Welcome to My Jungle (24 page)

Slash and Natasha at Axl’s Halloween party
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A typical note Axl would leave me of things that needed to be done. I wrote Dave Gahan on the piece of paper so I would remember who I was sending the champange to
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Slash and me at a restaurant in New York City. After a few drinks…

QUICK STORIES, STATS, & FACTS

7

• No drugs were allowed on the Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion tour. One guy in our entourage smoked a joint one night and he was fired the next day. Of course there was plenty of alcohol to make up for it.
  
• As I’ve stated, while on tour I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, while dipping Skoal at the same time. Dipping is putting chewing tobacco in your bottom lip. Lots of guys on the road dipped because it kept us awake—most of the time we were up for twenty hours a day.
  

  Five years after I quit I went to Robert Finkelstein’s bachelor party and tried a little dip again. I just took a tiny bit and put it in my bottom lip. Within thirty seconds I turned green and got violently ill. That’s how bad that crap is for you.
  

  I quit smoking on October 20, 1992. This was an amazing feat considering that everyone else on the road continued to smoke. I started smoking a little again after the tour ended, then quit for good in 1994.
  

• Axl used a filter when he smoked his cigarettes.
  
• Ninety-nine percent of the time all members of Guns N’ Roses and the entourage would all stay on the same hotel floor or on two consecutive floors. Axl would usually get the Presidential Suite, Slash and Duff would get suites, and the rest of the band members, and the manager, Doug Goldstein, would all get suites as well if they were available.
  
• My room was on one side of Axl’s room and Earl’s was on the other side. Robert was across the hall and Steve, Sabrina, Amy, and Stuart were very close by. Each band member also had their security person next to them as well.
  
• I did not get a tattoo. I’m pretty sure I was one of the only ones on the road that did not have a tattoo. And that was really hard, considering we had a tattoo artist tour with us. And he usually was only a few rooms away from my room in every hotel.
  
• Axl saved a bottle of Dom Pérignon after every show and we would write the date of the show and the city name on every bottle. We then shipped the bottles to his house in Malibu, California, where he put them on display for a while. He must have collected more than 200 bottles.
  
• That’s me at the end of the
  Making of Estranged
  video. I’m talking into the camera saying that Guns N’ Roses was all my idea. Axl thought it was really funny, so he added it in the video. Because of this video, the number-one question on a very popular Guns N’ Roses chat room was, “Who the hell is Craig Duswalt?” I also appeared in the videos
  Estranged
  and
  The Garden
  .
  

  

  Axl Rose wrote these letters to be used for the “Estranged” video.
  

• Axl and Slash, especially, are two of the most disciplined people I know. Before pretty much every show Axl would get a massage from Sabrina, then get adjusted by Steve, then take a shower where he would warm up his voice for about forty-five minutes with vocal exercises, then have Steve tape his ankles, and finally go onstage. After the show he would shower, and while in the shower he would again warm down his voice for another thirty minutes. Slash was the same way. He would play scales on his guitar every day, whether there was a show or not. We can accuse Guns N’ Roses of partying too much, which they did at times, but they were also very dedicated to their craft, and that is why they were so successful.
  
• One of the really cool things about touring with Guns N’ Roses is that before every show some women in the audience would flash their breasts just because some guy was filming them and projecting their image onto the big screens on each side of the enormous stage. I never understood why many women felt compelled to do this, but they did, and they did often. This camera feed would also appear on television monitors in the band’s dressing rooms. I’m not sure, but there might have been a direct correlation between the band going onstage late and the number of beautiful women in the audience showing their breasts.
  
• This is so rock star: Axl was dating Victoria Secret model Stephanie Seymour, and it was her birthday, and he wanted to get her something really cool. Being the romantic he is, he saw a huge black stuffed elephant in Paris. Her birthday was the next day, and he wanted it there for her. So he had Robert book the stuffed elephant on the Concorde on a flight from Paris to New York. There’s FedEx, and there’s UPS, but if you’re a rock star and you want to get your girlfriend a gift the next day, there is also the Concorde. By the way, this elephant is in the Guns N’ Roses video for their song “Estranged.” It’s in the dream sequence scene where the kids are playing on the swing set in white outfits.
  
• We played softball with local radio stations for various charities across the United States. Gilby Clarke was the best ballplayer from the band, but most of the talent came from us—the entourage. Slash and Duff would usually play as well, and the stands would be filled with thousands of Guns N’ Roses fans. When I got up to bat it felt like I was in the major leagues. Thousands of people cheering for you to get a hit. Quite the rush.
  
