2007.11.01 - The Howard Stern Show - Interview with Slash

Transcript:
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Stern: Slash is here, from the legendary band Guns N’ Roses. And more familiar to you now is Velvet Revolver. It’s his new band with the great Scott Weiland.

Quivers: And they’ve been doing quite good.

Stern: And I can’t imagine what an effort must have gone into this for Slash to write a book.

Quivers: But I’m telling you, he doesn’t look like a guy who would be calling you at 4:00 in the morning.

Someone: I’m reading a lot of the book now, actually.

Stern: There he is!

Someone: It’s a killer story.

Quivers: Hey there! Look at him!

Stern: Look at you. That’s you. Alright. The guy’s a great rock guitarist. He spent many a day, I’m sure – when you wrote this book, Slash, did you talk about your days as a really young man where you would… I mean, so few rock stars write about what it’s like to become a professional musician. I mean, yes, people concentrate on the more sensationalistic aspects of this book.

Quivers: After you’ve gotten there, yeah.

Stern: The sex, the drugs and all that stuff. But didn’t you have to spend endless hours in your room practicing this guitar to become a virtuoso, which you are?

Slash: It’s mentioned. I mean, I didn’t get into it in great detail.

Quivers: See, they always, you know, just gloss over that part.

Slash: I basically talk about how I got into it.

Stern: I don’t like where your microphone is. Shift your headphones down, like this.

Slash: All right.

Stern: Gary, help Slash, for Christ’s sake.

Gary: Is that better? Say something.

Stern: Yeah. I think that’s right. Take a look at that, Gary. Help Slash, for Christ’s sake. He’s not a professional broadcaster.

Slash: Oh, there it is.

Stern: There it is. Cool, okay. Now it’s good.

Slash: So what I was getting at was… you know, I mentioned how I got started and what I was into, what I was listening to at the time, and how I used to spend 12 hours a day and how I got completely engrossed in the whole thing, and whatnot.

Stern: There was a period-

Quivers: 12 hours a day!

Slash: It’s not because… I mean, for me personally, it’s not because, you know, you go, “Okay, it’s whatever time, 9:00 in the morning or something, I start now, and then there’s a lunch break, and then I get done.”

Stern: No, you were a kid who was obsessed with his guitar.

Quivers: You were obsessed.

Slash: Yeah. Every waking moment I’d spend with a guitar.

Quivers: What was it that inspired you? I mean, what was it that made you say, “I want to play the guitar”?

Slash: It’s a long story. What happened was, Steve Adler, the original drummer for Guns N’ Roses, he and I met when we were about 13 and we basically ditched the 7th and 8th grade together and just… We were best friends, and he had a guitar, a little cheap guitar, electric guitar, and a cheap little amplifier; and he had a little turntable, and used to crank Kiss as loud as it would go and then turn the amp up. He didn’t know how to play, but he would just bang on it. It was the excitement of that that started the whole sort of, you can imagine, teenage thing where it’s like, “Oh yeah, we gotta start a band.”

Stern: It’s a great thing in life when you have a passion like that. Do you think that you had exceptional musical talent or was it this unbelievable dedication to practicing?

Slash: I think… no. Basically, I was raised on a lot of music, as my parents were in the music business and I loved rock ‘n’ roll from the minute I could remember. Then, when I actually picked up the guitar and put those - realistically - three notes together that make a rock lick that had that rock sound to it, I had a knack for it.

Stern: Right. Did you ever take a professional lesson from a teacher?

Slash: I tried to, yeah.

Stern: And it didn’t work?

Quivers: But that didn’t work?

Slash: Well, what happened is, I had this guy – when I started, what I was getting out with Steve was that he was gonna play guitar and I was gonna play bass, right? So I went to a local music school that was in the neighborhood. I went in there without an instrument and I said, “I want to learn how to play bass.” The teacher was like, “Well, do you have an instrument?” and I said, “No.” So he started talking to me trying to get into my head about what I knew about music, where I was headed, what I wanted to do; and while he was talking, he was strumming the guitar and playing some Hendrix licks.

Stern: Yeah.

Slash: I said, “That’s what I want to do.”

Stern: And did you ever learn how to formally read music?

Slash: Not very much. I mean, I started out with the basics. When I was in the music school, he sort of taught me some rudimentary stuff that was really handy – you know, I learned how to string the guitar, because my first guitar had only one string (laughs).

Stern: Is it mostly by ear that you played even with Guns N’ Roses, like you would hear something in your head and then you would just try to figure it out on the guitar?

Slash: Yeah. You know, it starts out like piano lessons: scales - you know, you’re trying to read music. And that didn’t sound anything like what I wanted to do. I noticed that he could listen to any song that I would give him and he could pick it up and learn it by ear, and I said, “I can do that.” Then I quit school, and went and did it on my own.  

Quivers: So if you need to learn a piece of music, you just listen to it.

Slash: Yeah, yeah. And so when we’re writing stuff for, say, any number of bands that I’ve been in or I go and do a session with any number of artists, I just go on and do it by ear. The only person that I went in and worked with that I had to do-

Stern: Let me guess: Michael Jackson.

Slash: No. Ray Charles.

Stern: He wanted you to what, read music?

Slash: No, I had to record charts.

Stern: You did?

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: And was that difficult?

Slash: It was. You know, Ray Charles' chord charts are not like anybody’s chord charts. These are very [complicated]. The reason I had to read the chord charts was to actually remember all the different chords, because there’s so many and they’re all jazz chords, which I hardly ever use.

Stern: So when you went into a session with Michael Jackson, let’s say, he would play you a piece of music and say, “Hey Slash, see what you can do with this”?

Slash: Yeah, he would give me an arrangement, and then he would go, “Do whatever you want” and he would leave.

Stern: When you had to write a book - I mean, this sounds ridiculous, that you had to write a book.

Quivers: That sounds like another chore.

Stern: But I started thinking about your life. You are a guy, like, a free spirit. I don’t think you really sat and worried – like, you’ve been married three times.

Slash: Twice.

Stern: Twice, okay. One of your wives – didn’t you bang some chick, like, the night before your wedding?

Slash: My current wife.

Stern: Yeah. You cheated on her the night before the wedding, right?

Slash: Yeah.

Quivers: And that marriage is working.

Slash: Yeah!

Stern: It is working.

Slash: Well, she’s got balls.

Stern: But don’t you think, like, in a way – I mean, with all the drug use, out of control behavior, all of this stuff, I go back to your childhood. It was a wild childhood in the sense that your mom even was having this torrid love affair with David Bowie while you were just a child.

Quivers: Is that right?

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: True?

Slash: Yeah. Well, “torrid” is a pretty heavy word.

Quivers: I mean, an affair like that, she was still married to Slash’s dad?

Slash: No, no. My mom and dad were separated at that point.  

Quivers: Okay.

Stern: Was your dad a black guy?

Slash: No, he’s white. My mom is black.

Stern: Your mom is black?

Slash: Uh-huh.

Stern: Is Bowie’s thing black chicks?

Quivers: No, he had white chicks.

Slash: Well, he’s had a couple.

Stern: Yeah, and he’s married to a black chick now.

Slash: Uh-huh.

Stern: I think that’s his thing.

Quivers: Wait a minute. Why does that have to be a thing?

Slash: Actually, a lot of white English guys like black girls. You know, my dad, too – he’s English.

Stern: Yeah.

Slash: I’ve noticed it also in some other occasions. I don’t want to stereotype it on anybody.

Stern: Right. Because people don’t think of you as black. Do you think of yourself as black?

Slash: I don’t think of myself as anything, really. But when it comes up, I’m just a mixture of the two.

Stern: Was your mother rejected by the black community because she married a white guy?

Slash: No, no. I mean, maybe I was too young to say anything about that, because I wouldn’t know. But as far as I could tell, there wasn’t any issues. I’m sure there was a little bit.

Stern: Was there ever shame or humiliation in your life that you had a black mother? Did white kids try to shame you for that?

Slash: No, but I think there was moments – I mean, I really came from a different side of the tracks, no matter which school I went to or what neighborhood I lived in when I was coming up. So I was always different and that just added to the mystique (laughs).

Stern: Right. But wasn’t it weird for you? Here you are, a young kid, and your mom is carrying on with what is a very, very famous rock star; and there were almost no rules to how you grew up.

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: Didn’t one of your mom’s boyfriends do drugs with you, like heavy drugs, like smoked coke with you?

Slash: Yeah.

Quivers: Who? Wow!

Stern: I mean, you were what, 12?

Slash: I think I was 12. Yeah, 12.

Stern: 12 years old.

Quivers: No wonder you had a drug problem.

Stern: Yeah. Your mom’s dating a guy, and she goes to bed or whatever, and he comes into the room and he says, “Let’s get high”?

Slash: No, my mom didn’t know anything about that.

Stern: Right.

