2021.07.02 - Appetite For Distortion - Interview with Steve Darrow (Hollywood Rose)

Transcript:

Brando: Are you LA born and raised?

Steve Darrow: Yes.

B: I haven't yet to go out to the west coast.

SD: If you look like, for example, basically where I am right now and where I've been for the last 30 plus years is, you know, if you look at Marc Canter's Reckless Road book, there was like a map that's in the jungle. Yeah. It was a visual, almost like a monopoly game of like all the clubs and all the rehearsal places and the recording studios and the hangouts from the hot places in Hollywood. I'm like kind of smack dab in the middle of that.  Like a block from what was that little miniature rehearsal studio that they all moved into, that they called, they had a wacky name for it. It was like the Gardner Street Hotel and Suites, their sarcastic word for a room that was about 12 by 12 and all of them lived with their equipment.

B: Don't worry. I'm not going to ask you the question of how was the Sunset Strip in the eighties. I'm not going to ask.

SD: It was cool!

B: I know, I want to relive it not just by asking those a generic question, but getting to know you, what kind of kid were you and what influenced you to go along this path? What was little Steven like, not the Bruce Springsteen.

SD: Well, I guess if you go back, it starts with my family, who's all musicians and artists as well. And my dad. So raised, you know, born in the 60s, so raised going to concerts and love-ins and recording studios with my dad and his bands. And he was in, started out in the folk boom of like the early, early 60s and the surf music and then got into electric rock, you know, garage bands, and that led into psychedelia. Then he ended up being in a couple bands in the late sixties, mid to late sixties, when I was just born.

B: That's cool that your dad was in psychedelic bands.

SD: Yeah. And then he, so him, he was in a band called the Kaleidoscope in the sixties. And another member of the Kaleidoscope, David Lindley married my dad's sister. So he became my uncle. And so they were both basically, you know, living in the same town. And I was kind of bounced back and forth between growing up in their households, both of them. And so I was always around, you know, stripping on courts when I was a little kid and gear everywhere and weird people coming over. Sort of similar to like, if you've... I didn't ever talk to him much about it until recent years, but I mean, Slash kind of has the same upbringing, a little bit just with, you know, cause his mother was in the sort of rock clothing designer world.

B: David Bowie world. And yeah, you're just surrounded by it, right?

SD: Yeah. And he was like in the thick of things and like Laurel Canyon and Hollywood. And I wasn't the thick of things like, you know, out, you know, like in the suburbs of Hollywood and was, you know. Anyway, so, uh, basically I grew up with, you know, up until I was about 11 or 12, I was the stuff that my parents were into was it got, you know, it went from psychedelia quickly into like the super mellow laid back California 70s, early 70s singer songwriter sound. Both my dad and my uncle went off to be kind of well-known or not well-known but side after side men musicians for those people like in the studio, like my dad played on the first James Taylor record, you know and my uncle went on to play with Jackson Brown, Linda Ron's dad and Crosby's Nash and you know blah blah blah. And then once they got into the later 70s the 80s they had their own solo album. So I was kind of, you know, weaned on psychedelia and stuff. But then once I got to work where I was, you know, adolescent, I was like, this is just so, no. I was like, you know, ready to like, you know, like a 12 year old kid wants to do. So I got into surfing and skateboarding and motocross. And then that quickly led into punk rock, you know? And I was in a band in junior high school by the time, you know, I started playing drums, which is what I started out playing. And no one in the family played drums either.

B: So is that why you chose the drums? Like, is nobody else?

SD: In a way, I think in a way it was just that and, and B it was a, that was that, you know, because you know, my father was known as like, I'm the guy who could play anything with strings. You know, I was, I could play mandolin. I could play ukulele, I could play banjo, I could play guitar, bass, blah, blah, blah. There was a drum set in the house for drummers to come and play when they record, but I think that meets the fact that it was like something to do when your a kid, get your aggression out.

B: Yeah. Like BamBam or animal from the Muppets or something.

SD: And so I kind of caught on real quick. And then my friends that I was growing up with, they, you know, they went to, one of them went to England on a vacation with his parents in, you know, 1977 or something during the Jubilee and came back with all these tales of this thing, punk rock, which was, you know, huge over there, but still here was like creepy, you know, just you had to really be dialed in to know about it. And so we just kind of went with sort of teenage abandoned into, just getting into anything that was like that high energy and crazy, not the norm, you know.

