It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [67]
We did get some work done. We finished “Civil War” and wrote “Get in the Ring” and “Pretty Tied Up,” to name a few. We were still prolific songwriters in our creative prime at that point, and even with just three of us there, we were a locomotive.
Unfortunately this was also the point at which Steven really started to go overboard with his cocaine and heroin intake. I was nothing close to sober then, but I maintained a line I would not cross—which meant, first and foremost, that I would not let my work suffer. Also over the line: putting my life in jeopardy, putting someone else’s life in jeopardy, getting arrested. Slash maintained a similar line—especially when it came to rehearsing and playing live shows. And Slash and I had an unwritten pact to keep an eye out for each other and to make sure these lines were never crossed. In Chicago, Steven started to become frightening even to us, a couple of guys not accustomed to getting spooked when it came to intoxicants.
Ever since the band had started, there had been some vague animosity between Axl and Steven. This happens in bands. All bands. I could never quite figure out what these two guys had against each other, but the longer Axl continued not to show, the more Steven began to vent to me and Slash about him. I understood where Steven was coming from, but I was always more of a solution-based type of person. Getting pissed off and throwing food across a room or whatever never made much sense to me. Between Steven’s cocaine intake and his ever-more-vitriolic rhetoric, the situation in Chicago was becoming worrisome. Another drink, please.
In the daytime, I would try to do somewhat healthy and normal things to offset the nightly pollutants I was pouring down my gullet. I joined a gym, but really remember going only once. Health clubs were definitely not in my comfort zone back then. No, I would just go out for a run from time to time, or even go across the street to the church lawn and throw a football around with whatever kids were hanging out there. I grew up in a huge family with scores of nephews and nieces, and tossing a ball with some kids offered a comforting, familiar respite from the drugs, drink, and drama.
One day, while I was tossing a ball around with a couple of kids and their parents, four unmarked police cars came careening down the street and screeched to a halt on the sidewalk in front of us. The detectives jumped out of their cars, screaming and yelling for me to get on the ground facedown. I complied. Now, I did have an open container of beer, but still, I thought this show of force was slightly excessive for drinking in public—even if it was technically on church grounds. Whoa, they take this stuff seriously in Chicago, I thought to myself.
It was muggy and I wasn’t wearing a shirt. The cops kept looking at my back. I have a ton of old acne scars on my back and I assumed these guys had never seen acne scars like mine. Kind of rude to stare, though, right?
Big Earl, our new security guy, came bursting out of our apartment and started to quarrel with the cops about the exact reason they had me in cuffs and were now throwing me in the back of one of their cars.
“Get the fuck back, sir,” came the answer.
Earl yelled to me that he would get right down to the station and bail me out. I resigned myself to an afternoon in the pokey. That’s when it got a little interesting.
As we were driving, the cops continued to look at my back. They were also looking at me with a stare that expressed some serious disdain. The threat of violence hung in the air. Wow! Drinking in public is really frowned upon here, I thought. Then suddenly they pulled the car over and a cop told me to get out. I looked up and down the street for someone who might witness the beating they were about to put