With his idol on his side, a guitarist with cancer plays onBy Billy Cox
Published Sunday, July 13, 2008
PALMETTO ? The ringtone explodes with Guns N' Roses' opening guitar riff on "Sweet Child O' Mine," and Heath Sammons snaps open the cell phone. "City morgue," he answers. "You kill 'em, we chill 'em."
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Dressed largely in black, his faded denim jeans torn at the knees, the lanky 20-year-old is a poster boy for garage-band culture. He calls himself "old school," with a thing for Metallica, Boston and Aerosmith. He amps up his Gibson Les Paul and cranks a few power chords to establish his bona fides.
The black bandanna and backward baseball cap cloak the hair-loss side effects of chemotherapy, but on this particularly upbeat day, you would never know Heath was struggling with inoperable cancer. Because after having completed a jam session in Los Angeles with a rock 'n' roll deity, Heath anticipates leaping tall buildings in a single bound.
"You rock," proclaims a signed photo. "Hope you had a blast. See you soon. Slash."
Slash, as in Velvet Revolver / Guns N' Roses / "Guitar Hero." Billowing frizz beneath the legendary top hat, the droopy cigarette, the opaque shades, mere rumors for eyes. "Appetite for Destruction." That guy.
It is hard for Heath to keep a straight face
when he talks about his June 4 meetup with his idol, which was engineered by his family. The kid from Palmetto does his best to play it cool.
"He's an awesome musician and a great guy." It's no use. Here it comes, a sign of weakness -- the smile. "And he's loyal to his friends."
Family makes things happen
Heath's mother, Karis Meier, likes to accent life's positives. But discussing his abbreviated career at Manatee School for the Arts in Palmetto presents a challenge.
"Heath is very spontaneous, and Mom was at school quite a bit," volunteers Karis. "The principal was really good. He tried hard to work something out."
It was not all bad. Manatee School is where, at age 14, Heath took his first guitar lessons and learned he had an aptitude for music on his $100 Fender Squier. But boredom with structure soon followed, as did several expulsions.
At 15, his first band was Kashmir, which did Metallica covers. Then there was Kileva, whose name is an inside joke. Lately, when he feels up to it, he plays with older guys -- doing Eagles, Petty, Skynyrd covers -- calling themselves the Under Construction Band.
But the world collapsed in early 2006, when Heath took a skateboard spill in Tampa, which unleashed a nightmarish ordeal of pain. Doctors discovered a tumor in his sacrum, at the base of his spine, and diagnosed a rare bone cancer called osteosarcoma.
Debilitating bouts of radiation and chemotherapy at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa appeared to have wrung it out of his system by the spring of 2007.
But last September, three more spots showed up on Heath's lungs. Those were surgically removed, but the reprieve would prove temporary.
And somewhere amid the blur, around the fall of 2006, Heath's stepfather, Jim Meier, and his aunt, Melody Carpenter, got the same crazy idea.
Without knowing what the other was doing, in an effort to boost Heath's spirits, each contacted a fan-based Web site in hopes of reaching his favorite guitarist -- Saul Hudson, aka Slash. Because it couldn't hurt.
A kindred spirit
Talk about lucky to be alive -- Slash wrote the book on it, literally, in 2007.
In addition to tracing the superstar arc triggered by his run with Guns N'Roses, Slash's self-titled autobiography volunteers unsparing details of rock 'n' roll debauchery: heroin addiction, public intoxication, chicks for free, STDs.
On "Late Show with David Letterman," he told the world about knocking back half a gallon of vodka each day for 10 years, which left him with heart disease and a defibrillator.
"They told me I had six days to six weeks to live," Slash informed Letterman's studio audience last October. But he sobered up cold turkey, and in the June edition of Mojo magazine, he told readers he had been sober for two years.
He credited his two young children for providing the clarity that saved his life.
Maybe that brush with mortality accounts for his response to overtures from Heath's aunt and stepfather. It is difficult to know for sure, because Slash declines to discuss his generosity in the media.
But he replied to both Melody and Jim, and finally spoke with Heath over the phone at the Moffitt Center in 2006 as he was being prepped for treatment.
"I felt about dead when the phone rang," Heath recalls. "I couldn't believe it when I picked it up. I said, 'Mom, it's Slash -- get the nurse out of here.' He was real cool, he said, 'You sound like a strong kid, we're rootin' for you,' things like that. We talked for about 20 minutes."
Slash followed up with signed photos, jeans, T-shirts, hats. Last year, Heath received four box seat tickets and backstage passes for Velvet Revolver's October concert in Tampa.
"It's been sort of unbelievable," said Melody. "Everything I've asked Slash to do for Heath, every single thing, he's done. He's wonderful."
Playing through the pain
Cancer raged back into Heath's collapsing lung early this year, then bloomed as a tumor against his vena cava.
Moffitt oncologists counterattacked with chemotherapy. The returns came back in mid-May: inoperable.
Today, Heath's family is determined to rebuild his immune system through vitamins and diet.
And maybe with a little help from his friends. Following a heads-up from Heath's family, Slash made an offer no star-struck young guitarist could refuse: Come on out to L.A. one afternoon and jam.
"I couldn't believe we were actually going to do it," Heath says.
Accompanied by a small entourage from Palmetto, including 18-year-old buddy Tommy Busch, Heath packed his Les Paul and flew west.
Heath's entourage hooked up with the Guitar Hero on June 4 at a mansion Slash sold to actor Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton agreed to let them use Slash's old recording studio in the basement, called The Cave.
Heath introduced Slash to a couple of original compositions, which they recorded. They spent the entire afternoon, four hours, trading licks and stories.
"I think I play a lot like him," Heath recalls. "Not on purpose, that's just how it went, we're so much alike. Our riffs were pretty close."
Afterward, Slash offered a few words of encouragement for a blog that Heath's stepfather, Jim, maintains at
http://heathsupdate.blogspot.com/http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080713/NEWS/807130343/-1/newssitemap
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