1992.06.06 - Fully Illustrated Book & Interview Disc (Slash)

When does the Metallica dates start?

The Metallica dates start, given the exact date, I'm not sure, but they start in July.

Ok, so it's like you have some time off before…

We have ten days off.

What will you do when you have ten precious days off?

I might go and do a session. I like just to work all the time, so if there's no session to be had then I'll probably go off on week-long trip somewhere… Where there's some sun or something.

A great relaxing day for you is if you just can pick up the guitar and work on something?

Yeah, if I can get up in the morning, Tom here will call me and tell me there's such and such and such to do and then I have something to look forward to. Dead time just kills me.

Are you so used to having all the days planned that it makes it rough to know what to do?

Yeah, I don't know what to do with a day-off… Sitting around getting drunk all day.

Do you like living in your home?

No, it's too lethargic. But I just moved out of my house anyway. So I've been staying in hotels.

What about the animals. How do you get someone to watch all those animals you have?

They're not supposed to watch 'em. They're just there. I have two friends of mine that come in and take care of them. Feed 'em and buy the food and all that.

You're just in town to do some stuff and then you're going back to… where?

Right now? I'm gonna go back to the hotel room from which I came. [laughs] And I will hang out in the bar. There's a friend of mine down there, this guy from Ireland that I met. So I'm gonna hang out with him.

Does people come over and just start to talk with you.

It happens, a lot. Especially in a bar situation, because everyone lose their insecurity at bars I guess.

Do they ask you about the music?

The cool people that you hang out with don't even know what band you're in. Which is great. They just come over and start talking. So you don't even talk about your band.

What would you like to talk with somebody about?

I don't usually see people out to talk to. So when they come over it's whatever they want to talk about. I'm not like a half-ass psychologist or something [laughs].

Now looking back at the albums that are out. I was listening to the all the records this afternoon. There's so much stuff. I was listening to all the different guitar sounds and all the different things you play. Are you constantly playing guitar?

I don't play when I'm sitting around in the hotel. I'm not one of those people that practice, like working on speed and picking technique and all that kind of stuff. I like to go out and jam at clubs. Like given date that something's happening. And even when we're on the road I do that. And then I do sessions. When we're touring we are playing so much that I get to play a hell of a lot and I got a lot of space within the confines of the material. Plus in between songs.

When you're working with the stuff on both the records, will a lyric of Axl's set you off as far as what way the guitar is going to go. Or does it work the other way sometimes too?

To tell you the truth, that stuff's all so natural, I never gave much thought. I know one song in particular, "Patience," where Axl hits a certain vocal that gives me chills, and it affects my playing, when that goes by. And it happens every single night when we play it. It might be a spontaneous moment in the evening when he'll say the right thing, or he'll sing the right way, to just make my guitar go crazy. Make my playing go crazy. But otherwise I'm not really looking for it. It has to come out of nowhere.

Are you surprised ever when you listen back and think: "Where DID that come from?"

Are you talking about live stuff or studio stuff?

Studio stuff.

I don't listen to the stuff.

Never?

No, I mean, I hear it on the radio, and we play every night. There's no reason for me to sit down and put the CD in and… So when we were rehearsing with Gilby, when Gilby first came in the band, I had to listen to stuff just to help him along and go through the material. Because you don't think about it and you don't realize now how you played it. And so I have to look back and figure it out. But otherwise, no.

When you play the stuff onstage, do you consciously trying to change things just for live performances and give people something different? Or does the same solos sort of come back?

Well, the melody solos come back, the ones that you wrote right after that when the song is going along, the first thing that came to mind. Those are usually pretty close to the same every night. Then the other stuff, where you just went in and blazed, and there was no thought involved… it's just for the moment. I don't think I ever do those solos the same way twice.

What do you have to do before you go onstage? Is it just a really natural thing for you?

For me… I don't know, a couple of drinks, work my muscles out or work on the guitar for a little bit. And… just hang out!

Is it tense… I mean, now that you've gotten so notorious that…

No, we're very good at maintaining our sort of like: "We're Guns and this is the way we do things" status. And so, we're very relaxed because we're in our own environment. I mean, we're just tense anyway. When the thing comes into town, it's tense. It's just a tense thing. And so, we're happy in that tense sort of surrounding. It's like the other people I worry about, the people that I don't work with us on daily basis, I feel sorry for [laughs].