B: Who are your favorite bands? And what was the age like when you saw your first concert? Like for me, it's obviously we're different eras.  I guess if you want to count a real band, first concert, Eve Six. However, I like-

[...]

SD: It's kind of, it's kind of weird for me because like I said, I was always getting dragged literally in a baby carriage or walking around to concerts with the parents. And I went, you know, once was going to like shows and limousines, you know, when my uncle would play at the forum or something like that as a kid, just because it was something different. But I think the first, the first bands that I really, you know, actually tried to get tickets for and, and go to see and actually get a ride. It was before we could drive, we were old enough to drive. So it was, you know, 13 or whatever, but it was like Iggy Pop and the Runaways and the Ramones and stuff like that you know around LA. And then there was a lot of club bands that were probably not really, you know, they're cult bands now looking at the past. It's like you had CBGBs and you know [?] and stuff like that in New York, we had clubs like that here that would just have the crazy local bands so you'd get anybody from you know, it'd be what, you know, the weirdos one night and Van Halen the next night. And, you know, a band like AC/DC's first, you know, US show like at the Whiskey the next night and then, you know, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you know, so there's all this kind of stuff that was happening in like the late seventies, just on a club level. Like not even forget like the big concerts and stuff, but just clubs. So we saw a lot of those crazy bands.

B: So when you're seeing, I mean, obviously, you can't know the heights at Van Halen and AC/DC at that time, but the energy, and that's what you're looking for, the adrenaline. So when you're going to concerts, whether you are carrying it in a stroller or you were buying it for yourself or however, did you think this is what I want to do with my life as a profession or was it just part of your family? And maybe did you have another goal or was it like, hey, I want to be, I want to do both-

SD: -you know, both to be honest. I mean, like I said, I probably, you know, like every little kid wants to grow up to be a baseball player or professional skateboarder or something, or serial killer or whatever they aspire to be. You know, and then, like I said, I was pretty sporty for up until, you know, early high school and it was like, no, I'm full on, I got to go rock world, art world. And you know, being into punk rock at that time, it was, you know, it became later on, it just became a uniform for disenfranchised jocks that were shaving their heads and just kicking people's asses that didn't look right. But that wasn't when I was starting out, it wasn't about that at all. It was much more individual and everyone was different, everyone was crazy and everyone was crazy in their own cool way and high energy, but like you'd find your people, you'd find your tribe of people that were similar and you could like pogo and you know, jump around and maybe even throw a punch every once in a while, but it wasn't like the full on violent like Black Flag, you know, hardcore post, you know, all that kind of stuff like it turned into. And then, you know, of course, since it was such a weird time, like our age, my age, same with the GN'R guys, most of them are around the same age. A couple of them are older. A couple of them are tad younger. It was like still the seventies and the seventies was still, even when you were a teenager, still all about heavy metal and, you know, stone, getting stoned, like listening to Zeppelin, listening to Kiss, listening to Aerosmith. And then, or if you're a little bit more sensitive, you were into Peter Frampton or the Fleetwood Mac or disco if you were really messed up. So for me, it was like, I was even before I got bitten by the punk and stuff out of me now is listening to my dad's, you know, the heavier records in his collection, which was like Steppenwolf and Blue Cheer[?] and Hendrix. That kind of stuff. Then I gravitated into Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and that stuff that kids and then like, like if I was 12, the guys in high school who were a handful of years older than me were all listening to and then punk rock hit and it became, it was so segmented back then. It was like, okay, well you either got to choose. You can't like Sabbath and you can't like the Sex Pistols. You just can't. It's hard to explain now, but like back then it really was divided like at least if you wanted any kind of cred. So it was hard, you know, especially growing up in that time and around when people were just... You look at like Fast Times at Ridgemont High or a movie like that, you know, my school was basically those guys. You know, and then there was like the one, you know, they had the girl that had cultivated the Pat Benatar look, you know, and it was one of her, you know, and everyone was like, wow, who's that? You know, and then, but I had anyways, so.

B: Were you the Spicoli?

