2009.03.15 - GN'R Daily - Interview with Marc Canter

*Exclusive* New Marc Canter Interview

By: Dana R. Davidson

Marc Canter, author of ‘Reckless Road: Guns N’ Roses and the Making Of Appetite for Destruction,’ and part of the family that started the legendary Canter’s Deli restaurant. A Los Angeles Landmark which houses the world famous Kibitz Room, was gracious enough to sit with me for a while and talk about life, Guns N’ Roses, and his book, ‘Reckless Road: Guns N’ Roses and the Making Of Appetite for Destruction,’ which is available at www.recklessroad.com, amazon.com, most major literary retailers, as well as Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles, CA.

Dana: Where did you grow up?

Marc: I was born in Los Angeles. I actually grew up within in a one mile radius of where I’ve been my whole life. I’ve always been right here close to the deli.

Dana: How long has the deli been in your family?

Marc: Actually, 77 years. It started in New Jersey and it was just off of a cart, just some pickles, maybe some sandwiches but officially in 1931 in Boyle Heights with my grandfather and two of his brothers. They called it the Canter’s Brothers. 1948 my grandparents basically retired, they moved to this side of Los Angeles, and my aunt, who was 23 years old, decided that she wanted to continue it. Instead of calling it Canters Brothers, she called it, Canters Fairfax. It gave her something to do and it kept my grandparents working, not on a fulltime basis, but so they wouldn’t rot, and it worked cause they lived another thirty years.

Dana: Was it expected of you to join the family business?

Marc: Yeah, well, my dad has been running it all that time, then in the 80’s… 82 I came in, my sister came in in 85, my brother came in around that time to. And so, my dad is actually still here, and so is my cousin Terry, and we 5 or 6 of us do what ever we need to do to keep the train on the track.

Dana: Was it expected of you?

Marc: Like it or not I wasn’t any good at school, so it worked out for me. When I was in the eleventh grade I was working here part time and all the sudden my dad hurt his back and he was in the hospital for about 3 months. All the sudden his responsibilities were dumped on me. People would come to me and ask me things about problems they would normally take to him, or things would break, so it just kind of all got shuffled onto me. By the time he was ready to come back I had already been hiring and firing and fixing. Before I knew it, I was just sucked in, so even if I was good at school, I still would have been sucked in.

Dana: How difficult or annoying was the publishing process?

Marc: The book world is really a dark world. They make it hard. With this book we published with… it was the publishers first book. I was interested in them because they have this company called ‘Enhanced Books’ which takes books and enhances them. Puts extras on line so you get a page for page companion of the book and things pop out at you, audio, video, extra photos... So that’s why I was attracted to them and they were attracted to me because they saw that I had a really neat project that would work with what they do, plus, they were looking to take on a book. They didn’t realize how hard it was to get a book published and what it takes to get your book placed properly in the books stores. Usually, book stores only deal with publishers that have been around for a long time. Although, in this case, they are stocking the book but they aren’t giving it the proper display that it should have, so it just, it’s kinda a word of mouth thing is the only promotion we are getting for it. If somebody happens to stumble across it they usually pick it up, if they open it they’ll buy it, but it’s just, the publisher didn’t have the money to, actually they did have the money but some things went wrong before the book came out with who was running the company and that money mysteriously got spent. So, we were dumped out of the nest with no wings, it’s fly or die. We are, it’s not a profitable thing, but it is satisfying that people are enjoying the end product that they get, and that’s worth something.

Dana: What happened with the grammatical errors?

Marc: Same person that was in charge with spending too much money before the book was published, well, since he didn’t have any money left to get it edited and I believe he had to get it into the printer at a certain date or we were gonna loose that date… and we would have had to wait a few more months… and he assumed that there could have only been a few errors and he turned it in with many typos in the book. They are not informational typos but they are annoying. It’s just, he didn’t give, you know, I was told I would have 3 days to look at the book while it was on line at the printers before it gets locked in and he failed to give me those three days. I believe that if I had those three days I could have corrected most of the errors but I’m sure something would have gone through cause I’m not a copy editor.

Dana: Is he still part of the process or was he…

Marc: No he is out, he was removed but at the same time he did design a really neat book, so everything happens for a reason.

