MARC CANTER Okay. So the Poison thing. I remember Slash was looking for a band to join—my best guess is it was maybe the fall of ’84, when Axl was playing with L.A. Guns. And Poison knew about Slash because they used to gig with Hollywood Rose at the Troubadour. So they knew Slash was the real deal. They were friends, actually. Not Slash and Poison, but Slash and Matt Smith, who was Poison’s original guitarist.
MATT SMITH My girlfriend came out to visit and when she went back home, we found out she was pregnant. We had a showcase with Atlantic Rec-ords, and they really liked us, so they asked us back for another one. We thought we were going to get signed, but then they passed. That’s when I realized, Eh, maybe this isn’t for me. So like eight months into her pregnancy, I told those guys, “I better go. This is no life for a kid and I’ve got to be a dad.” I wasn’t going to be an absentee dad.
BRET MICHAELS He said, “I am going to be a father and we are living like pigs. I can’t do this. I need to go get a job and support my family.” And he was right. We were living like pigs. We lived behind a dry cleaner’s in a warehouse. It was a sad moment for us when he left.
RIKKI ROCKETT Matt was a badass motherfucker. I think he was a great guitar player, I loved his attitude, he was a good guy. And he was very true to his girlfriend. He never went out on her or anything like that. I found that very commendable. But we were like, “Man, we’re in our early twenties, this is our time to fly. Let’s just enjoy this. Let’s make this work for us. Let’s not get caught up where we can’t work anymore. Let’s make our work our pleasure.” It was sad when he left, but it was probably the best thing for us at that time. I think we were stagnant.
SLASH I had been sort of scrounging around, looking for anything that was happening, just to get out there and play. So one day Matt called me up and said, “Poison’s going to be auditioning guitarists. You should go out for it.”
MARC CANTER Matt wanted Slash to take his job. But Slash was like, “Eh, I don’t know. They’ve got all this makeup, they squirt Silly String…” Even though Hollywood Rose was a little glam, too. But Poison was over-the-top with it.
SLASH I really didn’t like Poison. I didn’t like that whole thing. But there was something exciting about them, and the thought of being able to get out there and start working the scene was enticing to me. I was willing to do whatever I could to break into it.
CHRIS WEBER I tried out for Poison, too. Tracii turned me on to those guys to get a gig. They were a local band at the time but they would sell out pretty good-sized shows.
TRACII GUNS I think I turned all those guys on to Poison. Chris and Slash and C.C. Because they knew who the Poison guys were, but they weren’t friends with them. But I was. I always went to see them play even before they were really rolling. They were just cool guys. And they were a different band with Matt for sure. They were more Aerosmith–meets–Van Halen than they were New York Dolls–meets–Lady Clairol.
CHRIS WEBER I thought it would’ve been a good gig if I’d gotten it. I kinda looked like C.C. DeVille at the time. White hair straight up to the ceiling.
TRACII GUNS I knew C.C. because he was playing in a band called the Screamin’ Mimi’s at that time, who were a really cool, like, post–new wave rock band. They had their own thing, like, wearing fur coats onstage, stuff like that. Not so much wearing women’s clothes. And C.C. had a really cool Charvel with flames on it. That’s all I saw. I was like, “Yeah, that dude rules!”
CHRIS WEBER I remember going to a rehearsal space and playing guitar with Bobby and Rikki. I can’t remember if Bret was there. But it never ended up taking off.
MARC CANTER I actually drove Slash to a Poison gig at a place in Anaheim called Radio City. This is still in ’84, before Matt left. It was a sold-out gig, you couldn’t get in there. The place was jam-packed. And I said to him, “Do it, because, look, they’re selling out. You make a record with them, you play some gigs with them, somebody else will find you and you’ll jump out. It’s a stepping-stone.” But there were little things that pissed Slash off, like he would have had to get up there and say, “Hi, my name is Slash!” during the part of the set where they introduce themselves.
RIKKI ROCKETT When we auditioned Slash he was like, “I don’t want to do that.”
MARC CANTER He went to a tryout and he bumbled his own tryout on purpose. He basically said, “Ah, it’s not for me.”
SLASH I played the shit out of those songs! And I got called back, twice. Then I was asked to come in a third time, which is when it got serious. And I remember as I was walking in that last time, C.C. was coming back the other way. We passed each other in the hall. So it came down to C.C. and me.
RIKKI ROCKETT C.C. brought in “Talk Dirty to Me.” The arrangements and a lot of it changed, even some of the lyrics, but seventy percent of that song he laid out that day. He hit that first chord and I was like, “Fuck, that’s ‘Personality Crisis.’”
MATT SMITH I was at the auditions for both Slash and C.C. We’d jam. I was playing bass. It was pretty cool. I thought Slash was the guy. They should’ve picked him. Bret liked him, too.
BRET MICHAELS I got where Slash was coming from. But Bobby and Rikki saw it with C.C. It was one of our first arguments in the band. Because Slash fucking killed it. C.C. came in and barely learned our songs. He started playing his own stuff. He was like, “I’ve got these other songs! You gotta hear ’em!” We immediately butted heads.