SD: I'm not so much Spicoli. I did go to school with him though, like full on Spicoli, like more, I lived in Orange County for a year with my dad and you know, down by the beach and there was full on Spicoli like and his buddies. He had the red haired friend. You know, that they all wore shorts and had puka shells. I mean, it was like totally legit. Like, and then if you end up watching another movie, like, you know, Dazed and Confused, which almost everyone from any age group, from 60 to 40 years old now could go, "That was my high school!" And it really was, even though it was set in Texas and it was set in '76, it was really like, you know, you had the stoners and you had the jocks, the dreamers, like the kind of like, you know, I forget the guy's name, but the guy was like the sort of anxious guy that was hanging around with the nerd kids and the girl with the red hair and I just want to dance, man. You know, like that. It was those guys and there became more like the people that I sort of hung out with once punk broke because they went into the nerdy, intellectual, you know, way because they fit in with that more, you know. And then the other guys were just kicking ass and worrying about what they're going to know what party they're going to go to. Anyway, it was really hard. I never shaved my head. I never had a Mohawk. I always had basically like this, which gave me a lot of grief and through all the punk rock time, but I managed to stick it out and got a lot, a lot of shit. Some people like they were destined to be bald from by the time they were in high school. They just got rid of it back then and they kind of fit their look, you know, but it really was divided. And then that's the weird thing about like, sort of, if you fast forward to, you know, when GN'R was getting together, when they were just called Rose and before Hollywood Rose, even like kind of right when I met them. I was just coming out of playing in pretty underground punk goth like world, you know, deathrock, I called it. And I went to high school with like Rozz [Williams] who was in Christian Death. I mean, our first bands together when I was 13 and he was 15, before anything happened, we played like one or two gigs and that was it. But so I grew up with these guys that later, you know, I mean, he's almost like the Axl Rose of goth rock. He was this kid who came from, you know, really strange town, Pomona, and turned into this icon. After he was dead, basically, like became this spokesman for this whole sort of, you know, genre. Books written about him, and there's, you know, stuff coming out all the time, and people, you know, girls that are in high school that have his picture, like spray painted on their leather jacket that weren't even born with the other hand. It's like you see now with other people. It was really weird coming out of that and then going straight into, you know, pretty much LA metal, which was, you know.

B: Yeah. So how did that happen? How do you go from goth rock to the glam and the tease and yeah, well, it's weird Guns N' Roses at the time, but they, I guess, tell us how you made that transition from goth to glam. I guess that'd be a good phrase. It was, I don't have your book by the way. "Goth to glam"? is that going to be the title of your upcoming book?

SD: Probably not, but some sort of that. The funny thing about it, I mean, it's kind of like the words hair metal now, you know, associated with like nothing but a good time. That's pretty much hair metal encapsulated, right? But like, we didn't say that back then. No one really said that. Back then it was like your bunch of glam fags or your, your poofs or your, your glam guys or your, you know, this and that.

B: What was the phrase then that was used if, cause you were saying that even just between Sex Pistol fans and Black Sabbath fans. So what was the phrase of, you know, what we call now hair metal was there?