Dana: How was it taking pictures? I remember you telling me that you didn’t really know how to use the camera.

Marc: Well, I started pictures in 1982. My friend Jack Lou who takes 30% of the photos that are in ‘Reckless Road’ was shooting all of the bands that were coming through Los Angeles. Eddie Van Halen was gonna be at the Roxy performing with Alan Holdsworth who was his idol. Nobody really knew about it but we heard about it and Jack wasn’t able to make it to that gig, he had to work, so he gave me his camera, showed me basically how to load the film and told me what to do. I snuck it in, took some pictures. and I was really happy with the results. I realized I could do this… My sister had a canon 81 that she wasn’t using so I figured oh, it was sort of like Jack’s, he had a Olympus, so I kinda took her camera and a week later it was Tidus Sloan, Slash’s first band, at Fairfax high school. So I shot off a roll of film and that went well and I was off and running.

Dana: How’d you meet the people involved in Guns N’ Roses?

Marc: I met Slash as Saul Hudson in the fifth grade in 1976 when he was trying to steal my mini bike, motor bike actually, in front of the KFC on 3rd and Fuller. He recognized me from school when he was looking to see who’s it might be. I didn’t know him but I knew his face. Rather than try to steal it he figured he’d just make friends with me so he could ride it. Turned out he only lived a block away from my house so we started becoming close friends. Soon after that I noticed he had a really good knack for drawing and his art projects were dinosaurs, snakes, jungles, all kinds of crazy things he’d do, so I knew there was something special there but I didn’t really think much of it. Then we were racing BMX motor cross together, when he’d go off a jump flashes would go off, he had a little extra style, he had a little extra than what most people had. Then we lost touch for about a year or two because we went to different schools. We met back up at the start of the tenth grade and by then he had been playing guitar for about a year and he was playing with Ron Schneider and Adam Greenberg and he said, hey, my band is playing a party next week and you should come.

Dana: What’s the name of that band?

Marc: Titus Sloan, so I show up at the party, I saved the flyer, and I was smart enough to actually bring a tape recorder to record the gig cause I just knew something was gonna be cool and it worked. I liked it. I started documenting it. About two years later we met Axl and Izzy. Izzy didn’t stay around for long, maybe a week or so, but I noticed the chemistry that Slash had with Axl was something special and Axl had something special on his own. So, I documented that and took pictures and recorded the shows. Then that band sort of fell apart. Axl went into LA Guns with Tracy Guns and asked me if I’d document that, take some pictures cause he liked the pictures I did with Hollywood Rose. So, of course I recorded that gig too and took some pictures for two of those gigs. That band sort of fell apart and about 9 months later Guns N Roses got back together but without Slash for a couple gigs. Duff had booked a tour to Seattle and Portland where he was from and Traci and Rob Gardner, the ex drummer, didn’t really want to go up there cause they didn’t know where they were gonna sleep or what they were gonna eat. They grew up in nice homes here and, you know, Axl, Izzy, and Duff lived on the streets so it didn’t matter if they slept in the back of someone’s car or in an alley that looks safe, it didn’t matter, they knew they were gonna make it. Music came first. So they simply called Slash and said, hey. They remembered he was good and they remembered that… they just wanted to be with him now that Tracy is not there. They asked Slash if he would join and Slash and Steven Adler joined. They did one gig at the Troubadour two days before they left, that was the first gig. June 6 1985. I noticed at that gig that things were different cause Steven had a single base drum instead of a double base drum, and a year ago when they were playing together Steven had a double base drum and the music was faster and it was like a speed metal band and now it had a little bit of a groove to it. They slowed things down, they were writing, it was like lightening in a bottle. I just knew it was really exciting to be there. After that gig they took off to Seattle and they went through a week of hell. Their car broke down, they had to hitch hike, they ate onions on the side of the road. So, by the time they got back they were no longer just 5 musicians fit for each other, they were blood brothers, they had gone through some hell together. Now they had each others backs. So I think that’s what kept it together the second time because it wasn’t just the music, they had some emotion for each other. So they came, took some publicity shots, and made flyers and just started playing gigs. Every couple gigs they’d write a new song and after Slash joined the band the first song they wrote together was ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and about 6 weeks later, ‘Rocket Queen,’ a little time after that was ‘Paradise City,’ then ‘Night Train,’ then ‘My Michelle,’ then ‘Out To Get Me,’ so the songs are pretty much self produced. They didn’t really get arranged any differently on the record, even the guitar solo is the same as it was the very fist time they played it. So I knew it was like seeing a Led Zeppelin starting because everything they did was good. They didn’t know how to fail and it just worked. They looked good, they sounded good, they had the image and like I said they moved properly, and they had the song writing capabilities. They had all 5 elements. A lot of bands will make it on one of those elements and they had all 5 so there was no way that they would fail. I knew that eventually they would get signed and put a record out and possibly have a gold record. I had no idea they would sell 90 million records but I think MTV had a lot to do with that cause Appetite For Destruction was out for about a year and sold about 200,000 copies and Geffen was ready to put out another record, have them record another record. MTV wasn’t playing them, radio stations really weren’t’ playing them, KNAC and the underground cool stations were playing ‘Welcome To The Jungle.’ David Geffen pulled a favor at MTV and begged the guy to play Jungle. They really didn’t want to play it cause they thought the band had a bad wrap and they didn’t want to lose advertisers so they said ok well play the song one time on a Sunday night at 6am eastern time. They played it once and their switchboards blew up with people calling in saying, hey who is that? Play that again. Within one week they were in top 10 rotation and within 3months they were selling 200,000 records a week. MTV was a great tool to show the world what was created here.