I just heard a press release about when you played at Rose Bowl. Every minute after midnight they get 4000 extra dollars.

After we played Pasadena, we're all moving there [laughs].

Now, the thought of doing big stadiums, is it… Do you, like, approach these dates any differently? Or is a show a show?

You have to approach the production a bit differently, because, as far as sound goes, it's really important to us to sound right onstage, in order for us to do the show the way we wanna do. We have to hear things correctly, so we have to anticipate the difference between a stadium and an arena, you have to prepare for that. Otherwise you, attitude-wise and show-wise is the same. It's more stage to fill. So it's great for us, 'cause we're into it.

When you're onstage and things are really clicking, are you always aware of the audience, or does the band sort of become it's own sort of entity?

I think everybody's different. I think Axl's a hell of a lot more aware of the people he's playing for, then I am per say, I'm more concentrating on my guitar. But everybody in the band, it's anonymous, after the song's done, the reaction from the crowd, everybody has to deal with it. But during the show it's like, if you look over, yeah, but I'm usually playing. It's a sea of people. I only keep the hair out of my face and do my thing. For Duff, I don't know. Everybody's got their individual scenario of what dealing with the crowd is like.

Are you very much aware of each other onstage?

Are you kidding? At the speed that we're running? Yeah, I'm very aware of everybody and where they are and where I'm gonna go. Like if I'm gonna jump off this, if he's gonna move then I'm gonna land on him, you know, it's pretty complicated.

Even as far as… can you sense where Axl's gonna go in a song?

Yeah. It's very unpredictable what we're gonna do, but at the same time there's a chemistry, where, since we've been on the road for so long, like Axl knows I'm gonna be in a certain place 'cause I know the guitar sounds good there. It's a sweet-spot, we call it. It's just certain places in certain songs when you know you need to be somewhere and you fall into sort of a regiment. Knowing that I have to switch guitars or I'm gonna have to get feedback or something. The rest of the time is just aimless wandering [laughs].

Is there any room for plain old fun? Like, I can do this and that's really gonna take Axl by surprise, or it's gonna take someone else by surprise.

The whole show's like that. The only things that you really concentrate on are musical integrity, like it's not a joke when you're playing. That's the first and foremost priority. Then, the other thing is making sure you don't hurt somebody else in the band [laughs]. The rest of the time we can do whatever. But, you do have to concentrate and it's weird because you have to concentrate within the confines of, like having a great time. So, it's like a constant tug-of-war. You lose it all together, but then you sort of keeps your feet on the ground, just by knowing you have to pay attention to these things. Because if you fuck that up, you're gonna fuck the show up.

There's gotta be a catenation between the guitar and this, the rhythm section coming in?

No, that one we have pretty much down, I think. The only problem we have is the guitar being too loud.

So everybody's trying to turn Slash down all the time?

Not everybody. It happens.

Will it be any different for you playing with the television cameras all around?

We've done it. Countless times at this point. And we have a documentary crew that's been out the whole time. So, we're used to it. And we have those video screens on either side of the stage. So, there's camera guys around all the time. You just sort of face them out, you know.

Is it kind of put you in a weird frame of mind? Since, it's stopped bothering you. On a normal day-to-day basis, if you're not on the road or something. If there were somebody following you all the time…

I couldn't handle that.

But, is it like sort of a different sort of…

No, it's just when you're on the road there's a certain kind of headspace that you're in, you know? The paparazzi stuff and the video stuff, and fans and this and that . It goes with the territory. You know, so you sort of learn to just roll with it. When you're at home, if somebody came up to you with a video cam and started following you around, you probably kick his ass, you know?

It's like you start doing things just for the sake of doing things?

No, never do that. That's the thing we've always tried to maintain. Is that just the way the band is and the fact that we do what we wanna do because we wanna do it. And, although the business really tries to take you in another direction, we've been, you know, kelp, you know. Sort of holding in there. Like flying, going back and forth. But maintaining our ground, you know?

Do you feel like these things that stick to the…

Barnacles? [laughs] It's true though. We hold fast to where we come from and like I said, integrity, as far as the band's concerned. So, it's hard. I mean, we get pulled in all different directions and potentially they're trying to get us to sort of move over a little bit and to conform just the slightest bit, to make things easier. But we wont do that. So we wear really, really heavy boots.

