Last of the Giants Read online

  Had it worked, though, this public shaming of his bandmates? Axl grinned. ‘It way worked, man! Cos Slash is fucking on like a motherfucker right now. And the songs are coming together, they’re coming together real heavy.’

  Within a week of finishing the Stones shows Doug Goldstein had taken Steven Adler and Slash to detox in Arizona, this time at an exclusive golfing resort. Turning up unannounced at Slash’s house was now a familiar ritual. Goldstein would tell him, ‘Okay, you need a pair of shorts and a pair of shoes. I’m gonna have to look inside your shoes first though. And I’m buying the smokes. Because what they used to do was hide little heroin balloons in the bottom of a pack of Marlboro. Towards the end it was, basically, I’m picking you up and you’re gonna be naked – and I’m gonna do a rectal search!’

  This time, though, with the trip to Arizona, Goldstein would have Slash and Steven to try to deal with. ‘I’m supposed to monitor them while they get clean,’ he recalls. ‘So I got my sleeping pills and I’m going to administer to them. I pick up Steven and I go to Slash’s house and somebody had tipped him off, right? So he’s in the wind – nowhere to be found – but I said, “Fuck it, Steven, we’re going.”

  ‘We get on a plane and we’re out there for about four days and Stevie’s sleeping till, like, three in the afternoon. So I said, “Look, I’m gonna go golf in the morning.” Steven goes, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll just sleep in.” So I leave the hotel at, like, five thirty in the morning and it’s about maybe eight and I make my first birdie of the day. It’s hole nine, and this marshal pulls up and says, “Is there a Goldstein in the group? You need to call your office.” I call the office and Niv picks up. He goes, “Where the fuck are you?” I go, “I’m golfing, why?” “Slash is on his way to jail!” I go, “You’re in LA, go fucking bail him out.” He goes, “He’s in fucking Arizona at your hotel, you dumbass.”’

  Unbeknownst to Doug Goldstein, Steven, unable to bear the gnawing pangs of heroin withdrawal any longer, had phoned Slash in LA the night before, begging him to ‘bring some junk and come out and we’ll party here’. Panicked, Goldstein jumped into his golf cart and drove as fast as he could back to the hotel. When he pulled up, he says, ‘There’s maybe ten cop cars, an ambulance, a fire engine and about 200 people all in a circle.’

  Wading his way through the crowd, he saw Slash, ‘standing there stark naked and bloody. I’m like, oh no, this ain’t good! Slash goes, “Dougie, I was in the shower, right? I looked through the keyhole and these guys were shooting guns at me. But they don’t shoot bullets. They’re shooting arrows! The arrows are going, like, ping bang ping!”

  ‘I was like, oh my god … One of the cops who is standing next to him goes, “Hey, Slash, give him a physical description.” Slash goes, “Okay, so, the tall one, he was, like, four feet eight inches and he’s wearing an AC/DC T-shirt.” He saw that through the keyhole of course, right? I look at Earl Gabbidon, Axl’s bodyguard, and go, “Do me a favour, here’s my room key, go get the briefcase.” I used to carry a briefcase with $50,000 everywhere I went for situations just like this. I say to Slash, “Tell me what happened?” He goes, “So they’re shooting arrows at me so I said fuck it, I’m gonna kick their asses! So I broke through the shower door. Broke through the bathroom door then started counting the arrows in my head. Then these fuckers outran me but then some bitch comes up to me speaking in tongues so I fucking knocked her out and threw her on the ground …”

  ‘It was the maid. She was speaking Spanish! Now I’ve got my briefcase in my hand and I see this guy in the crowd and his shirt is bloody. I pull him to one side and I go, “Let me ask you a question. What did you see?” “I saw everything.” “You saw him hit the maid?” “Yep, I saw him hit the maid.” I said, “You know, I can’t help noticing you’re wearing a monogrammed shirt.” He’s like, “No, no, no. My wife bought it at, like, a bargain place.” I said, “Look, I know what I’m doing. Don’t tell me. That’s a fucking monogrammed shirt. That’s a $2000 shirt, right?” So I give the guy two grand. “So tell me again, what did you see?” He goes, “Oh, ho, ho, ho! Got it! I didn’t see shit …”

  ‘So he walks away. Then I go, “Where’s the manager on duty?” This guy goes, “That’s me.” I go, “Have you looked at the room yet?” He goes, “Yeah.” I go, “Any idea of the damage yet?” He goes, “Yeah. The room’s gonna be out of commission for two days while we repair it. It’s not that bad a damage really. You’re probably looking at, I don’t know, two grand.” I go, “I’m sorry, did you say five grand?” So I give him five grand for that.