Slash: She wouldn’t have allowed it.

Stern: No, I understood.  

Slash: At some point he came to me and he’s like, “You know, I know you do this stuff.” He was a photographer – and, you know, misery loves company and he needed somebody to get high with, or whatever it was. And we’d go in the dark room and he’d get me loaded, and then we’d go out and hang out all night-

Stern: 12 years old.

Slash: Yeah, around 12 years old. We’d go out and pillage the neighborhood until about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. Then I would come home, pretend that I was asleep, and then get up and go to school.

Stern: But when adults are doing that with you-

Slash: Oh yeah-

Stern: It’s got to screw your whole head up. Like, there’s no rules, there’s no boundaries…

Quivers: And no wonder you seemed weird to the kids at school.

Slash: Well, you know, by the time I was 12 and 13, I’d already established sort of a tearaway kind of personality, and so… I’m talking about when I was younger, like when I was 7, 8, 9 years old.

Stern: But you know what is sad about this? If you hadn’t had the musical gift, if you hadn’t been, you know, Slash from Guns N’ Roses, you could have easily just ended up a junkie, no money, no life whatsoever, because these adults were not willing to parent you.

Slash: Well, you know, all things considered, that’s probably true. I probably would have ended up being an artist, though, because that was the original thing that I was-

Quivers: Yeah, but you’re talking about having some talent. We’re saying if you had no talents.

Slash: Yeah, then I would have probably… yeah.

Stern: I mean, you live in a 7 million dollars home.

Slash: That’s the only reason – the whole professional aspect of it, the passion for music and all that is what’s got me to the point where I’m still here right now, you know? That was a major part of that.

Stern: Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, then look at the dysfunctional family you married into, in a sense, in the Guns N’ Roses organization. I mean, that’s why the band couldn’t stay together. I mean, in a way maybe that’s why you were attracted to Axl as a partner in music, because he was screwed up, you were screwed up on drugs – who was the biggest drug addict in that band? It wasn’t you.

Slash: Yeah, it was pretty much… Well, no. I think it was myself and Steven.

Stern: Steven…

Slash: And Izzy went through a period. Axl was never a drug addict.

Stern: Oh, he wasn’t. He’s just difficult.

Slash: (Laughs) He’s straight. I mean, he would get high from time to time, but he’s never been an addict.

Stern: Do you ever wish that Axl would come to his senses even now and just put the original Guns N’ Roses back together again, go on tour, make a ton of dough?

Quivers: Or do you remember why-

Slash: I think it’s more mutual.

Stern: It’s more mutual.

Slash: Yeah, yeah.

Quivers: Yeah, but what was it about you and the rest of the guys that he just would never want to get together with you again?

Slash: Well, at this point, I think, with all fairness to Axl, I actually left the group and I think he feels sort of - I mean, I haven’t approached him about getting back together anyway, but I would imagine that he feels pretty abandoned.

Quivers: Ah…

Slash: We were, you know-

Stern: Why did you leave the group?

Slash: There was certain things I just couldn’t take anymore. It just got-

Stern: Like what, though? It’s so worth it. It was such a great band.

Slash: You know what-  

Stern: What couldn’t you take?

Slash: A lot of it had to do with just not being able to control him the time that the band went on stage, when we were doing anything on a professional level. And then, after the Use Your Illusion tour was over, which was two-and-a-half years of a lot of roller coaster kind of behavior – and also another thing was losing two of the original members of the band, which was Steven and Izzy. I realized there was a chemistry about the way that we all worked and also in relationship to Axl. Izzy was very much sort of the glue, the in-between guy that kept Axl and I sort of on an even keel, because he came to L.A – basically they were both from Indiana, so they had a certain kind of a relationship that really helped how the rest of the band sort of functioned.

Stern: Like the album name, Appetite for Destruction. Maybe it’s just that’s what it had to be. It had to really destroy itself.

Slash: Well, you know, you have a really, really explosive band, which obviously is gonna have sort of an implosive thing.  

Stern: Right.

Slash: And then, once we got in to start working on what would have been the next record, there was a lot of contractual stuff that Axl started throwing around, and that just was the icing on the cake.

Stern: Will you ever cut your hair? In other words, a lot of guys now have cut their hair. You still maintain the long hairdo.

Slash: Same with you!

Stern: Yes. But will you cut it all off at some point? I mean, there seems to be a movement. Why have you held on to the long hair?

Slash: I seriously doubt it. I don’t know, I haven’t really given it that much thought. This is the most thought I’ve put into it.  

(Laughter)

Quivers: Right now it’s still working with you.

Stern: I don’t agree with you. I think you do put a lot of thought into your look. I think Guns N’ Roses put a lot of thought into their look. I think Velvet Revolver puts a lot of thought into their look.

Slash: Well, if you knew me as a kid, I’m basically the same. I always had long hair, I’d always wear jeans and tennis shoes and t-shirts.

Stern: And the jewelry?

Slash: And jewelry.

Stern: Right.

Slash: The only thing that’s different was the top hat, which came later.

Stern: How old were you when you put a nose ring in?

Slash: Um… I must have done that during… that was during the Snakepit days, so that was, like, the mid 90s.

Stern: So there was nothing you could do that would shock your mother. Your mother had a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

Slash: I remember when I came home with my first tattoo. I was, like, 15 or 16 years old, and she was like – you know, the cliché - she goes, “You know, you have to live with that the rest of your life.” That was the last I ever heard of it.

Stern: That was that she didn’t care.

Slash: No.

Stern: Did you ever feel your mom didn’t care?

Slash: My mom was very, very, very cool. I was raised with a lot of roof.

Stern: Very cool! But wait a second. When your mother was having a relationship with David Bowie, was that the coolest thing that could have ever happened? How old were you? He’s way cool!

Slash: Um, I think I was, like, 9 or 10.

Stern: 9 or 10, huh?

Quivers: And you would see David Bowie.

Slash: Yeah, yeah.

Stern: He would hang out in the house. You had a charmed life that way.

Slash: She used to work with him. She designed all his clothes, so they had a working relationship, first and foremost, and then maybe had a romantic relationship, which really didn’t last that long; it was probably, like, maybe a year-and-a-half.

Stern: But were you proud of that? Were you like, “Wow, my mom is with…“?

Slash: He was the first guy that came in after my dad, so I was pretty apprehensive about hanging out with him a lot (laughs).

Stern: But your mom must have been a very good-looking woman.

Slash: She’s very good-looking.

Stern: Were you ever disciplined about anything? Did you ever receive any discipline? Were you ever punished?

Slash: Yeah, no, I mean-

Quivers: What would they punish you for?

Slash: You’re not giving me any chance to get it worded.

Stern: Oh, I’m not? I'm sorry.

Slash: But my parents, like I was saying, with all the freedom that I was given, as far as certain morals and certain character – you know, a lot of that that was instilled in me, there was a lot of right and wrong that sort of came natural for them to sort of instill in me, which was really great. I think there was sort of a mutual respect thing, almost like treating me on the same level as they were. It was interesting. I mean, I used to call them by their first names.

Stern: I wonder if that’s good or bad.

Slash: I wouldn’t let my kids call me by my first name (laughs).

Stern: You have kids now.

Quivers: Do you have kids?

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: Do you… Are you a disciplinarian?

Slash: I’m not too good at that. I try - like, you know, I try and get angry, but I think it’s almost laughable. But my wife has got a handle on that.

Quivers: So you’re providing structure for your kids, even if it’s through your wife.

Slash: Well, and also, I mean, I’ve obviously learned a lot over the years and I have a pretty clear memory of coming up, and so… You just sort of have a natural instinct for things and what the kids should be doing about what you might have done wrong that you want to teach them not to.

Stern: See, when I sit with you, you seem like such a rational guy. I can’t imagine you almost throwing it all away on heroin and cocaine. I don’t see it with you. I almost see you like a businessman.

Slash: Yeah…

Stern: I mean, okay, despite the rock ‘n’ roll persona and all that, I see you as a very reliable guy, a guy who shows up on time for interviews… You have a sense of the business, you respect rock ‘n’ roll, you love what you do, you have such a passion for this guitar… What attracted you to heroin to the point that you were every minute with it? I mean, it took over your life.

Slash: It was downtime.

Stern: Do you think that you were depressed?

Slash: I don’t think, I wouldn’t say – most of it was fun for the longest time, so I can’t say that I was actually depressed. If there was a psychologist here and we did a one-on-one for an hour-and-a-half, he’d probably would come up with some answers that maybe I wouldn’t be thinking of right now. But it was mostly fun. The thing about the drugs was always when I wasn’t working. I’m so hyperactive. When I’m sitting here with you, or I’m sitting in the studio, or I’m out on the road, I’m actually in work mode. That I can deal with, and as long as that’s a constant, I’m fine.

