand why.”

“I’m sorry, sir, there is nothing we can do about it.”

I got in touch with my promoter friend and there was nothing he could do either. He said that the word was that I’d been spotted with my guitar and top hat as if I was going to get onstage. That was preposterous—I didn’t even have a guitar with me! It was no use; the entire staff was instructed to keep me out at all costs. We decided that it wasn’t worth it; I’m not the type to cause a scene.

Perla and I checked out and got a room over at the Green Valley Ranch and went to the grand opening of Whiskey Blue at the resort and had a blast at the huge New Year’s Eve party they were having. That night, I ran into a guy whom I’d met before but didn’t know very well, though he knew me. He took me into the bathroom and laid out a line of what looked like blow for me to snort.

I love to be deviant and do what I’m not supposed to do, which includes doing whatever drugs are given to me without really asking what they are or wondering where they came from. I snorted this stuff up, and within five minutes a very familiar euphoria came over me. I knew that feeling well; it wasn’t coke, it was an opiate… this was some form of heroin. A very good form indeed, because suddenly everything in the world was wonderful as far as I was concerned.

I asked him for more and he gave me a handful of pills. “What is this?” I asked. “This is what I just did?”

“It’s OxyContin,” he said. “It’s basically synthetic heroin. You smash it up and snort it. I’ve got a great connection.” He sure did: he’d just beaten cancer and had a bottomless prescription.

“Wow,” I said, barely concealing my enthusiasm. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Now Perla and I had spent the first years of our marriage and our relationship being pretty wild. She was the most awesome, coolest girl: no matter how many parties we went to, no matter how much shit she’d done or I’d done or what was going on around us, Perla was always in control. She could remain grounded in insane circumstances and was always the one to take care of anyone who needed help. During that phase, we drank a lot, we did a lot of Ecstasy and coke, but the one thing she would not tolerate was dope. She threatened to leave me after my episode at the Hyatt and there was no way that she was going to allow this high-grade shit—which made it all the more appealing.

I told myself I’d tell her as I crushed another OxyContin and snorted it and entered a blissful state. I brought that habit back to L.A. with me and snuck this stuff in secret for a while. I started calling my new friend to get more… he’d run back and forth from L.A. to Vegas to keep me supplied. Pretty soon I had a new type of monkey on my back.

If there is one thing I am, it’s “the eternal teenager.”

IT WAS NOW 2002 AND AEROSMITH WAS playing the L.A. Forum with Cheap Trick opening up. I was all set up to go and my Vegas friend was in town with a big batch of OxyContin and we were armed to the teeth and ready to have a great night. Perla and I got into a huge fight about something insignificant shortly before I had to leave. It was bad enough that she didn’t want me to go—she wanted closure before I did.

I was stoned and stubborn; I didn’t want to hear it, I was going to the show whether we worked it out or not. My friend was waiting in the car and I was trying to get out of the house. I walked to the door as Perla stood at the bottom of the stairs, still talking to me despite my unresponsiveness.

“Slash!” she yelled. I turned around. “I’m pregnant.”

High as I was, that cut straight through it. I stared at her for a long moment. It felt like time stopped.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk when I get back.”

I got high as a kite that night, so deliberately and obviously that the Aerosmith guys, the Cheap Trick guys,