It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [30]
Izzy shared my horror at big, huge, overwrought “heavy metal” drum kits. He and I made sure there was never a second kick drum anywhere in sight, regardless of where we rehearsed. Together we began plotting to hide parts of Steven’s own drum kit, too. Every time poor Steven would show up at band practice, the kit got progressively smaller, until he was left with only the bare essentials—the setup that would allow him to hone his signature sound and influence modern rock drummers a few short years later. Without a second bass drum, his frenetic speed-metal beat was cut in half and instead he and I could lock in and create a groove.
During those first rehearsals, the five of us started working up a new song together based on some lyrics I had brought with me in a notebook from Seattle. The song became “Paradise City,” and it started to gel in those few days before our Troubadour show and the trip up to Seattle.
On Thursday, June 6, we played our first live show with the Appetite for Destruction lineup. The bill at the Troubadour included Fineline, Mistreater, and, at the very bottom, Guns N’ Roses. Slash’s high school friend Marc Canter—he turned out to be part of the family that ran Canter’s Deli—came and shot pictures. He made prints of each of us the next day so we’d have head shots to put up in the places we played on our tour. That was Friday.
On Saturday, June 8, 1985, Izzy, Axl, Slash, Steven, and I got together to set out for Seattle, a happy bunch of malcontents about to hit the road in search of rock-and-roll glory, ready to live by our wits in order to prove ourselves and our musical vision—or not. At the very least we thought we had real musical chemistry. That much was obvious even before the tour started.
A friend of ours named Danny had a huge Buick LeSabre with a powerful 455 big-block V-8 engine and a trailer hitch. Seven of us crammed into the car that Saturday afternoon: the five of us in the band, plus Danny and another friend, Joe-Joe, who had signed up to serve as roadies. These guys would go to the mat for us, really solid friends, and we were glad they, too, had not blinked an eye in the face of the uncertainties of a no-budget road trip. We rented a U-Haul trailer to carry our gear behind the LeSabre. Our plan was to drive straight through to Seattle—it would take something like twenty-one hours—and arrive there at some point on Sunday. My buddy Donner was going to let us crash at his house the first few nights before our show that Wednesday.
As we rose up out of the “Grapevine,” a writhing section of Interstate 5 just south of Bakersfield, California, the car started to hiccup and cough and rebel against the weight it had to shoulder in the blazing late-afternoon heat of the San Joaquin Valley. By the time we passed Bakersfield, a mere 105 miles out of L.A., Danny’s car up and died. A passing motorist stopped and tried to help, but the best he could do for us was to go to the next gas station and call AAA. The hope of grilling burgers the next evening in Donner’s backyard quickly faded with the realization that Danny’s car was going nowhere at all until it had some major work.
We were broke, hungry, and sweltering, hunkered down on the side of the highway. Dusk slowly descended but the heat didn’t break. When the tow truck showed up, the mechanic was a bit put off to find a whole gang of sweaty, skinny rock guys who wanted to ride in his truck. We ended up walking to the next off-ramp, where there was a truck stop and gas station.
At that point, removed from the whizzing cars, we took stock of the situation. It was the middle of the night. We had thirty-seven dollars between us. If we went back to L.A., we would obviously not be doing this tour. That was not an option, regardless of our current dilemma. We decided that the