It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [48]
After I hung up the phone, I trudged the last few blocks to the rehearsal place. Normally I would be happy to see any of my bandmates or the few friends we had. This time I was hoping to find something—anything—that could help me take the edge off of the plummeting feeling I was going through. Pills, Night Train, maybe even some coke. Or all of those things together.
When I rounded the corner into our alleyway, the sun hit me dead straight in my eyes. I let out an audible groan of shock and pain. The door to our space was open a little bit and luckily Joe-Joe and Del were there with some Night Train. After gulping down an entire bottle by myself, I told those guys what I had been up to.
“Shit, dude,” said Joe-Joe when I had finished. “I have a little bit of money on me. I’ll go get some more booze.”
He took off down to the corner liquor store. That was the thing about our inner circle. We would do anything we could for one another. We did not judge one another. We just had one another’s backs.
I settled down a little bit after that first bottle. Being in our little rehearsal space helped, too—it was a safe haven. The dingy floor with the old brown carpet was filthy, but it was our filth. The amps that lined the wall were worn, but they were the only sure bet we had to be heard musically. These amps were our sound. The loft was only six feet high, so anything up there—whether it was a guitar case or a naked girl—was easily accessible. This was our refuge. And our friends were there for me.
Joe-Joe came back with a big paper grocery bag of alcoholic fortifications and my crack-cocaine crash faded into the past, just another experience to tally up. I would end up doing crack many more times, but I was never as ill-prepared as I was the first time with Phillipe.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Just as the record label frenzy around us was heating up, some fallout from our Gardner space partying hit us. The cops busted down our door one night looking for Axl. They wanted him to answer what turned out to be a bogus rape charge. Our days became numbered there at Gardner. Axl didn’t do the crime (or time), but the incident inspired a great song, “Out to Get Me,” which we quickly added to our sets in early 1986. You can hear the depth of our collective anguish in that song, shitting ourselves that the record labels might get wind of the situation and break off their courtship: “You can’t catch me, I’m fuckin’ innocent!”
Axl avoided the storage space for weeks—eluding capture until the charges were dropped—and the news didn’t get out that our singer was looking at jail time. Everybody took us out for meals—different management companies, all the labels. The swank restaurants where people had business lunches weren’t just a side of L.A. I hadn’t seen; they were a side of life I hadn’t ever experienced—well, except in the bowels of the establishments where I worked as a dishwasher and later a baker.
I called Kim from the Fastbacks after a few of these outings, trying to adjust to the idea of being pursued for a record contract.
“It’s weird,” I told her. “These guys, men in business suits, take us out for lunch. You can order anything you want.”
They didn’t take us to Spago. We weren’t worth that much, and we were also pretty filthy. I remember going to meet David Geffen at his office. As we were hanging out in the lobby, employees coming and going didn’t realize we were a band—they thought we were street people.
After a while we asked to go to the same place as often as possible, a place up on Sunset at the edge of Beverly Hills called Hamburger Hamlet. I never had a hamburger there, but they had a full bar.
Despite all these meetings, I was nervous when it came time to finalize a deal. I deemed myself more experienced than the other guys, having been through this once before, albeit with a tiny indie label. But I was out of my league. I didn’t fully understand the business. In fact, I didn’t really understand it at all. I wasn’t even going to pretend that I could handle a deal like this.
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