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I’m sure the mention of prison and me dying was enough to drive Lucky and her man to vacate quickly. It wasn’t their fault that I couldn’t hold my shit together. I don’t know for sure, but Earl probably threw the dope away in the course of kicking them out. At least that’s what I told myself because they hadn’t left me anything… and that bummed me out most of all.

I cooled down in my room for a few hours, with both security guards posted in the hallway outside of my door to ensure that I didn’t go anywhere. Eventually Doug Goldstein came in and launched into one of the most pathetic displays of bullshit concern that mankind has ever known. He gave me a long speech at the top of his lungs about what I’d just done, about how people love me and this, that, and the other. It was very aggressive, very dramatic, and very fake. To illustrate his “seriousness” he threw a bottle of Jack Daniel’s through the television. When he left, I retrieved that bottle, which hadn’t broken, and poured myself a stiff drink to get over his intervention.

Shortly afterward, Doug called a band meeting in Axl’s room. We all gathered around, and I was still nodding out at this point. Everyone voiced their concern for my well-being, but Axl’s comment stood out most of all. It snapped me out of my haze, actually.

“You gave us a scare,” he said slowly, looking right at me. “We thought you were dead…. I thought I’d have to look for a new guitar player.”

The next morning we boarded helicopters and flew to Oakland for the gig, and the whole time Ronnie and Earl monitored me like two hawks tracking a mouse. From there we did the L.A. Coliseum, then San Diego, which was killer: Motörhead, Body Count, Metallica, and us. We did the Rose Bowl in Pasadena after that, which was just huge, and then we ended the tour in Seattle. And after a few days, everyone realized that what I’d done was a onetime thing.

As great as that tour was, I was relieved the moment it was over. I was thankful that I didn’t have to see the Metallica guys every day anymore, considering that I was never sure of what Axl was going to do from gig to gig. That last day I felt as I had felt for the entire tour: I was elated at what we had achieved, yet bummed that it hadn’t been as amazingly stupendous as it should have been.

AT THE END OF OUR YEARLONG TOUR the biggest mistake of all came to light: we’d barely made any money. Between the union dues incurred by Axl taking the stage late night after night and the theme parties that bled us dry night after night, we had next to nothing to show for all of our hard work. Doug finally confronted Axl about the band’s spending on the Metallica tour and the fact that our profit margin had been eaten up by our excesses. I think Axl had a few suggestions as to cost cutting that wouldn’t have done much, but Doug finally got through to him: he told Axl that if he wanted to keep his nice new multi-million-dollar mansion in Malibu, he needed to earn more money.

And so Doug booked us another year of dates, starting with South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia from October 1992 through January 1993. As hard as it was to endure, Doug got no argument from the rest of us—we wanted to play. What else would I be doing anyway? And at the same time, I thought maybe things would change. I also wondered continually whether the extra tour had been booked out of concern for the band’s finances or to land Doug a hefty commission.

Before we headed out again, I got married to Renee in October 1991. We definitely didn’t do it small—it was this really big production that I had very little to do with. My only memories of planning it involve Renee showing me an endless number of books full of gifts to pick out. I couldn’t relate to any of it and my lack of interest made her very upset. The wedding took place at the Four Seasons in Marina Del Rey, with Duff as my best man, a couple hundred people, including my bandmates and crew, and a lounge band. As soon as we were married, we headed to Africa, to Tanzania, on safari for two weeks for our honeymoon. For a wildlife fanatic like me, Africa was always on the top of my list for a vacation: there I could see what I’d been reading about in books and seeing on television my whole life. I was obsessed with leopards while we were there; I’d get up at five every morning to go out on safari and get back by six in the evening. It was the greatest place in the world to forget about everything that was weighing on my mind. It’s hard to imagine that any of it matters when you’re standing in the middle of the Ngorongoro Crater far from any trace of civilization.

Before the wedding, Renee and I had a coed bachelor/bachelorette party at the Troubadour, because Renee didn’t want me to get together unsupervised with the guys. And at that little party, I ran into an old friend named Perla.

Perla and I had been introduced in Las Vegas when we were headlining the Thomas & Mack Center during the first leg of the Illusion tour. At that point I was sleeping around a lot; it was when Renee and I were still dating very casually. Perla didn’t know shit about Guns N’ Roses and she didn’t care to—she’d come out from L.A. because she’d seen a picture of me and wanted to meet me. Ron Jeremy introduced us before the show, and afterward we met at my hotel and hung out all night long. Let’s just say that she left a major impression on me that grew into a serious infatuation.

We exchanged numbers and kept in touch when I headed off on tour after that. Eventually she became a tenant of mine; she rented the Walnut House from me for a year and was the best tenant I ever had. It says a lot about the strength of Perla’s character that she lived there without losing her mind because that place had a detrimental effect on everyone else who lived there—myself included, I suppose.

My first tenants were two bisexual chicks that I met during one of our four L.A. Forum shows. They were in the front row and they were going at it pretty provocatively during the entire gig. I had them brought to the dressing room afterward for more of the same and we stayed in touch; I’d call them up and have them over and watch them and we’d all have a good time. I rented them the house when I was going off on tour, which seemed like a good idea, but they completely lost it—they got strung out on meth and one girl killed the other girl’s cat and then attacked her. The “victim” moved out, and then the other one moved a meth dealer into the house. I had to go over there and take care of the situation, and when I saw that one girl again I barely recognized her. My second tenant was this guy Jim who worked at a zoo as a snake keeper. I hired him to look after my snakes and eventually took him on as a tenant. Apparently he suffered some kind of meltdown too and completely lost it while living there as well. Perla was the only one who wasn’t fazed by the place—and the only one who paid her rent on time and actually enjoyed living there.

Anyway, once I’d gotten back together with Renee, and gotten engaged and all of that, I did my best to avoid Perla because I knew that there was something serious between us that I couldn’t deny. After my fight with Renee over the prenup and my OD in San Francisco, I didn’t give a fuck, however, and arranged to meet Perla at our San Diego show, just two shows before the end of the tour and just a few weeks before my wedding. We spent the night together there, and the next time I saw her was when she crashed my bachelor party. She was dangerous; there was such an attraction between us that neither of us could deny. At the same time, she was way too ambitious and energetic to get into a relationship with; she was seventeen and I was twenty-five; she was too crazy, so not in a place where I wanted to cancel my wedding to be with her. She was a real firecracker, though, and the connection was strong enough that I spent the night with her once more… the night before my wedding, in fact.