It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [60]
To be fair to the audiences, what they were picking up was correct: much as I respect metal, we didn’t fit the bill musically. We wanted to be different. After all, Steven had only one bass drum. And while Axl sang in a high voice much of the time, he wasn’t operatic. His howl was pure, unadulterated rage and anguish, not a vocal exercise; clearly, the first time that sound came out of him, it had come from the pit of his stomach. Oh, and also we didn’t write songs about elves and demons and shit—unless, of course, you considered Mr. Brownstone a demon.
All five of us were still sleeping in one tour bus, and we salaried ourselves $125 a week. Most of that went back to L.A. to pay rent; I probably had $20 a week for walking-around money. It felt like a step backward in some ways. Our reward for succeeding—for building an audience, creating excitement in L.A.—was to go out and play to a sprinkling of people who didn’t give a shit about us. Well, that was on the good nights. Some nights the silent treatment gave way to name-calling. But despite that, and the occasional beer bottles that came flying our way, we didn’t care. Shit, a couple years prior we were hitchhiking to a gig with no gear. Now we were on a fucking tour bus. We could eat for free at a catered backstage buffet. Life was good.
And anyway, we knew it was all part of the process. We’d been to England and gotten a good reaction there on our own. We had won over New York. Our music was starting to catch fire in some corners of the world. Certain areas just took more work. We would work. We loved to work. For us, work was quite literally play. What the people hurling glass and invective at us didn’t realize was that for Guns N’ Roses, this was fun. Bring it on.
In May 1988, I flew home from Canada for my wedding. The prospect of a long flight was not welcome, never was, but a short respite from all the boozing wasn’t the worst thing ever—especially when it allowed me to wrap my arms around the girl who would be my foundation from then on. I would like to have had my band at the wedding, but I understood better than anyone that the band came first, and that if anyone was missing, it was me from the band and not the band from my wedding. A guy named Haggis filled in on bass for the show I had to miss—he had been with the Cult when we opened for them. It wouldn’t be the last time we found a replacement player from among the frequently changing personnel of that band.
I returned after a couple of days, but the Maiden tour was soon cut short when Axl had some throat problems. We went back to L.A. for a month just as the video for “Sweet Child o’ Mine” was released. As the video picked up steam, people began to recognize us on the street for the first time.
Kim from the Fastbacks called me from New Orleans one day: “I just heard you on the radio!”
We assembled an accomplished crew in preparation for our next engagement, joining Aerosmith for their national summer tour. These crew guys were the first outsiders to join our gang—not friends or even friends of friends, but bona fide professionals. Slash’s guitar tech, Adam Day, had been working with George Lynch of Dokken; he ended up staying with us for years. McBob handled my bass and Izzy’s guitar; he stayed with me for twenty years. His brother Tom Mayhue came aboard as the drum tech and also remained for years. We became a close-knit bunch almost immediately.
At one time singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry from Aerosmith had been such big users that they had the nickname the Toxic Twins. But all the guys in Aerosmith had recently gotten sober. And though that was the last thing we were interested in for ourselves, we didn’t want to see these guys—legends whose music we all loved—falter. All through the tour we made a real effort to keep our drugs and alcohol hidden from them as much as possible.