Slash (38 page)

“Well, I don’t know,” Mike said. “Let me make a phone call.”

“Okay, yeah.”

The phone rang again in the early evening. “Slash,” Mike said. “Here’s what I found out. He’s possibly available. Do you have a pen? I have his number.”

I hadn’t moved much that day; I was waiting for this call, focused on it, because I knew this was right. I wrote the number on the sheets, or on the wall or on my hand, I’m not sure which.

I dialed and waited. Matt picked up.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Matt, is it? This is Slash,” I said. “I’m from Guns N’ Roses and we need a drummer. Are you interested?”

Two days later Matt came in to rehearse, and within the course of two or three songs, Duff, Izzy, and I realized that we’d found our man. We’d found ourselves a player with an innate feel all his own, both in step with the rest of us and individually stylized. He had the power, the chops, and the vibe to fill the void—and add to what the band’s sound was about to become.

I think Duff and I took Matt out to ask him if he wanted to join—I can’t remember where—probably the Rainbow—but we took him out and drank and did some blow, that kind of thing. He fit right in. He was pysched; it was the situation that every touring musician dreams of. There’s no easier gig to walk into for a real rock-and-roll player. After hanging out with Duff and me, it was clear that Matt thought Guns was the biggest band on the face of the planet as well as a crew of relentless partiers. The pay was good and there were no rules, except for one: all you had to do was play well.

But Matt had to learn a hell of a lot of stuff pretty fast. We had the demos of thirty-six songs that we planned to record for the albums. Since those tapes weren’t really enough to go on, Duff, Izzy, and I had to teach him everything in a reasonably short amount of time, and because of that, the rest of us had to become very professional very quickly. There was a lot of remorse, at least on my part and surely the other guys’, about letting Steven go; but when Matt came into it, he brought new life to the proceedings. There was a light at the end of the tunnel when it looked like it might go dark forever.

A FEW OTHER THINGS WERE GOING ON
during this period as Guns geared up to reemerge—we made a few appearances that are worthy of note. One of them was the night that Duff and I accepted our American Music Award on behalf of the band for Best Rock Album. I had never paid attention to the Grammys or the AMAs or any of that stuff; I never watched those shows on TV or took an active interest in any of it. Duff and I went anyway—mostly for the drinks—and
we really had no concept of the fact that being nominated meant you might actually
win
something, and if you did win you were expected to get onstage and
say
something—to the crowd as well as the TV audience at home.

At this point, I was dating Renee and Duff was with Pilar, and the AMAs were something to take the girls to. All they had to serve was wine, and we had at least eight big cups a piece. The whole thing was pretty boring and stiff. We’re sitting there talking when all of a sudden Guns N’ Roses was called for
Appetite
winning Best Rock Album. We were dumbfounded. The spotlight shot over our seats and we staggered up there. Once I realized we’d won, I wanted to thank all the different people, so I thanked Zutaut, Niven, all those people at Geffen all the while dropping countless
fuck
s caused by the wine and my nervousness. I had no idea what the protocol was at these ceremonies. Anyway, I was a few names in when they cut the mike. I kept talking for a second, until I realized it’d been shut off. We were escorted back to do pictures and have the press conference. I was buzzed, I was having a good time and gave them all the middle finger.

The next day, this AMA thing was all I heard about. I was overwhelmed by the controversy because to this day the incident still doesn’t mean that much to me. I was, however, responsible for the seven-second delay being instituted at all future live award ceremonies; plus Dick Clark wouldn’t speak to me for eight years. I wasn’t allowed at the AMAs until only a year or so ago when I was asked to present some award.

It wasn’t intentional but nonetheless it sent a message: the Guns spirit was alive and well.

BACK AT THE STUDIO, WE HAD THIRTY-
six songs, which was more than enough to fill a double album. I wanted to choose the twelve best of the thirty-six and hone them down to perfection, but I let it go because as long as were moving forward, I was happy. Axl wanted to record all thirty-six and go the double-album route. He didn’t want to sit on these tunes. I understood that: many of them were
old by this point—they’d been held over from our last album, and some were even older. Also, there was a whole bunch of new songs that represented where we were at that moment in time. It might be retrospect talking, but the general consensus was that we were cleaning the slate, getting out everything we had. As a whole, these songs were representative of something important: the band’s past and present. It had been such an incredible journey and the only way to express it was all in this body of material.

Matt was great; he was tight with Duff and me; Izzy was around, but not like he used to be. Not only was he 100 percent dead sober, he was also very much anti-alcohol and antidrugs at that point. When Izzy met Matt they got along fine, but it was under the condition that the decision had already been made: it was all okay, but I think Izzy felt dictated to—and he
hated
that. Izzy was pretty fragile from the time he came back to the band until the day he left, and as I look back, this whole shift probably didn’t sit entirely well with him. When we had rehearsal we were all there as a band and it was cool, something was off. Izzy wasn’t happy…but he wasn’t saying anything, and Axl had distanced himself from the day-today mechanics of the band so much that as long as we had a drummer and everyone was there and playing together, he thought we were cool and ready to move forward.

The first recording with Matt was “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” for the
Days of Thunder
soundtrack (which also ended up on the
Illusions
albums). I remember doing the solo for it on my way somewhere and I used a ’58 Gibson Explorer. It was an amazing take, I just ran in there with my girlfriend and some friends in tow, picked up the guitar, and really let the solo
sing
: I turned the tone down on the bass pickup, I locked in and let it
scream
. I really love the way that one came out—it was very emotional yet effortless.