Stern: But when the downtime comes…

Slash: But as soon as a tour would end, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. The pace of being in a band and touring constantly, and living that life – touring is something that... still to this day, I love touring more than I like being at home.

Stern: Right.

Slash: I still can’t mellow out.

Stern: Right.

Slash: I’m learning how to adjust to life not working, so that I don’t go into the abyss like I normally would.

Stern: Is it hard for you to be a husband and a father, when you really yearn for the road and the freedom of the road?

Slash: I have to take them with me. I mean, I love them to death, so I make it work. But I have to admit, I’m a little antsy when I’m at home for too long.

Stern: The last time you cheated on your wife was before you married her. You’ve been able to remain faithful?

Slash: I’ve never have cheated – on all honesty, I haven’t cheated on her once since we got together.

Stern: Not yet. It’s remarkable.

Quivers: Yeah, but now are you on any kind of medication? Are you…

Stern: You’re on Subutex?

Slash: No.

Stern: You are not.

Slash: I did do it for a minute, though.

Quivers: Yeah?

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: How do you get off heroin? You say that in your book, that you go cold turkey.

Slash: I never really got into using prescription drugs to, you know, opt out (laughs).

Stern: Right.

Slash: You know what I mean?  

Stern: (?) uses Subutex. He’s on it regularly to keep him off his heroin. But you said-

Slash: Right. I know a lot of guys do that. I used Subutex for the first time a little over a year ago, and that’s how I got off the Oxycontin.

Quivers: Oh, you were on that, too, huh?

(Laughter)

Someone: Well, that’s heroin. I mean, you know, people don’t realize it, but that’s heroin.

Slash: But before that there was this stuff called Buprenex.

Quivers: Uh-huh.

Slash: And that never worked for me. I don’t think I did it properly.

Stern: But it’s funny. In your book you describe your first heroin experience as not even being all that great. You were in the studio in 1984 with Izzy-

Slash: That was the first heroin experience where I smoked it.

Stern: I see.

Slash: But the first time I ever shot it up, that was it.

Quivers: Why would you go to shooting it, if smoking did nothing for you?

Slash: Because… I don’t know, you know.

Quivers: (Laughs).

Stern: You couldn’t believe you didn’t like it. Even when you smoked it, what was the reaction?

Slash: When I smoked it, I just felt a little bit queasy. I don’t think I knew exactly what I was doing, so I didn’t get the full effect that I was supposed to get.

Stern: And then, how much time passed when you said to yourself, “I have an idea that if I injected this, I would be happy”?

Slash: Um, it probably was about a year.

Stern: A year.

Slash: Yeah. Maybe… In those days, you know, a short amount of time seemed like forever, so it could have been six months. But it seemed like a year.

Stern: You mainlined.

Slash: Yeah. But that was-

Quivers: But isn’t it a weird thing, Slash, to start wrapping your arm with something and cooking up drugs…?

Slash: It’s actually half the fun to it (laughs).

Quivers: Oh, really!

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: Really?

Slash: The process is-

Stern: Do you still miss it?    

Slash: Um, no.

Stern: You don’t.

Slash: You know what, because I stopped doing it on a regular basis in, like, 1991, as soon as Guns N’ Roses went back out on the second record. I stopped and I chipped a couple of times along the way over the course of however many years - I’d probably put, like, maybe seven or eight times – and it never was as good as when I first did it. It was always…

Stern: Chasing a dream.

Slash: A pain in the ass. And after a while you just resign to the fact that it’s just not gonna be like that anymore, and you sort of let it go.

Stern: Alright. So you’re drug free now.

Slash: You know, I’ve had moments where there’s been people around who have had it on. In the back of your mind there’s that sort of like, you know, sensation of going, “Oh yeah, wow.” But your rational thinking just takes over, because you don’t want to go there.

Quivers: And you never did any rehabs or anything-

Slash: I did my first real rehab stint about a year ago.

Quivers: Really?

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: Really? That recently. Would you laugh at guys like Aerosmith? When you guys would go out on tour with Aerosmith, when you were in Guns N’ Roses, and they would have rules where, in order to protect their sobriety, you couldn’t even drink alcohol around them, or you had to hide it and drink it in a cup, and this and that and the other thing? You don’t place those kind of demands on other people, do you?

Slash: No. No, I actually like it when, you know, within reason, people are… I like to be out with people and know that they’re able to drink, and stuff like that. It makes me feel more comfortable.

Quivers: You don’t even drink anymore.

Slash: Uh-uh.

Quivers: Wow!

Stern: Nothing. Like (?)

Slash: I know, right?

(Laughter)

Slash: But I play a lot better and I’ve been very productive. In this particular point in my life, it’s actually working.  

Stern: When you go to rehab, and you show up and you’re a very famous person… Do you go to a rehab specifically for famous people?

Slash: Well, this particular rehab that I went to wasn’t necessarily for famous people, but you had to have some cash.

Stern: Yeah, that’s a major dough. So, you’d be in there with some big players.

Slash: There was actually nobody there when I went in.

Stern: You had your own rehab.

Slash: I was the only client, which was great. You know, they gave me my own bedroom…

Stern: Isn’t that a little scary?

Slash: I think I was really in control going in there, knowing why I was there, so I think I really went to rehab more just to get some help to get off the stuff that I was on at the time. I really saw-

Stern: With Oxycontin and all that?

Slash: Yeah. That’s just so I didn’t want to go through the whole long withdrawal thing; and also just to sort of get away from everything for a minute, and get my head together, because there was a lot of shit going on at that time.

Stern: Not only were drugs going on, but a lot of sex, and you describe something in your new book…

Slash: Uh-huh?

Stern: … that is very disturbing. And I feel for you on this.

Quivers: Why is so disturbing?

Slash: What? The Izzy thing?

Stern: The Izzy thing.  

Slash: (Laughs).

Quivers: What was going on?

Slash: Yeah, this is… yeah.

Stern: You say: [reads from Slash’s book:] “I remember being up in the bunk one night after a show with Izzy and some girl. We were taking turns having sex with her, but Izzy wasn’t wearing any protection, so when he pulled out, he came on my leg, since I was right there on the other side of her. That definitely stopped me in my tracks. I sat up, looked over at him, and said, ‘Hey! Izzy …man. We’ve got to get a bigger place.’”

Slash: Yeah. Right.

(Laughter)

Stern: When a man comes on your leg, what is that like?

Quivers: Wow! (laughs)

Slash: That was a very surreal experience. But you have to understand, we were in a space that was entirely, probably, the size of a twin mattress. You know, it was a loft that was the size of the mattress, and there was nowhere else to go. We were both being with the same girl, and there was nowhere else for him to move to. So, in the heat of the moment, you know, he wasn’t really thinking about where was aiming, and I was right there.

Quivers: (Laughs).

Stern: You know, I mean-

Slash: A really bonding moment.

Stern: It really is. And when Izzy came, did he come a lot? Was it a big load? Did he drop a big load?

Slash: It was… it seemed like an eternity.

(Laughter)

Stern: Was he laughing? Did he go, “Oh my god..”

Slash: No, he didn’t know. You know, he didn’t realize where I was in proximity to where his (?) was.

Quivers: It was dark.

Stern: What did you do – honestly, this is very specific: what did you do with the load, once it’s…

Slash: We got the girl to lick it up.

Stern: You did? Did she really? I’m gonna throw up.

(Laughter)

Stern: What did you do, did you wipe it off with something… with your shirt?  

Slash: I just used one of the blankets on the mattress.

Stern: When you’re living that close with a bunch of guys and everything, the one thing I don’t get is double teaming these chicks. I mean, this is certainly a tremendous amount of variety, on the road, of women, especially when you’re in a cool band.

Slash: This was in the old days. This was, like, before we ever hit the road.

Stern: Right.

Slash: When we were just like the scourge of Hollywood local band.

Stern: Did you ever feel bad for the women? Did you ever have any sort of - this is what I’m talking about with your childhood.

Slash: Uh-huh?

Stern: It’s almost like there were no rules. Like, some woman comes in and she’s almost disposable; you take her in there, you fuck her a couple of times-

Slash: I’m not one of those guys. I’m that one guy in the band that actually was sort of a sucker for girls. I mean, even the stupidest ones I felt sort of bad for, the ones that would come in and be so easy to disrespect, you know?

Stern: Right.

Slash: And so, some of the relationships that I had with women over the years, or most of the relationships I’ve had with women over the years, when it came to sex, it was usually… there was some sort of mutual respect between the two of us. But in certain instances, like this one that we’re talking about with Izzy, that was just some girl that I don’t even know how she ended up there.

Stern: Did you ever share women with Axl Rose, the lead singer of Guns N’ Roses?

Slash: Um, a couple of times.

Stern: You did.

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: So you were that close.

Quivers: I guess everybody shared.

Slash: Uh-huh.