SD: Well, like I said, it was probably started out... definitely glam. Glam rock to me associates with the 70s, the good stuff. You know, like Alice, and the Sweet, and Bowie, and Gary Glitter and, you know, the 70s boom, which... But once it became, anything sort of post Motley Crue really, as far as LA club scene rock, you know, was basically like glam metal, glam. That's just kind of what they called it. So even within like the GN'R guys, they weren't really even happy with that back then. I mean, they were kind of 50-50 on being that type of band because they're especially Izzy in those days was calling, you know, pretty much controlling the way that the band grew. And it was like all about New York Dolls and Aerosmith and Hanoi Rocks, stuff like that. And then at that point, there was just kind of a small batch of people that really even knew about that stuff. If you were of that age, you know, if you were from 18 to like 25 and you knew about that stuff either from the old days or you knew about Hanoi Rocks, which was this weird cult band from Finland. I mean, this was before the internet. So it's not like we just had stuff bombarded all the time. It was like, we had to see a picture of him in a magazine. It was like six months to a year old that came from Europe. And then you had to go, "Whoa! Where do I get that record?" And then you had to explore. And it was kind of like a code word in those days. It's like, if you're down with Hanoi and you were down with Aerosmith and you're down with AC/DC, and a couple other things, it was like, that was the GN'R sort of like password. So anyways, but as far as the transition for me, it was kind of like, it wasn't that hard because even though I was playing in those type of bands and those kind of clubs, even the band I was playing in towards the end was basically within that scene was trying to go, we were trying to bum out the punk rockers. It was no, you know, a lot of bands were. A lot of bands that were around in the first wave were like, you know, screw that, let's go really weird. Let's go super art-y or let's go super synthesizer or let's go super, even Black Flag and bands like that were going like more Black Sabbath, you know? And we were too, and we all married makeup and it was a little bit weird because like that's kind of why initially like we got sort of attracted to like Crue and stuff like that when we first saw them like around town. I was like, there was these guys and they were like older guys and they were like a Cheap Trick and stuff like that, but they looked like, you know, Nikki Sixx could have been Souixie and the Banshees, you know, with his hair and lipstick and boots and everything. And it was like, almost like we're confused, but extremely fascinated. And then for a couple years, I think probably say from like '82 to like '85 or '86 slowly became like a lot of people were jumping over the fence, you know, until that scene and getting into like, "This stuff's okay, it's not your basic like jock metal it's a little, you know, girls dig it." And it's just like the Van Halen kind of formula, it's like the girls dig it, tons of girls show up the show because they dig it, that henceforth tons of guys show up the show because there's a ton of girls there. And it was just at this point it was just guys dressing like girls. Girls looking the same, wearing not much clothes. And I mean, at the height of it all, it really was like the stereotype that people think it was. It wasn't like that all the time. It wasn't like that everywhere. But there was times when it really was like chick strippers everywhere, chicks wearing hardly anything and hair up to here and guys with more makeup than the chicks.

B: So since you never cut your hair, did you tease it? Did you use it?

SD: Oh hell yeah.

B: Oh, right on. You gotta send me, I think you sent me some of those pictures. People are loving them. I appreciate that for me to share the pictures you sent me of you and Axl and baby Slash or put on social media. Like, wow. You, I mean, you can barely see your face because you are like Animal. Even you switched to bass, you're still like an animal behind-

SD: Yeah. That's the way I was back then. And you know, even Axel was... We had a thing, like once I actually, you know, joined them as a bass player, which I'm fast forwarding a little bit, but, you know, became like this, like he was like that crazy six year old kid that, you know, just wanted to go out there and, you know, cause at that point the band wasn't really doing much. Like they weren't playing on a regular basis at all. Right? I mean, it was like every several months or a couple of times a year, there was a gig, it wasn't really like, there was never even a really consistent rehearsal pattern. So there wasn't like this, "Okay, this is how I get my energy out. I'm going to," you know, "rehearse for a week and then do a gig on the weekend and then rehearse for another week." It was like this long stretches of like, you know, abstinence from-

B: Sounds like Guns N' Roses now, which is awesome.

[laughs]

SD: It wasn't like the Chinese Democracy, like 15 year absence, but it was like, you know, when you're waiting for something to happen, it seems forever. It's like, "When are we going to play, man?"

B: Yeah. So I guess, but before I got to that point, you know, when you're obviously looking for bands, how did you get recruited? Because it sounds like through the bands that you're naming, the music, I think you even mentioned some of your athletic ability. You could see why you and Slash would get along.

SD: It's funny because I didn't actually meet him until quite a bit later.

B: Okay. So who did you meet?

