The Slash autobiography thread

[axelmc]

The last straw with Axl involved some girls that were brought back to our place one night. Megan had gone out and I was at home in bed. Late at night, I heard some commotion; the sound of a few people filing in and heading past my bedroom down to Axl's room. Until then, Axl had spent most of his time in there alone constantly on the phone. This night was clearly an occasion.

My room was at the front of the apartment, separated from Axl's by our living room and a long railroad-style hallway. So I went down there to see what was going on; I found Earl, Tom Mayhew, Steve, and Axl hanging out with two happy-go-lucky Midwestern girls that they'd brought back. We all hung out, and as it got later, it was suggested that the girls have sex with all of us. They were willing to blow everyone in the room, which seemed reasonable to me, but they didn't want to fuck us. For whatever reason, that really pissed Axl off. The girls had a very intelligent rationale for their point of view, but Axl begged to differ. This debate continued for a moment, and it was pretty relaxed, but suddenly Axl exploded. He threw them out with such rage it was shocking. The way it went down was completely unnecessary. The coup de grace was that one of the girls' dads was a prominent officer with the Chicago police, or so I was told. Later that morning I packed up my stuff and flew back to LA. A few days later, I had Megan move out and join me.

My retaliation when I get frustrated creatively is to be self-destructive with drugs. It's my excuse to go down that path. It's a common phenomenon for junkies. So shortly after I got back to LA, considering the state of affairs with the band, when the opportunity presented itself, I was too eager to take advantage. Megan and I had settled in; we were happy in our new home. She turned out to be quite the homemaker, and took to keeping the place up, cooking, and being domestic very naturally. She would go to bed early and get up and go the gym and then clean up and make dinner. She would tend to the house, then head to bed at 10pm or 11pm and I'd stay up all night, downstairs in the living room, shooting up every few hours in the black bathroom. Some nights I'd write songs on the couch, some nights I'd just stare at the snakes. Before I noticed, it would be morning and Megan was up and we'd have a great time until I got tired. She never asked questions and we got along that way for a while, very happily. We had pet names for everything. Everything to her was either 'cute' or 'sweet,' and I was usually 'sweetie'.

Soon I started speedballing heavily and really enjoyed the unique brand of hallucinatory paranoia that comes with it. No one had taught me to speedball; I just thought it would be like a narcotic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Coke and heroin were two great tastes that I knew would go great together. The rush of the coke would send me up and then the dope would kick in and the trip would take a wonderful turn; and the two would weave in and out of each other from there on out. I'd always end up shooting all of the heroin before I'd mowed through the coke, so usually I'd get wired to the point of an impending heart attack. At the end of those nights, I was also often left with the distinct feeling that I was being watched, so I started to think that walking around my house armed to the teeth was a good idea.

I bought a bunch of guns: a shotgun, a .38 Special, a .44 Magnum, and a few revolvers. I used to keep my .38 in the back of my pants, and after Megan went to sleep, and after I'd shot up enough coke and heroin, I'd walk around the house thinking about things while watching the little hallucinatory figures that started to pop up in the corners of my vision. I'd see them dive and roll off of the top of the curtain rods or run along the baseboards in my peripheral vision, but every time I tried to look at them head-on, they'd disappear. Around then I stopped talking to everyone I knew and started doing a great deal of drawing. Throughout my life, my drawings have always reflected what I was into at the time. During this period, I drew nothing but dinosaurs and assorted graphic designs and logos.

I should have been drawing the little demon men that I could never quite see or seem to capture on film - believe me, I tried. As soon as I started to speedball regularly, those little guys were everywhere. They were small, wiry, translucent characters that I saw from afar until eventually they'd crawl up my jacket whenever I got high. I wanted to get to know them in a way; as I lay on the floor, waiting for my heart rate to relax, I'd watch the little Cirque du Soleil show that those guys would put on all over the room. I often thought about waking Megan up so that she could check it out. I even took pictures of them in the mirror when I found them perched on my shoulder and in my hair. I started to talk about them and see them so clearly that I even freaked out my drug dealer. On the rare occasion when I'd leave the house to score my drugs, I'd usually shoot up right away at his place and then start seeing those little guys crawling up my arm.

'Hey, do you see that?' I'd ask, extending my arm. 'You see that little guy, right? He's right there.'