• One night, I forget where, Guns N’ Roses forgot to play their biggest hit, “Welcome to the Jungle.” Axl came offstage and nonchalantly said, “Damn, I think we forgot to play ‘Welcome to the Jungle.’” The band members simply replied, “Hmmm.” And that was it. The only time that ever happened.
  
• Axl loved to collect crucifixes from all over the world. He had a huge crucifix hanging in his living room.
  
• Axl had a pet baby wallaby on a small portion of the tour. He named him Freddie, after the late lead singer of Queen. Axl built a sling, to mimic the baby wallaby mother’s pouch and carried his pet wherever he went. He also fed Freddie with a little baby’s bottle. It was quite awesome to watch—Axl Rose, acting like a dad.
  
• Axl and I went to a few Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Raiders football games. He’s a Raiders fan. I’m smarter … I’m a Chiefs fan. It’s actually very difficult to go to games with Axl. I love actually watching the game, but when I went with Axl, my main focus was keeping as many fans away from him as possible. But as usual, once one fan realized Axl was there, word spread quickly, and it became quite the frenzy.
  
• Axl must have had an affinity for kangaroos and wallabies. On the next page you’ll see a picture of Axl and his new friends, Mr. and Mrs. Kangaroo. We went to an animal reserve in Sydney, Australia, and we found out fast that all kangaroos do all day long is have sex. I wanted to take regular pictures of kangaroos, but all I have is pictures of kangaroos having sex, because that’s all they do. There must have been twenty kangaroos having sex at the same time. It was like I was watching a backstage orgy, not that I ever saw anything like that while touring with Guns N’ Roses.
  

Axl and a couple of kangaroos having a grand old time in Australia
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Axl with his “pouch” to hold his pet wallaby, Freddie
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Freddie, Axl’s pet wallaby
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• There are thousands of hours of video footage of the Use Your Illusion world tour in a vault somewhere in Los Angeles. But no one in the band wants to release it. (I wonder why.) Our documentary crew followed us the entire three years, and all this footage was supposed to be made into a full-length documentary. Instead, the footage was never used. It’s probably worth millions of dollars and will probably never be seen again. Some of us think that might be a good thing.
  
• Axl hated singing the same songs every night. I used to say to him that he’d have to play his hit songs forever, and he used to say something along the lines of, “Well, then, shoot me now.”
  
• It seemed that everyone else on tour did, but I never went to the Playboy Mansion. I had so many opportunities to go during my days with Guns N’ Roses, but I always thought I’d go “next time.” Well, next time never came, and no one invites me anymore. So sad.
  
• On Saturday, January 30, 1993, the largest show ever in Australia featured Guns N’ Roses at the Eastern Creek Raceway (now the Syndey Motorsport Park) outside of Sydney. We took a helicopter to and from the show because the traffic was so bad—I’m pretty sure there was only one road in, and one road out.
  
• During our stop in Switzerland, Axl gave me a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch just for the heck of it. He also bought watches for everyone else in his personal entourage that day. I’m guessing that the final bill for the six of us must have been at least $25,000.
  
• While touring Europe we shared the same private
  MGM Grand
  plane with Bruce Springsteen and U2. Each band would put bumper stickers with their logo on the outside of the plane.
  
• Slash, a few members of the band and crew, and I went bowling one night in South America. I met my cousin Bill Baldwin there. He lives in Florida, but he’s a pilot for United Airlines and happened to be in South America at the time. So he came out with us that night and we had an amazing time, especially because we were told by the owners of the bowling alley that we could order anything we wanted from the in-house restaurant and a fully stocked bar. There were about fifteen of us there, and we ate and we drank,
  a lot
  , because they told us we could. For free. So we listened. About five hours later we’d had enough “bowling” and Jack Daniels, so we headed back to the hotel. The next morning I awoke to a knock on my hotel door, and the owner of the bowling alley handed me a bill for about $5,000. I told him I wasn’t paying. He told me that I was paying. After arguing for about a half hour, I offered him free tickets to the show, backstage passes, and autographed pictures. I guess it must have been about $5,000 worth of stuff because the bill then magically disappeared.
  
• Guns N’ Roses’ album
  Use Your Illusion II
  sold more than
  Use Your Illusion I
  during the first week of their release and ever since.
  
• As most people know, many celebrities do not use their real names when checking into a hotel. Here are a few Guns N’ Roses specials:
  

  Wile E. Coyote
  

  Dash Riprock
  

  Colin Sick
  

  Tung Inmee
  

  John Shaft
  

  Hayden Life
  

  Hugh Jorgan