Читать книгу My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns ‘N’ Roses - Steven Adler - Страница 28

Saul was the coolest, smoothest guy. He had already been scoring with chicks and had a definite air of confidence about him. Saul had many talents. We’d go back to the schoolyard where we first met and ride bikes. He was awesome on a bike, the best BMX-er around, and would even enter in competitions. Me, I had a Huffy that I hated. They were a joke to kids who took their riding seriously.

Saul lived with his grandmother at Sweetzer and Santa Monica. I lived with my grandmother at Hayworth and Santa Monica, five blocks away. The first time he came over to my grandmother’s house, I showed him my guitar and little amp that my mom had bought me. I knew two chords and two scales.

Some kid had shown me those along with the main riffs of Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” and Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down.” I loved Kiss, so I put Alive! on my record player, turned the volume all the way up, and started rocking out, doing my best Ace Frehley impersonation. He instantly fell in love with the blistering noise coming out of the amplifier.

That’s all it was really, just noise. That same week, I gave him the guitar to work with, and I decided to be a singer. I bought a mike stand and a cheap microphone. We would sit in his grandma’s stairwell, and he would play guitar and write lyrics.

Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had all these scarves on his microphone stand, so I got these bandannas at an army-navy store at Vine and Santa Monica and put them on mine. These little kids who lived next door to me thought I was Leif Garrett. I had hair just like him. When I would run into them outside, they’d ask me for my autograph. Sadly, it was a short career, because while I really tried to sing, I just couldn’t. I’d always sing to the radio and eventually I realized I wasn’t any good. I also came to the conclusion that guitars weren’t for me either. Drums gave me a primal thrill that a guitar could never touch. And I had been banging on Tupperware since I was two, so it was the drums for me.

I thought drums looked so cool. My first drum set was comprised of books stacked in position, and for my first drumsticks I used the bottom part of wooden hangers. Around the same time, Saul’s grandma bought him a better guitar than the one that I gave him.

Again we would sit in his grandma’s stairwell and jam for hours. Soon we became inseparable, like four people engaged in a lively conversation: Saul, his guitar, me, and my drums. I remember reading that when Clapton met Duane Allman after an Allman Brothers concert in Florida, their guitars talked to each other for hours. It was and always will be the music. The music bonded us for life.