Dana: How long did it take to you get the book together?

Mark: I documented the first 50 gigs they did then they basically took off on tour so I stopped documenting. I had it really for myself if nothing else cause it was just good stuff. I was an Aerosmith collector so I looked at this as being like an Aerosmith style band, so lets collect this now since these are my friends and it’s good. But when the band made it and after they did a world tour 5 years on the road or whatever, I realized that maybe I should put out a scrapbook of the club days. The world will want to see this. I worked on it 5 hours a day for about 15 months and I spent a lot of money getting everything just perfect, I didn’t use computers. I blew up the pictures to the size I wanted, I laid them out on art boards. I put text, transcribed the shows, I just wanted it to be perfect and by the time I was done the band kind of fell apart. My agent wanted too much money for it from the publishers and they didn’t want to pay that kind of money. I was told if they ever put a record out maybe we’d get it published and it just kind of sat in my closet. I actually, at one point, tried to self publish it. I started selling off my magazine collection. I had over 2000 Rolling Stones, Circus, and Hit Parade magazines from the 60’s and 70’s. I stared saving that money and realized it wasn’t going to work. I didn’t have enough money, so I ended up just buying baseball cards, but valuable ones with that money and I just shelved it. I figured one day, we’ll see. In 2006 I ran into the people from Enhanced Books by accident because Canters was in a book called ‘Americas Great Delis’ and that’s how I found out about Enhanced Books and what they were doing because they came here to interview us for the extras online. That’s when it all clicked on what we can do. I realized the time was right, I found some good people. and it looked like we could make a cool project. I figured now would be the best time cause Guns N’ Roses was pretty relevant at the time. Why not now?

Dana: How many pages was your first draft?

Marc: First draft was 380 pages almost 2000 images and now it’s 340 pages. The manuscript I turned in was about 280 pages and they actually brought it up to 347 by using less images, they just made the images larger. I had probably 1400 images that I turned in on the manuscript on the book and they ended up using about 1000. Then there are 200 extra images online.

Dana: And that’s the online integrated thing?

Marc: Yeah, when you get to the page spread of the website there is either a video camera, a microphone, or a camera icon. If the icons let you click on it, it shows you the extras. The microphones automatically pop out at you. The video is really more or less interviews of some of the cast of characters that we talked to for the book.



Dana: Was it difficult getting everyone together to give the quotes and tell their story?

