Array Slash - Slash

I flew out to New York, where Nile Rodgers produced the electric version of a few tracks. Then he and I flew out to Spain to have this major Spanish star, Martha Sanchez, do vocals. She is basically the Spanish Madonna, and it was clear to me that Nile had spent all of this money to get her involved just so that he could be with her. It was fine by me; I had a great time hanging out in Madrid. Martha took us to all of these speakeasy-type bars in these grottoes and ancient wine cellars deep below the city. In every single one of them, there would be the best flamenco guitar players—I learned a lot from jamming with them.

I showed up for the wrap party in Miami and quickly became friends with Quentin, Angela, and a few other people. She and I started seeing each other back in L.A.; that went on for months. Basically it was composed of doing it in her car. We’d meet at a restaurant and we’d do it in her car. We’d talk on the phone and meet up and we’d do it in her car.

I CONTINUED JAMMING WHENEVER AN opportunity presented itself, just trying to sort out what to do next. I had my hands full anyway, because while I was out sowing my wild oats, my marriage was falling apart. It was hardly sudden: even when I was in L.A. I was barely living at home. And now that I was done obsessing over Guns N’ Roses, I was obsessing over what to do next.

When I traveled I never brought Renee along, and I was never faithful on the road. We did go to Ireland together to visit Ronnie Wood and his family for a while. There were parts of my lifestyle with Renee that I appreciated. She was an aspiring actress and I respected that, yet at the same time she couldn’t seem to get a break and her career really wasn’t going where she wanted it to. I think she was frustrated because I had already established myself. I’d cemented a foot in the door. None of that really mattered to Renee anyway, or so it seemed, because I wasn’t from the kind of band that played the kind of music she was into. Come to think of it, I don’t even think she knew the magnitude of what we were doing. She probably thought it was pretty childish.

As our relationship began to erode, Renee started hanging around the lowest echelon of Hollywood actor scumbags, partying a bit too much. At the same time I was doing my thing, completely oblivious to my commitments as a husband.

After I’d been paid by the insurance company for the house that had been totaled in the earthquake, we shopped for a new one and found it in Beverly Hills on Roxbury Drive. It was a big expensive Spanish-style structure built in the 1920s and now in foreclosure. It also had a basement, which is rare in L.A. The house definitely had an aura; it was run-down, and in the basement there was a big disco ball hanging from the ceiling. I fell in love with it. On the third floor next to the master bedroom, there was this extra room that was stark white that seemed like it had been a darkroom: there were long, thin drawers to store photos and on each was an embossed black-and-white label with girls’ names like “Candy,” “Monica,” and “Michelle.”

We bought it immediately. It excited me that it had probably seen a few illicit photo shoots, and I can only imagine what kind of parties had gone down in that basement. All that mattered to me was that it had a basement—the perfect place for a recording studio. I got to work on that immediately and it was the first time that I took a “spare no expense” approach to something I wanted—it was the first time I’d really played with my money. I let Renee do whatever she wanted to the house, and we pissed money away on it in every way. The Roxbury house should have been great—it had a recording studio, lots of rooms, Jäger and Guinness on tap, pinball machines and arcade games, a pool table, etc. It was in a nice area of Beverly Hills, but none of that meant anything to me, so I wasn’t really happy. The Snakepit II was coming together, yet still I was drinking deadly amounts of alcohol and dabbling with heroin, Ectasy, and cocaine. I felt sort of empty and lost. Renee loved the house, but I rarely slept at home; instead, I spent an unhealthy amount of time sleeping around.

I spent most of my time hanging out at the Sunset Marquis, running away from everything. I was completely weightless after Guns N’ Roses; I entered a phase of just spending my time and money at the hotel pool, chasing girls, drinking at the bar all day, and distancing myself however I could from anything in my life that I considered a nuisance. If John Lennon had his lost weekend, I had my lost year.

My security guard, Ronnie, took care of things at the house. Meanwhile I continued my infidelity tour of L.A. and soon enough I got sloppy. I attended a few high-profile events where I shouldn’t have been misbehaving, so people were finding out—and so was Renee. Overall, it was a fun period without any sense of direction, though my desire to play guitar remained the same; I just needed to channel my energy into that.

I WAS HANGING OUT IN THE BAR AT THE Sunset Marquis one night when Perla walked in with a few of her girlfriends, all of them looking like trouble . She was a sight for sore eyes, I must say. She looked amazing. We talked and laughed for a while and I realized at that moment that I was in it. She gave me her address and the following night I showed up where she was living over by the Hollywood Bowl. She had a fresh vodka waiting for me, and that was it: I don’t think I left her place for a week, and after I got up one morning and fed her cats, we were inseparable from that point on. Perla had a whole set of friends who weren’t so much in the rock-and-roll scene but were every bit as edgy and new to me. It was like a vacation being with her—new faces, new places. It was like I’d finally gotten far enough away from my life to relax. I had finally met a girl who could party as much as I could, if not harder. But she was sharp and very much in control and I had a lot respect for her. She was beautiful, intelligent, and classy, but also very streetwise—and Cuban to boot. Needless to say, I was in love.

Perla and I were in bed on something like our tenth day together when she fixed me with a serious look. “You’re married, you know,” she said.

“Oh, yeah!” I said, kind of laughing it off. “You’re right. I forgot about that.”

The truth was, I had forgotten. I didn’t feel married at all, and since I’d hooked up with Perla, marriage seemed like something I’d done in another life. It was almost like leaving Guns N’ Roses: I’d essentially checked out long before I officially left.

The next time I saw Renee she confronted me about what I’d been doing and was shocked to hear that I had no desire to work anything out—I just wanted a divorce. The next time I came home one night, I found a guy in bed with her and I told them not to get up; I’d let myself out. Despite her objections, I had insisted that she sign a prenup—maybe my overdose had something to do with forcing the issue. All of it was taken care of pretty quickly, and once it was, we never saw each other again. In retrospect, it’s kind of interesting that I suddenly had disconnected with the two most long-term, closest relationships I had had up to that point, just a matter of months apart.

ONCE I WAS DIVORCED, PERLA AND I set off on a crazy, very exciting, and tumultuous relationship. Tumultuous because unlike any of the other girls I’d been around, she was very passionate about the obligations of a relationship and took it very seriously—she was not fucking around. So there was a bit of a clash between my ideals and hers, which made our relationhip much spicier. We forged on. Besides, this all made for a very intense sex life, so I really wasn’t going anywhere.