It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [25]
They had some gigs booked, though, and since Izzy and I had a lot in common and Axl seemed so unique, I decided I would stick it out for a while. After we’d played the Dancing Waters club and another gig so forgettable I can’t remember the name of the venue, any excitement I had about the band dwindled. I missed the next rehearsal. Axl called me after that. He could tell I was pulling back and asked me to please come to the next rehearsal. I reluctantly agreed.
Axl met me outside the rehearsal space to talk about my reservations.
“You have to be part of this,” he said. “Give it another chance.”
One thing I soon learned about Axl: if he saw something in a person, he would do everything possible to ensure that person remained part of his vision.
Part of my problem with the band was that I was skeptical about the commitment of Tracii and Rob, who both had comfortable suburban lives in L.A. I had already recognized a difference between people from L.A. and people who had moved there. Axl and Izzy were distinct even from other transplants—they were serious in a whole different way. Axl sometimes slept on the street back then. It was also clear that Izzy would do whatever it took, heroin habit or not. You can come with us or not, they seemed to say, but we’re going to make our way and realize our dream. I liked that. Still, I wasn’t sure how best to express this to Axl. I told him I just didn’t think that Rob and Tracii were cut out for going all in and sacrificing everything to work on their craft. Axl didn’t argue. We went inside.
During rehearsal I had an idea. I had been through the punk-rock crucible; I was used to sleeping on floors and doing anything else necessary to get my band out there. In my experience, conditions like that also offered a chance to see what your bandmates were really made of. A shake-out cruise could be just what Guns N’ Roses needed.
I pulled aside Axl and Izzy.
“Listen, how would you guys like to play some places beside fucking Dancing Waters in San Pedro?”
They nodded.
“If we’re going to play for three people,” I said, “let’s at least go do it other places.”
“Fuckin’-A,” said Izzy.
I could tell immediately that Izzy understood what I was up to—he had been through this before. He knew this was a way to test the links in a band and find the weak ones.
In the first wave punk bands I played in, we booked our own gigs, functioned as our own tour managers, handled our own dough, made our own concert T-shirts. The do-it-yourself ethic had been strong, and as a result I knew the nuts and bolts of the business. With some songs mastered and these local gigs under our belts, I knew I could use the contacts I’d accumulated over the years to line up some shows for the fledgling Guns N’ Roses—a punk-rock tour of the West Coast.
“I think I can book us a tour,” I said. “It’ll be bare-bones, but we’ll be out there playing.”
They loved the idea.
“Yeah, let’s do it!”
I was excited now, too: we would know by the end of this whether GN’R was the real deal or not. Punk-rock tours in those days ran on pure adventure and adrenaline. You counted yourself lucky if you earned enough to pay for gas and still had something left over to buy ramen noodles. You slept at a crash house if you could find one or on the club floor if the owner liked you. But none of that was important. The main thing was that it offered the chance to prove yourself, to push yourself beyond the confines of your comfort zone, to take music you believed in to other people’s towns, to throw all caution to the wind. Come to think of it, there was no caution in those days.
I was able to book us a string of dates, mostly in places I’d played with previous bands or been through while working briefly as a roadie for the Fastbacks. The first show would be a homecoming gig for me—a June 12 slot supporting the Fastbacks at the then new Seattle club called Gorilla Gardens. The rest of the dates were in little punk venues, communal houses, and squats down the coast back toward L.A. We would play 13th Precinct in Portland,