SD: You know, we met Slash like, like you read all the stories Axl was playing with Rapid Fire at Gazzari's and you know, Izzy had seen this guy that drew the Aerosmith picture, blah, blah, blah. You know, so I didn't actually meet him until really we started playing, but I had met Izzy and Axl a good couple years, like probably like at the end of 1983 or something like that. And I had just gotten out of that band I was playing with and that scene basically, and was starting to go see Wasp at the Troubadour all the time, starting to see Crue at the Roxy, those kinds of bands that I thought... I was checking them out because I go, "There's something going on, something else going on." It's a good transition between just straight up like hardcore punk and kind of jock metal at the time. Which I had no problem with, but I didn't really want to be in that scene, you know, the spandex and the spikes and everything. I had no problem with hair, no problem with leather, no problem with makeup, no problem with any of that stuff. But it was different the way that we sort of went through it. And so anyways, I had started just looking like everybody else, like before the Internet and before Craigslist, we had this thing called Recycler Magazine, a newspaper that came out every week. And it was just a classified ads. It was just everything, you could buy cars, you could buy pets, apartment rentals, and they had Artists Wanted, Musicians Wanted, actor gigs, you know, and so it was just this free paper and seems like everybody you knew went to get the Recycler on Thursday and just looking for something. Same way that Mick Mars had met Motley Crue, [?] the Recycler that had a funny tag to it. I'd been seeing this ad and I had been placing my own ads, trying to find, you know, something that was more in that, you know, dark metal sort of glam thing. It was Alice Cooper, you know, meets Judas Priest meets, you know, the Sweet or something like that. But then at the same time, I was like, "Yeah...", the people were... I wasn't getting any of the right people, people weren't getting it, you know, and I was trying out for these bands that were just straightforward, like every other band in LA, they were just straightforward, you know, kind of Van Halen, Journey, Lover Boy kind of whatever, or still some leftover kind of other punk guys that were getting into trying to play rock, even like Red Cross, bands like that at the time, were like sort of branching out into like being a little more hard rock or whatever. And I don't really wanna do that, I don't wanna go roots rock and new wave, you know, that kind of thing. And so anyways, I was down with Hanoi Rocks, I discovered them and I was like, "Wow, these are pretty fascinating. These guys are like..." and down with this band called Smack, that was also from Finland, who were a little bit more in what I kind of thought Hanoi Rocks should have been like. They were sort of more like, you know, the Dead Boys meets, you know, a hair metal band. But they were from Finland as well, and they only had really weird records that were really hard to find, and you couldn't mention their name to the average kid on the street and stuff. I turned Slash and Axl onto them early on and they were like, "Oh!" But anyway, so I found to add the Recycler and it was like really like boom, boom, it was like super, super glam. Like it was the headline. It's like, I guess they needed a drummer. They needed a drummer and a bass player. I think they had a bass player, but they're always kind of still looking for the right bass player. They had Rick and they had André and a couple other people that were sort of leftover people from Izzy's bands in the before days, like Shire and stuff like that.

B: For sure. Yeah. And I'm looking at a timeline and I want to make sure I give credit to, Anthony Mazzaria sent me a timeline. And if I could show you, it's so funny. He does like hand drawn arrows. So as yeah, I see like André Trox was there, Rick Mars was in there. You know, Johnny Kreiss was in there, but yeah. So, sorry, continue.

SD: I think Johnny and Rick were in Shire, this band Shire with Izzy. The Shire was around before, I think it's just sort of like striped spandex, you know, poofy hair kind of-

B: Before I lose it, I want to ask about Shire. I'm going to interrupt because it's, it's actually kind of important because I had Alan Santalesa-

SD: Yeah, Alan.

B: So I don't know if you know, and I want to put this out in the universe, especially since you're in that area. I saw a video brought to my attention recently that he's homeless. And it was a few... it was outside of McDonald's a couple of years ago. And I mean, I can only hope he's okay. I don't know if you know anything.

