It's So Easy: And Other Lies (11 page)

I decided I would take a guitar—my killer, black, late-1970s B.C. Rich Seagull. But I sold my Marshall combo amp to help pool money for the move. A new amp would be easy to pick up once I got down there, found a job, and settled in. And anyway, I doubted guitar would be the best way to break into the L.A. scene: 1984 was the biggest year yet for Van Halen, and the band’s hometown was awash in guitar players inspired by Eddie Van Halen’s ornate, light-speed shredding. I doubted people in Los Angeles were going to understand someone coming down and playing guitar like Johnny Thunders or like Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols—raw and fucked up, with the song at the center, not the solo. Of course, I wanted to do that Johnny Thunders stuff, but I thought first I would need to find the right people. And I figured the best way to do that—and to get a gig at all—was to make bass my main instrument. If nothing else, I could get my foot in the door and meet people.

A few years earlier I had played bass briefly in the Vains, but I was not what you would call a great player. I had recently been experimenting on bass again and had bought a black Yamaha and a crazy Peavey head with an Acoustic 2x15 cabinet. To anyone who knows gear, this may seem like an odd combination to play bass through, but it had the beginnings of a unique sound. I was searching for my own signature as a bass player, and this gear was a good start.

There were so many kids and kids of kids in the McKagan clan that there wasn’t any drama when I told my family about my plan to bail. The owner of the Lake Union Café understood when I handed in my notice, too. He knew music was what I did. He also respected the work I had done at the café. The head pastry chef wrote a nice reference for me to take along; it would serve me well.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

On Friday, May 31, 1985, Slash had a gig at the Country Club with Black Sheep, a band he had recently joined. I had already been thinking that his guitar style would mesh well with Izzy’s. So I took Axl to the show and we talked to Slash. The next day I called Slash and tried to convince him to bring Steven Adler and come by to rehearse with us. They both knew Axl, too, having played a few gigs with him as Hollywood Rose in 1984, not long after Axl arrived in L.A. But in the interim there had been some bad blood. Apparently Axl had slept with Slash’s girlfriend. Not only that, but when the singer of Black Sheep figured out the reason for our visit to the show the night before, he was so angry he called Slash’s mom and told her we were drug addicts—a point on which he was only partly right.

Slash was inclined to try it out because Guns seemed more where he wanted to go musically than Black Sheep. His interest in that job was primarily mercenary: it was a place to be plucked from to fill a gap in an established band—the way Ozzy plucked Randy Rhoads from Quiet Riot. But rather than wait around in Black Sheep hoping to get the call to fill in as touring guitarist for KISS or whatever, Slash liked the idea of joining a band with the intention of making its own mark.

Finally Slash and Steven agreed to come to a rehearsal, just days before a previously scheduled June 6 gig at the Troubadour that was supposed to serve as a warm-up for our tour. We met at a space in Silverlake—we rented it for six dollars an hour, and that included a drum kit. From the moment the five of us leaned into our first song, we could all hear and feel that the fit was right. The chemistry was immediate, thunderous, and soulful. It was amazing and all of us recognized it instantly.

Izzy shared my horror at big, huge, overwrought “heavy metal” drum kits. He and I made sure there was never a second kick drum anywhere in sight, regardless of where we rehearsed. Together we began plotting to hide parts of Steven’s own drum kit, too. Every time poor Steven would show up at band practice, the kit got progressively smaller, until he was left with only the bare essentials—the setup that would allow him to hone his signature sound and influence modern rock drummers a few short years later. Without a second bass drum, his frenetic speed-metal beat was cut in half and instead he and I could lock in and create a groove.

During those first rehearsals, the five of us started working up a new song together based on some lyrics I had brought with me in a notebook from Seattle. The song became “Paradise City,” and it started to gel in those few days before our Troubadour show and the trip up to Seattle.

On Thursday, June 6, we played our first live show with the
Appetite for Destruction
lineup. The bill at the Troubadour included Fineline, Mistreater, and, at the very bottom, Guns N’ Roses. Slash’s high school friend Marc Canter—he turned out to be part of the family that ran Canter’s Deli—came and shot pictures. He made prints of each of us the next day so we’d have head shots to put up in the places we played on our tour. That was Friday.

On Saturday, June 8, 1985, Izzy, Axl, Slash, Steven, and I got together to set out for Seattle, a happy bunch of malcontents about to hit the road in search of rock-and-roll glory, ready to live by our wits in order to prove ourselves and our musical vision—or not. At the very least we thought we had real musical chemistry. That much was obvious even before the tour started.

A friend of ours named Danny had a huge Buick LeSabre with a powerful 455 big-block V-8 engine and a trailer hitch. Seven of us crammed into the car that Saturday afternoon: the five of us in the band, plus Danny and another friend, Joe-Joe, who had signed up to serve as roadies. These guys would go to the mat for us, really solid friends, and we were glad they, too, had not blinked an eye in the face of the uncertainties of a no-budget road trip. We rented a U-Haul trailer to carry our gear behind the LeSabre. Our plan was to drive straight through to Seattle—it would take something like twenty-one hours—and arrive there at some point on Sunday. My buddy Donner was going to let us crash at his house the first few nights before our show that Wednesday.

As we rose up out of the “Grapevine,” a writhing section of Interstate 5 just south of Bakersfield, California, the car started to hiccup and cough and rebel against the weight it had to shoulder in the blazing late-afternoon heat of the San Joaquin Valley. By the time we passed Bakersfield, a mere 105 miles out of L.A., Danny’s car up and died. A passing motorist stopped and tried to help, but the best he could do for us was to go to the next gas station and call AAA. The hope of grilling burgers the next evening in Donner’s backyard quickly faded with the realization that Danny’s car was going nowhere at all until it had some major work.

