It's So Easy: And Other Lies (39 page)

YOU SHINED A LIGHT WHERE IT WAS DARK, ON MY WASTED HEART

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

After appearing as Kings of Chaos, Mr. Moo’s Futurama, and Wayne Neutron, Matt Sorum, Steve Jones, John Taylor, and I ended up calling our unintentional “supergroup” Neurotic Outsiders. It was funny to hear it described as a group at all, much less a supergroup. The whole thing was totally casual—our live shows were nothing more than punk-rock parties, a couple of dudes playing loads of cover songs—Clash, Pistols, Damned, Stooges—with lots of our friends jumping onstage to join us for a song or two. But after we played a string of Viper Room gigs and a few national gigs through February 1996, record companies started pursuing us. I was dumbfounded. We were just having a laugh, after all. In the end, Madonna’s label, Maverick, gave us a million-dollar advance. This was four times what Guns got! From our perspective, the deal had an element of a heist to it, and the whole thing—especially with Steve Jones a part of it—reminded me of
The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle.

John Taylor chuckled about the weird contours of the music business. He was living in an apartment in Venice Beach while we worked on the Neurotic project. He told me cautionary tales about his time in Duran Duran.

“I thought I was just fabulous and that it would never stop rolling in,” he said. “I owned places in Paris, London, and New York. I flew everywhere in private jets. And one day I woke up and it was over. The money was gone.”

The bands I’d been in never talked about business. For most of them, of course, there simply had been no business to discuss. There was plenty of business whirling around Guns N’ Roses, but we were afraid to talk about that stuff for fear of betraying our ignorance. Now, failing to acknowledge the business of being in a band seemed to me like a sort of cowardice, or at the very least a failure to deal with reality: professional musicians may be reluctant businessmen, but we are businessmen nonetheless. To pretend otherwise, or to ignore the obvious, felt dishonest. Now that I knew I was going to live and that I was going to continue to play music, I decided that at some point I should try to figure out how the commerce side of things worked.

But first, Neurotic Outsiders had an album to make. We went into NRG Studios in North Hollywood, recorded the songs we’d been playing live for the past year, and by the end of the summer of 1996 we were preparing to release our self-titled debut album. Even though we had told all the labels pursuing us that we weren’t willing to mount a full-scale tour, we did line up a string of gigs in September to promote the record. I was going back out on the road.

A few days before the album came out, we played New York City’s Webster Hall, which had been one of the launching points for my ill-fated solo tour. This time it was actually fun. Next up were Boston, D.C., and Toronto. Then came September, 13, 1996, and a show in Pontiac, Michigan. We did press at each stop, and here, outside Detroit, I was slated to talk to a writer named Jon Stainbrook, a contributor to the skateboard magazine
Thrasher.
Stain was a longtime ringleader of the Toledo punk scene, and he had interviewed me several times over the years. He brought his tape recorder to my hotel room. I was glad to see him again.

After the interview, he said, “Hey, man, I know you’re sober now and that you’re not into model chicks and all that shit. But there’s this girl, friend of my family. We’ve been friends since we were kids, she’s really cool, she’s been modeling in Milan and Paris. She just moved to L.A.”

I wasn’t sure what he wanted, and just said, “Yeah, sure, man, I can show her around or whatever when I get back.”

“Great!”

But instead of giving me her number, he reached for the phone in my hotel room and dialed her number.

“Her name is Susan,” he said as he waited for her to answer.

He quickly told her about me and then just handed me the phone. We exchanged pleasantries and agreed to meet up at some stage when I got back to Los Angeles in October. She sounded nice.

After that, Stain and I left the room to get coffees, and as we walked past a newsstand he pointed to a magazine cover.

“That’s Susan there,” he said.

“Oh!”

Call me shallow, but I was much more interested once I saw that photo. She had long brown hair and dark almond-shaped eyes. Fucking beautiful. She was nearly naked in the shot, too, and her body was absolutely slamming.

“Yeah,” Stain said, reading my mind. “She’s the real deal. I didn’t want to say it, but the photographer Steven Meisel gave her the nickname ‘the body’ after a shoot.”

“What’s the body’s last name?”

“Holmes.”

I called Susan Holmes again the next day. We talked for a long time. I called her again a few days later. We started talking a lot. I still had a few dates to play in Europe, but by the time I was ready to fly home from Germany at the end of September, we had agreed she would pick me up at Burbank airport.

When she approached me at the airport, it was marvelous to be able to look her in the eyes without craning my neck: she was five foot eleven. At six foot three, I appreciate tall women.

I wore a ratty tank top for the long flight. It was comfortable, of course, but I also had a clever plan. Susan and I were supposed to go out to dinner when I arrived.

When we climbed into her car, I said, “Listen, why don’t you just come up to my house? I can shower and change …”

Susan wasn’t having it. She suggested we go to a supercasual sushi place instead and hang out there.

Wow, she has morals.
This was getting interesting.

