Array Slash - Slash

Until the compressor on our shitty bus broke down, taking the air-conditioning with it, somewhere in the middle of Texas. As we sat there sweating bullets in the heat, it occurred to us that there had to be a class above touring on the level we were at.

West Arkeen came out to Texas for a few days, which took the party up a few notches in spite of the Sahara-like conditions on the bus: West left us four or five days later looking like a shadow of his former self. I estimate that he lost about eight pounds in sweat. We had three days off in Texas after that, in this resort hotel in the middle of nowhere, and during those three days we fired our bus driver and a tour manager we’ll call “Cooper.”

Cooper was a character; he wore a newsboy cap all the time and drove a yellow Lotus. He was this skinny, wiry English guy with a very jumpy demeanor—I guess that was due to all of the coke he did. The problem with Cooper was that he had turned into a self-centered rock star and forgot that he was a tour manager. We’d gotten sick of Cooper luring the chicks we’d picked up to his room with the promise of coke, and keeping them there in the hopes of getting laid. He’d even lie to us when we’d call his room, asking where the girls were. He’d say they’d split and we believed him until the one time we stormed down there and caught him red-handed.

He also had a bad habit of promising Izzy and me a gram of coke if we got up in the morning to do interviews. He’d give us the smallest taste, but once when we were done at the radio station or on the phone or whatever, and demanded the rest, he usually tried to back out of his promise. That was just stupid—if you promised us drugs and didn’t deliver, we were the kind of people who’d kick your ass.

The last straw was a situation where Alan had entrusted Cooper to take care of the band and he just lost it and got us to a gig very late. It was a big-time fuckup and that was it for him; Alan sacked him and the bus driver at once. They were just gone. The next we heard was that Cooper was selling phone books door-to-door.

I was impressed when Alan booted Cooper without so much as an explanation—that’s when I knew that he was serious. It was an example of the overly protective, paternal, and possessive stance he took toward us. It was comforting because we were such hell-raisers that someone needed to give a shit.

It was great that Alan trimmed the fat; but the reality was that after those days off, we needed to get to the next gig in Houston and we had no tour manager and no bus driver. We had to seek out other transportation on the spot. I don’t remember what the other guys did, but Duff and I drove in this Trans Am with this girl I’d picked up. All was fine until we got caught in a torrential rainstorm because her car had no windshield wipers. The rain was coming down so hard that I had to lean out of the passenger-side window and use my upper body as a shield to keep the rain off one half of the window while I wiped the other half with my arm so that she could see well enough to drive.

Our Houston gig was killer, and after that we saw more of the South. Louisiana was right up my alley, especially New Orleans, with all of the voodoo and the presence of African religion and black magic. We went to a really authentic bayou restaurant in the swamplands where I ate rattlesnake and blackened alligator. It was such a great time for me; I came to realize that there was no other place that I’d rather be than on the road and that I’d hit it right in terms of a career.

WE LOCKED OURSELVES INTO A SET road crew for this tour as well, a cast of characters that became our team for years. We’d rehearsed before the tour with Mike “McBob” Mayhew as the rhythm-guitar-and-bass tech; and “McBob” used his keen sense of humor to remind us of just how low we were on the food chain by constantly pointing out the pedestrian nature of our traveling accomodations. He had years of experience on the road, and his little comments here and there were all the reminders we needed that the Shangri-la of our tour bus was a mirage.

McBob has been with Duff and me to this day—he is part of the Velvet Revolver crew—and after all this time one of the more entertaining aspects of having him around is his still endless supply of road stories. Many of them end with Mike landing himself in the hospital due to all sorts of ailments and injuries that are typically self-inflicted or an unforeseen effect of partying. One of the most memorable stories in his arsenal is about the time he got so drunk that he fell out of a car, skidded on his head down the pavement, and woke up in the hospital with a metal plate in his skull. Sometimes it sets off the metal detectors in airports. McBob was like Robert Shaw—Captain Quint—in Jaws, sitting there on the bow of The Orca dropping these heavy war stories on us like a one-man atom bomb.

Our crew was rounded out by Bill Smith, my guitar tech, whom I soon realized was in it solely for the beer. He was a sweet guy, he loved to party, and he sat there on the side of the stage, watching the show more than helping run it behind the scenes. I’d say he probably changed five guitar strings the entire tour; he was able to swap them out okay, it was just that he didn’t get it done on any consistent or logical timetable. Thanks to Bill, I learned to play more carefully—I tried to never break a string because if I did, I never knew when I would get that guitar back. I only had two guitars on the road, so I’m not sure what was taking so much time. Needless to say, I had to replace Bill. All things considered, between our crew and our inexperience with touring on a professional level, our operation came off like the Bad News Bears.

THERE IS AN ESSENTIAL MOTIVE FOR touring that never dawned on us back then: we were completely ignorant that touring was intended to promote our record. We thought of it as all for the sake of playing. It was, to me, work for the sake of work, because without a tour, I’d have nowhere else to be. We were too into the experience to think of promoting our “product” day to day as we walked onstage, but Alan was trying to figure out how to market this thing, probably so he’d have something else to boast about as much as just making it succeed.

Alan wasn’t doing a good job, and neither was Geffen, because the one thing I was painfully aware of when we played every night was that nobody was aware of our record whatsoever. We felt as unheard of as any other band you’ve never heard of. So we kept it moving, we kept touring regardless of how we were received, and Alan and Tom Zutaut kept pumping Appetite . The only other option would have been to go home, and we had no intention of going home ever again if we could help it.

For an entire year, from August 1987 to sometime late in 1988, we didn’t see L.A. for more than a few days; we just bounced from tour to tour. Alan Niven booked us a tour across Europe opening for Aerosmith, with Faster Pussycat on the bill, that was to kick off a few days after The Cult tour ended. Aerosmith had just returned to rock and roll, and we couldn’t think of anyone we’d rather support. But it wasn’t meant to be this time—at the last minute Aerosmith canceled, so instead of going home, Alan sent us out there with Faster Pussycat and a great Japanese band called EZO to fulfill our obligations.

It was our first headlining tour; it began in Germany, at the Markthalle in Hamburg on September 29, 1987. It was great to headline, but we had a few issues. Faster Pussycat was one of those bands we hated from L.A.; they were exactly the kind of people we tried to avoid. The tour was also a bit of a culture shock: Hamburg still felt like it was a post–World War II casualty—the place had a pretty narrow viewpoint. It was a dark, industrial, sort of sour city that seemed, as a whole, as if they’d rather not have us there if they could help it. That kind of environment always inspired us to show our true colors more than usual, which didn’t go over well. Every time we’d walk into a restaurant, every head cranked around and the room got quiet. And when it did, we were all the more determined to order a bunch of drinks and smoke and carry on more than we ever would have done in the first place.