Stern: That’s amazing. I never got into that. Then again, nobody wanted to share with me. Who wanted to see me naked? Certainly not another guy.

Quivers: (Laughs).

Stern: Does it feel a little gay when you see one of your band mates naked there, you know, and…

Quivers: And you know how they… do it.

Slash: It’s funny. You can sort of. You don’t really get into the watching them per se.

Stern: Right.

Slash: It becomes sort of an animal thing and you’re not really paying attention to them. You’re with the girl, and he’s with the girl, and you’re not really focusing on him at all. And you don’t want him in any… Like, I had an incident a long time ago (laughs). I used to have these parties at my house, and party-loving people would come over and we would have a lot of, you know…

Stern: Blow?

Slash: Interaction.

Stern: Yeah.

Slash: And I was on the landing in my house with this girl. I was on the floor and she was on top of me, and Ron Jeremy happened to be there, and he came up behind her - without even asking me - and then sort of got behind her. And I was like…

Quivers: Oh!

Slash: And, all of a sudden, I felt invaded.

Quivers: Yeah!

Stern: Yeah!

Slash: So there has to be some sort… it’s not one of those kind of things. I watch some porno movies and I go, “I just couldn’t handle…,” you know.

Stern: There are rules – in a sense.

Slash: Yeah.

Quivers: Even with Ron Jeremy joining him.

Slash: Yeah, there could be some awkward moments.

Stern: Awkward in the sense, too, like, when you have to follow Izzy, let’s say, or Axl, you’re the second guy in the girl - these guys have already come inside the girl. I mean, does any of that bother you? That bothers me for some reason. Why am I so uptight? Why is that a problem?

Slash: (Laughs) Yeah, really, of all people.

Stern: Am I uptight?

Slash: Um, it’s not really being uptight. It’s just that certain people have certain limits to what they think is, you know…

Stern: Acceptable.

Slash: Yeah, acceptable.

Quivers: That never bothered you.

Slash: You know, there’s certain aspects of it that bother me.

Quivers: Yeah…

Slash: I’m sleazy, to an extent, but there’s another part of me that’s got a moral center – you know, there’s certain things I won’t accept.

Quivers: But are there rules as to who goes first?

Slash: But that’s… I have a wide…

Stern: Yeah. But, like, are you the king bee in a sense that, like, you go first and the guys follow…

Slash: I never thought about that. I’m actually racking my brains trying to figure out how that works.

Stern: So, let me – did there come a time when, let’s say, Izzy was banging a chick and he finishes, and then you say, “Now I’m hopping on”?

Slash: I don’t think it ever really worked that way. It was, usually, one of those kind of things that, if we were sharing a girl, it sort of all happened at the same time.

Stern: So would you take them… would you prefer the mouth, or the anus, or the vagina?  

Slash: Well, we never did the…

Stern: Anus.

Slash: The anus - you know, the two… you know.

Stern/Quivers: Right.

Stern: Yeah, that’s way out of control!

Slash: What’s the scientific-

Stern: Yeah, what is that called? “Double”…  Not “DP,” but it’s…

Quivers: It’s not double penetration!

Slash: It’s called… I learned this in Canada recently. I can’t remember what it’s called, though. Anyhow… I think it was… you know, like, he would be doing her and I would be getting oral…

Stern/Quivers: Right.

Slash: And we might switch around - not in any particular order.

Stern: Would it be something sort of too… if you weren’t well (?).

Slash: I would prefer just having-

Stern: A girl.

Slash: The one girl, or two girls… I don’t really like having guys around.

Quivers: Oh, two girls!

Slash: I could probably count on two hands how many times…

Stern: You shared.

Slash: I shared, yeah.

Stern: Because that’s a weird - did you ever get into the “Gee, my penis is bigger than Izzy’s” or…

Slash: (Laughs).  

Stern: I mean, I would get into that. I mean, I’m not saying… it’s because you do, naturally, compare. Any guy who says they don’t, is lying.

Quivers: But also, don’t you see him doing some weird things and go, “Whoa! Look at what he’s doing!” (laughs)

Stern: Yeah. Right.

Slash: There’s awkward moments, yeah.

Stern: Did you ever see Izzy, like, looking at a girl’s butthole and then you go, “You know what, Izzy’s gross.”

Slash: No, no, I don’t remember that. I do remember some incidents that happened with some other people in other bands, where you have, like, a few girls come from a strip club, or something like that, and they come into a hotel room and everybody’s partying; and then all inhibitions go out of the window, and, next thing you know, there’s, like, two girls giving one guy head for a minute, then the other guy comes along, and then you’re all standing together and they’re all doing it. At that point it’s a party, but then there’s another element that comes in. It’s like, “Okay, now we’re all doing this together. I didn’t know you that well.”

(Laughter)

Slash: Yeah, there’s some moments out there.

Stern: When you wrote the book, did you leave some of those things out, like you saw the lead singer of… AC/DC do something or…

Slash: I didn’t put anything in there. There was one mention of my good friend, James Hetfield.

Stern: Okay. From Metallica.

Slash: Right. And I put it in there, I didn’t want to get him into – you know, I didn’t want to…

Stern: What did you see him do? What did you put in?

Slash: Well, he was in my hotel room, in the actual bedroom part. I let him use the room with this girl that he was with. This was a long time ago, way before he got-

Stern: Pre-marriage, yes. Of course.

Quivers: (?)

(Laughter)

Slash: And I needed to go in the room to get something. So I sort of opened the door and I was creeping in, and he was head-fucking her against the wall.  

(Laughter)

Slash: But he was doing it in the James Hetfield kind of like…

Stern: Angry?

Slash: Sort of “Oh yeah!”

Stern/Someone: “This is rock ‘n’ roll!”

Slash: I mentioned that because-

Stern: Is your penis bigger than Izzy’s?

Slash: Um, I can’t remember. I think we were roughly around the same size.

Stern: Roughly around the same size. Axl had a small penis, I’ve read.

Slash: Uh, I don’t know. I never actually went there (chuckles).

Stern: I see. You never took a look at that. Well, I mean, it’s a fascinating life. I mean, the sex, the drugs…

Quivers: Are you talking to Axl now?

Slash: Uh-uh.

Stern: Hell no. But these guys can’t stand each other.

Slash: We haven’t talked since… when I quit, that was…

Quivers: … pretty much it.

Slash: [That was] an unprecedented sort of kind of thing. I don’t think he thought that I was serious.

Quivers: Ah…

Slash: And I think that really caused a lot of bad blood.

Stern: You deal with the financial aspects of being in Guns N’ Roses to your signing bonus when you first get signed to a record label. This is how out of control you were, which is so opposite to the guy I kind of know sitting on the couch. You blew your signing bonus.

Slash: I tried not to.

Stern: You blew it on heroin, right?

Slash: Yeah. Well, they-

Stern: Sad, right? About how much money you think you missed out on?

Slash: It wasn’t that much money. It was 7,500 bucks.

Stern: Yeah, but at the time-

Slash: At the time, it was huge and I couldn’t put money in the bank, because I had a lien on my income at the time. So I had it all in travelers checks, and I really tried to maintain it. But you have to understand that, when Guns N’ Roses got signed, we couldn’t do anything. We couldn’t do any gigs or really do anything except for sit for about a year and a half; and it was pretty hard to deal – you know, we were bored shitless.

Stern: Is there an unbelievable aspect to fame that, like… aside from your mom introducing you to David Bowie at an early age, all of a sudden you start to get in a band, you start to get some kind of name out there. And suddenly, you know, like, you say your first son was conceived at the Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones house, you’re hanging out with Sly of the Family Stone smoking PCP and crack with him… I mean, you’re doing that-

Slash: Well, I didn’t actually smoke crack with him.

Stern: But you saw him doing it.

Slash: Yeah, yeah.

Stern: It’s hard to believe. He seems like such a normal guy.

Slash: Yeah, see?

Quivers: Yeah, when I saw him last, he looked fine (laughs).  

Slash: Drugs do weird things to very normal people.

Stern: And then wild things happened to you. I mean, a woman blew him while he was asleep. I mean, that’s great stuff, right?

Quivers: Wow! You woke up for this?

Slash: She wasn’t a woman. She was a kid.

Stern: What do you mean?

Slash: She was… I mean, she must have been, like, 14 or 15 years old.

Stern: You were asleep.

Quivers: And you were sleeping?

Slash: Well, I was sort of asleep. I sort of half-woke up for that (laughs).

Stern: I mean, this was not a normal life. You know that. I mean, most guys-

Slash: It was fun, though.

Stern: You bet!

Slash: I gotta tell you I have no regrets.

Stern: Oh, and I was gonna ask you that. Certainly you shouldn’t.

Slash: Also my parents came from sort of the whole free love generation.

Stern/Quivers: Right.

Slash: Everybody was very uninhibited in those days. And when you talk about David and whatnot… I mean, I was raised around a lot of musicians, a lot of entertainers, and it was all like that. You know, I remember walking into a friend of my mom’s place one time. I mean, adults were always having sex when I was a kid.

Quivers: You see all of this.

Slash: Yeah. It wasn’t lurid – you know, that kind of sex. It was just sort of a more loving kind of-

Stern: I’m telling you, he had a childhood with no rules!

Quivers: Yeah, yeah.

Stern: I mean, you thought it was normal to walk into a room and see adults having sex.

Slash: Well, I mean, it would have been abnormal for them to keep me around-

Stern: Did you ever see your mom having sex?

Slash: Only once.

Stern: Who was she having sex with?

Slash: My dad.

Stern: With your dad. Oh.

Slash: I only did one time.    

Stern: Hey, that’s weird.

Slash: Yeah, that was weird. I’d never-

Stern: What position were they in? I bet it’s frozen in your mind.

Slash: It was missionary.

Stern: It was.

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: And did you stand there and watch?

Slash: You know, there was that second that lasts forever?

Stern: Yeah.

(Laughter)

Stern: You saw it, like, going in and out?

Slash: No, no. It wasn’t that close. I was on the other side of the room.

Stern: That’s gotta be traumatic. Yes, Gary, what do you want to ask?

Gary: I just want to ask Slash, because there’s stuff that you’re reading – I heard that, you know, you don’t talk to Axl anymore.

Slash: Uh-huh.

Gary: And there was that weird incident a couple of years ago.

Slash: I know.

Gary: And I just never understood – you know, Guns N’ Roses, the Axl Guns N’ Roses, played at the Hard Rock on New Year’s Eve, and Slash went there just to see what was going on, but I never understood what actually happened.

Slash: What happened was, my wife and I saw an ad for Guns N’ Roses at the at the Joint at the Hard Rock, and so we made a plan to go there - it was New Year’s Eve. So I went down there, sort of got myself set up – I made a phone call, got set up, and then went down there, and I was forbidden to enter the venue.

Gary: But did you ever say to Axl, “Hey, I want to come by and see you”?

Slash: No, no. Νο.

Gary: And they didn’t let you in.

Slash: They just… the whole building knew I was coming.

Stern: Why do you think you went there? Were you looking for confrontation? Were you looking-

Slash: No. They were saying, the rumor was that I had my guitar and my top hat, and that I was going to go in there, because, some, you know-

Stern: But why go and torture yourself?

Slash: No, I just wanted to go see Guns N’ Roses, because I’d never seen them before.

Stern: Yeah, but wait a second.

(Laughter)

Slash: That was it.

Stern: You had to be angry. This isn’t Guns N’ Roses.

Slash: Yeah, but this was years after - you have to understand, when I quit, whatever he went on to do after that, was fine.

Stern: Right.

Slash: And I knew he was going to continue on with the name, because that was one of the things that was leading up to the split anyway when it first came up, and so… No, I was really intrigued. I wanted to go see what Guns N’ Roses was.

Stern: What do you think of, like, Van Halen right now, where they get rid of Michael Anthony, the original bass player and backup vocal guy, they put in Eddie’s son – Eddie Van Halen’s son is in there now. Like, does that kind of burn you up a little bit? Because that’s what Axl tried to pull with Guns N’ Roses; he tried to replace the whole band.

Slash: Right.

Stern: Do the fans deserve to see… they don’t want to see Van Halen or Guns N’ Roses with other players.

Slash: Well, I think it needs to be made very clear to the public that the original members will not be there, which, somehow with the Guns situation, I don’t think that happened.

Stern: I think that’s why you went to the show that night. You wanted to sort of say to Axl, “Go ahead, do this in front of me, asshole.”

Slash: No, no. It wasn’t like that. It was really pretty innocent. You know, I just wanted to go see it. I mean, think about it, how interesting would that be – all around, you know.

Quivers: Yeah, but you couldn’t have been surprised by their reaction.

Stern: I would be angry.

Slash: I was… there’s a point there where it’s like, “Oh come on, get off it, you know, what am I gonna do?”

Stern: Yes, Gary.

Gary: It was weird, because there was one time I went to see Guns N’ Roses, and of course you’re looking for the guitar player to be Slash. And it could have just been, you know, non-descript. Instead, it was that weird guy, Buckethead! Remember Buckethead?

Someone: That was on the MTV thing!

Gary: It was a guy with a bucket over his head, and it was almost like calling too much attention.

Quivers: Oh my god!

(Laughter)

Slash: I was him for Halloween a couple of years ago.

(Laughter)

Stern: Were you a Buckethead?

Slash: Yeah, but let me just put one thing in-

Stern: Do you think Buckethead is a talented individual?

Slash: You know, I’ve never… I don’t really know his work. I really don’t know his work.

Stern: I see. Okay.

Slash: I’ve heard he’s a really accomplished guitar player.

Stern: Okay.

Slash: Very technically, you know, fluent.

Stern: You say that as a put-down in a way, that a guitar player-

Slash: He’s not a rock guy, you know.

Stern: A rock guy has a certain soul to his guitar. Is that what you’re saying?

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: It’s not just all about technique.

Slash: I have heard a couple of pieces of music from Buckethead, and it’s technically proficient but doesn’t have any heart, you know?

Stern: So, in other words, you kind of say, “Hey, there’s two types of musicians.” There’s the guy who can go and read charts and get that all done, and then there’s you. You can walk into a studio and make something magical happen.

Slash: Something like that.

Stern: Okay.

Slash: You know, it’s like, if somebody picks up the guitar, and has the balls to really come from the heart and expose himself emotionally on the instrument, you can tell, you can feel it.

Stern: Getting back to the sex for one minute-

Slash: Wait, let me straighten out one thing about the Axl thing.

Stern: Sure, go ahead.

Slash: Just with all due respect to Axl, he didn’t know that I was banned from the venue. It was a manager’s thing, which actually happened to be our old manager, who I hated with a passion. He thought Axl might not react positively if he knew I was there, so he decided to take it upon himself.

Gary: But did Axl ever reach to you afterwards to say, “Hey, I heard you were there. I’m sorry you couldn’t get in, I would have loved to have seen you”?

Slash: No. That’s not his style.

Stern: No, he doesn’t do that.

Quivers: No reaching out.

Slash: No.

Stern: Now, getting back to the sexual thing, it is amazing - because I’m sure you guys weren’t wearing contraception and stuff - that the only STD you say in your book that you got was that you got genital warts on your stomach.

Slash: No, no. I got genital warts on my penis.

Stern: Yeah.

Slash: But what happened was, I had these marks on my stomach, which - there was sort of like a psoriasis kind of thing. But being hypochondriac, I guess – it was right around the time that the AIDS thing was first really starting.

Stern: Right.

Slash: And it just seemed like real small versions of what the AIDS lesions looked like.

Quivers: So you thought you had those lesions.  

Stern: Yeah.

Slash: And, of course, it would not surprise me, because practicing of, you know, safe sex at the time wasn’t really a habit. I don’t think it worked. The only time you ever practiced safe sex was not to get a girl pregnant, but, even then, that was hard to do.

Quivers: Yeah.

Stern: But it is amazing. You didn’t come down with a lot of stuff.

Slash: That was the only thing, that and crabs. That was the only-

Stern: The crabs you got, you didn’t get the herpes…

Slash: No.

Stern: You didn’t get any of that stuff. You really got lucky.

Slash: I never even got hepatitis C, which a lot of guys got.

Stern: A miracle. Did you share needles when you were shooting?

Slash: There was times.

Stern: Yes. And-

Quivers: He skirted all of them.

Slash: I’ve been really lucky.

Quivers: Yeah!

Stern: But here you are, a hypochondriac.

Slash: Not really. I’m just, you know-

Stern: But you probably are.

Slash: A little bit, yeah.

Stern: And then you would share a needle with someone, which, to me, would be totally dangerous.

Slash: It’s in the whole fervor of…

Stern: Getting the drugs.

Slash: Yeah. There’s a real psychological thing to that.

Someone: You know, they say that about Keith Richards, too: that he’s lucky and he’s got this constitution of, you know, of…

Stern: The horseshoe.

Slash: Yeah. You have to be reasonably intelligent to sort of get away with a lot of this stuff. But, at the same time, you know, I’ve been really, really lucky.

Stern: Yeah, it is a roll of the dice. Another upsetting thing happened to you: you once passed out, you were unconscious, and you were tea-bagged by Tommy Lee, the drummer of Motley Crue.

Slash: (Laughs) Yeah.

Quivers: Now what’s that all about?

Slash: Don’t trust your friends (laughs).

Stern: Yeah, I mean, you passed out from drinking…

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: You’re laying there on the floor unconscious, and Tommy Lee gets naked and puts his balls…

Slash: Over my face. They weren’t touching, but…

Stern: Who knows…

Slash: Well, I saw the picture.

