It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [69]
Then we got an offer to play four shows in October 1989 as the opening act for the Rolling Stones at the L.A. Coliseum. It was a huge shot in the arm for us at the time—though that’s probably a poor choice of idioms given the situation in the run-up to the shows.
Mick Jagger negotiated the terms of our gig himself and took care of all the details. We didn’t deal with a Stones lawyer or agent or somebody like that. We expected to, of course. Nope. It was Mick. We would say, We want this much per gig. And Mick would say, No, you’re going to get this much.
Despite the work we now needed to do to prepare for the Stones shows, Slash and Steven showed no sign of pulling out of their drug habits, and Izzy slipped back into heroin use, too. Sometimes those guys put their drug use in front of band practice. One or the other often showed up late or left early from rehearsal—if they showed up at all. But we never talked about the problem. We were never any good at communication, especially when that meant confrontation. If we could have developed those skills then, the story of GN’R might have been very different.
With the shows looming, the Los Angeles Times ran a big piece about us supposedly staking our claim in rock and dethroning the old guard. There is one thing no band can ever do, and that is dethrone the fucking Rolling Stones. That would have been true regardless of the state of our band. And I was very nervous about the state of our band going in to the shows. The Times article seemed a bad omen to me. Later in life, I would be more apt to listen to that first instinct when committing to various things, but come on, this was a chance to open for the world’s best.
By the time of the actual shows, everything melted into the background because I was so excited. My brother Matt put together the horn section again to play along with a few tunes. He was student-teaching. In the evenings before the shows, he came to the hotel where we were staying, got dressed, hung out in the hospitality room, and drove out to the Coliseum in one of the band’s vans to get ready to play to tens of thousands of people; he told us that during the day he saw kids with GN’R cut into their arms at his school. By this point, the magnitude of our success was weird not only for us, but for people around us as well.
The Stones were great hosts—they hooked all our guests up, and the whole scene was charged. I flew my mom down for the shows. While she was in town, she picked up on the problems between me and Mandy. It was dispiriting to have a relationship I had taken seriously, and had such high hopes for, unraveling—and particularly for that disappointment to take concrete form in front of my mom. But for the moment, Guns was playing with the Stones, a fact that could buoy me in the face of almost any personal setback. Guns was fucking playing with the Stones.
Prior to the first show, Mick Jagger came up to me during sound check. I had on my cowboy boots, as usual, and it was misty and drizzling.
He motioned to my boots and said, “You going to wear those tonight, mate?”
I shrugged and smiled. I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or what.
“You’re going to slip on our stage.”
This was the Steel Wheels tour, with an all-metal stage set.
“I’ve got some trainers,” he said. “What size do you wear?”
“Eleven,” I said.
“Me, too,” he said. “We must have the same size willy.”
Wow, I thought, Mick Jagger says we have same size willy, and he’s going to let me wear his sneakers. Despite his kind offer, though, I didn’t wear