My dealer would just stare at me expressionless. This guy was a drug dealer who was pretty used to strange junkie behaviour. 'You'd better go, man,' he say. 'You're way too out there. You should go home.' Apparently I was bad for business.

One night I was patrolling the house with my shotgun and came down the bedroom stairs into the living room. Then I went up the stairs to the bedroom landing and up to the loft, where Megan was asleep. As I got up there, the gun went off and blasted through the ceiling opposite the loft. Megan didn't even wake up.

David was engaging, and wise in the ways of chemical abuse. He asked me about what I was doing drug-wise and what I was going through emotionally, psychically, and with the band. I rambled on for a while, but once I started talking about my little translucent friends, David interrupted me. The conversation as a whole was way too involved to have with someone that he hadn't seen since they were eight years old, but he'd heard enough.

'Listen to me,' he said. 'You are not in a good way. If you are seeing things every day, what you are doing to yourself is not good at all. You are at a very spiritual low point when that begins to happen.' He paused for a moment. 'You are exposing yourself to the darker realms of your subconscious being. You are making yourself vulnerable to all kinds of negative energy.'

I was so far gone that I didn't agree. I thought of my hallucinations as my good-time entertainment.

'OK, that's cool.' I said. 'Yeah, I suppose that's bad. Duly noted.'

Doug thought that he could pull off a soft intervention with Steven by taking him on vacation to an exclusive golf resort in Arizona. I was a more complicated animal - suggesting rehab wasn't going to go over well, and neither was being looked after. Actually, no one could tell me shit at the time; they had to trust that I was going to get it together on my own. And I fully intended to; I thought about how to go about it over the course of many nights spent high up in the Walnut House.

I had a doctor prescribe me Buprinex, which is an opiate blocker. He'd get me bottles of that and syringes. It was a very expensive treatment, but this guy was kind of a Dr Feelgood; not the type of guy who had a real legitimate practice to speak of.

I brought all of that with me the night that I spontaneously decided to join Doug and Steven in Arizona. It made complete sense at the time: the Arizona sun was a great place to begin scaling back my habit. I told Megan that I had some band shit to do and that I'd be back in four days. I booked my flight, I called a limo, and I called a drug dealer that I knew who was located on the way to the airport. I had it all figured out. I copped enough coke and heroin, all the Buprinex and packed to get me through a nice mellow long weekend at a golf resort.

I hadn't called Doug or Steven to let them know I was coming, so when I landed there that night, I was on my own. There wasn't much going on around town, but I didn't care.

'Hey, how far is this place?' I asked the limo driver.

'About 45 minutes, sir,' he said.

'OK. Listen, can you stop off somewhere to get me some silverware?' I asked. 'I've got some food back here that I really want to eat.'

The driver drove for about 20 minutes and stopped at a Denny's.

He came out and handed me a knife and a fork, wrapped in a napkin. 'Great,' I thought.

'Hey,' I said. 'Listen, is there anywhere else we can stop? I need a full set of silverware.'

After another 15 minutes we stopped again and this time I got the spoon. I promptly put up the divider between the driver and me, got my drugs out, and cooked up my meal.

I did my fix and relaxed while we drove to the hotel. The scrappy underbrush of the Arizona landscape suddenly looked much more inviting and the tinted glass made it look even more lush.

[JimBobTTD]

I know it isn't just about his GNR years.

This whole thing is about how you state that he doesn't remember 75% of his GNR period. I'm calling you on this. A few words, with no source given, cited in a hostile article doesn't make it a fact. The next clip you give us, where Slash says he does remember stuff, doesn't strengthen your argument.

[axelmc]

When we got to the resort, the Venetian, I took my one-man party into my room. It wasn't the kind of place that I was used to, because it didn't look like a hotel; it was a collection of bungalows along a beautifully manicured golf course. My room was great with sheer white curtains around the bed, a small adobe-style fireplace, and a bathroom with a glass-enclosed shower - it was like a well-appointed spa. It was so relaxing that I could think of no better therapy than shooting coke and smack all night to soothe my soul.

I soon forgot that the shit I brought was meant to last me four days - I was acting as if I had something to celebrate. Within hours I was out of heroin. It's a common problem for junkies: when you're high, you're in a nice contented state, everything is good and mellow, and that's when you make your plans; that's when you figure out how much dope you need. Then you start doing your dope and everything changes.

