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Tom tried to fake out the competition, but it didn’t work; word got around that he was interested in us and overnight every other label in town was trying to contact us. Bridget was still our kind-of manager, but since Vicky Hamilton was much better connected in L.A., all the A&R reps were calling her to get in touch with us. And that was enough to rekindle our relationship with Vicky.

It was a great time: we enjoyed as many free lunches, dinners, drinks, and whatever else came included from the major labels for as long as we could before signing. For the better part of the next two months, we were courted by Chrysalis, Elektra, Warner Bros., and a few others. We’d roll into these nice restaurants and order these extravagant liquid lunches, then sit there and just play the game. The only thing that we’d agree on was that we needed to meet again for lunch to discuss things further before we agreed on anything.

On and on it went until the day we decided to go down to meet David Geffen and Ed Rosenblatt and sign with Geffen Records. I sat there the entire time during our negotiations looking at David, whom I hadn’t seen since I was about eight years old, thinking about all of the times I’d gone back and forth to his office with my dad when he was dropping off artwork, and wondering if David had any idea at all who I was. He didn’t, of course, as my mom found out later. I made a point to visit the bathroom at Geffen, whose walls, as I remembered from my childhood, were a hippy collage, done very nicely in a very sixties style, of pictures from old rock magazines. I was happy to see that it was exactly the same.

The negotiations were quick: we demanded six figures, among other things, which was an unheard-of advance for a new, unknown artist in 1986. They accepted; Vicky Hamilton was our acting manager, so she hooked us up with Peter Paterno, who became the band’s attorney. Peter wrote up our contracts and it was a done deal.

So Guns N’ Roses was finally signed, but once we were, our new label didn’t want us to play gigs anymore. They wanted us to lay low, build our mystique, and get our business in order: they insisted we find a real manager, and a producer, and focus on making a record. They wanted us to live off our advance and not be distracted by the routine of playing weekly while we took the necessary next steps. Little did they or any of us know that setting us loose with any kind of funds was a bad idea; they were sanctioning a degree of freedom that we had never known. Out of all of us, I was the most apprehensive about not playing any gigs. We were just going to sit idle with thousands of dollars to burn? That wasn’t going to end well. The five of us had managed to make every day an epic on a budget that was determined by what we found in our pockets that morning; with our advance money in our hands and a record label behind us, much too much was possible.

As we all came to find out, back then and again and again, the worst thing that ever befell this band was having nothing to do and some money to spend.

Restlessness is a fickle catalyst; it can drive you to achieve or it can coax your demise, and sometimes the choice isn’t yours. My restless nature is what earned me my nickname and it’s kept me looking for the next thrill, the next gig, and the next mountain to climb for as long as I can remember. It’s not the kind of thing that takes days off.

Before Guns got signed, I had no job and was living in a vomit-stained garage that was about as charming as a South American jail. All of my energy went into day-to-day survival and working to further the band, one show at a time. Once Guns was signed I didn’t have to worry about money, food, or shelter. This minor sense of stability was unfamiliar to me; I had no concern for acquiring any of the trappings of normal life, so what seemed to be a blessing to me was almost a curse.

We were signed for something like $250,000, and our signing advance was around $37,000, of which my cut was about $7,500. I translated it into American Express traveler’s checks that I kept in the right front pocket of my jeans, thanks to my trouble with the IRS. Saving my share wasn’t an option, but I didn’t celebrate by buying myself a new guitar or anything—I spent almost all of it on heroin. Each of us learned the same lesson in our own individual way before we got ourselves in line to do what we’d set out to do. It wouldn’t be the last time that we’d need to rally against our instincts: whenever we earned ourselves some peace of mind, the same restlessness that fueled our success threatened to destroy it all.

It was obvious to everyone in our camp that Vicky Hamilton wasn’t going to cut it as a manager once our operation increased in scale. It was also time to get a real crew: Joe wasn’t a tech in any way, and Danny was a drug bud (whom I continued to hang out with in that capacity for years) but not any kind of road manager. We weren’t entirely happy about making those changes, but it had to be done. It was the end of an era; we were no longer scrappy with nothing to lose: now we were scrappy with corporate backing.

Tom Zutaut arranged a few meetings with potential managers, the first of them being Cliff Bernstein and Peter Mensch of Q Prime, who managed Metallica, Def Leppard, and others, then as they do today. I went to Tom’s office and they were late, so I passed out on Tom’s couch waiting for them. For the record, I’m not sure if I was high or not. What I do remember is that the meeting didn’t go well.

“Guns N’ Roses just doesn’t have a musical enough sound to be a band that we’d consider representing,” one of them, I’m not sure which, said.

I sat there, pretty dumbfounded. Huh? I might have mumbled.

Basically, I took that insult lying down, because actually I was lying down, and that was the end of it. I didn’t say anything, but my face must have registered a look of disdain or at least some skeptical confusion.

“You know those guitar solos you do?” the other one, I’m not sure which, said.

“Yeah,” I mumbled.

“They just sound like noise to me, whereas if you listen to Metallica, their playing sounds really melodic.”

“Okay, man,” I said. Whatever you say, Jack, I thought to myself.

The whole time Tom did his best to mediate a potentially explosive situation by chiming in with comments meant to cheer things up and keep it positive.

“Well, the music really isn’t well represented in the demo, guys,” he’d say. “You really have to hear the songs properly produced.”

Tom knew, as well as I did, that the music was very well represented in the demo—these guys, like so many others, just didn’t get it. They passed, of course, and they regretted it. Everyone Tom introduced us to in those days who passed on us regretted it—which in the end was a lot of people.

At the time Izzy was still living in his apartment and Duff was now living with this Hungarian girl, Katerina (whom he’d later marry), in an apartment on Hollywood Boulevard, coincidentally, next door to Sly Stone. I guess you could say that he and Duff had a tight neighborly relationship: Sly used to come by Duff’s place unannounced to smoke PCP, crack, or a mix of the two, alone, in Duff’s bathroom and then just leave. That blew our fucking minds. Apparently he did that all the time, but most of us didn’t see it because we never really hung out at Duff’s place—his girl wasn’t the type to host a bunch of guys sitting around the living room. But I used to meet Duff over there before rehearsal, so I did witness it once.