Marc: Well, see, originally I just wanted the band to look at the book and see what they could remember from those gigs that I might not remember or something that happened around the time. Jason, my co author, really wanted to dig a little deeper. He didn’t really care about the shows, he wanted to know what drove them to move to Los Angeles, why were they wiling to live on the streets, how did it feel to be hungry, a little bit more emotion on it. Not digging for dirt but just digging for more, why, why why… Then I started thinking that we should really interview the roadies (Mark points to Ron Schneider who is sitting in the next booth), the ex band members, the friends, the stripper’s, the ex girlfriend’s, the record company people that signed them like Tom Zutadut, Mike Clink, the guys that mixed the record, failed producers, anybody that was there and might have something to say. The more the merry. We did it and it got really interesting. Jason took all the information that I had in with the shows pulled it out and mixed it in with everyone else’s and threaded it through the book like chat boards. Unfortunately, I lost some things that were in those shows that didn’t have a place in the chat boards but at some point I’ll get it online as extra information. It’s just useless info but not useless to a fan. We ended up talking to like 26 people, so now you got 26 views on how it all went down, and some of it is actually inaccurate but that’s what they remember. Actually, I had a fight with Jason about that because Dezi, who was Izzy’s ex girlfriend, she used to dance to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ on stage, Axl pretty much ended that, and she said that Axl ended it because Axl got jealous cause she was stealing all the attention cause sex sells, and whatever, but the truth of the matter is Axl ended her because she was dealing heroin and she wasn’t a good influence on some of the members of the band. Axl had seen what it was doing to some of the people. Truth is, if Dezi was really helping, Axl would want two Dezi’s cause that’s what Axl is, he wants a big production, so it was exactly the opposite but she got it in there. I would have cut it out but Jason wouldn’t let me and that’s that.

Dana: So it wasn’t that difficult getting them on board?

Marc: It was. We actually got hers (Dezi) the last minute and I didn’t get to read hers until the book came out. Jason interviewed her on the phone and I wasn’t there. There were a couple other people I would have liked to have gotten. Rob Gardner, how did he feel to leave Guns N’ Roses just as they were hitting LA and we missed him by two weeks. He found me. We did interview him, but we haven’t added his stuff to the extras yet, but we will get to it at some point. So, you know it makes me feel good when people email me on myspace (myspace.com/recklessroad ) and they tell me, ‘thank you for being a fly on the wall, I always wished I could have been there. Your book is like a time machine.’

Dana: When I read your book I could really feel the energy of the time, the passion shows through your book. I think you accomplished what you set out to do…

Marc: It’s a labor of love and I’m proud of it. I think I made a pretty good mark and hopefully all Guns N’ Roses fans will have it when they finally find out that it exists. It’s at Borders, Barns and Nobles, it’s a hit and miss, you never know, it’s in like 60 percent of the stores themselves. We also sell it on www.recklessroad.com where we have special edition covers available for each band member that are only available on recklessroad.com and when you buy the regular edition you get a free poster of the cover. (It’s also available on amazon.com)

Dana: I am aware that during the bands early stages you helped out with food and what now. What was it like taking care of them?

Marc: Well, they were my friends so they would have done the same for me. I was the only one that lived at home and I had a good job so I spent all my money… I had no expenses, my gas was paid for, everything was paid for, so all the money I made was simply my money so it all went into them cause they needed money for advertisement, for guitar strings, for flyers, for some equipment. I pretty much put all my money into the band until they found better backing, which they did after about 8 months. They really didn’t need my help anymore, maybe emotional support, but not financial support anymore. I did what I could do, got them to where people could recognize their ability to sell out a club, and saw that there was money to be made. My work was done but I’m sure they would have done the same for me if they were in my position.

Dana: You have friends that have lasted over 30 years… Your thoughts on loyalty. Were you brought up with that?

Marc: It’s a commandment, do to others as you want done to you. Treat your neighbor the same way you want to be treated. So basically, I don’t know any other way than to help people and to do the right thing. I just happened to be there at the right time when they needed my help and I was able to help. Still emotionally, I was even a better help because after the band made it big and people were coming around who were beggars and hangers, if they needed some advice they could always call me to get a reality check because everyone working around them, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh grab, oh yes yes yes, yes. Nobody would give them negativity. Slash, to this day always calls me if he knows I was at a performance. He calls me the next day to find out how it was cause I’ll tell him, ‘you sounded like shit, or you were great, this song was good the wah-wah pedal was good, I couldn’t hear you in that song, the sound man needs to do this, your singer was high.’ Whatever. I will tell him exactly what it is, so they know that they are always able to call me. Even if they disagree with what I have to say at least they know I’m giving my opinion and not yes-ing them. I think that is worth a lot.