I kept shooting coke that night just to keep shooting and I was pretty content with myself just going through those motions for a few hours. And then things got weird. I started shadow-boxing monsters that I saw on the other side of the sheer curtains that framed the large king-size bed. I was bobbing and weaving, as if I were working out at a gym. This shadow-boxing continued all night long until the sun came up, drowning every shadow in the room and ending my activity. Once I snapped out of that trance, I figured that I should probably head out in search of Steven and Doug.

First, I decided to shower, to straighten up a bit. But before that, I opted for one last shot of coke. I felt great when I got under the big rain-style, luxury showerhead. And as I was there under the nice warm water when the coke hallucinations hit me harder than they had that night or ever before. Full daylight was coming in through the skylight, but I watched as long shadows emerged from the corners. They crept up the floor toward me, up the glass of the shower, and took the shape of the shadow monsters I'd boxed earlier. They were right in front of me, filling the glass door, and I wasn't going to let them get me, so I punched them as hard as I could, sending the entire pane of glass into pieces all over the floor. I stood there with a cut hand, under the water, paralysed, paranoid, scanning the bathroom for other assailants. And that's when my little buddies showed up.

They always looked like the creature in Predator to me, but a fraction the size and translucent blue-gray; they were wiry and muscular with the same pointed heads and rubbery-looking dreadlocks. They'd always been a welcome, carefree distraction, but this hallucination was sinister. I could see them gathering in the doorway; there was an army of them, holding tiny machine guns and weapons that looked like harpoons.

I was terrified; I ran across the glass on the floor and slammed the sliding glass door to the bathroom shut. Blood began to form in a pool under me, issuing out from my feet, but I didn't feel a thing; I watched in horror as the Predators squeezed their limbs between the door and door frame and began to slide it open. I put all my weight against it in an effort to hold it shut, but it was no use; they were winning and I was losing my balance on all of the broken glass.

I decided to flee. I broke through the sliding glass door, cutting myself further and spraying debris all over the room. When I ran out of the bungalow, the bright sunlight, the shocking green of the grass, and the colours of the sky were overwhelming; everything was jarring and vivid.

Everything in my room had been so real that I was not prepared, in my condition, to be so suddenly transported from the drawn curtains into the shimmering daylight.

I just ran, fully naked and bleeding, down the fairway, away from the army of Predators I saw over my shoulder every time I turned to look. I needed a reprieve from the harsh daylight, so I ducked through the open door of another bungalow. I hid behind the door, then behind a chair, as the Predators began to fill up the room. There was a maid in there, making the bed, and she started to scream when she saw me. She screamed louder when I tried to use her as a human shield to protect myself from the small hunters on my trail.

I fled again, running at top speed through the resort with a translucent army at my heels; the colours and scenery only added to my dementia. I made it to the back of the main clubhouse and went through the back door and into the kitchen; all of the cooks and activity were dizzying, so I ran out of there, right into the lobby. There were guests and staff everywhere and I remember grabbing a well-dressed businessman standing there with his luggage, once again using him as a human shield. He seemed so together that I believed he could hold the Predators at bay, but I was wrong. They actually got to me at that point and started climbing up my legs, loading their little guns. The businessman didn't want anything to do with me; he shook free so I backed into a utility closet somewhere near the kitchen. As a crowd gathered, I ran out of there again, back outside, eventually finding darkness and shelter in a shed on the fairway, where I hid behind a lawn mower, until finally, the hallucinations began to subside.

I'd caused quite a bit of a commotion by then; the cops had arrived and, along with a crowd of onlookers, they confronted me in my hiding place. I wasn't seeing the Predators any more, but when I gave the cops my testimony, it involved a detailed recreation of how they'd chased me all over the resort trying to kill me. I was still high enough that I told the story without a shred of self-consciousness. Everything around me still looked pretty bizarre; even when Steven broke through the crowd and handed me a pair of sweatpants.

? Extracted from 'Slash: The Autobiography' by Slash with Anthony Bozza, published by HarperCollins on 29 October, priced ?18.99

From Saul to Slash: a life on the edge

Born plain Saul Hudson in Hampstead, north London in 1965, Slash was surrounded by rock music from an early age. His mother was a costume designer for David Bowie and his father was an artist who created stage scenes for Neil Young. When he was 11 the family moved to LA, where a family friend renamed him Slash because he was always rushing around.

