Slash

ways, I had honestly wanted to stay low-key and never bicker in the press, mostly because so many artists before me had gone that route and I thought it distasteful. But here I was, put in a corner with press in every direction, hungrily looking for controversy and prodding that raw nerve. I couldn’t control my responses. Everything I said about Axl was negative; it was almost emotional. This, of course, pissed off Axl and was definitely the catalyst for rant against me in his 2005 press release, not to mention complicating the GN’R lawsuit even further.

While the CD was being packaged, Duff and I went on a press tour to promote it in Europe and Japan for a few weeks. The band went on the road before it even came out. Our first gig was in Kansas, and from there we hit every city in just about every state. We managed to generate enough buzz that when the album was released in June 2004, it went to number one in its second week. We were in Vegas for a show when Clive called us to let us know that we’d hit the top of the charts, and I have to say that after all I’d seen and all I’d done, getting a call from the legendary Clive Davis with news like that gave me goose bumps: it was an arrival, in my book. That was the start of a tour that seemed to keep going and going, building momentum the longer it went on. All in all we remained on the road for nineteen months, playing everything from clubs to festivals to stadiums.

The band played to crowds of thousands around the world and our record sold three million copies worldwide. We worked hard on that tour; we’d often play five nights a week, a different city every night. We did it all on a bus, in close quarters. We did Live 8, we did the Donnington Festival, we put out three videos on that record. It was pretty successful; suddenly we were once again in a major band.

Our last gig was in Orlando, then everyone went home and resumed their lives. And once we did, we got into all kinds of shit. There were rumors that we were breaking up, there were rumors that all of us were back on drugs and on the verge of self-destruction, and too many more rumors to name.

I, FOR ONE, YET AGAIN, DID HAVE A very hard time readjusting to being home. When we were writing Contra-band, way before we went in and recorded all of it, my son London was born in August 2002. I had gone with Perla to get her ultrasound and at the time I was still getting my head around the fact that I had a child on the way—obviously this was going to be a new experience for me. That said, once I knew one was coming, I thought I wanted a little girl, figuring she’d be just like her mom and they would be inseparable, a notion that further fed my denial about my inescapable new responsibilities.

That was my little idyllic vision of fatherhood until I realized something I’d been ignoring: I have a hard enough time with grown women, forget about little ones. A daughter would probably be my undoing. I breathed a sigh of relief when Perla delivered a beautiful, healthy nine-pound baby boy. We named him London not only because he was conceived in the U.K. but because I’d had a friend with that name in grade school and never forgot how cool I thought it was.

I didn’t have any experience raising children, obviously, but I did get some training. Perla felt an overwhelming rush of the maternal instinct when she got pregnant, and one day she brought home a Pomeranian puppy from the pet store. The dog immediately became my responsibility, especially once Perla was ordered to a few months of bed rest. I was forced to raise this dog and that was my preparation for fatherhood. It was the only experience I’d had raising anything, because one thing is for sure—having cats and snakes doesn’t really count. All things considered, I must have done something right because our dog was very well behaved by the time London was born.

Having a child forced me to be present; it insisted that I honor my sobriety. When I wasn’t with Velvet Revolver, I was home with my wife, raising our son. I was the dad, assembling the nursery, shopping for toys, putting together the electric mobile sets. And then Perla got pregnant again. We found out that it was another boy, and I breathed another sigh of relief. Our new baby was a breech as well, though the complications didn’t develop until later on in her term. It was rough on Perla once again.

I was on tour when my second son was delivered. I managed to fly home regularly to visit Perla in the hospital, but the day that my second son was to be delivered I had a show the night before. I had to fly from the hospital to Atlantic City on a red-eye then fly home on a red-eye to be there in time for his birth the next morning. I missed my flight back to L.A. and was lucky enough to get another one. They had to hold up Perla’s C-section until I got there. I went right to the hospital and arrived just before he was born. I spent that night and the next morning with Perla and my perfect new little eight-pound baby boy, then I flew back out and met the band at the next gig. Such is the life my two sons have been born into.

We didn’t know what to name our second son until we remembered what our good friend movie mogul Robert Evans told us we should name our first son. As usual, he had a strong opinion that I couldn’t deny.

“Give him the coolest name that a man could ever have,” he told us in that signature baritone. “Name him Cash.”

“Robert, it’s too late,” I said. “We’ve already named him London.”

“All right. But if you get a second chance,” he said, “do the right thing.”

^{The family Hudson: Slash, London, Perla, and Cash on a Disney cruise in 2006 where they were undoubtedly the local outcasts.}

After a very short period of deliberation, we decided that he was right. And so our second son is named Cash.

AFTER TWO YEARS AT THE FEVER PITCH that is nonstop touring, I was once again dropped into the real world, and as familiar as I was with the condition, it hadn’t gotten any easier to bear—if anything, it had become a harder adjustment to make. When all you care about is the grind of going from gig to gig, when the next show is the only thing you’re looking forward to for an extended period of time, when room service and your hotel room are your reward, you exist in a very stylized mode of living.

Home, no matter who you are, is nothing like that. When you are home you have to get off of your ass and do things yourself; when you are home you become as normal as you’ll ever be because you have to rely on your own faculties. In the past, I’d relied on booze and drugs to offset that transition and make it a bit easier to take in the short run. Once you have kids, if you intend to be a dependable parent at all, that option goes out the window: when you come off the road and you’re a parent, you get home and you have to deal. You go from a situation where you’re taken care of to one where you’re taking care of.

It wasn’t easy on either Perla or me when I got home. I had started drinking wine—a lot of wine—on tour, and she’d been watching me slip into my old ways once again. For whatever reason, when she came to visit me on tour, I chose that day to sit at the bar drinking, under the guise of waiting there for her. All that I accomplished was getting myself smashed to the point that I was useless when she finally arrived. I’d say hello and go pass out. So we had some issues to deal with.

When Velvet Revolver got signed, got our album together, and set about preparing to tour, we underwent a change in management that I didn’t agree with at all. This eventually led me to find my own manager separate from the band. That sounded like a logical solution to me, but all that it did in reality was alienate me from the other guys and cause a great degree of animosity among us and among the management teams whenever a business arrangement came up. This situation added an extra level of stress that two years on the road did nothing but escalate. The tension never affected our chemistry onstage or creatively, but on a day-to-day interpersonal level, things were touchy, and by the end of the tour, everyone was at one another’s throats. I stand by my decision, but I understand now that it made me the pain in the ass of the band in the other guys’ eyes. I get why I drove them nuts.

It was around this time that Axl chose to send out a press release that did nothing but add fuel to the fire. It’s been widely documented, so I won’t do it justice by going into it all, but in short, Axl released a statement claiming that I’d come by his house, extremely coherent, early one morning to ask him to please settle the lawsuit between us that had been ongoing for years at this point. It also claimed that he and I talked for a while and that I had nothing but disparaging comments to make about Scott Weiland and everyone else in my band.

The truth is, I haven’t spoken a word to Axl personally since I left the band in 1996. It’s sad but true. I did go by his house one night but I was drunk—Perla wasn’t and she was driving. I walked up to the door and delivered a note that read something like “Let’s work this out. Call me.—Slash.” But I didn’t give it to Axl, I gave it to his assistant.

In any case, Axl released his statement, and it was a big deal in the press because it was the first time Axl