Slash dishes it out!!!

Here are some choice excerpts from the man Time Magazine has ranked number two on their list of the “10 Best Electric Guitar Players of all time” otherwise known as Slash. Not only was he the lead guitarist for Guns N’ Roses, the band whose debut record Appetite for Destruction became the best-selling debut album of all time selling over 28 million copies (18 million albums in the US alone) but he has also worked with other greats such as Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, and even composed a score for a Tarantino movie. All of these quotes are taken from his autobiography simply titled Slash.

“My mom is an African American and my dad is English and white. They met in Paris in the sixties, fell in love, and had me. Their brand of interracial intercontinental communion wasn’t the norm; and neither was their boundless creativity. I thank them for being who they are. They exposed me to environments so rich and colorful and unique that what I experienced even while very young made a permanent impression on me. Page 3

“When my parents got separated, I was transformed by the sudden change. Inside I was still a good kid, but on the outside I became a problem child. Expressing my emotions is still one of my weaknesses, and what I felt then defied words, so I followed my natural inclinations-I acted out drastically and became a bit of a disciplinary problem at school. Pg. 15

“I stole a lot of books, because I’ve always loved to read; so I stole a ton of cassettes, because I’ve always loved music. Cassettes for those too young to have known them, had their disadvantages: the sound quality wore down, they got tangled in tape machines, and they melted in direct sunlight. They are like a thinner pack of cigarettes, so an ambitious shoplifter could stuff a band’s entire catalog in their clothes and walk away unnoticed. Pg. 25

Experiencing yourself out of context, divorced from your usual point of view, skews your perspective-it’s like hearing your voice on an answering machine, it’s almost like meeting a stranger; or discovering a talent you never knew you had. The first time I plucked a melody out on a guitar well enough that it sounded like the original was a bit like that. The more I learned to play guitar, the more I felt like a ventriloquist: I recognized my own creative voice filtered through those six strings, but it was also something else entirely. Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me. The guitar is my conscience, too-whenever I’ve lost my way. It’s brought me back to center; whenever I forget, it reminds me why I’m here.
Pg. 49

Steven (Adler, original drummer for G&R) never spent a full week’s worth of time in school out of any given month. I got by because I did well enough in my art, music and English classes that my grade-point average was high enough to pass. I got As in art, English, and music because those were the only subjects that interested me. Apart from those I didn’t care for much else, and I cut class all the time. Pg.50

“You’ve got to hear this,” Steven said, all wide-eyed. “It’s this band Van Halen, they’re awesome!” I had my doubts because Steven and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye musically. He put the record on, and Eddie’s solo that sets off “Eruption” came shredding through the speakers. “Jesus Christ,” I said, “what the hell is THAT?”
Pg. 54

“When he (Steve Adler) and I used to walk around town, we used to pass a music school on Fairfax and Santa Monica called Fairfax Music School (today it’s a chiropractor’s office), so I figured that was a good place to learn to play bass. So one day I stopped in, walked up to the desk, and just said, ‘I want to play bass.’ The receptionist introduced to one of the teachers, a guy named Robert Wolin.” Pg. 55 “(Slash was first informally commissioned by his classmate Steve to play bass.)”

My first music teacher, Robert, patiently informed that I’d need an actual bass of my own to take lessons, which was something I hadn’t considered. I asked my grandmother for help and she gave me an old flamenco guitar with one nylon string on it that she had packed away in a closet. When I met Robert again at the school, he took one look at the guitar and understood that he’d better start right at the beginning, because I had no idea that what I was holding wasn’t necessarily a bass. Robert put on the Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar,” picked up his guitar, and played along with the riff and the lead. And that’s when I heard the sound. Whatever Robert was doing, that was it. I stared at Robert’s guitar with total wonder. I started pointing at it.
“That’s what I want to do,” I told him. ‘That.”
Robert was really encouraging; he drew some chord charts for me, showed me proper fingering on his guitar, and tuned the one string I had. He also informed me that I should get the remaining five strings in the very near future. Guitar came into my life that suddenly and that innocently. There was no thought, no premeditation; it wasn’t part of a grand plan outside of playing in Steven’s fantasy band. Ten years later I would be, with all the perks that Steven had dreamed about: traveling the world, playing sold-out shows, and having more chicks at our disposal than we could handle…all thanks to that battered piece of wood my grandmother dug out of her closet. Pg. 55