We were broke, hungry, and sweltering, hunkered down on the side of the highway. Dusk slowly descended but the heat didn’t break. When the tow truck showed up, the mechanic was a bit put off to find a whole gang of sweaty, skinny rock guys who wanted to ride in his truck. We ended up walking to the next off-ramp, where there was a truck stop and gas station.

At that point, removed from the whizzing cars, we took stock of the situation. It was the middle of the night. We had thirty-seven dollars between us. If we went back to L.A., we would obviously not be doing this tour. That was not an option, regardless of our current dilemma. We decided that the five of us—along with three guitars—should hitchhike, continuing north while Danny and Joe tried to get the car fixed. They could then catch up, uniting us with our gear either along the way or in Seattle.

I called Kim Warnick of the Fastbacks from the gas station. Our first gig in Seattle was opening for them. I began to explain the situation. Actually I had to go back further and fill her in on the lineup change that had taken place since I set up the show.

“So Izzy, Axl, and I convinced Slash—”

“Izzy, Axl, Slash—and Duff,” she said. “What kind of names are those?”

“Well, there is a guy named Steven.”

She said it would be no problem for us to use the Fastbacks’ gear if Danny wasn’t able to get up there in time. Okay, that part was taken care of and now it was time to find a ride, someone willing to transport five guys and their guitars—a tall order for sure.

We knew it was going to be tough to hitchhike in such a big group. To make clear the magnitude of the task at hand, I should add that even though I was in my full-length leather pimp coat, I was not the most menacing-looking among us. Even someone who’d be willing to stop for one bedraggled rocker would never take us all. So we decided to try to catch a ride with a northbound trucker. Truckers had those big empty sleeper cabs and would surely love to have some company, right? Someone to talk to on that long and lonely stretch of I-5 that runs up through California’s agricultural outback.

We approached several truck drivers and finally found one willing to give us a lift as far as Medford, Oregon, in exchange for our pooled cash. That was his end destination and for us it was six hundred miles closer to our first out-of-town gig. It was a win for both parties: he would get thirty-seven bucks and we would be heading north at highway speeds.

It was obvious right from the start that this particular trucker was a speed-freak, and that our thirty-seven dollars would be used to supplement his habit. He had probably already been up for a few days, and riding with him in that state in a huge semitruck was a risky endeavor. Fuck it. We were on a mission. Do or die, we were going to make it to Seattle.

I was hoping Kim would spread the word in Seattle that we had broken down and were on the road without a car. Maybe someone would be willing to come down to Portland to pick us up if we made it that far on our own. For now, we piled into the eighteen-wheeler, guitars and all. The other four guys climbed into the sleeper cab. It was tight. I rode shotgun in the passenger seat up front.

The guy couldn’t believe our story.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You guys are fucking
hitchhiking
to a gig—
a thousand miles away
?”

“Yep,” I said.

“And you don’t have any equipment—or even any food?”

“Well, yeah, but our equipment …”

“I don’t mean to sound like a prick, but, I mean, can’t you play anywhere in Los Angeles?”

I tried to explain the swashbuckling magic of playing to strangers, in strange places, us-against-them, us-against-the-world … winning over listeners a few at a time.

He shrugged.

The drug-induced sleep deprivation started to take its toll on our driver about two hundred miles into the drive. By the time we hit Sacramento in the morning, he said he needed to rest his eyes and clear his head of the speed demons. It was okay with me. I had been talking with the dude for this first part of the ride and noticed that he kept looking into his sideview mirrors and sort of jumping around in his seat. This kind of stuff happens when you don’t sleep for several days. I had a little bit of experience with speed from my teenage years, enough to know what was happening to the driver.

Sacramento sits at the top of the arid central California valley—the area became a center of agriculture only with the aid of intense irrigation. When it’s hot in the valley, Sacramento always has the highest temperatures. Our venture into the valley coincided with an absolutely scorching heat wave. Now, for some reason, the driver stopped in front of the state capitol building.

“All right, boys, I’m going to need you to hop out here.”

We didn’t know what to say, and were in no position to argue anyway.

“I’ve got to take care of something,” said the driver. “But I’ll be back for you, don’t worry.”

Yeah, right. I was convinced our driver had just tricked us and left us behind. I’m sure the rest of the guys shared the same suspicion.

We were left sitting on the curb.

No one said a word. No one even made a face, sighed, or raised an eyebrow.

As we sat there in front of the capitol, wilting in the heat, exposed to the intense sun, it became clear: as of this moment, Guns N’ Roses was no longer
a
band, but
the
band—
our
band.
These are my fucking boys—they’re willing to fight through anything.
I already knew this trip had set a new benchmark for what we were capable of, what we could and would put ourselves through to achieve our goals as a band. This band became a brotherhood under that oppressive Sacramento sun.
Fuck yeah!

Then, as I sat there silently rhapsodizing about my friends and our collective determination, the eighteen-wheeler suddenly pulled up and the driver nodded.

“Let’s roll, boys,” he said.

He had actually come back to pick us up. Unbelievable.

“You have a fucking show to get to!” he said.

I hopped back in the passenger seat. He was cranked out of his mind. He must have dropped us off to go score some more speed, and to this day I have no idea how, in that state, he remembered to come back for us.

That afternoon, just after Redding, I cautiously suggested we pull over at the next rest stop and take a break. I could see it was getting even more dangerous being in a huge moving vehicle with him. He had huge black circles under his eyes and he was sweating profusely. By some miracle, he agreed—and he actually slept there for a few hours while we just hung out nearby, trying to be as quiet as possible. We had no money for booze or food. I’m not sure what Izzy had with him, but he wasn’t showing any signs of withdrawal yet. After the driver came to, he took us the final hundred and fifty miles up to Medford.