RIKKI ROCKETT Can you really imagine Slash in Poison?
TRACII GUNS C.C., for good, bad, or whatever, back then he was a monster.
MARC CANTER Slash took one look at C.C. and he said to him, “You’ll get the job.” Because he was perfect. He was exactly the piece they were looking for.
SLASH He clearly fit the part better than I did. I mean, he came in with his hair all done up, he had all the right clothes and was wearing stiletto heels. I showed up looking the way I look now. And I also remember I had on a pair of moccasins. Because the Poison guys looked at me and asked, “What do you wear?” I was like, “This is … it,” you know? And they said, “Well, do you have some different shoes?”
RIKKI ROCKETT C.C. was from Brooklyn. He loved the Dolls and Lou Reed and all that sort of stuff. I think he was frustrated in New York trying to make rock happen and we were frustrated in Pennsylvania trying to make rock happen. We all ended up converging on the West Coast, able to do what it is we wanted to do in the first place. I think that really drew us all together.
TRACII GUNS So once Axl and Izzy and I started doing Guns N’ Roses, we got Rob Gardner and [bassist] Ole Beich, who had been playing in L.A. Guns for the past year. It was just kind of like, “Hey guys, we’re going to do this new band now…” Our first show was at the Troubadour.
FLYER FOR TROUBADOUR GIG (March 26, 1985) ITS ONLY ROCK N ROLL / L.A. GUNS HOLLYWOOD ROSE / PRESENTS THE BAND GUNS’N’ROSES
ROB GARDNER We had a really good crowd. A new name, a new vibe. As a band we were really together.
TRACII GUNS Then Ole was the first to leave. And Ole was cool as shit. He was a Danish guy and he had played with Mercyful Fate. But he was like, “No, it’s not metal enough…”
ROB GARDNER Ole was much more metal. And L.A. Guns was much more metal. But then once the change came around with Hollywood Rose there was a little more glam involved. And Ole didn’t like wearing makeup and that kind of stuff. So then we replaced Ole with Duff, who had come down from Seattle and knew Izzy.
TRACII GUNS When Izzy was living with his girlfriend, Desi, I think it was on North Orange near Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Duff lived across the street from him. And one day Izzy called me up and he goes, “Hey, man, I’m friends with this guy, he plays with the Michael McMahon band. They play Top 40.” And I’m like, “Top 40?” He goes, “Yeah, but this guy can play anything.”
DUFF MCKAGAN I had an apartment behind the Chinese Theatre that was, like, two hundred bucks a month. Super cheap. It was a crime-ridden little street. There was an alley behind it where drugs were sold. I knew none of this, but it didn’t matter. I was nineteen. And Izzy moved in across the street. Izzy wasn’t one of those long-hair guys I saw on the posters with the outfits, you know? And to be honest with you, neither was Slash or Steven. But one day I saw this Johnny Thunders–looking guy at the phone booth across the street and we started talking and he told me about this band he was putting together with his friend from Indiana, Axl. And I knew who that was. I’m like, “I’ve seen that guy!”
TRACII GUNS I’ll never forget the first time I saw Duff. We pull up to our rehearsal space in the Valley at this guy Willie Basse’s place. It was, like, nine in the morning, and Duff was sitting on the hood of a car drinking a Foster’s Lager. I’d never seen anybody, not even my dad, drink a beer at nine in the morning. But he looked really cool, and when he plugged in and started playing he was legit, man. He could play anything from “YYZ” by Rush to “Richie Dagger’s Crime” by the Germs. And that was a really good rehearsal because he had learned all our stuff. Izzy had shown him everything.
DUFF MCKAGAN Rob was a good drummer. And Tracii was quite a guitar player. He was a shredder. And we played a couple shows at places like the Dancing Waters.
TRACII GUNS Then the next thing that happened was Rob left.
ROB GARDNER There was a lot of stuff going on. We were young, hormones were flying, there was drugs and everything else. But I’m not going to go into a lot of specifics. I don’t feel I really need to. I’m not here to trash anyone.
TRACII GUNS Izzy kept suggesting Adler, but Axl was just like, “No, I don’t want to play with that guy.” Finally, Steven came down to rehearsal and it sounded great. And Axl’s like, “Okay, fine.”
MARC CANTER Duff booked gigs up north in Seattle, Oregon, places like that. The club scene he had passed through with other bands. And Izzy and Axl went, “Totally! Let’s do it!” But Rob and Tracii were like, “There’s no way we’re doing that. Where are we gonna sleep? How are we gonna get there?” They came from homes. They lived in L.A., they went to school here. Their parents were here. They were situated. Whereas Axl and Izzy came from Indiana and their job was to quickly make it one way or the other. Axl and Izzy, I wouldn’t say they were best friends but they had a special bond where they were part of a team. Both of them came out to L.A. with nowhere to live. They slept in the street or in someone’s car or on a couch if they were lucky. I remember when I met Axl he didn’t care where he slept. Sometimes he would even sleep in the stairwell at Tower Video where he worked—there was a little cubbyhole that you could kind of tuck behind and nobody would see you. And in 1984 his goal was to buy a gym membership. Not to have a place to work out, but to have a place to shower.