Stern: Oh, you did.

Slash: Yeah. It’s actually in Nikki’s book. I think it’s a little bit more graphic in Nikki’s book, of course-

Stern: Describe, if you would, the smell of Tommy’s balls.

Slash: I was out cold.

Stern: I see. You never smelled his balls.

Slash: No.

Stern: Right.

Quivers: (Laughs).

Stern: Did you say to a guy afterwards, “Hey, come here, I’m gonna kick the shit out of you”?

Slash: Um, you know, no. I deserved it, because I put myself in that position by passing out on the floor of the bar, and them having to take me up to the room and put me to sleep.

Stern: But you didn’t expect your bros-

Slash: Well, I had a couple of things to say, obviously, but, you know, under the circumstances, I deserved it (laughs).

Stern: You seem like a good-natured person.

Slash: I am pretty easy-going.

Stern: What about fights? Did you ever have any fist fights?

Slash: I used to.

Stern: You used to.

Slash: I haven’t had any in a while.

Stern: Did you ever have any with Axl?

Slash: No.

Stern: You never had a fight.

Slash: Well, I think there was one time in our relationship where I thought that was going to happen, but I think we both thought better of it.

Stern: Probably the relationship between you and Axl can never be repaired, because even in your book you say some nasty things about him, in the sense that you saw him flip out on girls who wouldn’t have sex with him.

Slash: There wasn’t… there was one incident that I… it wasn’t… I didn’t put that in there because I wanted to talk about him. It just had a lot to do with why I left – we were in rehearsal at the time, and we were staying in Chicago, and then why I left Chicago, which is the whole story.

Stern: What did you see that night?

Slash: Nothing I’m gonna get into.

Stern: What do you mean? He yelled at a girl or he hit her?

Slash: He just reacted inappropriately.

Stern: In other words, “Hey, you have to give me sex.”

Quivers: The girl wouldn’t have sex with him.

Slash: Yeah. But there was… you know, I really don’t want to get into all that, because-

Stern: Why?

Slash: It wasn’t that big a deal. It wasn’t that big a deal. I think the reasoning behind it, and so on and so forth, I thought it was sort of unsavory, so I just got sort of disgusted with the whole thing that was going on at that period. So I don’t want to single that one incident out.

Stern: Why did you have sex with an old girlfriend the night before your wedding? What happened there? Were you trying to – were you scared to get married? Was that it and you just said, “Hey, shit, I just gotta get out of this thing”?

Slash: The first marriage I got into was an ultimatum.

Stern: Right.

Slash: And I don’t think I went in the right… I didn’t go into it from the heart. So I sort of dated the girl that is now my wife – not really dated, but we saw each other on occasion. We always had a good time, and she knew that; she knew that we have sort of a connection.

Stern: Is this the wife when you were doing my movie you were hanging out with?

Slash: That’s the one that I was married to then.

Quivers: Yeah, the first one.

Stern: Right. You divorced her.

Slash: Yeah, I divorced her.

Stern: She was hot.

Slash: She was. You know, she was a good-looking girl, but it was an ultimatum. I’d been caught – she finally caught me. Someone ratted me out for everything that I’d done behind her back.

Stern/Quivers: (Laughter)

Slash: I mean, literally everything.

Stern: Aren’t friends great?

Slash: Somebody had it in for me.

Stern: Why would they do that to you?

Slash: So we split up for a while, and, of course, I was out on tour, and I started feeling lonely. And just because of all these things I did to her, it didn’t mean that I didn’t care about her. It was just that I really wasn’t ready for that serious of a relationship at that point, I think.

Stern: But, again, there’s no rules, you know. So, like you were just saying, you’d screw it.

Slash: I was like a sex addict at that point.

Stern: You were.

Slash: I was out of control. I had three and four hotel rooms in every hotel, so I could be bouncing around.

Quivers: Oh really?!

Stern: So that’s part of your thing. You can’t sit still.

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: So you keep yourself busy with women, right?

Slash: Yeah, yeah.

Stern: Yeah, why not.

Slash: It’s like drugs.

Stern: Yeah, it ain’t bad.

Slash: You know, you can’t knock it, though.

Stern: A lot of famous women?

Slash: No, not necessarily. I mean, some more famous than others, but…

Stern: Look at you. How many women do you figure you banged in your time?

Slash: Oh, I don’t care-

Stern: Come on! Give me a number.

Slash: I don’t have a number.

Stern: Are you up over 500?

Slash: I have no-

Stern: Look at you!

Quivers: You don’t keep any records? (laughs)

Slash: Of course not!

Stern: Are you kidding? Written records. It’s more thorough than a German concentration camp.

Quivers: (Laughs).

Slash: Anyway. But so, what happened was, Perla heard that I was getting married. Actually she came to my bachelor party, which was a co-ed bachelor party, because… Oh, what I was saying was, so I called my girlfriend up. I called my girlfriend up, who was gonna be my wife.

Stern: Right.

Slash: And I said, “Let’s get back together,” and she said, “No, unless we get married and I’ll see how.”

Stern: “I’ll see how to do it.”

Slash: So then we did it, and Perla, who’d known me from previous, came around and said, “Ha ha,” you know. And then somehow we ended up doing it the night before my wedding.

Stern: Beautiful.

(Laughter)

Someone: You went from “ha ha” to-

Stern: From “ha ha” to “ho ho.”

Slash: The wedding was doomed from that point on. The marriage was doomed, you know.

(Laughter)

Slash: But I feel really bad, because I actually put her through something – I’m not into hurting people’s feelings for, you know, being inconsiderate.

Stern: How are your children going to rebel against you? It’s really tough.

Slash: I don’t know. I’m sure they’ll find-

Quivers: They’ll be conservative…

Slash: All kids find something.

Quivers: Yeah.

Stern: Yeah. They seem like good kids or what?

Slash: They’re great kids.

Stern: Yeah.

Slash: They’re out of control, too, though. We have to work really hard to keep them in check.

Stern: Right. Because you’re used to having a life without rules.

Slash: My wife and I, when we first - our whole relationship, up until we had kids, we were probably the craziest couple you’ll ever meet.

Stern: Oh, I believe that.

Slash: So, when the kids came, it started – I guess it was payback. It’s like, okay, we got two boys. It’s like… (chuckles).

Stern: Who are the great bands today? Anybody turning you on musically, or are you just fed up with the whole scene?

Slash: You know, I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about what’s going on with rock ‘n’ roll right now.

Stern: Right.

Slash: It’s not as far removed from the genuine article, as far as I’m concerned. There’s some bands that are still around that came out in the 90s, which I might have not thought that much of then, but I think they’re great now, because they’re the only bands around that have any inkling of that kind of rock ‘n’ roll attitude.

Stern: I see.

Someone: What’s an example of one of those bands?

Slash: Well, Foo Fighters are great.

Quivers: Yeah.

Stern: Foo Fighters are great. What else?

Slash: One of the greatest bands that’s come out in the last 15 years.

Stern: Did it surprise you when the drummer from the Foo Fighters turned out to be a lead singer and-

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: I mean – yeah, what did I say?

Someone: The drummer from Nirvana.

Slash: Yeah, yeah.

Stern: Yeah, the drummer from Nirvana to do that?

Slash: The first time I saw the Foo Fighters was here – what’s the place by Dave Letterman? Um…

Someone: Roseland.

Stern: Roseland.

Slash: I saw them at Roseland, and it was great. That was, like, not too long after Kurt died.

Stern: It was shocking, probably.

Slash: It was a great band and he’s a great songwriter.

Stern: So, when you had to write a book – I don’t know if you knew what you’d write in a book. When you say you wrote the book, you worked with a writer, and he even claims that at 4:00 in the morning, when you would remember a story, you would call him.

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: You don’t know any work hours.

Slash: (Laughs) Well, no, I just – I had to call him when they came.

Stern: Right.

Slash: Because trying to recall all that stuff wasn’t an easy thing to do.

Stern: It’s hard. I think it’s the most difficult thing in the world. Well, you’ve done it. I mean, you’ve written a very, very interesting book. This is great, Slash’s new book, “Slash.” That’s the name of the book.

Slash: Yeah, it’s just “Slash.”

Stern: That’s what it says.

Slash: My face is slashed (laughs).

Stern: No.

Quivers: Yeah, he did say that.

Slash: I thought - Yeah.

Stern: Sloshed. Slash’s new book-

Slash: “Slosh” would have been a good title (laughs).

(Laughter)

Stern: That’s a good one. You should have talked to me. The book “Slash” is in stores now; and you can check out Slash and Guitar Hero 3 in stores now, as well.

Someone: Best game ever.

Slash: Isn’t it cool?

Someone: Guitar Hero, Howard, is the best fucking game.

Slash: Yeah. It’s one of those things I got involved with that I don’t consider a sellout, because it was so cool.