“Guitars replaced BMX as my main obsession literally overnight. It was unlike anything I’d ever done: it was a form of expression as satisfying and personal to me as art and drawing, but on a much deeper level. Being able to create the sound that had spoken to me in music ever since I can remember was more empowering than anything I’d ever known. The change was as instantaneous as turning on a light, and every bit as illuminating. I went home from school and copied Robert’s methods, putting on my favorite songs and doing my best to play along. I did what I could with one string; after a few hours I could follow the key changes and mimic the melody of a few songs in the most remedial way. Tunes like Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke in the Water,’ Chicago’s ’25 to 6 to 4,’ Led Zeppelin’s ‘Dazed and Confused,” and Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’ can be played down the E string so I contented myself with those over and over again. Simply the understanding that I could mimic the songs on the stereo was enough to imprint the guitar on my reality forever.
Pg. 56

“I took lessons from Robert on my worn-out flamenco guitar throughout the summer before ninth grade-with all six strings in place, which, of course, he taught me how to tune. I was always amazed when he put on a record that he didn’t know and learned it on the spot in a few minutes. I set about achieving that ability for myself: like every overeager beginner, I tried to jump to that level straightaway, and like every good teacher, Robert forced me to master the fundamentals. He taught me basic major, minor, and blues scales and all of the standard chord positions. He’d also sketch chord charts to my favorite songs, such as ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love,” that I was to play as my reward once I’d done the week’s exercises. Usually I’d skip straight to the reward and when I showed up at the music school the next day, it was obvious to Robert that I hadn’t even touched my homework. Sometimes I liked to play as if I had only one string. Every song I liked had a riff in it, so playing it all up and down one string was more fun until my fingers learned the proper form. “Pg. 56

“My BMX racing gear gathered dust in my closet. My friends wondered where I was at night. I saw Danny McCracken one day while I was riding back from music school, my guitar slung over my back. He asked me where I’d been and if I’d won any races lately. I told him that I was guitar player now. He sized me up, looked at my worn-out six string, and stared hard right into my eyes. ‘Oh yeah?’ He had a very confused look on his face, as if he wasn’t sure what to make of what I’d told him. We sat that there awkwardly in silence for a minute on our bikes then said our good-byes. It was the last time I ever saw him. Pg. 57

“I respected my guitar teacher, Robert, but I naively and impatiently failed to see the direct line between the fundamentals he was teaching me and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin songs that I wanted to play. It all came to a head soon enough, once I discovered my personal instruction manual, so to speak; it was a used book I found in a guitar store bargain bin called How to Play Rock Guitar. This book had all of the chord charts, tablature, and sample solos from greats like Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, and Jimmy Hendrix. It even came with a little floppy 45 that demonstrated the proper way to play what was in the book. I took that thing home and devoured it, and once I was capable of mimicking the sounds on that little record, I was soon improvising on my own, and then I was beside myself. Once I’d heard myself lay down patterns that sounded like rock-and-roll lead guitar it was as if I’d found the Holy Grail. That book changed my life; I still have my worn-out copy in a trunk somewhere and I’ve never seen another one before or since. I’ve looked for it plenty of times to no avail. I feel like it was the only copy left in the world and that it was there that day waiting specifically for me. That book gave me the skills I sought and once I’d begun to master them I quit music school forever.” Pg. 57

“I was now a ‘rock guitar player,’ as far as I was concerned, so out of necessity, I borrowed one hundred bucks from my grandmother and bought an electric guitar. It was a very cheap Les Paul copy made by a company called by Memphis Guitars. I was attracted to the shape, because most of my favorite played Les Pauls-it epitomized rock guitar to me. That said, I didn’t know enough to even know who Les Paul was; I wasn’t acquainted with his sublime jazz playing and had no idea that he had pioneered the development of electric instruments, effects, and recording techniques. I didn’t know that his brand of solid body guitar would soon become my primary choice of instrument. And I had no idea at all that I’d enjoy the honor of sharing a stage with him many times, many years later. Nope, that day it was pretty basic; in my mind, that visually presented the sound I wanted to make. Pg. 57

