Slash

by Slash

“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.”

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!

me out at all costs. We decided that it wasn’t worth it; I’m not the type to cause a scene.

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.

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.

“It’s OxyContin,” he said. “It’s basically synthetic heroin.

Now Perla and I had spent the first years of our marriage and our relationship being pretty wild.

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.

could remain grounded in insane circumstances and was always the one to take care o...

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 th...

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 an...

If there is one thing I am, it’s “the eternal teenager.”

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

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. I...

But, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t get what Perla had said to me out of my head.

everything. We’d been married over a year, and together for five years.

It didn’t take us long to decide that we would have the baby.

The running joke was that we’d name the kid Guinness,

was Ronnie Wood’s dog’s name.

had, Perla’s pregnancy straightened me out:

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.

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.

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.

I was on the straight and narrow, not really even drinking.

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.

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.”

he’d played with Ozzy,

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.

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.”

and Sen Dog came up and rapped the verses of “Paradise City.”

the first Snakepit, I felt fulfilled musically.

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 ...

first time that that many members of Guns had played together in years.

All in all it was a momentous evening. I was elated.

I was home with Perla the next day when Duff called.

What I’d been thinking was that I’d been wasting time. I’d been tinkering around with other musicians; talented guys, sure, but none of them were right for me. I’d been looking for something when what I was after had been right in front of me the whole time.

“Duff, we should do something with this,” I said. “We would be stupid not to. Fuck all of the obvious Guns N’ Roses connotations.”

Duff and I had never said it, but the two of us had been consciously avoiding working with each other. We didn’t want to be pigeonholed, we didn’t want to be labeled:

want to resign ourselves to the compartment we’d be relegated to—an ex-Guns side project. At this point enough time had gone by, and even if it hadn’t, we’d experienced enough energy playing together again to know that we could get beyond any bullshit expectation that might be dumped on us.

and Duff and I started making things up on the spot, just as naturally as we always did.

I am embarrassed to admit that I was willing to quit the band prematurely because of that. I assumed that Duff and Matt had been listening to the same tapes of our sessions that I had; and it’s my fault that I presumed that since no one was objecting to what we were doing, they were all fine with it.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I told Duff and Matt after rehearsal one day. “I’m done.”

“Hey! What are you talking about?...

“What’s wrong?” Ma...

MATT AND DUFF AND I STARTED REHEARSING and writing like crazy.

working at Tower Video when Guns N’ Roses was just taking off,