  ‘I ask him, “How about the maid? What does she make?” He says, “Maybe $600 a month.” I go, “So three grand will cover her?” He goes, “Absolutely!” Meanwhile, the cops are cracking up, cos they totally see what I am doing. I look at the cops, I go, “Hey, guys. I got a feeling if you look around the crowd you’re not gonna find anybody who wants to testify against this guy any more.” They go, “You know what, get him out of here right now or we’ll be back to do it for you.”

  ‘And the whole time, Steven is standing on his balcony, yelling: “Stupid junky! Stupid junky!” I’m like, “Get the fuck back in your room and shut up!”’

  When Slash arrived back in LA, though, the nightmare continued. Duff, his mother, Ola, and brother, Ash, were waiting for him to stage an intervention. Too exhausted and embarrassed to argue, Slash caved in and promised them he’d go to rehab. This time Doug Goldstein flew him to a well-known professional rehab joint in Sierra Tucson. ‘After three or four days,’ Slash said, ‘I decided, “Fuck this …” He called his heroin dealer from the airport and flew home to LA.’

  Niven and Goldstein had a little more success when a few weeks later they managed to persuade Steven to take the trip to Tucson. Truly, this was last-resort time. The golf resort ‘cure’ had been the first time Steven had even considered any kind of managed withdrawal. They had tried the same trick of essentially kidnapping him and flying to Hawaii that had nearly worked with Slash, but as soon as he and Goldstein were in their seats in first class Steven had begun to scream blue murder. ‘He knew what was coming,’ Niven recalls. ‘The aircrew were not happy. “It’s gonna crash, its gonna go down!” he yelled. “The fucking plane’s gonna crash!”’ He tried to climb out of, and over the back of, his seat as Doug struggled to fasten his seatbelt. ‘The fucking plane’s gonna go down in flames, let me off it!’ he howled.

  Steven and Dougie were hastily shown off the plane. Now, though, in the wake of Axl’s ultimatum onstage at the Coliseum, he simply had no choice. Not if he wanted to keep safe his gig in Guns N’ Roses. ‘Doug and I came to know the rehab centres of America as well as we knew the concert venues,’ Niven sighs.

  Steven would stick it out in Tucson for longer than Slash. But only just. The detox didn’t take and within weeks he was back where he’d started. Doug Goldstein got some insight into why that might be, he says now, when he took it upon himself to visit Steven’s parents. ‘I drive out to the valley and they’re showing me pictures of Steven … big-time Jewish family sitting around eating potato knish.’ Goldstein told them where their son Steven was, that he needed their help. He was trying to get their son sober. Could they tell him what had happened in his life to make him that way?

  ‘The dad starts talking. “Hey, Doug, Deanna, she’s throwing a Tupperware party, so Steven’s out with his friends, he’s getting drunk, he’s twelve years old, and he comes home and in front of all the ladies he starts throwing up.” He goes, “You’re from a good Jewish family, what does a good Jewish family do? Throw him out of the fucking house!” I go, “Really? I know a lot of Jewish families. I’m from a good Jewish family and my family would have hugged me and found out what the hell’s wrong. You threw him out of the house at age 12? Where the fuck did he live?” “Well, we don’t really know that.”

  ‘Well, I do. He lived on the roof of his school for three months until his grandmother found him and brought him in. So when people go, “Stevie’s so cut
e, he’s like a little kid”, well, no shit. Here’s maturation pretty much stopped at age twelve. Pretty sad, man … Very sad.’

  He continues his theme. ‘That kid would stick around until four a.m. to sign all the autographs. He was the face of GN’R to the fans, at the local venues, he was a sweetheart – without the drugs.’ The problem was, where the others would find ways to function – or at least, maintain – on dope, Steven was like a downhill racer without brakes. ‘I’m telling you: as tough as Slash was, Steven was harder. Whenever it was kind of go-time, Slash kind of – I don’t know how to put it, he just kind of knew when to back off the partying. Steven kind of never really got that.’

  Or, at least, not until it was too late. ‘I tried every different thing I could think of to try and get Steven sober and it just … at the end of the day, if somebody’s not willing to go through those steps then it’s just not gonna happen.’

