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By Root 1085 0

sporadically because they still didn’t have beds anywhere else, though I was actually moving in the opposite direction on the personal front. After a period without an exclusive relationship, I started to see a girl named Mandy. She was in a band called the Lame Flames. By spring 1987, as Guns was finishing the record, Mandy and I moved in together. Our apartment became an oasis of stability not just for me and Mandy, but for people around me—like Todd Crew. His band, Jetboy, had just signed a major-label deal. Whenever people needed to find Todd—his band, their management, his family—they called my number. Now that I had an actual phone instead of having to use a pay phone, I was also able to call home a lot more. I talked to my mom frequently, excited to tell her about Mandy and the foundation I seemed to be building with her. For the first time since Stacy, I feel as if I am in a relationship with long-term potential, Mom. I talked to Big Jim a lot more, too. He had continued to write me, always managing to track down my latest address as I lived like a nomad during those two years since the trip up to Seattle for GN’R’s ill-fated shake-out tour. Jim confided in me during some of those long conversations that he was thinking of moving down to L.A. I was psyched at the prospect of having another solid friend around.

Once the Appetite sessions were over, we needed another outlet as we waited for all the peripheral stuff to get done—the record wouldn’t be released until July. Axl, Izzy, and Slash went to New York to sit in on the mixing process. I started playing rhythm guitar in a side band called Drunk Fux, just screwing around with various friends.

One afternoon Todd was sitting in my apartment when my phone rang. Jetboy’s manager was on the line. I handed the phone to Todd. The conversation didn’t last long. Todd looked devastated as he hung up.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“They just kicked me out.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m no longer the bass player in Jetboy. They fired me.”

“What? That’s all he said?”

“He said they decided I drink too much and hang out with the Guns N’ Roses guys too much.”

Todd was absolutely crestfallen. The payoff for several years of hard work had suddenly been jerked away from him at the last minute.

At the time I was royally pissed off at Jetboy. In essence, they fired Todd for being too fucked up. It ruined the camaraderie we had with that band. Unfortunately we would face a similarly heartbreaking situation within our own band in a few short years.

For the short term, Todd joined Drunk Fux, which now consisted of him on bass, me on rhythm guitar, Steven Adler on drums, Del singing, and West Arkeen on lead guitar.

Then I realized I hadn’t heard from Jim in quite a few days. I couldn’t seem to reach him, so I started calling a few other Seattle people to see what the story was. But then my phone rang. It was Jim’s girlfriend. She was crying. Jim had died of a heroin overdose. At first I didn’t understand. He wrote me letters. He sent me pictures. He was coming down to L.A. Now he was dead. Oh, god. My heart sank. It felt as if something inside me had been ripped out.

Why didn’t you move to L.A. before this happened, Jim?

I flew home for Jim’s funeral in Seattle. All my old feelings about heroin came flooding back: Joe Toutonghi, who had urged me to get out of town three years prior, spoke at Jim’s funeral—and as he eulogized yet another overdose victim, Joe himself was clearly nodding out. Seeing my old friend and roommate Eddy again at the funeral, I was really scared he might be next. It was clear he was what people called a “to die” junkie. The kind who just couldn’t stop no matter what—only death would break the habit of a “to die” junkie.

But there was no time to hunker down and reflect on the macabre events. Guns N’ Roses was on our way to London. The gig came about because of our Live! Like a Suicide EP, released six months before, in December 1986. The EP was a fast and furious collection of songs, two originals and two covers. At the time we were relieved