When he was 14, his grandmother gave him a guitar. 'I'd been trying to get into this older girl's pants for a while,' he once explained. 'And she finally let me come over to her house. We smoked some pot and listened to Aerosmith's Rocks. It hit me like a fucking ton of bricks.'

In 1983 he and childhood friend Steven Adler formed Road Crew in LA, before joining Axl Rose, Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin in Guns N'Roses, whose first gig was in 1985.

Over the next two years the group toured the LA rock circuit and recorded Appetite For Destruction. 'Sweet Child O' Mine', taken from the album, went to No 1 in the States in 1988. The band struggled to maintain their momentum, though. Adlin was dismissed following 1991's Use Your Illusion 1 and Use Your Illusion 11, and 12 months' later Stradlin, too, quit the group.

For his part, Slash began to drift in and out of the band following 1993's The Spaghetti Incident?, an album of covers of punk and glam songs. His departure was made official in 1996, whereupon he focused on his side-project, the Snakepit, which he disbanded in 1998. Four years later, along with Duff McKagan, Slash formed hard rock supergroup Velvet Revolver.

Axl Rose owns the name Guns N' Roses, and a new album, Chinese Democracy, has been threatened for years. Individual tracks have leaked on the internet but there is still no confirmed release date.

[FunkyMonkey]

From the autobiography...

At some point during these months my manager had the brilliant idea of having me present some award to someone or other at the MTV Video Music Awards. I can't even remember who we gave it to, but my co-presenter was Traci Lords, the porn star, so we met backstage and then started dating immediately.

Sorry couldn't resist.

[JimBobTTD]

In all fairness, the occasion ushered in the prospect of slipping it to Tracii Lords. With that on your mind, would you still remember the junk award from MTV to some fly-by-night cheesey pop act?! 

[Ali]

I know it isn't just about his GNR years.

This whole thing is about how you state that he doesn't remember 75% of his GNR period. I'm calling you on this. A few words, with no source given, cited in a hostile article doesn't make it a fact. The next clip you give us, where Slash says he does remember stuff, doesn't strengthen your argument.

A hostile article? ?I don't see anything hostile about it. ?Sarcastic, yes. ?But, I see the sarcasm as a result of the obvious flaw in what Slash is trying to do.

No source? ?I gave the source, man. ?The Broward New Times. ?I even posted the link to the interview in an entirely different thread. ?It's legit.

Slash is 42 years old. ?I'm sure he can remember enough from his life to make a 480 page biography. ?But, that does not mean that he remembers a large percentage of his time during GN'R, or a large percentage of an almost twenty year period. ?He surprised himself by the fact that he can remember anything, but that shows how shot his memory is in general.

My point has always been is that to really be able to try and set the record straight on an era of a length of time like his in GN'R, you have to have a good recall of a large percentage of that era. ?If you don't and you only remember some events involving the band and some crazy drug stories, then you are only setting part of the record straight at best. ?Certainly not the entire record of his time with GN'R.

Ali

[Ali]

In all fairness, the occasion ushered in the prospect of slipping it to Tracii Lords. With that on your mind, would you still remember the junk award from MTV to some fly-by-night cheesey pop act?!?

In that case, probably not

Ali

[JimBobTTD]

No source? ?I gave the source, man. ?The Broward New Times. ?I even posted the link to the interview in an entirely different thread. ?It's legit.

The article gives no source for "can't remember three quarters of what went on", which forms the basis of your argument. See earlier posts about literary criticism!

[FunkyMonkey]

No source?  I gave the source, man.  The Broward New Times.  I even posted the link to the interview in an entirely different thread.  It's legit.

The article gives no source for "can't remember three quarters of what went on", which forms the basis of your argument. See earlier posts about literary criticism!

It is an interview with Slash?  And the entire sentence is...

Trouble is, he admits that he "can't remember three-quarters of what went on."

 

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-10-04/music/velvet-revolver-seeks-libertad/

[14 Yrs Of Silence]

Everybody is a BITCH these days. ?I'm sure slash told the stories that he actually remembers. So there is no credibility issue as far as I'm concerned. ?The Fact is that Axl Rose will (and does, from the exerpt) look like a Huge Dick. ?This is obviously probably true since everyone seems to say this. ?The only question is, can you still be a fan of his knowing this. ?I say yes, but not quite as much as I would be if he acted like a reasonalbe person.