It's funny how things work so well, the way that Guns N' Roses goes through life and makes albums, that people still trying think that they have a better idea.

I don't think that everybody got that figured out. I mean, it's obvious it's only gotten more mixed up. The only thing that is really, really secure is the relationship between the members of the band and with the people that we work with. So, we all know what we're doing. When we come to town, it's just like this fucking storm that comes in, takes over the building, it's like our building today. [laughs] And we do things our way.

One of the guys in Motley Crue were saying how, from when they started until things got big, got really good and they hit big time, and they realized that they had grown up in the band pretty much. Grow up with the same guys around you. And you grew up as a band member. They realized that they really didn't know how to be a grown up in the world. Like it was hard to switch gears.

I don't know what Motley Crue does, as far as that goes. When out first long tour ended, it was really emotionally distressing for me to try and differentiate between what I'd been doing and then try to be home. 'Cause I didn't want to be there. And so, growing up in a so called society, which obviously means nothing to me anyway. That was a really, really hard transition. It wasn't that I wanted to grow up in it all, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I wanted to leave. And I was forced to have try and figure that one out. I'm sure it's different for everybody.

Are you happiest when you're doing some thing as Slash, guitar player of Guns N' Roses?

It's better then me doing it as Mick Mars from Motley Crue [laughs].

Is that when you're most comfortable?

Me from Guns N' Roses?

Yeah.

See, I've never been me from Guns N' Roses. I'm just in the band as part of the band. I'm not like some sort of character. People might see me as being that, but for me personally, I do Guns N' Roses, 'cause I've never looked at it from the other end. So, I don't think of myself as Slash from Guns N' Roses when I'm dealing with the other guys. I don't think any of the other guys do either. That's family. So, when I'm walking around, I'm not thinking about it in that sense.

When did you start playing guitar?

When I was 15.

I thought you started much earlier. What made you finally pick up the instrument?

I don't know. I grew up around music and stuff and I knew what I liked and what I didn't like, you know? I didn't know what the instrument was. I knew what a guitar was, but I didn't know anything about it. I just knew what the Who sounded like. And so when I went to go started, it was because our old drummer, Steven Adler had a guitar. He put a Kiss record on and took the guitar. He would just bang on it. And that gave me a hard-on.

But before that? There was a lot of music in your house.

All the time, yeah. But I never tried to sit down and figure out what a mandolin was. Or, who played bass. Whatever, I was the same kind of fan that I am now, where I didn't sit down and try to analyze it. It just felt great.

So when you started playing, was it just…

When I started playing I never approached it from the technical aspect of it. So I was never intimidated by trying to learn like a Van Halen lick or anything like that. So it happened a lot quicker for me then a lot of other people. Because those ambitions do get in the way of what you're doing.

So were you just, like from the very beginning, just sitting and working on your own stuff?

I did sit down, like if there was something I really liked, a melody or something, I would sit down and learn it, but for the most part I just wrote, man, shit, you know.

So were you writing lyrics too?

Yeah, at the time, yeah.

It seems that you're not doing much of lyrics.

I had to write my lyrics 'cause I hadn't any singer. When I found a singer, it's like, "cool, you can do that." [laughs]

So, you don't miss writing lyrics?

Not really. I've really never been that much of a verbal expressionist, or vocal expressionist.

You let the guitar do the talking.

Something like that. You said it, I didn't [laughs].

When you started, were you trying to sound bluesy?

I just started playing what it was that I liked. So, I didn't think about it. The music that I was influenced by, that I liked, so I went naturally in that direction. If there was something I didn't like but it had some amazing guitar play in, I wasn't interested.

So now when you would go back and listen to the great guitar player…

I still listen to the same stuff I was listening to.

The Becks?

There's only one Beck. I still listen to Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page and Rory Gallagher. There's a bunch of them. They're still like the mainstays for me 'cause I haven't heard anybody else doing it better.

You mentioned that all the people that you're doing sessions with, everybody from Stevie Wonder coming up and Michael Jackson…

The Simpsons.

And the Simpsons right. [laughs]

Where the hell did that come from [laughs].

I think it was the married-with-children connection… I know what it was, your on the Spinal Tap record and they were on the Simpsons.

That's the most Spinal Tappish itself. Ok, I can understand that.