  Despite the up-and-down nature of their four shows with the Stones, Mick Jagger had been alive to the impact the headlines generated by Axl’s onstage outbursts had on ticket sales. All four Coliseum shows had been massive sell-outs. For a band on its first major US tour for nearly a decade this was good news indeed. When the Stones then announced a special show they would be doing in Atlantic City, on 19 December, that would also be available to see on TV via a pay-per-view deal similar to that more usually arranged around heavyweight boxing championship world titles, Jagger had no doubt over who would add the icing to that delicious pay-per-view cake: W. Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin – the Jagger and Richards, no less, of Guns N’ Roses. ‘He ignored Slash,’ says Alan Niven, ‘as he would decades later in Los Angeles when inviting guests onto the stage at the Staples Center during their latest “Last Time” tour.’

  The idea was simply that Axl and Izzy would come up onstage and join the Stones for one number. When the Stones’ office sent word that Axl and Izzy could pick which Stones song they would like to help sing and play, neither of them knew what to say. ‘I dunno,’ Axl told Niven. ‘There’s so many. How do you pick one? Ask Iz.’

  ‘Tell the Stones what to play? I dunno,’ echoed Izzy when Niven called for his input. Niven decided to take the matter in hand and choose for them. ‘I called Jagger’s office and told them they would just love to perform “Salt of the Earth”. Apparently that threw everyone into a bit of a tizzy since the band had never played the song live before. But I could not think of a more relevant statement, or a better treat for Stones fans, of which I was still one.’

  Staged six days before Christmas, the final show of three at the East Coast gambling capital, this was to be the glorious finale to the Stones’ Steel Wheels tour. As well as Axl and Izzy, Eric Clapton would also be putting in an onstage appearance (on ‘Little Red Rooster’), as would John Lee Hooker (on ‘Boogie Chillen’). With the 16,000 tickets for the show selling for anything between $40 and $240 a go, and the pay-per-view slots going for a ‘suggested retail’ price of $24.95, this was another giant payday for the Stones for which nothing must be allowed to go wrong. That was the plan anyway.

  But as Alan Niven would chokingly recall: ‘In Atlantic City, Axl was late to arrive to the hotel, late for rehearsal and late for the stage. He ordered me to go tell the Stones he would be present for rehearsal an hour or so later than scheduled. When he told me to do that, it was literally, “You’re fucking joking, Axl. Get in the shower. I’ll wait in my room.”’ Knowing that would hardly work, ‘I prevailed on Izzy to go to the rehearsal and buy Axl a few minutes while he composed himself.’

  But when a forlorn Izzy sidled up onstage at the sound check, Keith Richards let him have it. ‘Where’s your fucking singer?’ Izzy mumbled an apology. Then did his best to fill in for as long as he could as the band worked their way fitfully through the unfamiliar ‘Salt of the Earth’. When Axl showed up an hour later, Keith confronted him. According to Izzy, says Niven, ‘Axl made some excuse about partying, missing a flight, whatever, Ax always had some lame excuse.’

  ‘Well, I slept in a fucking chandelier last night,’ growled Keith, ‘but I’m on time.’

  But Alan Niven wasn’t around to see that. Axl had been so furious with his refusal to tell Jagger and Richards they would have to wait for him, he had effectively banned his own manager from the show. Niven, equally furious, was happy to leave. He says that ‘a very embarrassed Brian Ahern came to the room and told me, “I hate to tell you this, but Axl says he’s not going to go to rehearsal unless you’re out of the building.” I went, “Fine.” I wrote a little note to Axl telling him he was behaving really badly. He had good people who cared about and loved him. Then I went home and did what everybody else was gonna do and watched it in the comfort of my own home on pay-per-view.’

  Yet when he did, he says now, he couldn’t help but note how, as he put it, ‘Axl’s passion and conviction would utterly outshine Jagger’s languid indifference when they performed “Salt of the Earth”. Urchin Axl truly connected to the sentiment of the song. Back in the day, when the little fucker was “on”, fired up by contention, conflict or competition, he was simply brilliant.’ On a wall in his office these days he has a framed photograph of Izzy Stradlin, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood onstage together in Atlantic City. ‘It’s like watching three gems being put on the same cushion in front of you.’