“Knocking on Heaven’s Door” was also the first song that we could listen to and get an idea of what the band sounded like with our new drummer. It came out great, but there was a definite difference in the overall feel of the new Guns from the old Guns. We had lost a little bit of the mayhem and punk rock, that raw chaotic, seat-of-the-pants feel. In
stead we sounded more epic and solid and huge. That was a good or a bad thing depending on who you asked. In my opinion, I was just happy to be moving ahead.

Next, we went in and Matt learned all thirty-six songs at breakneck speed, basically by playing them with us live because there was no other material to reference. We booked ourselves into A&M in Hollywood and recorded thirty-six songs in thirty-six days. Between takes, we’d go to Crazy Girls, the strip bar across the street, which I’m sorry to say is no longer there. At night we’d go out carousing, then show up the next afternoon and do it all again on a new song. It was a great thirty-six days, during which Duff and I realized that Matt was both an incredible drummer and our brand-new party buddy. Before the drug thing got out of hand and before the incident with Steven, there were some dark periods, but we’d come through that: we were now very functional alcoholics and occasional coke users. Actually, I doubt that it was occasional—Matt and Duff did a lot of blow. I didn’t do as much, but it didn’t matter because, like them, I’d built up my tolerance of everything to the point that we were all a perfectly productive, chemically driven, and very professional band.

Beverly Hills High should be proud: Slash onstage with Lenny Kravitz.

I WAS GETTING OUT THERE AND CIRCULATING
a lot more, too, by this point. Duff and I ran into Iggy Pop during our down time and he asked us to play on
Brick by Brick
. We went down to meet him at the Rainbow, where we got into his car and listened to the demos, which was very cool. Iggy is Duff ’s ultimate hero and there was a little bit of history there on my end because of Bowie—he and my mom had gone to visit Iggy at the Cedars psych ward. We showed up in Hollywood and laid down some tracks with him: “Home Boy,” “Pussy Power,” and a song that Iggy and I cowrote, “My Baby Wants to Rock ’n’ Roll.” It was one of the most fun sessions I’d ever done. Not long after that, we also did the video with him for “Home Boy.”

This was a real honor for us; it was another sign that Guns was getting back out on the scene and that we were being taken seriously as musicians. People wanted to see us plain and simple. At that point in 1990,
Appetite
and
Lies
had become huge commercial successes. This newfound attention also drew the spotlight to me as a guitar player, which took the form of a few calls to our management office. It was flattering to discover that other musicians had started to give me credit for being a fairly good guitar player.

One collaboration I did at the time was with Lenny Kravitz. I already knew him; he and I attended Beverly Hills High at the same time, and although I was in continuation while he was a regular student, we were the only two half-black half-white musicians in the school that I knew of. Duff and I were fans, and our favorite record of the moment was Lenny’s debut,
Let Love Rule
. When we were introduced at some awards function, I was ecstatic when he asked me to play on his next record,
Mama Said,
which he was in the midst of writing. Shortly thereafter we met up in a little studio on Robertson in L.A. where I put a solo on “Fields of Joy
.”
As I was warming up in the lounge that day, I played a funky guitar riff that I’d come up with recently but hadn’t found a place for in any of the songs I was working on at the time with Guns. It was just another of my exercises at the time.

“Hey man, what is
that?
” Lenny asked

“I don’t know…Just something,” I said. “It’s too funky for Guns, but I like it. It’s cool.”

“Yeah, man. Don’t forget it. Bring that into the rehearsal room,” he said. “Let’s work on it. I’d like to write some lyrics to it.”

When it came time to actually write and record the song, Lenny flew me out to New York. He lived in Manhattan but he’d set himself up in a studio across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was where he’d recorded his debut album, and where he was doing the basic tracks for his next album. We took the train there from his apartment, and he played drums while I laid the guitar down for what became “Always on the Run.” It was a lot of fun, very raw and stripped down, the way it should be done. There’s not a lot going on on that track, but it sounded really good; he put the bass and vocals on later. The studio was like Lenny’s castle; every instrument was in place—he could jump from guitar to bass to drums and get it all down as his inspiration dictated.

I had brought Renee with me on that trip and we were staying in midtown at a hotel close to Lenny’s apartment and had spent the night before, a Saturday, carousing extensively. It was summertime, it was hot as hell, and once I got to Lenny’s place that Sunday morning, I discovered that due to some outdated rule called the “blue law” on New York’s books, no bars or liquor stores were open at all.

It wasn’t exactly how I pictured this collaboration going down and it was about to be a problem. I remember hanging around Lenny’s apartment waiting for him to get ready. The place looked like the world’s biggest closet of vintage clothes had vomited all over the room: there were garments everywhere, covering every available surface. It was ten a.m., I was taking this whole scene in, and I was
craving
a drink.

“Hey man, do you have anything to drink?” I asked.

“No, man, I don’t think so,” Lenny said. “You want to smoke a joint?”

“That’s cool. I could really use a drink, though,” I said. “Can we stop by a bar or a liquor store on the way?”

“I don’t know, man,” he said. “I don’t think so. That’s all closed on Sunday.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, getting a little bit nervous. “Do your neighbors have any booze? I need a drink, man.”

Lenny did his best; he procured what seemed like a thimbleful of vodka from his neighbor. I downed it but it was like throwing a Band-Aid at a
gunshot wound. As we hopped on the PATH train to Hoboken, which is a trip of about twenty minutes, I began to experience alcohol detox: my hands shook, I was light-headed, irritable, and anxious. It wasn’t some big mystery—I just needed a fucking drink, like
now
. My reserve of civility was equally dry.