Stern: Better than chess?

Slash: No, chess is great. But that’s a different animal.

Stern: I see.

Quivers: Do you play chess?

Slash: I play chess on my Blackberry.

Stern: You play chess?

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: You’re not on the ICC, the…

Slash: What’s the ICC (?)

Stern: Chessclub.com, internet chess club?

Slash: No.

Stern: Oh!

Quivers: Because Howard could play with you.

Stern: I will play with you.

Slash: Really?

Stern: Oh yes.

Slash: That’s what I remember starting playing chess when I was pretty young, and I’ve always had a thing for chess.

Quivers: Uh-oh, he’d beat you.

Stern: Right where I am. I’m at 1600.

Slash: No, I believe you’re probably pretty good.

Stern: I’m okay. I’m no retard.

Quivers: (Laughs).

Slash: I’m into poker now. That’s my new thing.

Stern: That’s your thing?

Slash: Now it seems like everyone is into poker, so I-

Stern: But aren’t you gonna get carried away with that and pull a lot of money?

Slash: No, no. I mean, at this point, I love watching it on TV and I love playing it on my telephone.

Stern: Right.

Slash: And, you know, it’s-

Stern: Are you playing big stakes poker?

Slash: I’m not a gambler. You’re not gonna get me to take $1,000 or $10,000 and put it on it (laughs).  

Stern: How much do you play for?

Slash: I don’t play for anything. I’m playing on a machine.

Quivers: Yeah, he doesn’t go to the casino.

Stern: That’s it?

Slash: Yeah, that’s it.

Stern: Alright.

Slash: I have some friends that I can play with, but, you know, with small stakes.

Stern: All right. Get the book “Slash,” in stores now. What do you want to say, Gary?

Gary: I’ve got a question and a story - one of our friends has a good story about Slash. But in the book, do you talk about how you wrote the songs? Because I read how you came up with the guitar riff for-

Slash: Sweet Child O’ Mine.

Gary: Sweet Child O’ Mine. I was wondering if it was true.

Slash: I got into a lot of the songs on Appetite, because it’s, you know, such an infamous record. So I did talk about Sweet Child O’ Mine, and Welcome to the Jungle, and Nightrain, and Paradise City, and stuff like that.

Stern: Yeah.

Gary: Because Sweet Child O’ Mine supposedly was he was just – that was what he would do to warm up.

Slash: It was… In practicing, I try and make up something interesting just to keep myself engaged instead of just mindless practicing.

Stern: It’s a great riff.

Slash: And I stumbled on this cool pattern that had a nice melody to it, and I started coming up with these different notes within the pattern. Then a couple of the other guys started playing some chords behind it.

Gary: And then would Axl come in and start singing to it?

Slash: Axl, unbeknownst to us, was upstairs writing lyrics to it and we didn’t know.

Stern: Wow!

Slash: So the next day, at rehearsal, he goes, “Let’s do that thing you guys were working on.” And it became this big song.

[Sweet Child O’ Mine starts playing in the background]

Stern: That’s great. You know when it’s that easy, it’s a shame it can’t last forever.

Slash: (Laughs).

Stern: You just wish you could stay in that zone.

Slash: Here’s the chords that came up behind the riff and started the whole song.

Quivers: Right.

Slash: That was one of those songs-

Stern: The song still gives me chills.

Slash: It’s one of those songs that’s very indicative of an entire band working together.

Quivers: Right.

Slash: Because it would never have happened without the other guys.

Quivers: Yeah.

Stern: Right. It’s a collaborative thing that happens. But you were just – this is your warm-up exercise.

Slash: It’s not a warm-up exercise. He said that-

Gary: Well, that’s what I read. What was it?

Slash: No. It was just something that I made up that I was just thought was interesting. But I never would have probably made a song out of it. It was very private. They just happened to pick up on it.

Stern: And Axl walks down and says, “Hey, listen to these lyrics I’ working on.”

Slash: No, he didn’t say anything about it. The next day, if I remember correctly, he goes, “Hey, play that thing you guys were jamming in the living room yesterday,” and so we started playing it and he started singing something. So he was up there listening and writing.

Stern: Wow!

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: Oh, that’s just great. That’s a cool story. Yeah, Gary.

Gary: Now I’m going to tell you our story. So [says a name] used to live in Las Vegas, and he said he worked at one of those photo places. And he said he once developed a nude roll of film of Slash.

(Laughter)

Gary: He’s out there, if you want to talk to him about it.

Slash: You gotta be kidding me.

Stern: Really?

Gary: Yeah.

Stern: Why would you do that on camera? You don’t care. You don’t probably mind the camera.

Slash: I don’t believe this, but-

Stern: What was it [says the name of the Vegas store employee]? You worked in a camera place-

Vegas store employee: Well, it was like a souvenir Slash liquor store that, like, sold everything - if it wasn’t nailed down, we’d sell it – and we developed film there, too. And he came in and was trashing. At the time, I didn’t even recognize Slash, because he didn’t have a hat on, his hair was, like, flat and everything. And they dropped off a roll of film. It was you and I don’t know which-

Slash: Was it in L.A.?

Vegas store employee:  No, it was in Vegas. It was on Fremont Street.

Slash: Oh, no, no. Okay, that’s… there’s actually some pictures in the book of she and I, but they weren’t full-on sex.

Vegas store employee: No, no, no.

Slash: I have some nudity, but there’s no real penetration.  

Someone: There’s a picture in the book, she’s got her face where the sun dawns, if you will.

Slash: Yeah.

Vegas store employee: When I developed the film, that’s when I realized it was Slash, because there was a picture of him in the shower, and I saw this tattoo on his arm, of himself, that says “Slash with the hat-

Slash: It was actually of a girl that has my name, a cartoon character.

Vegas store employee: Oh, okay. And he was nude-

Slash: Um-

Vegas store employee: …and he’s just standing there in the shower-

Stern: How was he (?) Did he have a big penis?

Vegas store employee: Yeah, it was huge.

Stern: Oh.

(Laughter)

Vegas store employee: I made double prints, I put it in the book we had for naked photos – we had a book underneath for nude pictures.

(Laughter)

Slash: So you’re immensely gracious, thank you.

Stern: (Laughing) That was very nice of you. Well, Slash, it’s a pleasure having you on.

[Inaudible cross-talk]

Someone: Listen, Howard?

Stern: Yeah.

Someone: Can I ask him a couple of questions?

Stern: Yeah, go ahead.

Someone: You guys were a great sort of band in the tradition of classic rock ‘n’ roll. When you saw bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, that whole grunge thing coming on, did you feel like you guys were in trouble in any way?

Slash: No. You know, I was really excited, being that in the 80s we were one of the few sort of hands-down gritty rock ‘n’ roll bands, with so much other glam and sort of fake anthem or stadium rock, or whatever you want to call it, going on. When grunge happened, which I still have a hard time calling it that - but in the 90s, in the early 90s, when Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden… what’s the other…?

Quivers/Stern: Pearl Jam.

Slash: Pearl Jam, and bands like that – those were the main ones. I thought it was great, because it was, like, some new blood and I was really addicted to a couple of these records.

Stern: So it wasn’t a turn-off to you.

Someone: What would you rather call it? Just rock ‘n’ roll like anything else?

Slash: It was basically just an extension of what we were doing.

Someone: Right.

Stern: I agree. I agree.

Someone: And just one quick last thing. I’ve struggled with drugs, as documented on the show, and I’m curious: what created more chaos in your life? Because I have a definite answer to this.

Slash: Yeah.

Someone: Coke or heroin? What do you think created more, like, chaos? What made you more out of control?

Slash: Coke definitely made me more out of control. But, you know, we keep mentioning coke, but I only speedballed coke, so I always had it with heroin.

Someone: Oh really?

Slash: I mean, I did a couple of lines here and there. Like, I used to hang out with Sam Kinison back in the day, and he used to blow my mind. He’d do a line the size of this table in one hit.

Quivers: Oh yeah.

Stern: Yeah. I’ve seen that.

Slash: I mean, really some serious business.

Stern: Yeah.

Slash: Coke is not really my drug of choice. It’s too up.

Someone: So you always had heroin.

Slash: Heroin guy, yeah.

Someone: Wow.

Slash: But some of my weirdest stories in the book are about when I run out of dope, and you just end up with the coke left to shoot, and then the hallucinations that go along with that.

Someone: Right, right.

Stern: So you said at one point you put your fist through a piece of glass-

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: A glass shower.

Slash: There was something that happened, an incident in Phoenix, where I probably would have gone to jail for a good amount of time.

Quivers: Really?

Slash: Luckily, there was a promoter there my manager called. That was probably one of the few good things he ever did for me.

Stern: What happened?

Slash: They got me on a plane and sent me back to L.A. like that.

Stern: What did you do, though?