I think Axl would admit today that he has been a dick in the past. ?Keep in mind that he's struggled with mental health issues and has spent a significant amount of time in therapy. ?Without knowing the man personally, it appears anyway that he is in a much better mindset today then he was years ago. ?And remember, back then he was in a band full of drug addicts so he saw how everything was falling apart as it unfolded. ?That must have been very difficult along with the newfound fame and demons from his past to keep it all together. ?For all his faults he is appears to be a genuinely good guy and I'm pulling for him. ?Now that they are all clean and sober (sans Steven) they would probably get along much better today then ever before. ?

[darth monkey]

You know what, this is probably the closest we'll ever get to hearing the story. Axl was always late to shows and never rehearsed. You can almost say he wasn't there 75% of the time. It's just a book, read it and shut up and make your opinion after.

[Ali]

No source?? I gave the source, man.? The Broward New Times.? I even posted the link to the interview in an entirely different thread.? It's legit.

The article gives no source for "can't remember three quarters of what went on", which forms the basis of your argument. See earlier posts about literary criticism!

It is an interview with Slash?? And the entire sentence is...

Trouble is, he admits that he "can't remember three-quarters of what went on."

 

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-10-04/music/velvet-revolver-seeks-libertad/

FunkyMonkey made my point for me.  The author of the article spoke with Slash.  He is the source of Slash's quote.

Ali

[JimBobTTD]

Er, no. It is not an interview with Slash, it is an article about him with a few soundbytes thrown in. The quote to which you are referring is not in any real context, may not have even been said by Slash and could be about anything. Nowhere does it say:

Roberts: What about this book?
Slash: I can't remember three quarters of what went on in my time with GNR.

Ergo it is not a reliable source of information.

[Ali]

Er, no. It is not an interview with Slash, it is an article about him with a few soundbytes thrown in. The quote to which you are referring is not in any real context, may not have even been said by Slash and could be about anything. Nowhere does it say:

Roberts: What about this book?
Slash: I can't remember three quarters of what went on in my time with GNR.

Ergo it is not a reliable source of information.

It is an article/interview.  The author spoke with Slash.  Anytime a journalist speaks with someone/asks questions about them and their work, it is an interview.  It just wasn't written in strict Q&A format.  There is no making up of any quotes.  That is a desperate reach to suggest that.

Ali

[CheapJon]

there are kinda already 2 threads with this, but yeah it's a interresting read to say the least

[FunkyMonkey]

Er, no. It is not an interview with Slash, it is an article about him with a few soundbytes thrown in. The quote to which you are referring is not in any real context, may not have even been said by Slash and could be about anything. Nowhere does it say:

Roberts: What about this book?
Slash: I can't remember three quarters of what went on in my time with GNR.

Ergo it is not a reliable source of information.

He is the full interview in your format...some is posted below.

Q&A With Slash From Velvet Revolver/Guns N' Roses

Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 06:52:55 AM

During the Q&A below, which formed the basis of the Velvet Revolver profile in the September 20 Westword.

Michael Roberts: You were talking earlier about how many stories about you are exaggerated. Will the whole book be, ?That?s not true,? and ?That?s not true, either?? Or are there enough crazy stories that haven?t been told?

Slash: To be honest with you, it?s not all about crazy stories. I can?t remember three-quarters of what went on. It was hard enough to write this book based on simple facts: On this year, this happened, and on this year, that happened. So much shit went on, and it?s still like that in this band. There?s so much stuff that goes on over the course of a day, let alone over ten years. But there was some key stuff, some major things that went on, that I do remember ? stuff that happened to me personally, stuff that happened with the bands, little anecdotes sprinkled throughout that I can remember. And tying it all together, it was a real challenge. It was a good thing I was sober when I did it, or I probably wouldn?t have been able to finish it otherwise.

http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2007/09/qa_with_slash_from_velvet_revo.php

[ppbebe]

hard data good job funky, as usual.

Is it just me or slash diehards are rather lazy?

[JimBobTTD]

I stand corrected. It seems that he did say that.

[fuckin crazy]

hard data good job funky, as usual.

Is it just me or slash diehards are rather lazy?

Who made the statement that memory loss was due to hard core drug use? The burden of proof is on the author of that quote. The meaning of that idiomatic device "can't remember 3/4 of ..." is quite obvious. I stand by my original post.

[JimBobTTD]

Indeed. We are still dealing with a literal interpretation of a figure of speech as being the basis of Ali's argument.