There's like some real loose thread there. When somebody calls you up and says, "Come down and play."

Very rarely does anybody call me and says, "Come down and play!" It's usually some sort of relationship I have with somebody. Most of these people I know, that I've played with. There's been, like the Michael Jackson thing, that was the one phone call and everything else it's just people I know, or I've come in contact with. You know, like we go and have a beer and then jam some day, It'll be on tape [laughs].

What was the jazz festival like, with Carole King?

That was fun. A hell of a lot of fun. A very different crowd. I've never played, I swear to God, it looked like springbreak. Everybody had like fluorescent orange and pink and blue caps on, shorts. It was wild. I've never played in front of a crowd like that. The crowd was really responsive and I went up and played three songs. And of them was the one I recorded with her and "Chains," which is an old song, and "Locomotion" with Aaron Neville singing. So I was like: "Wow." I was up there with no shoes, no shirt, leather pants, sunglasses. Like: "It's summertime, we're in New Orleans." It was fun. I didn't rehearse anything. Just went up there and winged it, as they say.

With Aaron Neville. What an inspiring voice.

Oh God, it was amazing.

--- now follows a one-and-a-half-minute long segment in the interview where Slash and the interviewer jokes around, and it is really hard to hear what they are saying, so I've cut that out. But they don't say anything important ---

I was listening to the banjo open on… I guess "Breakdown"…

"Breakdown," yeah.

Did you have to learn things…

I just had this idea that it should sound like that, so I tuned it like a guitar [laughs]. I don't know how to play banjo, are you kidding? I was in bed, sitting there trying to figure it out.

So it worked.

Yeah.

How do the arrangements come together? 'Cause there's so many really interesting…

Oh God. Every single song has a different story, from the most, like, really quickly written, simple arrangement, to songs that took forever to write, because our attention as band are pretty short., just like the average kid, I suppose. Like "November Rain" took forever just to get it into a certain however many minute format. I mean, it was like 20 minutes long when we first started playing it, and rehearsing it. And this was like more then two or three years ago. And we hadn't much time to get it together 'cause we were on the road. So, that one, finally we… just focused on it and made it to what it is. Like "Coma," I just wrote all the music from one end to the other. I don't know how, it was just the way I heard it... that arrangement. Axl adapted the lyrics to that. "Locomotive," which is a long… I'm thinking about the long ones. That was something that was, in order to fit the lyrics in, we take a little time out of here and time out of there to make the lyrics fit. "Your Could Be Mine." We wrote that during "Appetite…" and the arrangement never changed really. They're all different and it's hard to pin-point anyone particular scenario for an arrangement.

It's a hard process…

When it gets real hard, you don't wanna deal with it, 'cause you've burned out on it. If you hear something and it's inspiring, you go like: "Wait, wait. Ok, I know" and you hear it. That's one thing. But if you sit there and you like, drum it out over and over again, and it keeps getting to the same spot and you're not going anywhere, just let it along, 'cause it'll make you crazy and it wont make you wanna get involved with doing the song again later on.

Do you do "Coma" live?

Yeah. We don't do it that often. We just played it in Japan recently. It was really cool. It just comes out every so often.

It's such a powerful song.

We've opened with it a couple of times. [laughs] What the hell?

Wow.

"We're in a bad mood today, let's open with 'Coma.'"

When you're in a real good mood, what do you open with?

"Jungle" or "Nightrain."

As the show is going along, and things change, do the setlist get thrown out of the window?

We haven't had one. We haven't used a setlist in the last year.

So, who decides…?

After we've played one song and everything blacks out, we go: "What do you wanna do?" "I'm not ready for that." "Well, let's do this." "Ok, ok." Switch guitars and stuff for the following tune that we all decided on. Then after that song's over, we go back: "What do you wanna do?" "Should we do this now?" "Should we do that now?" It's really spontaneous.

What a nice refreshing thought.

Well, it's great when it works. But, when it doesn't work, it's equally bad, you know.

So it doesn't work when you can't decide?

You can't decide, or you might throw in an odd one that we haven't played in a while, and maybe everyone not knows it.

Or everybody thinks they know it. And it changes a bit, which still makes it good.

If you say so. [laughs]

Is it strange to think that where you find out all these things, and people know so many things about you, is it odd to think that there are just, like millions of kids out there that know, I bet they know you have snakes, or know who you are?