She had no real idea of what I had gone through beyond rumors and the little I had already told her about what I had been like once upon a time. When she ordered a sake to calm her nerves (of course … I am a stud!), I was not bothered in the slightest. I was beginning to get comfortable in situations like this. The Neurotic Outsiders tour had helped a bunch. I was no longer “gripping” every time I went to a bar or spent time around people who drank. Socializing with “normies”—people who function normally rather than abusing alcohol—helped me see just how screwy my life had been and how bad an alcoholic I was. Being around normal drinkers actually started to make me feel more secure in my sobriety.

I soon learned that when Susan got together with her girlfriends, they often had a glass of wine or a cocktail—the stuff normal people do. Susan wasn’t a big drinker, though. Not even close. One glass of wine was almost too much for her. I always found this amusing. Back in the day, a
bottle
of wine was like taking a sip of water or chewing a piece of gum for me. It didn’t affect me.

I was sober and honest, so the first few weeks with Susan were emotionally intense. A month together felt like a year—in a good way. Without the bullshit, we got to know each other quickly and built a solid foundation. And when Susan did finally come to my house, Chloe took an instant shine to her.

I called Cully soon after I started hanging out with Susan.

“Holy shit, I hit the lottery,” I said.

“You sound fired up, bro,” said Cully.

“Yeah, I can’t tell you how excited I am,” I told him.

It was all well and good to share this with one of my best friends, but I should be open about my feelings with Susan, too, I thought.

“I am so happy,” I told her.

This was life without regrets.

And that’s when it hit me.

Today is a good day to die.

I think I just might get it.

If something were to happen tomorrow, my last thought wouldn’t be,
I wish I had told Susan how I felt about her.
I’d done everything; I didn’t
want
to die, but I could be proud of not having left anything unsaid or undone. That’s what it meant to wake up with a clear conscience, to be honest.

Maybe that Crazy Horse quote wasn’t morbid. Maybe it wasn’t even about death. Maybe it was about
life
and how you live it.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

A press release went out in late 1996 announcing that Slash had officially quit Guns N’ Roses. It barely registered with me—I had long since come to grips with the fact that he was done. And anyway, it wasn’t as if Guns was active. He left behind an empty studio being paid for by an entity that itself barely existed.

Neurotic Outsiders finished its live obligations and drifted apart again. The friendships remained but we stopped playing regularly.

One afternoon I went down to the House of Champions and walked in while a class was taking place.

The sensei leading the class said, “Turn and bow.”

The students turned toward me and bowed.

This was a huge and totally unexpected rite of passage. An organic show of respect from the people who trained and taught here was the highest praise I could imagine. It held far more value for me than any belt or diploma—though I did feel as if I had somehow graduated.

In December 1996, Susan and I decided to make plans to go away together for New Year’s. We booked a room at the Hilton Waikoloa on the Big Island in Hawaii.

We were alone together and in love. Things went great. Until one morning when Susan woke up feeling sick. We called the front desk about seeing a doctor. No problem, the hotel had a doctor on-site and we could get an appointment that same day.

Its tropical decor made the doctor’s office feel unusually friendly. A nurse checked us in and then escorted us to an examination room. She asked Susan to describe her symptoms. The woman wrote everything down, smiled broadly, and gave a sort of silent-movie wink. She said the doctor would be right in, and walked out.

“What’s up with her?” I said.

The doctor came in, all chipper and whistling. He asked Susan to give him a urine sample. She did. An exaggerated grin spread across his face and he went back out.

“Weird,” Susan said.

He came in again a few minutes later.

“Well, congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. McKagan, it’s just as I suspected. After all, Hawaii is where love happens.”

“Sorry?” I said.

“You’re going to have a baby!”

I just about fainted.

Here’s the deal: we weren’t yet a Mr. and Mrs., we had been together for only a few months, and neither of us had ever before been in a situation where “congratulations” would accompany a discussion of pregnancy.

We went back to the hotel room and didn’t say much to each other. We had talked about having kids—
someday
—from quite early in our relationship. Now all the things we had said to each other would be put to the test.

The timing couldn’t have been better, though. Susan was done modeling, so there were no career concerns for her. Once we got over the edge of that first day, all the things we had worried about melted away.

The next step was to get the skeletons out of the closet. I told her all my sordid stories. It took a while. She told me hers.

This was not the way I planned things in my new life. But I realized my idealized notions of a perfect life were nothing more than a mishmash of unattainable images from Frank Capra movies. Those old dreams of mine were too passive. Outside forces didn’t dictate romantic success any more than they dictated the course of other parts of life. I had to take ownership, dictate the course myself—or rather, together with a partner who was also willing to work toward the same goals. Yes, we would have to work at it. Shit happens; life would always be unpredictable. It was up to me—and us—to rise to every occasion.

At long last, I felt ready for this. Those dark hours and days and weeks and years fell by the wayside there in Hawaii as Susan and I discussed our next move. We would be a team, come hell or high water, and it was going to kick some serious ass.

Confidence is knowing you can do something even before you try it.

Could I be a good father?

Yes.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE