Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [38]
When we got to Austin for Woodshock, the base point for Tales of Terror, Tex and the Horseheads, the U-Men, and all the other assorted musicians that were hanging about was Chris Gates from Poison 13’s house. It was quite the rowdy party scene. The morning after we all hooked up, I remember being woken up by a cop knocking on my knee with his billy club. A majority of us were passed out across the street from Chris Gates’s house—in a funeral home parking lot, with various tarps and blankets thrown over us. A funeral procession was trying to get into the lot.
JOHN BIGLEY The plan was to tour out of Austin, but the only other show we did was Houston. All the other shows got canceled. That happened a lot in the mid–’80s: The venue would cease to be before you got there.
TOM PRICE You could barely call it a tour. It was more like a migration for the summer. A couple weeks after Woodshock, we’d have a show somewhere in Austin, so we’d just hang out until then. We’d find jobs and shoplift food from the 7-Eleven. We’d stay with other musicians, like the guys from Poison 13. That was a huge influence, seeing all these cool bands, which were Texas rock and roll but punk, too, definitely not fitting the hardcore mold.
CHARLIE RYAN In Austin, these people let us stay on their couches for weeks. They fed us and put us up, and it was a monthlong party for us—until they got sick of us. “When you goin’ home?” “Well, we’re broke, so we ain’t goin’ anywhere.” That was our excuse.
Finally, a few of them said, “We gotta get ’em out of town.” So some of the bands actually put on a show and gave us the money so we could put gas in the bus and leave.
TRACEY ROWLAND When the U-Men were in L.A. at the beginning of the tour, Larry couldn’t make it, so he talked me into going down—to keep ’em out of jail, I guess. So John’s girlfriend Val and I drove down in my 1964 Volkswagen Bug. The band’s bus was such a wreck that everywhere we went in L.A. during that week and a half, we went in this Bug.
So the band, Mike T., Val, and me are all crammed into this Volkswagen Bug, and we pulled into this gas station to get gas, and we all piled out of this Volkswagen. And there’s Duff McKagan!
DUFF MCKAGAN I was coming home from work, and I ran into them. I was living in a cockroach-infested single-room apartment. L.A. at the time was Quiet Riot, Ratt, some really terrible bands. In L.A., Guns N’ Roses was considered a punk-rock band. We were huddled in this corner of Hollywood, snapping viciously at any gig we could get.
JOHN BIGLEY Tom goes, “That’s fucking Duff!” There’s this fuckin’ wanker wearing a bullet belt, with his pants tucked into his cowboy boots. His hair is all teased out and long and crazy. You know, Hollywood butt-rocker guy. “Duff, what’s goin’ on? Look at you, man!”
He goes, “Got this band goin’. It’s goin’ really well.”
“What’s it called?”
He sighs. “It’s the singer’s name …” He whispered it: “It’s called Guns N’ Roses.” Yeah, he was embarrassed. He used to be in a band called the Vains, man. Guns N’ Roses?! “The singer is calling himself Axl.”
Guns N’ Roses. Axl. We’re all laughin’. “Wow, how magnificent!” I go, “That sounds like fuckin’ shit. Good luck with that, you freak.” But he was super good-natured about it.
The band laughed about it for a couple of days. “Duff’s doing metal!”
Then, fuck, two years later: “Welcome to the jungle!”
CHRIS HANZSEK We tried to make Deep Six a post-hippie, communal “Let’s make a record we all love” compilation. The compilation was inspired mostly by Jeff and Mark in Green River. I think they might’ve even first mentioned it to me, like, “Hey, what do you think of this idea?” And then right away I loved the idea, and my girlfriend Tina agreed to be the general financier.
TINA CASALE (C/Z Records label/Reciprocal Recording studio cofounder) I first met Chris