  Axl would also share happier memories with me of Atlantic City. Whatever tensions his late arrival had aroused with Keith Richards, he said, Mick Jagger had been quick to be emollient. He related how Jagger and Eric Clapton had ‘cornered’ him about David Bowie at the sound check. ‘I’m sitting on this amp and all of a sudden they’re both right there in front of me. And Jagger doesn’t really talk a lot, right? He’s just real serious about everything. And all of a sudden he was like’, doing a cockney accent, ‘“So you got in a fight with Bowie, didja?” I told him the story real quick and him and Clapton are going off about Bowie in their own little world, talking about things from years of knowing each other. They were saying that when Bowie gets drunk he turns into the Devil from Bromley! I mean, I’m not even in this conversation. I’m just sitting there and every now and then they would ask me a couple more facts about what happened, and then they would go back to bitching like crazy about Bowie. I was just sitting there going, wow …’

  *

  Back in LA at the start of 1990, disorientated by the fame and the money and the madness inherent in having everything they’d dreamed of come true, they drifted. Slash and Duff showed up at the American Music Awards, drunk and coked, slurring and swearing … Axl and Slash jammed with Aerosmith at the Forum … Slash and Duff guested on an Iggy Pop record … Duff got divorced from Mandy, who he’d had a big fight with on New Year’s Eve … then, in April, the band played Farm Aid in Indianapolis, a televised gig that showed Steven in his worst possible light … Axl got married to Erin Everly in Las Vegas, after threatening to shoot himself if she refused … Slash jammed with The Black Crowes in New York … the days and nights rolled by, end on end. Every time I spoke to Slash – or Axl, or Duff, all of whom now came to me with different stories, crazy concerns, out-there insights and bad craziness – it was the same but different. Something new that had happened that made the rest of us feel old. You feared for them but at the same time you wondered at them, too. Wasn’t this what the real rock’n’roll lifestyle was supposed to be about?

  When the LA Times ran a story about Axl winning ‘a temporary restraining order against the West Hollywood neighbor he is accused of hitting over the head with a wine bottle’, it made headlines in every music magazine, radio station and music TV channel in the world. Yet nobody who’d ever had the remotest dealings with Guns N’ Roses was the least bit surprised by the story. Gabriella Kantor, who lived along the corridor from Axl at Shoreham Towers, had called the cops, claiming Axl had hit her with a bottle after ‘an altercation’. Though no charges were filed, the band’s lawyers had got a judge to place the restraining order on Kantor, whom they described as ‘a potenti
ally dangerous rock ’n’ roll groupie … upset that she is not a part of [Rose’s] social and or professional life’.

  In order to try to keep a cap on things, Doug Goldstein was now paying $1000 a week to another occupant ‘just to tell me the goings on. He was a Middle Eastern guy, cute as hell. He calls me one day, absolutely out of his mind. “He’s fucking crazy! I don’t want your money! Fuck you!” I go, “Slow down, what happened?” “He crazy!” I go, “Yeah, I know. But what happened?”

  ‘What happened was Axl had taken Erin’s Halliburton suitcase and thrown it off the twenty-fourth floor and almost hit this guy.’ He laughs. ‘He’d have killed him if that had hit him. Are you kidding? No question, but very funny, actually. Another time, I got a phone call saying you better come up here. Axl shoved a piano out of the front window of his apartment. I mean, this shit, I wasn’t trained in this! Like, I’m calling crane companies, right? To come get this piano out of the fucking weeds down below the home. It was brilliant, man! I’ll tell ya, every day it was a different challenge. And it was okay because it was kind of fun. It was like, okay, never dealt with this one before.’

  Axl moved out of his apartment for a while, to stay at the Sunset Marquis, where another scuffle took place in the dining room one morning – but which the hotel management, famed for their tolerance of the ‘unconventional’ ways of famous entertainers, were happy not to make a big deal of. This was Axl Rose, after all, now the most famous rock star in the world. Who would be dumb enough to fuck up that relationship?

  Then four months after the shows at the Coliseum, the spat between Izzy, Axl and Vince Neil at the MTV Awards began to send out its shockwaves. None of us could have guessed then how far they would spread. It was January 1990. I was staying at the home of the band’s PR, Arlett Vereeke. Late one night the phone went. It was Axl, calling to rant about something or other he’d just read in Kerrang! Arlett told Axl I was there, and she handed over the phone to see if I could help. He told me to come to the Shoreham Towers apartment right away, where he would make some sort of ‘statement’. He ‘was in the mood to talk’. Arlett drove me over, and sat in on the whole interview, which made it more disconcerting when Axl tried to claim later I had made parts of it up – and Arlett dutifully backed him. But then, having once been a rock PR myself, I knew that that’s what good PRs do: back their clients to the hilt, right or wrong. It’s not the writer who’s paying their bills.