The whole thing's been really weird. I mean, I had like… When it starts to hit you on a personal level, you know, when it starts to come out, then all of a sudden, reality of you don't have any real privacy, and all that. That's strange realization to have to try and grasp. I don't complain about it too much. I've been complaining about it a lot lately because it's really just hit me recently. Like in the last couple of months. Where the band's been big for a long time, but I just never put myself in that... saw myself in that light. As being any kind of, you know, pseudo-celebrity type. And so this just really hit me in the face recently. It was sort of a chock, because it hit me really hard. It was just like: "Fuck, I can't really do this, I can't go there." You have to think about what you're doing when you walk out the door. That kinda shit.

Did something happen?

Just a bunch of shit that all happened at once.

And it made you realize…

It's always when you've been on the road for a while and you come home and you don't think that's anything's different, and you find out that it really is. I mean, you don't walk around the streets going: "Somebody's looking at me." So, when you find out that you're walking down the street, not thinking that people are calling other people and saying where you were. I mean, that's like a morbid fucking situation to be in. And like I said, I don't usually complain about it, because, you know, everything I've been through has been a small price to pay for what I get away with, you know. But then to find that I don't really get away with anything. [laughs] That's what pissed me off. [laughs]

Do you read any of the thousands of articles or reviews…

I don't read anything. Why? Why bother?

Are you aware of the image, what people think of… I mean, you're definitely a band that does everything their own way and… I mean, does the whole thing seem like: "Yeah, part of it's right, but it's…"

Well, you know, certain things come out, people makes you aware of certain articles or, I go to get some cigarettes. You know, from a newsstand, and I see a cover with my face on, and go "ok." Then you feel like a real idiot, 'cause the guy selling you the cigarettes is looking at you looking at yourself in a magazine. I mean, he knew who you were when you were walking up there to get the cigarettes. Which you try and walk in like you're just anybody. And you'll flip through it. But I've never do anything but look at the pictures. [laughs] I mean, who's got time to sit there and read like a page of garbage, on some band, you know. The Guitar Player ones I'll read. That's it. Axl's Rolling Stone cover, because I knew what a big deal that was. That was something I read. Every so often that you have a series article that you do… an interview that you do that you vent out a lot of stuff, personal stuff. So you gonna see how that come out. But for the most part, no, I don't read anything.

What did you think of the Rolling Stone cover story?

Axl's?

Yeah.

I was just glad he got it off his chest. He had a lot going on and… I mean, to do it in Rolling Stone… I think he really needed that Rolling Stone has. Which is a hell of lot of people, a lot of different… sides of the spectrum, as far as people go. It was great for him to do that, because people really misunderstand him. So it's cool. For me, I could say anything. [laughs] I mean, it's a different kind of scene. I mean, I don't usually get that serious, you know, regardless of how serious things are. It's hard for me to sit down that long and share it with anybody else.

--- now follows a 10 second long segment in the interview where Slash and the interviewer jokes around, and it is really hard to hear what they are saying, so I've cut that out. But they don't say anything important ---

I was actually going to mention this guy I was hanging out with in the bar today, who was just hilarious. He's an Irish guy. I forgot to mention him. I told him to listen to the radio. He's probably pissed.

We'll put him in. Is he a new friend?

Yeah, his name is Mike. He's a musician and plays, like wind instruments in sort of a off the wall orchestra, form of type thing, for plays and movie soundtracks and all that stuff. I sat there and listened to some of his stories that, in their own way, were, like, amazingly similar to mine. Anyway, but he's an Irish guy. He get up and physically makes his jokes and stuff. He's hilarious.

I was amazed that you've never played Paris before.

I was amazed that we've never played Paris before.

How'd that happen?

I don't know. We just kept going back to Texas. That's all I can remember. Like, Texas. Texas is great. But there's all these places that we haven't played. I actually wanted to play Hawaii. 'Cause we've never played there. It's a lot of places that we haven't been to. Now that we're headlining, we actually have control about where we play. So there was a lot of speculating about where we were gonna go that we hadn't been before, and we just played Oklahoma. The option was Oklahoma or Texas. I was like: "Why would we go back to Texas?" We've never been to Oklahoma. Which turned out to be a really good gig. I guess you have to pay attention to that stuff, 'cause you can fall into a pattern and just go around in a circle.

