Slash (53 page)

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?

I
n 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, and everyone I ran into were aware of it. Under the circumstances, I did the only thing that made sense: I hung out with David Lee Roth all night. But, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t get what Perla had said to me out of my head.

When I got home we talked about everything. We’d been married over a year, and together for five years. Up until then, nothing had happened and we’d never used protection. It didn’t take us long to decide that we would have the baby. We surmised that my Guinness consumption in Ireland must have had something to do with my sudden potency. The running joke was that we’d name the kid Guinness, but we decided against it since that was Ronnie Wood’s dog’s name.

More than any other incentive I’ve ever had, Perla’s pregnancy straightened me out: I got off the Oxy, still without telling Perla what I was up to. I just kicked as I had in the past—cold turkey, with no one the wiser. I kicked standing up, and told Perla that I had the flu. But it was no use: I’d forgotten about a stash I’d hidden in our guest room, and when she found it she knew exactly what I was up to.

We’d been hopping from rental to rental and finally decided that we needed to buy a house. I’d had the house where I’d recorded Snakepit on the market for a while and it had finally sold, so it was like a new start. I remember starting our house hunt while I was getting clean and just sweating profusely as we looked at these places. I think I was still clinging to the flu excuse at that point.

We looked at this one house that was straight out of “Hansel and Gretel”: it was a medieval cottage that the owner had decorated ridiculously. It turned out to be Spencer Proffer’s house, the guy who produced
Live! Like a Suicide
. We had a quick hello and good-bye, just a drive-by catching up. I was surprised to find out recently that he has nothing nice to say about us at all. He said that during those sessions I peed on the floor and that Axl shot up in the studio and threw up on the control board and tried to get Spencer to shoot up, too. You can read these lies and more in the extensive library of unauthorized Guns N’ Roses stories available at bookstores and online. None of that is true; he must have a case of ill will because we didn’t hire him to produce the whole record.

So I got clean, and I was inspired by Perla: from the second she knew she was pregnant to the day she had the baby, she didn’t touch a drink and quit smoking on the spot. She underwent such a huge, abrupt switch; the maternal instinct took over immediately and it was amazing.

Perla had some complications with the pregnancy; London was a breech baby, which means that he was sitting in such a way that it was very uncomfortable and painful for her for most of the nine months. She had to remain on bed rest for most of her term.

During those months I started looking to put a new band together. Pete Angelus, who had managed Van Halen, David Lee Roth, and the Black Crowes, had taken an interest in managing me, so he hooked me up with Steve Gorman, the then former drummer for the Black Crowes, who was available because at that point they’d broken up. My old buddy Alan Niven gave me the number of a bass player that he thought I should hear, so we brought him in, and I can’t remember his name but the three of us started rehearsing, just jamming with no real agenda. I was on the straight and narrow, not really even drinking. It was the first time since before the final months of Snakepit that I had gotten myself back into gear: I was in a better head space than ever, I’d started to think about a band again, and I’d started writing material. During that time I came up with the music that evolved into the song “Fall to Pieces.” We jammed for a very short period of time, but I came up with a lot of ideas, the most complete one being that song. Those were the first signs of me taking any kind of a responsible, adult role in my life, because if there is one thing I am, it’s “the eternal teenager.”

IT WAS AROUND THIS TIME THAT I HEARD
Randy Castillo had died. I’d known Randy for years; we’d met in the metal touring circuit of the eighties. He was one of the most in-demand session and touring drummers around; he’d played with Ozzy, Lita Ford, and everyone else you can think of. But Randy was as far from the typical L.A. metal musician as could be: he was one of the most genuine, down-to-earth, and easygoing people I met during that entire period. He was always fun to hang out with and just no bullshit: he was totally self-abusive with booze and coke, but was always a great drummer with a heart of gold. I don’t re
member exactly how we met, but we had mutual friends, and in my mind it felt like I’d always known Randy. What set him apart from everyone else in L.A. was that he was always happy and never judgmental of anybody. Unlike most of the other characters around back then, he was never preoccupied with talking shit about other people, or spending the night critiquing how other people looked or acted. That kind of conversation is such an L.A. staple; Randy didn’t care—maybe because he was from New Mexico originally.

I played New Mexico with Snakepit, and by then I’d heard that Randy had cancer and that it was very serious. When we came through, he came down to the show and hung out on the bus with us. At the time he was undergoing chemotherapy and he didn’t look good at all. He was very thin and weak but I was just so happy that he’d even come down.

A short while later I heard that his cancer had all but disappeared and that he was doing much better. And not long after that I saw him and he was a different guy altogether—he looked
great
. When I got the call, maybe five months after that, that Randy had died, I was shocked. I hadn’t even known that he’d taken a major downturn.

The funeral was at Forest Lawn Cemetery and everyone Randy had ever known was there, all his old musician friends from all of the bands he’d been in, including Ozzy, Randy’s extended family, and all of his friends who loved him—it was a huge gathering. At the reception I ran into Matt Sorum, who told me that he and some others were setting up a fund-raiser for Randy’s family and organizing a benefit gig to raise money and commemorate him. Matt asked me if I wanted to play at the gig and I thought it was a great idea; any excuse to play guitar onstage is all I need. Besides, I wanted to do it for Randy.

Matt and I decided that we’d do a set together and we agreed to call Duff, who’d moved back to Seattle, to ask him if he was interested. He’d formed a band called Neurotic Outsiders with Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols and they had put out a record and done a tour. Then they disbanded; Duff had put another band together with some friends from Seattle called Loaded. I’d run into him a few times in the past year: he’d come down for my birthday, and we’d jammed with Izzy in a studio one time, so we were definitely on speaking terms and in contact.

We needed a singer (as usual) and we needed a rhythm guitar player. I had my eye on Josh Todd and Keith Nelson from Buckcherry. I’d heard that their band had broken up, so that was an option. I liked Josh’s voice on some of the stuff of theirs that I’d heard and this seemed like a good opportunity to try him out.

We wanted to make this thing something special, so Matt called B-Real and Sen Dog from Cypress Hill to see if they’d be willing to come down and do a song or something with us. They were in, so we all showed up to rehearse and it was really a landmark afternoon. When we walked in over at Mates there was a tangible vibe: being in a room again with Matt and Duff instantly took me back to the chemistry we’d shared onstage every night with Guns. We got up together while the other guys watched, and the moment we hit the first chord, there was a confidence and a musical cameraderie that spoke for itself. And it said, “
This
is how it’s done, boys.”

We rehearsed “Paradise City,” “It’s So Easy,” “Mama Kin,” Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak,” “Rock-’n’-Roll Superstar,” and the Sex Pistols’ “Bodies.” B-Real and Sen Dog came up and rapped the verses of “Paradise City.” It was fucking great. For the first time since the first Snakepit, I felt fulfilled musically. I was surrounded by musicians who really knew how to hold down a mean groove and put forth an even meaner delivery. The core of Matt, Duff, and I was undeniable. When we started jamming, people who were rehearsing or working at Mates that day began wandering in to watch and listen. Soon we had a small audience and we plastered them to the wall.