“Finding guitar was like finding myself. It defined me, it gave me a purpose. It was a creative outlet that allowed me to understand myself. The turmoil of my adolescence was suddenly secondary; playing guitar gave me focus. I didn’t keep a journal; I couldn’t seem to vocalize my feelings in a constructive fashion, but the guitar gave me emotional clarity. I loved to draw; that was an activity that took my mind off things, but it wasn’t enough of a vehicle for me to completely express myself. I’ve always envied the artists who could express themselves through art, and only through the guitar have I come to understand what a wonderful release it is. Pg. 58

“Practicing for hours wherever I found myself was liberating. Playing became a trance that soothed my soul: with my hands occupied and my mind engaged, I found peace. Once I got into a band, I found that the physical exertion of playing a show became my primary personal release; when I’m playing onstage I’m more at home in my own skin than at any other time in my life. There is a subconscious, emotional level that informs playing, and since I’m the kind of person who carries his baggage around internally, nothing has ever helped me tap into my feelings more.” Pg. 58

“Finding my voice through guitar at fifteen was, to me, revolutionary. It was a leap in my evolution; I can’t think of anything that made more of a difference in my life.
Pg. 58

“One night when Phillip was mumbling incoherently I remember being really curious about whatever it was that he was saying. “Tidus ally sloan te go home,” Phillip said. At least that’s what I heard. “What?” I asked him. “Tid us all de sloans to ghos hum,” he said. Or so I thought. “Hey, Phillip, what are you trying to say?” “I’m stelling you to tidus these sloans ta grow fome,” he said. “Tidus sloans to go home.” “Okay man,” I said. “Cool.” I think he wanted me to tell all these girls in house to go home, but I walked away from that situation thinking that Tidus Sloan, whatever the fuck that meant, was a pretty cool name for a band. Pg. 57

“I do not like to combine cocaine and guitar. I did a few lines just before we went on and I could hardly play a note; it really was embarrassing. It’s been the same the very few times since I’ve made that mistake: nothing sounded right, I could not find the groove, and I really didn’t want to be playing at all. It felt like I had never played guitar before, or as awkward as the first I tried to ski. Pg. 61

“It might be surprising to some, but even before I had a band, I started working regularly as early as possible to earn the money that I needed to pursue playing guitar. I’d had a paper route since ninth grade that was pretty extensive; I covered from Wilshire and La Brea down to Fairfax and Beverly. It was only Sundays; I’d have two huge bags on either end of my handle bars, so leaning just a touch too much to either side spelled wipeout. Pg. 65

“The amount of time I put into work and the amount of time I put into learning the guitar were simultaneous revelations to me: I finally knew why I was putting my nose to the grindstone. I guess it was the union of my parent’s influence: my dad’s creativity and my mom’s instinct to succeed. I might choose the hardest way to get wherever I want to go but I’m always determined enough to get there. That inner drive has helped me survive those moments when everything was against me and I’ve found myself on my own with nothing else to see me through. Pg. 64

“Work was something that I focused on and did well whether I liked my job or not, because I was willing to work my ass off all night and day for the cash to support my passion. I got a job at Business Card Clocks, a small mail-order clock factory. From September through December each year, I would assemble clocks for a bunch of companies’ holiday gift baskets. I’d put an enlarged reproduction of their business card on a piece of masonite, insert a clock movement in the center, put a wooden frame around it, box it up and that was that. I made thousands and thousands of those things. We were paid by the hour and I was the only person who got crazy; I’d be there at six a.m., work all day, through the night, then I’d sleep there. I don’t think it was legal, but I didn’t care. I wanted to make as much money as I could during the season. It was a great job that I kept for quite a few years, though it did eventually bite me in the ass: my boss, Larry, paid me by personal check, so I was never on the books at his company. Since I wasn’t on the books, I saw no reason to pay taxes on my earnings. But the very moment that I made money with Guns a few years later, the IRS came calling, demanding all of those back taxes, plus interest. I still can’t believe that of all the things I’ve done, the government nailed me for my job at a clock factory.” Pg. 64

“When I started Junior High, there were so many great hard rock records for me to listen to and learn from: Cheap trick, Van Halen, Ted Nugent, AC/DC, Aerosmith and Queen were all in their prime. Unlike a lot of my guitar-playing peers I never strove to imitate Eddie Van Halen. He was the marquee lead player around, so everyone tried to play like he did, but nobody had his feel-and they didn’t seem to realize that. His sound was so personal, I couldn’t imagine coming close, or trying or even wanting to. I picked up a few of Eddie’s blues licks and from listening to him, licks that no one registers as his signature style because I don’t think he’s ever properly appreciated for his great sense of rhythm and melody. So while everyone listened to Van Halen. I’ve always enjoyed individualistic guitar players, from Steve Ray Vaughn to Jeff Beck to Johnny Winter to Albert King, and while I’ve learned from observing their technique, absorbing the passion of their playing has taught me so much more.” Pg. 65

“That summer after my expulsion, I enrolled for summer school at Hollywood High to try to earn the credits I needed to join Beverly Hills Unified High School with the rest of the class at the beginning of my sophomore year. But I also tried to get out of high school altogether by studying for and taking the proficiency exam. It didn’t go so well: during the first half hour I took a smoke break and never went back. Pg. 68

“I could never be in a band that looked or sounded like Motley Crue, but I wanted what they had. I wanted to play guitar in a band that inspired that degree of devotion and excitement. I went to see Motley that weekend at that Whisky……….musically, it was just okay but as a concert it was effective. Pg. 69

“Once you’ve lived a little you will find that whatever you send out into the world comes back to you one way or another. It may be today, tomorrow, or years from now, but it happens; usually when you least expect it, usually in a form that’s pretty different from the original. Those coincidental moments that change your life seem random at the time but I don’t think they are. Pg. 73

“The one day I did spend there taught me an invaluable lesson, however: I needed to pave my own way into the music business. It didn’t matter that any idiot could fulfill the duties of fetching for Motley Crue, or anyone else for that matter-that job was something that I refused to do on principle. I’m glad that I did; it made it that much easier when Motley hired us to open for them a few years later. Pg. 81 (Commenting on his short-lived stint as a gofer for Motley Crue)

“Shady as it was, I did learn to run light and sound for a group of Duran Duran wannabes called Bang Bang. I realized two things as I watched their set: 1) it wasn’t possible for a music performance to be more ridiculous, and 2) this sound-and-light gig was taking me nowhere fast.” Pg. 85

“Axl never had a place of his own back then; he just crashed wherever he could.
Pg. 90

“It shouldn’t be shocking to hear that it wasn’t always smooth sailing when Axl lived with my family. As I mentioned, my room was off the living room, down two flights of stairs under the garage. For the most part, Axl kept to himself when I wasn’t there, but one morning after I’d left for work, apparently he wandered up and crashed out on the couch in the living room. In other households that might not have been that big of a deal, but in ours it was. My grandmother, Ola Sr., was our matriarch and that couch was the throne from which she watched her favorite TV shows every afternoon. When she arrived right on time to enjoy her regularly scheduled programming, and found Axl there sprawled out, Ola Sr. politely roused him. In her sweet, soft, old-lady like voice she asked him to go back downstairs to my room, where he could sleep as long as he liked. For whatever reason, that didn’t go over well: from what I understand, Axl told my grandmother to fuck off and then stormed downstairs to my room-at least that’s what my mom said. My mom took me aside when I got home from work, and as easygoing as she is, insisted that if Axl was going to live under her roof for even one more day, he needed to apologize to her mother and promise to never behave that way again. It was my duty to make it happen, which at that time I didn’t think was that big of a deal. My mom used to loan me her green Datsun 510, and as Axl and I drove to rehearsal that evening, I mentioned, in the least confrontational way, that he should probably apologize to Ola Sr. for telling her to fuck off. I hadn’t known Axl long, but I already knew him well enough to understand that he was a sensitive, introspective person who endured serious mood swings, so I chose my words carefully and presented the issue in a very nonjudgmental, objective tone. Axl stared at the window as I spoke, then he started rocking back and forth in the passenger seat. We were driving on Santa Monica Boulevard, doing about forty miles an hour, when suddenly, he opened the car door and jumped out without a word. He stumbled, kind of hopped, and made it onto the sidewalk without falling. He steadied himself, then took off down a side street without looking back. I was shocked; I did a U-turn and drove around in vain, looking for him for an hour. He didn’t show up back at my house that night and didn’t come to rehearsal for four days. On the fifth day he appeared at the studio as if nothing had happened. He’d found somewhere else to crash and he never mentioned it again. It was pretty clear to me that Axl had a few personality traits that set him very far apart from every other person I’d ever known. Pg. 90-91

“Our group willpower drove us to succeed on our own terms but never made the ride any easier. We were unlike any other bands of the day; we didn’t take kindly to criticism from anyone-not our peers, not the charlatans that tried to sign us to unfair management contracts, not the A&R reps vying to hand us a deal. We did nothing to court acceptance and we shunned easy success. We waited for our popularity to speak for itself and for the industry to take notice. And when it did, we made them pay. Pg. 103

“We planned to pack the gear and leave in a few days, but our zeal scared the shit out of our drummer, Rob Gardner, so much that he more or less quit the band on the spot. It didn’t surprise anyone because Rob could play well enough but he didn’t fit in from the start; he wasn’t of the same ilk, he wasn’t one of us: he just wasn’t the sell-your-soul-for-rock-and-roll type. Pg. 104

“We watched as Steven set up both of his silver-blue bass drums and loosened up with a few typical double-bass fills at rehearsal the next day. His aesthetic touchstones were off, but it wasn’t an insurmountable problem. It was a situation rectified in typically Guns fashion: when Steven ducked out to take a piss, Izzy and Duff hid one of his bass drums, a floor tom and some small rack toms. Steve returned, sat down, and started counting in the next song before he realized what was missing. “Hey, where’s my other bass drum?” he asked, looking around as if he’d dropped them on the way to the bathroom or something. “I came here with two… and my other drums? “Don’t worry about it man. You don’t need them, just count off the song,” Izzy said. Steven never got his extra bass drum back and it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Pg. 105

“In my mind it was simple, if we focused on nothing but surmounting the nearest obstacle, we’d make our way from Point A to Point C in no time.
Pg. 111

“I was already late (for work) and my boss, Jake, had called. I was in the doghouse already because I used the phone at the newsstand to conduct band business so often that he’d started calling during my shifts to catch me in the act, which proved to be difficult. Those were the days before call waiting and I was on the phone constantly so it took Jake hours to get through just to yell at me. Needless to say he was pretty pissed off about opening for me that day. “Yeah, Jake, I’m sorry,” I mumbled, still pretty drunk when he called for the second time. “I know I’m late, I got held up. But I’m on my way.” “Oh, you’re on your way?” he asked. “Yeah, Jake, I’ll be there really soon.” “No you won’t,” he said. “Don’t bother. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.” I paused for a moment and let that sink in. “You know, Jake, that’s probably a good idea.” Pg. 115 (on getting fired from his job at a newsstand)

“One night can really change your life and this was the night that changed mine. I’ve thought about this a lot and I’m sure that it was probably because of all the Jim Beam I drank. We were in some chick’s apartment I ended up at with Izzy. I was at her vanity table, in her bathroom; it was very dimly lit, very druggy. She tied me off, loaded it up, shot it…and a wave engulfed me from somewhere deep within my stomach. I got this huge rush and that was all that I remembered. I was pulled under, I passed out cold, and fell of the chair and woke up sprawled across the floor hours later at daybreak. It took me a second to figure out what had happened: there was a bottle of Jim Beam next to me that I’d been drinking and for a moment I forgot altogether that I’d done heroin. I looked through the doorway and saw Izzy and the girl asleep in the bed and that was when I realized that I felt somehow…different. I wasn’t sure what it was, aside from the fact that it wasn’t familiar. It was all fine, though, because I was in the best mood. When Izzy and the girl woke up we hung out and I was just so content, so happy, so entirely at peace with everything. Izzy felt exactly the same way. The girl’s apartment we were in was off Wilshire near downtown L.A. and we left her there that morning without a worry in the world. The future looked bright even though we didn’t have any prospects at the time. As morning came over the city, we wandered all the way back to Melrose in Hollywood. The buzz I’d gotten had lasted the whole day long. Pg. 125-126