Dana: Do you pass your passion and appreciation of music onto your kids?

Marc: Actually I’m very proud of my son. For years we tried to get him into ACDC, Aerosmith, you know 70’s rock, where it’s real, and all he was listening to was rap and just R&B, just like, we thought we lost him to the devil, pretty much, and right around the time he became 13 or 14 he started appreciating rock n’ roll. Then he was interested in listening to all of my stuff. He was interested in everything, everything you could ever think of that could be somewhat good he has or has downloaded or traded with people. Now he is in a band called Front Runner, they write their own music, and are basically Deep Purple style from the 70’s but its their own version of it. It’s not a cover band and they write music, he writes music, lyrics, he can write some melodies, and I think he has actually surpassed me as far as musical taste. I was kinda narrowed down to certain things and he likes it all. So he has a better appreciation for music than I even do. I couldn’t ask for anything better. Sometimes I roll my eyes when he is looking at something that I know really isn’t that good, but the fact that he is willing to give it a chance shows that he is open. So I… if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t’ ask for a better person to… a better son to enjoy music the way he enjoys it. I enjoy watching their band play music that they write themselves or if they didn’t’ write it and they want to cover a song I enjoy the music they choose to cover, I couldn’t’ ask for a better situation.

Dana: When and how did you meet your wife Leisa?

Marc: I met Leisa, actually me and my friend Ron Schneider actually rescued a girl from Leisa. I was 16 and we were driving by Fairfax high school and I was with Ronnie. Some girl that Ronnie knew was about to get her ass kicked by Leisa for doing some shady things to Leisa’s then boyfriend, and, we kinda rescued this girl and drove her home. Then years later I find out it was Leisa. I knew of her anyway before I met her through Ronnie. We had mutual friends but it was at Ronnie’s birthday party, it was only like 8 or 9 of us, and that’s how we came a little closer and started going out in 1987. We had pretty much everything in common so we turned out to be a pretty good couple. It’s the American dream, we have a boy and a girl. We have replaced ourselves in the life.

Dana: How long have you been married?

Marc: We have been married since 1989. It’s almost 20 years. It doesn’t’ seem like 20 years, it went by pretty fast. We’ve actually been together for 21 years which seems, you know, when we got married nothing changed. You might as well call it our anniversary is the first time we met cause that’s pretty much how long we’ve been together.

Dana: Drug use was obviously a big thing, how did you not get caught up in it?

Marc: That is something that I saw a lot of my friends do when I was 12 and 13 and by the time I was 15 the friends I was hanging around with weren’t really doing any drugs. Some were still smoking pot but it didn’t really phase me. That whole scene was dead and gone but when I met Slash the second time around he was already drinking alcohol on a regular basis, so he was pretty much an alcoholic, he was drinking alcohol every day.

Dana: What age was that?

Marc: 16 years old the second time around. Cause when I was with him from 11-13 there was nothing, we were just having fun, kids on the streets. Somehow by the time he was 15 he must have started drinking, and so, guess that makes him an alcoholic. He was drinking just to stay alive, literally, because if he didn’t drink he’d shake. I’ve always dealt with him being drunk or whatever. It didn’t’ really phase me as a drug problem, that’s just the way it is. At some point, you know, some of the people in that band started doing bad things, heroin or whatever, and that was, I was totally against. The drinking you are gonna do, whatever, at least it’s legal, and you know, what can I do, but, heroin is another story. That will kill you and if it doesn’t kill you it will screw you up and screw up your life. I was totally against that and I became their mother because they were hiding it from me. They knew that I didn’t’ approve of those things, and you know, they’d call me strung out and they’d say, can I eat some food and I’d say, no, because if I give you food when you do get money you are gonna buy drugs, but that was right around the time I stopped backing the band anyway cause they had better backing. But after they got signed is when they would call, you know, that’s when some of them got strung out, not all of them, but some of them. They figured I would buy them other stuff why wouldn’t I buy them food, but I was smarter cause I knew that buying them food is buying them drugs. Some people don’t see that, but I did. Then they found strippers to hang out with and they’d buy them drugs or whatever. They still got it, I didn’t really help or hurt their situation. They did it with or without me. But I certainly wasn’t going to put my stamp of approval on it.

Dana: So were drugs just something you were never really interested in?

Marc: Instinctively I knew it was a bad thing, look around, look at the people that do the drugs and find out where they end up, either dead or a wasted life their whole life. They fight their whole life to get back on their feet. So why would you even start if you know what the end result is. There is no happy ending taking that path. None whatsoever, so why even try it. You already know what’s gonna happen, its addictive. I have addictive personality, I’m compulsive, the good news is I am compulsive and that’s how this book became. I was compulsively documenting but had I tried drugs I’m sure I would have been a drug addict or dead by now. You know, whatever you wanna call it, cause I have that compulsive disorder, you know, I would like it cause it makes you feel good and I would go down the dark path. So I knew better. I even do that with alcohol, not that I drink alcohol, I don’t like the flavor of alcohol, but once in a while I’ll have a strawberry daiquiri at dinner and you don’t taste the alcohol, it’s like a slurpee, but after you drink it, you know it would take the edge off of the day, and those days I’d work 12-13 hours a day and hard. That drink will kinda make you feel a little bit better and I knew right away that, wait a minute, I better not do this anymore because I might like it. I might start doing this everyday and I can already see my friends are doing bad things. It’s better to just not even go there because you do know what is on the other side and especially, I knew, I had an addictive personality. When I was little I used to spend all my money on pinball machines and I just knew that I was a compulsive person but I didn’t find this out medically until about 5 years ago that I have OCD. Now that I know about it I can easily control it.

Dana: It’s like with any disorder, once you are aware of it…..

Marc: Once you are aware of it and understand it, you have it. Once you understand whatever stupid little message your brain is telling you is a misfire in your brain and that you don’t have to listen to it… People that flick light switches and wash their hands 3 times, their brain tells them to do it so they listen. If they new it was a false message they would simply stop. I use it still to this day to push me through crappy jobs that I don’t like, I turn it on. I say, ok lets let the OCD take me on and I’m not going to stop till I’m done. You make a deal in your mind that you don’t stop till It’s done and same with the book. When I was putting the book together I’d work 5 hours a day on it and I wouldn’t stop till I hit that fifth hour. I was compulsively designing the book, which turned out, I left no stone unturned. Actually, there were a lot of things that didn’t make it into the book that should have been there but people don’t know it, only I know what’s missing. They are happy with what they got. There were over 1000 images, so that’s 1000 more images they would not have had, had I not put it out.

Dana: When your close friends got strung out on drugs and started doing naughty things did you have to distance yourself for a while or did you just watch?

Marc: No, in fact I even bailed them out of jail. I bailed Slash out of jail once for getting pulled over with a rig in his car. I really felt like leaving him in jail cause I felt like bad things would happen and maybe he wouldn’t want… but I kinda did the math on it and I realized that it’s not going to stop him from doing what he was doing. I realized that I might as well bail him out of jail. It just, you know, it was unfortunate and some of the members were using the drugs and they got off of it and never went back. Slash was little harder to kick that habit, you know, he fought that demon for years. The good news is now he’s clean and sober for 2 years and has a wife and 2 children. I think it was the kids that pulled him out, and his health, but I think it was more so the kids. What are we here for? We are here for the kids, and he is a good father. So, I am happy now that finally after 20 something years they pretty much are all sober. Steven Adler is the one left who is battling that. Sometimes some experiences, even the bad ones, if you ask people who have gone through hell and back, they’ll always say, if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it the same way because it makes them a stronger person. So, as long as they survive it and they can learn from it, it’s not such a bad thing. Unfortunately, if you ask those people how many friends they have that are dead from it, they can count on two hands because one hand isn’t enough. You know, it’s like playing Russian roulette. Their friends didn’t’ make it, maybe they did, it’s just a bad scene. My advice is don’t start. Just don’t start because nothing good can come from it. Nothing.

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