Array Slash - Slash

Our enthusiasm was too great to allow for delays or thoughts of practicality, so we told Danny and Joe to stay with the car and gear until it was repaired and to meet us in Portland (about seven hundred fifty miles away), at one of the gigs on the route. From there, we decided we’d drive to Seattle together (about a hundred and seventy-five miles farther) to play the final show of our tour with our own gear. There was a brief moment when Danny and Joe campaigned for us to remain in Fresno together until the car was back on the road, but neither that nor the obvious option of turning back were ever considered seriously. We hadn’t even considered how to get from one gig to the next, let alone that we might not find amps and drums ready to borrow when we got there. We really didn’t give a shit about any of that; the five of us didn’t hesitate—we hit the highway to start hitchhiking.

We gave Danny and Joe whatever money we could spare to pay for the car—probably about twenty bucks—and walked up the on-ramp to the highway, guitar cases in hand. A few hours without so much as one vehicle even slowing down to check us out didn’t dent our confidence. We remained proactive, testing the efficiency of the various hitchhiking configurations available to us: five guys with no visible luggage; two guys hitching and three guys hidden in the bushes; one guy with a guitar case; just Axl and Izzy; just Izzy and me; just Axl and me; just Steven alone, waving and grinning; just Duff alone. Nothing seemed to work; the people of Fresno weren’t having us in any way, shape, or form.

It took about six hours for our kind of misfit to come along; a trucker willing to take all of us on board, stuffed into the front seat and the small bench behind it in his cab. It was close quarters, made even closer by the guitar cases and the sheer intensity of this guy’s speed habit. He shared his stash with us sparingly, which made his endless stories of life on the road more digestible: the five of us were all pretty cynical and sarcastic, so in the beginning we were thoroughly amused by this guy’s insanity. As that night, the next day, and the day after that came screaming down the road at us through the windshield, there wasn’t anyplace else I thought I’d rather be. When we’d pull over at rest stops so this guy could sleep for a while in the back of his cab—which was a consistently inconsistent amount of time lasting anywhere from an hour to half a day—we’d crash on park benches, write songs as the sun came up, or just walk around kicking trash at squirrels.

After a couple of days of this, our chauffeur started to smell particularly pungent and his formerly affable, strung-out chatter seemed to turn darkly weird. We were soon collectively disenchanted. He informed us that he planned to take a detour to pick up more speed from “his old lady,” who I guess drove out to meet him at regular spots on his route to keep him juiced up. It didn’t look like the situation was bound to improve. The next time he pulled into a rest stop to take one of his endless naps, we were way too bored and broke to stick it out any longer. We decided to explore our options by hitting the blacktop to again look for a ride, figuring that if worse came to worst, the speed demon in the semi would find us and pick us up again whenever he woke up. He probably wouldn’t even think we’d ditched him.

Our prospects weren’t plentiful, because, among the five of us, not one of us bore an iota of mainstream appeal, from Duff’s red-and-black leather trench coat to our black leather jackets, long hair, and a few days of road grime. I have no idea how long we waited, but eventually we hailed a ride from two chicks in a pickup truck with a shell. They drove us to the outskirts of Portland, and once we got within the city limits, all was well—Duff’s friend Donner from Seattle had sent someone to get us who informed us that Danny and Joe had called ahead: apparently the car was too unreliable to make the trip so they had headed back to L.A. It’s not like we cared; we were forging on, even though we’d missed every single gig along the way. It didn’t matter to us so long as we had a shot at making our final show of the tour—it was scheduled to take place in Seattle, and what was meant to be our last gig became the first Guns N’ Roses show that ever was.

Arriving in Seattle was especially victorious both because we’d actually made it (that last drive came off with no problems), and also because Donner’s house was the closest thing I have ever seen to Animal House . The day we rolled in, they threw a barbecue in our honor that, as far as I could tell, never seemed to end—it was as raging when we dragged ourselves out of there as it had been when everyone first cheered the five strangers from L.A. who came through their door. There was an endless supply of pot, a ton of booze, and people sleeping, tripping, or fucking in every corner. It was a fitting Guns N’ Roses after-show party… that started before our first show.

We arrived at Donner’s house a handful of hours before we were supposed to be onstage. We had nothing but our guitars, so we really needed to find ourselves equipment. As I said, before moving to L.A., Duff had played in legendary Seattle punk bands, so he could pull in some favors: he gave Lulu Gargiulo of the Fastbacks a call, and she came through for us by loaning us their drum kit and amps. She personally made the first Guns N’ Roses show possible. And I’d like to thank her right now once again.

The club was called Gorilla Gardens, which was the epitome of a punk-rock shit hole: it was dank and dirty and smelled of stale beer. It was situated right on the water, on an industrial wharf that lent it a vaguely maritime feel, but not in a picturesque, wooden dock manner at all. That place was at the end of a concrete slab; it was the kind of setting where deals get made in East Coast gangster movies, and on top of all of that, it was cold and raining outside the night we played there.

We just got up and did our set and the crowd was neither hostile nor gracious. We probably played seven or eight songs—“Move to the City,” “Reckless Life,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Shadow of Your Love,” and “Anything Goes” among them—and it went by pretty quickly. That night we were a raw interpretation of what the band was; once the nervous energy subsided, at least for me, we’d reached the end of the set. That said, we had a very small number of train wrecks in the arrangements, and all in all the gig was pretty good… until we had to collect our money. Then it became as much of an uphill battle as the rest of our early career would be.

The club owner refused to pay us the $150 we were promised. We tackled this obstacle as we had the entire road trip—as a group. We broke down our gear, got it packed up outside of the club, and cornered this guy in his office. Duff talked to him while we crowded around, looking formidable and throwing in a couple threats for good measure. We blocked the door and held him hostage until he finally coughed up $100 of our cash. He had some sort of bullshit excuse about why he was shorting us $50 that was just fucking dumb. We didn’t care to get to the bottom of it at all, so we took the $100 and split.

THERE IS ONE IMAGE THAT I HAVE OF our days in Seattle that sums it all up to me. It is of an upside down TV. I remember lying with my body half on the bed, my head hung over the end of the pull-out couch so far that the top of it was against the floor. There were equally rotted people that I didn’t know lying on both sides of me and I was so stoned that I thought I’d found the best position in the world that a body might ever be in. The blood rushed to my brain as I dangled there watching The Abominable Dr. Phibes, starring Vincent Price, and there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do.