Читать книгу My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns ‘N’ Roses - Steven Adler - Страница 54

After a few months of living in that little hovel, I decided to move back in with Grandma. It was great going to all those concerts, but the band I had intended to put together with Mark and the other guy wasn’t really going anywhere. So there’s Slash and me, both back at our grandmothers’ places now, working at any odd job we could grab. This was another low point for me emotionally, but it spawned a kind of simmering desperation deep inside, a fierce, burning desire to get it the fuck together. Slash and I reunited, drifting rogue musicians in search of the ultimate band. There was a dire immediacy in our playing now, and for the first time, we practiced together regularly. We started to gel more, and it was in those lean days that our sound and style really started to come together musically. We jammed nonstop, loud and proud. We would make the gods hear us; we would make the gods sit up and take notice.

One evening we were walking in front of the Roxy when I spotted a flyer on the ground and picked it up. There are a million band flyers floating around Sunset at any one time, but this one caught my attention. It was for a band I hadn’t heard of called Rose, and they had a gig at Gazzarri’s the following Tuesday. The flyer featured a picture of two guys standing together. They definitely had the look, the right image that was so important to the local rock scene of the time.

Although I had never heard of them before, I immediately felt in my gut that they had superstar potential. I showed the flyer to Slash and right then I said, “I swear, if we get these guys and a cool bass player, we will have a kick-ass band!” Slash nodded slowly, I think initially just to blow it off, but then he smiled. At that moment I believe he knew I might have been onto something.

The next Tuesday we went to see Rose perform. We arrived at about six o’clock. There were a lot of bands playing, so there was anywhere between fifty and seventy-five of each band’s faithful listening during each set. The stage was sectioned off so there could be three bands’ gear onstage at any one time. The guys in Rose were on the stage-right end.

It was a long event, band after band, like twelve of them. Rose got to play only three songs. I learned that the guys featured on the flyer who caught my attention were vocalist Axl Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin, two childhood friends from Indiana. I thought they looked cool and that even their names were cool. They had a guy named Rob Gardner on drums with them, but I wasn’t that impressed with him.

The bass player’s name was DJ. I believe he helped write “Move to the City,” one of the songs they performed. He was skinny and had long black hair, good-looking rock ’n’ roll kind of guy. But he was only in the band for a couple of months.

Just a few days later, I met Izzy Stradlin through my friend Lizzy Gray. They lived in the same building. Izzy and Lizzy had played together in the band London for a short time. Of course London was already notorious for launching the career of Nikki Sixx.

Izzy looked like a young Ron Wood, with that gaunt, angular cut to his face, perfectly framed by straight black hair that hugged his jawline, making his face look even more thin and elongated. He was into heroin, just like Ron Wood and Keith Richards, his heroes in the Rolling Stones (Woody had taken over from Mick Taylor by the time the Stones recorded Black and Blue in 1976). He had thick-soled platform shoes and always wore black pants with some sort of super-tight shirt. He looked more like his shadow than himself and to me was the personification of cool. Izzy and I hit it off right from the start. We each saw something in the other; perhaps it was just the way we talked about music. Izzy was the consummate rhythm guitarist. I loved the solid power chords he built into Rose’s songs.

Izzy’s apartment was below Sunset on Palm Avenue near Tower Records. It was a square little studio with a small kitchen and a tiny bathroom. We were hanging out there for the first time when I asked him about getting together to play. He was fine with the idea and he gave me their demo tape to listen to right on the spot. The cover featured the same picture from their flyer, and the cassette contained three songs: “Shadow of Your Love,” “Move to the City,” and “Reckless Life.” I didn’t get to keep the tape because Izzy only had two of them.

Since Rose had just gotten rid of, or was thinking of firing, Rob Gardner, we made a plan to jam together so I could learn the songs. Later that evening, I split and headed over to my friend Sue’s; she happened to live right across the street. Sue was the sweetest girl, very accommodating, and her pad became a popular party pit stop.