Slash: Oh, I just – I tripped out in this bungalow.

Stern: On coke.

Slash: Yeah (laughs).

Stern: Yeah. You started to hallucinate.

Slash: Yeah, completely. And I was running around this resort, running from something I thought was chasing me.

Stern: You were naked, weren’t you?

Slash: Yeah, I was naked and I ran into this maid who pressed charges.

Quivers: Oh my goodness!

Stern: For what?

Slash: For… what do you call it? Like…

Stern: Indecent exposure?

Slash: No, no. When you punch somebody, what do you call it?

Quivers: Oh, assault.

Stern: Assault… yeah.

(Laughter)

Stern: You punched the maid? You were naked and you punched the maid.

Slash: No, I just ran over her.

(Laughter)

Slash: I dropped her down-

Someone: You thought she was a monster.

Slash: No, she was in my way.

Stern: And you were running from what? What did you see?

Slash: I was running from these little imaginary demons that were…

Quivers: Oh my goodness.

Slash: They had these little guns that were chasing me. And I trashed my hotel room trying to get away from them, and went through the front door.

Stern: It doesn’t sound like fun.

Slash: No. It was, you know-

Stern: You could have lost your mind.

Slash: Yeah.

Someone: Yeah, in the book you described them. What did you say that you described them-

Slash: I said they looked like little predator guys.

Someone: Yeah, yeah!

(Laughter)

Slash: That was the best thing I could think of.

Stern: I mean, you were real hardcore. In fact, in the book Slash goes into the fact that he got a virus from drinking too much and they had to replace something in your heart?

Slash: They put a defibrillator in my heart.

Stern: Right.

Quivers: Wow! This is hardcore.

Slash: And they told me that I wasn’t gonna live. They said, “You have six days to six weeks,” and I refused to – you know, I remember that was serious and I didn’t have a problem quitting drinking to sort of go along with doctors’ orders, but I was really concerned with… because I had to cancel the tour. So I wanted to make up those dates.

Stern: Right.

Slash: And that’s what got me through it, you know (laughs). And I was back on the road within months.

Someone: Because when you’re on coke or heroin - at least me - you can drink endlessly. And when I would go on a coke binge – see, I was bought into coke in my twenties, because it forced you to be social, cocaine. You were out, and that’s why it created more chaos. But heroin, you want to withdraw and be by yourself.

Slash: I’m an introvert by nature, so doing coke and socializing, it’s like, it’s okay, it makes it more… Like, I go out now and I realize why I did so many drugs; because I just can’t-

Stern: Stand being with people.

Slash: It’s boring. You know, I’m sitting in the bar, everybody’s talking, and I’m like, “This is why I used to drink.”

(Laughter)

Stern: Well, anyway. Hey, by the way, you were at Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral.

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: How did that… were you close with her?

Slash: I wouldn’t say “close.”  She was more of an acquaintance to me, but she was close to my wife.

Quivers: Oh!

Slash: And, you know, we didn’t know each other all that well, but… what’s the guy’s name?

Stern: Howard K. Stern.

Slash: Howard invited us, and Perla thought we should go, so we took off and went down there. And that was a real scene. Nicole’s mom was a real piece of work.

Quivers: Really?

Slash: Yeah. She showed up at the funeral – I guess it was about an hour to two hours late because she was at the courthouse still trying to win that-

Stern: Yeah.

Quivers: Yeah. The custody deal.

Slash: Yeah, yeah.

Stern: Pretty wild. Man, you’ve done it all. And you put it in a book.

Quivers: And you find yourself everywhere. Yeah (laughs).

Stern: Yes. And I gotta tell you something: it’s a great book.

Slash: Ah.

Stern: Good for you, man. Slash’s new book, “Slash,” in stores now. Check out Slash in Guitar Hero 3, by the way.

Slash: And Velvet Revolver’s got a new record out.  

Stern: Yeah, Velvet Revolver. And that thing is going well.

Slash: We’re touring. We’re just on a quick break. We’re going to Japan and Australia next month.

Quivers: Very nice.

Stern: Yeah, I can’t believe you got Scott Weiland under control.

Slash: He’s probably… he’s the angel in the band.

Stern: No kidding!

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: It’s unbelievable.

Slash: I wouldn’t call him an angel, but he’s doing really well.

Stern: Well, it’s great. It’s always great to see you.

Slash: It’s great to see you, too.

Stern: I love when you come in here. I love to sit and talk to you about your life. It’s fascinating.

Slash: All you guys. And I heard you were sick, so you might not be here. So I’m glad you’re here.

Quivers: Oh, I’m here. I’m not sick. Don’t believe the rumors.

Stern: No, she’s sick.

Someone: She’s the healthiest one in the room.

Quivers: (Laughs).

Stern: Right. That’s right. We will come back. Cousin Brucie is coming in - that’s a big deal in our world. We’ll be back right after these words. Thanks, Slash.
     
Slash: All right. Thank you.

Stern: Good luck with the book, man. You’re gonna do any of those book signings?

Slash: That’s what I’m here doing, as well.

Stern: Oh, you didn’t mention it.

Quivers: Oh, you did one last night.

Slash: Barnes and Noble the night before last. I did the Book Review in Long Island last night, and I’ve got New Jersey, I can’t remember the name of the store…

Stern: Today you’re appearing in New Jersey?

Slash: Tonight, yeah.

Stern: Tonight.

Slash: Yeah.

Stern: Alright, we’ll find that out. I’ll mention it. I’m sure a lot of people show up just to shake hands with you.

Slash: It’s been pretty cool. We haven’t… it’s moving some books, I guess. Just the editors are really into that, to, like, go and sign. It’s like, you know, record company people.

Stern: Yeah.

Quivers: (?)

Slash: I just thought it would be like, “The book is here, if you want it, take it,” you know. But they’re like, “No, we gotta sell some copies.”

Stern: Well, we’ll be back right after these words.

I think it's safe to assume, based also on what Slash says in his book, that the "contractual stuff" he's referring to here had to do with Axl's resignation letter on August 31, 1995 and the new or amended partnership agreement - whichever it was - that, presumably, would grant more control to Axl.

Slash had also alluded to it here:

Blackstar wrote:

And then, once we got in to start working on what would have been the next record, there was a lot of contractual stuff that Axl started throwing around, and that just was the icing on the cake.

The Howard Stern Show, November 1, 2007

I think it's safe to assume, based also on what Slash says in his book, that the "contractual stuff" he's referring to here had to do with Axl's resignation letter on August 31, 1995 and the new or amended partnership agreement - whichever it was - that, presumably, would grant more control to Axl.

Slash had also alluded to it here:

You know and then as far as Guns N' Roses is concerned, as of yesterday we've actually - I don't know - we've sort of concealed our contract so we're in working order as they say. […] Well...in contrast to everything that's been going on in the press, which I've been hearing a lot of, it's like "Guns is in the studio" or "Guns is this" or "Guns is that" or "I'm hanging up by handcuffs in a hotel room" [chuckling]. I mean, basically we've all been working and so now at this point we're actually going to formate [?] ourselves and get to work.

MTV Headbanger's Ball, August 1996

As you know, I haven't added a chapter on the resignation letter yet, and it deserves its own chapter. I guess I will come to sources soon where it will be described so I can add it.

Soulmonster wrote:

Blackstar wrote:

And then, once we got in to start working on what would have been the next record, there was a lot of contractual stuff that Axl started throwing around, and that just was the icing on the cake.

The Howard Stern Show, November 1, 2007

I think it's safe to assume, based also on what Slash says in his book, that the "contractual stuff" he's referring to here had to do with Axl's resignation letter on August 31, 1995 and the new or amended partnership agreement - whichever it was - that, presumably, would grant more control to Axl.

Slash had also alluded to it here:

You know and then as far as Guns N' Roses is concerned, as of yesterday we've actually - I don't know - we've sort of concealed our contract so we're in working order as they say. […] Well...in contrast to everything that's been going on in the press, which I've been hearing a lot of, it's like "Guns is in the studio" or "Guns is this" or "Guns is that" or "I'm hanging up by handcuffs in a hotel room" [chuckling]. I mean, basically we've all been working and so now at this point we're actually going to formate [?] ourselves and get to work.

MTV Headbanger's Ball, August 1996

As you know, I haven't added a chapter on the resignation letter yet, and it deserves its own chapter. I guess I will come to sources soon where it will be described so I can add it.

Or maybe it could be included in the ownership of GN'R chapter, as it's directly related to it.

But I'm afraid that there probably aren't many sources on it other than Slash and Duff's lawsuit, Slash's autobiography, and - vaguely - Axl's chats. Which reminds me of the misfortune of those court documents being lost.

Oh well, I will just wait then until I read Slash's book again, or come to Axl's chats.

He also says this in the interview which alludes to the contractual stuff that allowed Axl to continue with GN'R: