Slash Recounts Porn Stars, Drugs and GN'R in Autobiography

England-born, L.A.-raised guitar god Slash realized his fate in a single moment: holding his grandmother's discarded single-string guitar for the first time. It launched what would become a life ripe with heroin, coke, women and booze in one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands of all time, Guns N' Roses. Slash, born Saul Hudson, along with Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler and Duff McKagan, sold more than 90 million albums worldwide, with their 1987 debut, 'Appetite for Destruction,' going 16x platinum, ushering in a new musical era of heavy metal and hard rock. But with success came excess.

In his autobiography, simply titled 'Slash,' the axe-wielding rocker recounts his trials in triumphs, including his relationship with porn star Traci Lords, being chased by a 'Predator'-like creature during a drug-induced hallucination and of course, the ever-complicated Rose. In the excerpt below, Slash recounts one of the first gigs following the inception of Guns N' Roses -- one that included a 1,000-mile roadtrip replete with a vehicular breakdown and hitchhiking adventure.

CHAPTER 6

We rehearsed every day, working up songs that we knew and liked from one another's bands, like 'Move to the City' and 'Reckless Life,' which ­were written by some version or another of Hollywood ­Rose. We had a piece of s--- PA, so we composed most of the music without Axl actually singing with us. He'd sing under his breath and listen and provide feedback on what we ­were talking about in the arrangements.

After three nights we had a fully realized set that also included 'Don't Cry' and 'Shadow of Your Love,' and so we unanimously decided that we ­were now fit for public consumption. We could have booked a gig locally, because, collectively, we certainly knew the right people, but no, we decided that after three rehearsals, we ­were ready for a tour. And not just a long weekend tour of clubs close to L.A.; we took Duff up on his offer to book us a jaunt that stretched from Sacramento all the way up to his hometown of Seattle. It was completely improbable but to us it seemed like the most sensible idea in the world.

We planned to pack the gear and leave in a few days, but our zeal scared the shit out of our drummer, Rob Gardner, so much that he more or less quit the band on the spot. It didn't surprise anyone because Rob could play well enough but he didn't fit in from the start; he ­wasn't of the same ilk, he ­wasn't one of us: he just ­wasn't the ­sell-­your-­soul-­for-­rock-­and-­roll type. It was a polite ­departure-we ­couldn't imagine anyone who had played those last three rehearsals not wanting to tour the coast as an unknown band with nothing but our gear and the clothes on our backs, but we accepted his decision. We would not be stopped, however, so I called the one drummer that I knew who would leave that night if we asked him to: Steven Adler.

We watched as Steven set up both of his ­silver-­blue bass drums and loosened up with a few typical double-­bass fills at rehearsal the next day. His aesthetic touchstones ­were off, but it ­wasn't an insurmountable problem. It was situation rectified in a typically Guns fashion: when Steven ducked out to take a piss, Izzy and Duff stashed one of his bass drums, a floor tom and some small rack toms. Steven returned, sat down, and started counting in the next song before he realized something was off.

"Hey, where's my other bass drum?" he asked. "I came ­here with two ... my other drums?"

"Don't worry about it, man. You don't need them, just count off the song," Izzy said.

Steven never got his extra bass drum back and it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Of the five of us, he was the most conventionally contemporary, which, all things considered, lent a key element to our ­sound -- but we ­weren't going to let him hammer that point home all night long. We bullied him into being a ­straight-­ahead, 4/4 ­rock-­and-­roll drummer, which complemented and easily locked in with Duff's bass style, while allowing Izzy and me the freedom to mesh ­blues-­driven rock and roll with the neurotic edge of ­first-­generation punk. Not to mention what Axl's lyrics and delivery brought to it.

Axl had a unique voice; it was brilliant in range & tone, but even though it was often intense and in your face, it had an amazingly soulful, bluesy quality to it because he had a choir background from singing choir in church when he was in grade school.

By the end of his tryout, Steven was hired and the original Guns N' Roses lineup was locked and loaded. Duff had booked the tour; all that we needed was wheels. Anyone who knows a musician well, successful or otherwise, knows this: generally, they are adept at "borrowing" from their friends. It took one phone call and very minor convincing for us to enlist our friends Danny and Joe, whose car and loyalty we made use of very regularly. To sweeten the deal, we christened Danny our tour manager and Joe our roadie and the next morning drove Danny's weathered green tank of an Oldsmobile out to the Valley to pick up a U-Haul trailer that we filled with the amps, guitars, and drum kit.

Seven of us packed into this ­mid-­seventies Olds and set out on what I don't think anyone but Duff realized was a trip of over a thousand miles. We ­were outside of Fresno, two hundred miles from L.A. and two hundred short of Sacramento, when the car broke down. Danny ­wasn't the type of guy to have splurged for AAA, so luckily we broke down within pushing distance of a gas station, where we discovered that it would take four days to get the necessary parts to fix a beast old. At that rate, we ­wouldn't make any of the shows.

Our enthusiasm was too great to allow for delays or thoughts of practicality, so we told Danny and Joe to stay with the car and gear until it was repaired and to meet us in Portland (about seven hundred miles away), at one of the gigs on the route. From there, we decided we'd drive to Seattle together (about a hundred and fifty miles farther) to play the final show of our tour with our own gear. There was a brief moment when Danny and Joe campaigned for us to remain in Fresno together until the car was back on the road, but neither that nor the obvious option of turning back was considered seriously. We hadn't even considered how to get from one gig to the next, let alone that we might not find amps and drums ready to borrow when we got there. We really didn't give a shit about any of that; the five of us didn't ­hesitate -- we hit the highway to start hitchhiking.

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