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About a week later, Steven was there when the cops stormed in and turned the place upside down. They broke a few pieces of equipment searching for contraband and hassled anybody associated with us in any way; they threatened Steven with arrest if he didn’t tell them where to find Axl and me because we were wanted for allegedly raping that girl. Steven got in touch with us and warned us, so we stayed away from home for the rest of the day. I headed back there the next morning; it was raining and unseasonably cold, and I found Izzy when I got there, picking his way through the mess that the cops had left behind. I was completely puzzled because I hadn’t done a thing that I could think of—I hardly spoke to the girl in question that night, nor had anybody else.

It was a bad situation, so I took my cue and split; I grabbed a few things and headed off to hide out with Steven at his new girlfriend Monica’s apartment, which was within walking distance. Monica was a Swedish porn star who’d taken Steven in and I couldn’t have asked for a better place to lay low because we used to have awesome threesomes. Monica was great, she was a really wonderful hostess that way, plus she had a phone, so I was able to receive constant updates on our legal situation. Generally, the news wasn’t good: this was a real situation—Axl and I were charged with felony rape. The future looked grim and the band’s progress halted immediately.

The girl’s parents had contacts in the LAPD, and intended to press charges to the fullest. Axl took off to Orange County and hid out at some girl’s place for a few weeks, while I stayed with Steven and Monica. For fear of arrest, we didn’t book gigs and maintained a low profile. The truth was, Axl had definitely had sex with the girl, but it had been consensual and no one had raped her. For my part I hadn’t even touched her! When we got our wits about us after a few weeks, we dealt with the situation through the proper channels.

Axl returned to L.A. and the two of us moved in with Vicky Hamilton and her roommate, Jennifer Perry, and Vicky hired a lawyer to handle our case. I’m sure Vicky regretted taking us in immediately: Axl and I took over the living room in her quaint one-bedroom apartment, and between the empty liquor bottles and the ceaseless parade of characters that seemed to trail along behind us wherever we went, overnight we converted it into a complete mess. Axl slept on the couch, I slept on the floor, and what was once a living room looked like a bomb had hit it. The kitchen was a fucking disaster; within a week there were dishes and trash piled a mile high. Luckily I’d convinced my ex-girlfriend Yvonne to watch my snake, Clyde, for a while. The case went to court, but somewhere along the line, the charges against me were dropped. Axl, however, did have to get himself a suit and face the judge, but once the testimony was given, the charges were dropped and that was it.

WE LOST WHAT SEEMED LIKE A YEAR OF our lives getting clear of that legal issue, because until then, every day had moved us forward with ferocious intensity. After that incident, we vacated our garage rehearsal space, and started playing out and working on new songs again. Our friends Danny and Joe were still in the picture; Danny’s green Oldsmobile was still our band transportation. Danny was a great guy with a James Dean haircut and a very cool, confident vibe. He and I became drug buddies, too: once I got into heroin, we would drive that green beast all over L.A. looking for smack.

Joe was our roadie and my guitar tech back then, though he was pretty lousy: I remember headlining at the Roxy and one of Joe’s duties was to bring me a slide during the solo section of “Rocket Queen,” but by the time he actually got the slide on my finger the solo was over. I was so pissed off that I physically kicked him offstage. But all was forgiven later on, because Joe was a loyal, true-blue kind of guy that anyone would want to keep around. Joe was always the one to back any of us up when things got sticky and dedication like that can’t be bought.

We weren’t at all like the other bands playing clubs on the strip; we generally didn’t care what they were doing. We did, however, as far as other bands went, have an unspoken disregard for Poison, because they were the biggest local band on the block and the epitome of everything that we hated about the L.A. music scene. We were scheduled to share a few bills with them at different points, early in our career, but each time something major went wrong. I believe once they didn’t show up at all and we were forced to play two sets to cover for them, and I think another time the promoter pulled the gig at the last minute because of some shady move on their part.

One of our more memorable gigs from this era was an outdoor festival called the Street Scene that took place on six or seven stages in downtown Los Angeles that occupied a circuit of city blocks. It was our first time playing it, I and it was 1983, and we were scheduled to open for Fear, the only L.A. punk band that I really cared about. We drove down there in Danny’s Oldsmobile and were unloading our gear in the designated band parking lot when we noticed a sea of people running our way. We continued to unload as people sprinted past us, literally as fast as they could—from what, we had no idea. It was as if Godzilla was coming or a guy had set off a shotgun behind them. We couldn’t see what the problem was until we finally got close enough to the stage to realize there was no stage; Fear’s fans had overzealously rioted and torn it down before the band even went on.

Our manager, Vicky, and I wandered around this huge mess in an attempt to find us a slot somewhere on the day-long bill. We pushed our way from stage to stage talking to the organizers, looking for an opening until we found one—playing after Social Distortion. It didn’t sound like the best idea, following a loyally beloved local punk band, but it actually turned out to be one of the greatest gigs we ever did.

The audience was full on punk and still bloodthirsty after just having seen Social Distortion. We got up there and ripped into our set, and within the first thirty seconds, the show became a spitting contest between us and the first five rows: their fans fucking spit on us, so we just spit on them back. It was hilarious and memorably sickening: I remember going over to Izzy’s side of the stage and standing there beside him spitting back and forth with these people because that’s the kind of band we were. We were very tenacious, so no matter what any crowd ever did, we always turned it on them. By the end of our set, this disgusting war of the wills became fucking fun. We ended up with green phlegm all over us, and considering that it was warm out, not only was I shirtless, but the heat cooked the spit and made it start to smell pretty bad. It didn’t matter, I was impenetrable: in the moment the energy of it all took over.

The next time we played the Street Scene was memorable, too, on a much different level. That go-round we were scheduled to open for Poison, who were headlining one of the bigger stages. It was going to be our biggest high-profile gig to date, and we were very ready to blow Poison off the stage. In the end we didn’t even have to: we got up there and played, and everybody went nuts, climbing the scaffolding and pushing the stage to and fro in excitement. By the time we were done, the fire marshals decided to close the place down. I remember seeing Poison roll up in all their glitter, ready to go on but unable to. I was quite pleased to see them all dressed up with no stage to play.

SO… BACK TO HEROIN. IN THE WEEKS that followed that first time with Izzy when we’d spent the afternoon in that pink bedroom of that girl from Fairfax High, I developed a new interest. And I was dead-set to enjoy the honeymoon phase.