So for Axl and Izzy to go up north and do gigs, that’s rock ’n’ roll. They’re gonna do it. They’re gonna make it work.
ROB GARDNER They were saying, “We have these shows booked…” But we didn’t have a reliable source of transportation and I was like, “Ah, it’s kinda crazy to do it…” We had some junky old van, and I was worried it was gonna break down, which it did. They had to hitchhike back and everything. So I just made a decision that I didn’t wanna go, and I ended up leaving the band. And I think Tracii was right behind me.
TRACII GUNS Okay, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And I think even Duff reiterated this story once. And I’m like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” And Rob wasn’t even in the band when I left. So he has no idea. What happened was, Guns N’ Roses were playing the Dancing Waters in San Pedro. And Izzy had called me and said, “Hey, if you get down there before I do make sure you put Axl’s friend Michelle on the guest list.” “Yeah, whatever, cool.” So we get down there, and Izzy’s there already, and Axl actually got down there early, too. And he starts unloading on me and Izzy, “Why isn’t Michelle on the guest list?” He was just in a really bad mood and it kind of ruined the show for Izzy and I that night. But, you know, Izzy had a way of being very passive about those kinds of things. But I was just like, “This sucks. This is making me really unhappy.” Then a few days later we played the Timbers club in Glendora, and that was the first time Axl was late to a show, and it was just waiting around, waiting around, waiting around.
So between then and our next rehearsal, which was on a Thursday, I had a lot of time to think, and I don’t know, I just smelled trouble. I could see a very negative thing about to happen, and I didn’t want to be involved in whatever that feeling was. Then on Thursday night I blew off rehearsal and I get a call from Izzy. “Dude, where were you?” I’m like, “Oh man, you know, the brakes on my Volkswagen, I need to get them fixed…” Some bullshit excuse. Then, finally, after like three or four days, Izzy and Axl called and Axl was flipping the fuck out, like, “What are you doing? What’s your problem?” And I’m like, “Hey, you know … this. The way you’re talking to me right now. I’m not into this.”
So we’re going back and forth and finally he goes, “Well, I’m just gonna call Slash.” And I’m like, “That’s a great idea!” You know, it’ll be a perfect band. You guys can do what you wanna do and then you don’t have the other chef in the kitchen. So I go, “I’ll do my thing, don’t worry about me.” And they didn’t. And they went and sold like fifty million records or something!
SLASH After the Poison thing, I joined this band called Black Sheep. Before me they had [future Racer X and Mr. Big shredder] Paul Gilbert, which is pretty funny given how different we are as guitarists. And it was at a Black Sheep gig that I started talking to Axl again. He told me he had had a falling out with Tracii and asked if I wanted to join the band. Izzy was already there, and so was Duff.
MARC CANTER So Slash was playing with Black Sheep, and even though his heart wasn’t in it because they were a heavy metal band, he was capable of doing that gig. He played one show with them, at the Country Club, on May 31, 1985. And Izzy and Axl showed up. They were buzzing around and they said, “Hey, Tracii and Rob just left, we have a gig at the Troubadour next week, and then after that Duff has booked some gigs up north.” And Slash already knew Duff. So they all knew each other and Slash was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do it.” I thought the best thing for his career would be to stay in Black Sheep because they were a bigger band. Plus there were no drug addicts in Black Sheep. But he quit Black Sheep and got Steven and they started playing with Guns N’ Roses.
DUFF MCKAGAN Our first rehearsal, we rented a room in Silverlake for, like, five bucks an hour. And Izzy and I took all of Steven’s drums away from him—all the rack toms and all the double bass drums. So he just had a single kick and a snare. He was like, “Where’s all my drums?” But it was literally one of those things where, from the first three chords, that A-G-D or whatever it was, it was, “Holy fuck!” We started playing and right away it had that warmth and that energy and that ferocity to it. It was like five swingin’ dicks in a room, you know?
GINA BARSAMIAN They started with me on a weekday night. The first show was a Thursday.
FLYER FOR TROUBADOUR GIG (June 6, 1985) A ROCK N ROLL BASH WHERE EVERYONES SMASHED
MARC CANTER It was a really good gig, because now you’ve got the Appetite for Destruction lineup, and Steven’s missing the double bass drum, so you can hear the vocals and the three ranges of Axl’s voice, and everything’s slower, not double time. And they’re playing things like “Don’t Cry” and Slash is whipping out this guitar solo that’s the same one you hear on the record. I think I shot four rolls of film that night. Because everywhere I pointed the camera I was shooting rock stars.
SLASH It just happened, you know? The five of us got together and from that point on, Guns were the scourges of Hollywood. And we hated Poison!