I think of you as one of the touringest band…

Somehow that seems funny. [laughs] I was watching MTV, like, I think it was yesterday. I was flipping through channels, because I'm not part of the MTV on-ins, and flipping through channels, and I see my face on TV and in side of this news thing that they were doing. They go: "Band on this marathon tour." I was like: "Marathon tour?" OK, well we're gonna go out for two years. But, we're gonna stop home for six months. [laughs] I mean, some bands just tour every single day, for a really long period of time. We go out in these big chunks and we come home for a couple of weeks and go back out. You know, come home for a month and go back out, you know.

Makes it easier to deal with…

Well, you start to loose perspective. Because, like I said, since we don't do the same show every night and because every show is really seriously hear-felt, we don't go on and fake it. We just go up there and go through the motions. Every gig is like emotionally and physically straying, you know. So, you have to keep that motivation together. So you stop for a little bit and then turn around and go back on and keep it all fresh, and when it starts to get old, stop a little bit and…

When you get off the stage, do you have to go out and…

No. See, that's my problem. We're all individuals. Everybody has their own way of dealing with it. Mine happens to be like, as soon as we get off, I have to keep the pace up, or it drives me crazy. I think I'm addicted to it, more or less. It's like a drug for me. 'Cause I'm really depressed when I realize that I'm not going anywhere. Whereas some of the guys really like to come home and just hang out and quiet down for a while. So it's an individual thing.

You're gone. [laughs]

I've been gone. [laughs]

Been gone for all these years.

Yeah.

Before you went in to do the two albums, did you always knew it was gonna turn into two?

That was on of the these things that we we're gonna do that certain amount of material. And that was just the way that we were gonna do it. And it was a matter of trying to figure out a system… We didn't wanna put out a double record. Like, Guns N' Roses second album is like 50 dollars. [laughs] Like: "Who the fuck do we think we are?" So, that was my little thing, we do one with one color cover and another color on one. And you can pick and choose.

Does it seem like one record to you? Or does it seem like two real different…

To tell you the truth, I don't even think about it. We set up the order of the songs for each one and just said: "OK."

Go for it.

I think we had the whole band write up their personal list of what they thought the order would be and then we all came together with one, were we sort of put them together and came up with one.

Did it vary much at the beginning?

Oh yeah. Kidding? [laughs] It's funny now when I think of that.

Like, they had nothing in common. There's no rhyme or reason here.

Somehow we came up with a master list.

When everybody's together in the band, is someone in charge of thing's moving along?

We all have our own particular little things that we do. You know, that we do best. Like, on a creative level, having to do what the band is doing, it's really between Duff and Axl and I. Because none of the other guys are actually original. Although Matt's come in and we sit down and listen to what he has to say about stuff. You know, Axl has his thing and I more or less like, the day-to-day stuff because I'm always there. Like: "Give me something to do!" So I get into that. Duff has his thing and we just fall into it naturally so there's not a lot of debating as to who does what.

You like to keep your hands in everything that's going on.

Hands, feet. [laughs]

All body parts just thrown in and making contact at all time. When the various personnel changes happened, was it easy to adjust to the new members, or?

Well, we were lucky. I mean, for all the so-called hardships that we've been through and obstacles that have been thrown at us, that we had to bury to get us through, we were lucky in the sense that the biggest obstacles that we had to deal with were trying to find someone to fit into the band. And then, both happened really quickly. So it was just another obstacle thrown our way and that's a big test that we have to deal with on a constant basis. We don't know why and it's really screwed and we wine all the time and when the line-up changes happened it was like: "Oh great." You know, and the new members, Matt and Gilby came really quickly and fit in really well and it was really natural. I was like: "Ok, I'm gonna take that for granted."

Does it seems sometimes that things are getting thrown at you?

Oh, constantly. I mean, to the point where every time my phone rings, my heart starts beating. It's like, all depends on the tone of the voice on the other end. Like: "What's wrong?" 'Cause I'm totally gun-shy anyway. Like: "What? What you're gonna tell me? Is it bad?" I mean, it's constant.

Like somebody says something and you say: "What's wrong?"

Yeah.

Not: "What's right?"

Yeah. I mean, I'm a total optimist but to answer the phone and go: "What's right?" is not my first reaction. [laughs]