“We weren’t at all like the other bands playing clubs on the strip; we generally didn’t care what they were doing. We did, however, as far as other bands went, have an unspoken disregard for Poison, because they were the biggest local band on the block and the epitome of everything that we hated about the L.A. music scene. Pg. 127

“The word was starting to get around, so much so that when Tom Zutaut of Geffen Records saw us play at the Troubadour, he deliberately left after two songs, telling every A&R guy he saw on the way out that we sucked because he intended to sign us immediately. Pg. 154

“The next time we played the Troubadour, Tom came backstage and introduced himself and I remember the whole band thinking that he was the only A&R rep that we’d met who deserved our respect, because his accomplishments spoke for themselves. His enthusiasm was so real; he told us that we were the best band he’d seen since AC/DC and when he spoke about our music we could tell that he related to our songs more truthfully than anyone else had. There was something keenly sincere about Tom that night in the dressing room, and although we never told him so at the time, we had no intention of signing with anybody else.” Pg. 154

“We enjoyed as many free lunches, dinners, drinks and whatever else came included from the major labels for as long as we could before signing. For the better part of the next two months, we were courted by Chrysalis, Elektra, Warner Bros., and a few others. We’d roll into these nice restaurants and order these extravagant liquid lunches, then sit there and just play the game. The only thing that we’d agree on was that we needed to meet again for lunch to discuss things further before we agreed on anything. Pg. 155

“The negotiations were quick: we demanded six figures, among other things, which was an unheard-of-advance for a new unknown artist in 1986. They accepted; Vicky Hamilton was our acting manager, so she hooked us up with Peter Paterno, who became the band’s attorney. Peter wrote up our contracts and it was a done deal. Pg. 155

“Tom Zutaut arranged a few meetings with potential managers, the first of them being Cliff Bernstein and Peter Mensch of Q Prime, who managed Metallica, Def Leppard, and others, then as they do today. I went to Tom’s office and they were late, so I passed out on Tom’s office and they were late, so I passed out on Tom’s couch waiting for them. For the record, I’m not sure if I was high or not. What I do remember is that the meeting didn’t go well. “Guns N’ Roses just doesn’t have a musical enough sound to be a band that we’d consider representing,” one of them, I’m not sure which, said. I sat there, dumbfounded. Huh? I might have mumbled. Basically, I took that insult lying down, because actually I was lying down, and that was the end of it. I didn’t say anything, but my face must have registered a look of disdain or at least some skeptical confusion. ‘You know those guitar solos you do?’ the other one, I’m not sure which, said ‘They just sound like noise to me, whereas if you listen to Metallica, their playing sounds really melodic.’ ‘Okay, man,’ I said. Whatever you say Jack, I thought to myself.” Pg. 158

“’First things first,” he (Paul Stanley of Kiss) said. ‘I wanna rewrite ‘Welcome to the Jungle.’ According to Paul, the song had real potential but it lacked an impactful structure. What it needed was a chorus that was more memorable, more singsong, more anthemic-in a word, more like a Kiss song. “Ugh,” I grunted under my breath. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of our relationship. He was the epitome of the guy with nice clothes, the trophy wife, and the nice car “stooping” to our level to tell us what to do. I didn’t take kindly to that.” Pg. 145

“Paul Stanley had mixed Guns N’ Roses-at Gazzari’s. I cringed at the thought. Really, how much more cliché could it get?” Pg. 144

“’Have you taken any drugs tonight, sir?’ one of the cops asked me. ‘No,’ I said, squinting at him through my hair. ‘Are you sure about that? It looks to me like you have; your pupils are pinned.’ ‘Yeah, that’s because you’re shining a flashlight in my face,’ I said. Pg. 148

“Alan Niven and Tom Zutaut had sent every producer in town to meet us, and just when it seemed hopeless one finally stuck-Mike Clink. We did one session with him and recorded “Shadow of Your Love,” which was the best song in the set the first time I saw Hollywood Rose. Our version of it didn’t make the album, but it was eventually released on a Japanese EP. In any case, when we listened back, it was all finally there: finally we heard ourselves on tape exactly the way we wanted to. It was just us, but refined; Clink had captured the essence of Guns N’ Roses. Finally, all systems were go. We’d spend seven months in limbo, barely playing and intermittently recording with producers who weren’t right. It felt like an eternity; because the way we lived, a few months would have decimated a lesser band. Mike Clink had what it took; he knew how to direct our energy into something productive. He knew how to capture our sound without losing its edge and he had the right kind of personality to get along with everyone. Clink’s secret was simple: he didn’t fuck with our sound-he worked hard to capture it completely, just as it was. It’s amazing that no one had thought of that. Clink had worked with Heart and Jefferson Starship, but what sold us was that he’d worked on UFO’s Lights Out. That record was a standout to all of us, because Michael Schenker’s guitar playing on it was both outstanding and sounded amazing.
Pg. 166

“At the time Alan had hired a guy named Lewis, who was posing as our security guard, to look after us. Lewis weighed somewhere between three hundred and four hundred pounds and drove a late-seventies sedan with the driver’s seat pushed completely into the backseat just to accommodate his girth. He was really a sweet guy from Houston and I loved him, but when he was supposed to be on security detail, he was usually eating. Lewis had this way, and I don’t know how he did it, of going around to the back door of any place we might go to and procuring a huge carton of food from the kitchen. They would literally give him a cardboard box full to the top of take-out containers with everything on the menu in there. This wasn’t a burrito or a taco kind of handout-Lewis had entire entrees, like four of each of them. It was something the likes of which I’ve never seen. He’d take this haul out to the car and just eat. Meanwhile, inside, usually the three of us got into or just barely avoided full-on bar fights. We were psycho enough to scare people off most of the time, but sometimes it got ugly. Luckily, we weren’t ever hauled out to the parking lock by a mob of redneck shitkickers-if we had, we might have interrupted Lewis’s meal. Pg. 169

“Anyway, when I heard my guitar through that amp, I knew that it was right immediately; it was truly a magic moment. I plugged into it, as I had all the others, and casually hit a few chords-and that was it. It was that perfect Les Paul/Marshall combination where the depth of the guitar’s tone and the crunch of the amp come together perfectly. It just sounded amazing. ‘Hold on,’ Mike said. ‘Don’t move. Don’t do anything.’ He made a few minor tweaks to the head and it sounded even better. And that was that-no adjustments were made even to my guitar set up for the entire session-no mikes were moved, no knobs turned, nothing. We’d found the sound I’d been looking for and we weren’t going to lose it. Pg. 174

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I am glad that we didn’t move the amp or guitar one inch for the Appetite sessions-it was just fine where it was. But now I understand why I have never been able to re-create my exact sound on that record ever since. It is more than just setting up the same equipment and the exact technical specs of the amp that I used for Appetite but it can never be replicated. I’ve actually played a modified Marshal amp that was supposedly identical, but even with that original guitar, it didn’t sound the same. It couldn’t-because I wasn’t in the same studio under the same conditions. Those sessions were one of a kind. Pg. 174

“I did about a song a day; I’d show up, make myself a coffee and Jack Daniel’s-or was it a Jack Daniel’s and coffee? Pg. 174

“Mixing the record was an incredible experience. It was the first time that I learned the process of sound manipulation, and looking back at it now that digital technology has changed the recording industry forever, I feel privileged to have made and mixed that record in the days before things changed. There was no automated interface back then: Thomson and Barbiero manually worked the faders, making minor adjustments to each channel, as per our request, each time we listened back to each track. Those two guys were amazing; they had a system, pretty much an unspoken language. Steve was the energetic, in your face guy and Michael was the reserved, analytical, calculated guy. And they got on each other’s nerves constantly, which somehow fueled their creativity. Pg. 179

“Geffen got so many complaints that our album was banned before it was even properly stocked at the national chains. We were told that most retail stores wouldn’t carry it and most others required that we wrap the album in a brown paper bag unless the cover was changed. Pg. 184

“Appetite for Destruction was released on July 21, 1987, to little or no fanfare at all. Pg. 194

“When we got to Arizona, I believe it was, we experienced groupies for the first time; not the kind that wanted to fuck us because they were fans of ours-we’d already had our share of those back home. These were the type of any-band-anytime equal opportunity groups that were down to fuck everyone all the time. Overall, groupies were usually between seventeen and twenty-two; if they were in their mid-twenties, they’d most likely been around the block a few times-maybe too many-and there were those older than that, which often involved some bizarre mother-daughter combos. Pg. 200

“Although I’d been around show business all of my life, on the Motley tour I finally realized, firsthand, that entertainment was equal parts tedium for each moment of magic-it demanded commitment. Pg. 214

“For some stupid reason I found it necessary to smash all of the glass louvers in the front door of our bungalow. I didn’t think about it at all; it seemed perfectly natural at the time. Suddenly there was knock at the door that night as we sat on the couch and this Samoan guy who was a guard at the resort was out there and he was not happy at all. ‘Did you break all of the glass?’ he asked. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘So what?’ ‘You’ve going to clean up this mess.’ He was right; morally, yes, I should have cleaned up the glass I’d broken. But I was paying nearly a grand a night just to be there, and at those rates, I wasn’t about to clean up anything. ‘Why don’t you fucking clean it up, man?’ The guy stared at me for a second, then he grabbed me by the neck and slammed me against the wall. I didn’t know what he had planned; all I knew is that I could hardly breathe and that my naked back was seriously feeling the stucco wall. My girl went crazy and jumped on the guy’s back , totally raising Cain. It didn’t matter much; he was locked onto my neck like a pit bull: he swung at her with one arm, but the other one never loosened its grip on my throat. This whole scene was pretty loud; after a few minutes we attracted a crowd. This couple from next door came over, and when the Samoan guy saw them, it was like kryptonite: all of a sudden he straightened up and just ran away. The next day I tried to find him, but it was no use: he disappeared and never came back; he left his job and all of it behind, apparently.” Pg. 250

“In hindsight, it was clear that despite Aerosmith’s radio hits, we were soon the main attraction. It happened very fast for us, thanks to MTV’s chronic rotation of “Sweet Child o’ mine”: within a few weeks of the single’s release in early June, it hit number one and we became the most popular band in the nation. We heard things from management, but it didn’t sink in with me until Rolling Stone (magazine) showed up on the tour: they’d sent a writer out to do a cover story on Aerosmith, but after a few days of watching the crowds’ reaction and seeing us play live, the magazine opted to put us on the cover instead. Pg. 256

“I’d done everything in my power from the day we got together to make Guns N’ Roses the best band in 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 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 it is something unsurpassed in the history of rock and roll. Pg. 595

“If there is one thing I am, it’s the ‘eternal teenager’. Pg. 420

“'You’re never gonna find a singer,' he said, smirking. ‘With the level you’re at, you just can’t do that. You can’t just look for raw talent; that’s nowhere near your level. There are only so many singers around who are worth considering-and we know all of them! I wasn’t going to be discouraged; I persevered. We had endless tapes coming in and there had to be something of value in there-or so I thought. We rehearsed five days a week: three hours were spent writing and the last two every day were spent listening to the mountain of tapes that came in. We listened to all of them. It was grueling. More than that, it was discouraging. Usually they were so bad that we’d need to sleep it off just to be able to start fresh again the next day. Most of them were so bad that we assumed that they were taking the piss… but we were never quite sure. Too many were like some guy in Wyoming who lived in a garage sending us his very best imitation of Guns. There were too many tapes by singers who just loved Guns to an unhealthy degree. I wanted to ask a lot of them if they’d actually listened to what they had sent us or at least played it for someone else before they sent it, and if they had what that person thought of it. There were endless examples of guys doing really bad versions of “Welcome to the Jungle”; there were too many people who considered themselves poets submitting dramatic lyrics on a variety of subjects. We got folksingers, we got thrash-metal singers, we got people who sent us recordings that were so poor that I swear to god they must have recorded them on the mike in their boom box.
Pg. 451 (On trying to find a new singer for his post G’N’R band)

“I live so much in the moment that I’ve never daydreamed about the future beyond tomorrow. I’ve never related to those people who plan their lives five years down the line. As much as those types think they have control of reality, I beg to disagree, because how can anyone really “plan” what is going to happen to them beyond the next twenty-four hours? It’ not that I don’t care what happens five years from now, it’s just that the next twenty-fours is the stepping stone to getting there. I’ve found that by just being, day to day, just waiting to see what comes, and going from there is the only way to grow.” Pg. 456