It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [78]
I started to worry about our reception in Rio. Would we be greeted as American warmongers? I was hoping just to get to the hotel and duck into my room unnoticed.
Again: Is anyone going to show up to these gigs?
Vodka. Valium. Vodka.
As we began our descent, I was exhausted from the constant to-and-fro of getting plastered and coming to again, from trying to get hold of huge quantities of alcohol from the flight crew to quell my panic without appearing panicked or out of control.
We taxied in and I staggered off the plane, bleary-eyed. I felt like a fucking Martian after traveling for so long and feeding my body with mind-numbing intoxicants.
What are all these people doing here? Why are they screaming?
A crowd of 8,000 fans greeted us at the gate. I was overwhelmed; they were overjoyed. We shuffled out to a van. Lots of security guys in and around the vans.
Machine guns, really?
Hotel. Nowhere near the famous beaches. Swank hotel, for sure, but perched just below the city’s most infamous favela, a dense hillside slum called Rocinha.
Why here? None of the other bands are staying here.
Prince, George Michael, INXS—the other headliners—were staying elsewhere.
Why are we being kept apart from the other bands?
Next day. Rehearsal. Some shitty little space downtown. Guys with machine guns on our van again. A second van carrying more ex-military types with automatics. Following us everywhere. As we wound our way through the city, I had my first chance to see Rio’s inhabitants in their natural state—which apparently was screaming “Guns N’ Roses” at the top of their lungs.
During the next day there—a scheduled day off—I went to the hotel pool in my shorts and flip-flops to get some sun and drink myself into a stupor. The pool had a swim-up bar and was surrounded by dozens of toweled lounge chairs. Palm trees, exotic flowers, lush grounds all around.
No wonder there are so many gardeners.
People hovered around the periphery of the pool and gardens like flies.
Hang on—are those … I must be fucked up. Are those fans?
What I had taken for gardeners outside of the high fence surrounding the pool area were actually hundreds of fans. Now the security forces ran off the poor kids.
This city is on fire for GN’R.
Maracaña Stadium: 175,000 people and a river of sewage streaming right through the place. An actual river. Of shit.
People chanting, “Guns N’ Roses, Guns N’ Roses!”
The audience cried and sang along to every word as we launched into our set.
Fucking hell, there are a lot of people up here onstage.
We had two new keyboard players, backup singers, and horn players. The sides of the stage swarmed with crew and management and who knows who else.
Where my boys at?
I turned and looked toward the drum riser. Steven wasn’t there.
PART FOUR
I’D LOOK RIGHT UP AT NIGHT AND ALL I’D SEE WAS DARKNESS
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The shows in Rio should have marked the triumphant beginning of a new phase in the history of the band, but instead it felt as if Guns N’ Roses had somehow changed from a band into a traveling extravaganza in which we each just played a more or less independent role. We had added more people to the band, but there was much less sense that we were a unit of any kind, big or small. During that trip to Brazil, I sometimes felt completely alone and alienated even in my own band. I loved Guns N’ Roses, I loved all the members of Guns N’ Roses, including the new guys. But something still felt terribly wrong.
I drank every day prior to Rock in Rio, but I could still pull myself out of it at times and curtail my drinking. The shows in Rio were the beginning of a three-year headlong dive into drugs and booze—the darkest days of my life. For me, there was a difference between drinking a half gallon of vodka a day and drinking a quart or a liter. A liter was pretty good. Beginning in Rio, I drank half a gallon a day, every day.
Back in L.A., Mandy called me to say she was going to start dating. Great, you should. Her new boyfriend had a posse of friends. They showed up at the Rainbow one night