SD: The last few times I've seen him, I knew him actually pretty well after Shire because we both worked on Melrose when Melrose was like the shit, the place to be. It's kind of turned into the hood now. It's where people just get their watches stolen in drive-bys. But it was like, I worked in a record store and he worked on the corner at a gelato place, which was like unheard of back in the 80s. Like, "What's gelato? Just ice cream? What the hell's going on here?" And, you know, it was like a real trendy like, you know, it was all gray and Euro looking and he was Italian and he was super good looking blonde, but he was Italian, could pronounce all the funny Italian words. And so I was literally like work next door to him. So we'd see each other every, you know, almost every day or times a week. And he was sort of all... It was in the like, post, you know, post Guns N' Roses kind of taking off days. And we were all sort of like, sort of like the left behind sort of people at that point. And all these other bands were starting kind of like, in the wake of GN'R getting popular. And anyway, he was, you know, had a good situation and older girlfriend and had a nice place. He was really polite and really seemed really fine, you know, really quiet, soft-spoken. Then I saw him... I didn't see him for a long time. I did see him like ten years later, he came running up to me on the street, "Hi Steve!" I was like, "Who is this guy?" Totally, totally, totally not at all the same shape and size as Alan. He almost looked like Lux Interior from the Cramps or something like that. Big, tall, gangly guy with short black hair and all these crazy clothes. And he was really boisterous. And I was like, "You're not Alan?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" And he started like... "Oh, what the hell happened?" And then we caught up and then I go, "Okay, well, Alan's gone through some changes. He's totally into a different thing now." And then I'd bump into him occasionally around town at different places and he was equally as different. And I didn't see him. And so anyways, long story short, I wouldn't doubt that that story's true at this point. The odd thing, the one ray of hope is that I did Rock and Roll Ralphs, which is probably on the little map of the jungle, is about two blocks down from Guitar Center. And it's called Rock, it's a grocery store, but it's called Rock and Roll Ralphs because it was open 24 seven. It was right in the middle of Hollywood. Anytime after like 11 or midnight during the eighties, you'd see more people in bands at Ralph's, buying booze and pizzas and stuff than you would at clubs because everyone lived in an apartment around there, and Seventh Veil was across the street. And the Rock and Roll Denny's was another block down the street. So anyways, I would go there, you know, a bunch of times a week to Ralph's just to get shop and not that long ago, a couple of years ago, the bag boy, the guy bagging you groceries is like, would you like, "[?] or a plastic?" And he goes, he just looked at me, he was really quiet and you know, pretty conservative, normal looking guy. And this, "Steve Darrow?" I looked at him, "It's Alan." And I looked down and he had a little name tag, you know, and it's, and I was like, "Oh, it is Alan." It's like, "Oh, what are you doing?" He's like, "I'm working here at Ralph's." "That's great." And then I kind of thought, "Okay, well, I'll probably see him all the time now. Cause I go to Ralph's numerous times a week" and I kind of maybe saw him twice, like working there and I didn't see him after that.

B: Well, I, sorry. Once you, mentioned Shire, I couldn't, you know, get past that thought, because I put it out on, I mean, it's a shot in the dark. I mean, the video I was sent was a couple of years old and I hope the guy's OK. I was fortunate enough that he actually came... He was in New York and he came in studio when I interviewed him. So I hope he's OK. Sorry to deviate to that.

SD: That's OK, because I know that the band that later on, the bands that he was in, were totally different than what, you know, Shire or Guns N' Roses or anything. You know, he was actually in this band, it was a spin-off of Motorcycle Boy, or he might have been in Motorcycle Boy. They were a real big Hollywood trash rock band at the time. Like everyone worked on Melrose. No one had a motorcycle except the singer, but they were called Motorcycle Boy. They're real, real like school of Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers meets the Cramps, meets the Ramones, you know, real simple three chord trash rock. He ended up in a band like that, Alan, and then the couple of bands that he had after that... A couple of times when I'd bump into him, he'd throw me a cassette, "Here's my band, we're called," I don't even know what they're called. And they're just crazy. Like, I mean, he was a shredder. He was like, you know, into eight, like he could play like the Scorpions guys and, you know, Ratt and stuff like that. Even he was, you know, had Marshalls and, you know, whammy bars and perfect blonde hair and everything.

B: See, that's why it's so important and why I love doing this podcast is to talk to people like Alan and you, that have this history that we may not read about all the time. So, and these bands that are near misses. They have the same talent, they have the same drive-

SD: It's just the wrong place at the right time or-

B: Exactly. Exactly. So I guess let's go back to the right place, right time for you, if we can. So you kept looking for an ad with it in the Recycler.

SD: Yeah, the Recycler. And so I had called, got a message, you know, just a generic answering machine back then, this is, you know, whatever early eighties and got a call back, I think I was living with my mother in Pasadena at the time, didn't get the call, played phone tag with whoever was calling me and finally I, you know, called and I got the call back from this guy named Jeff. And it's like, "Yeah, yeah." "So what do you do? You play drums?" So you got, you know, and right off the bat, it was just like, "Okay, well, what do you look like?" "Do you have a pair of black pants?" "Yeah, actually wearing some right now," you know, and, "Well, how long's your hair?" "You know, what are you into?" "What's your bag musically," and blah, blah, blah, "What do you play like?" It was, he was looking for all the, all the, you know, cause at the time-

B: The password, I like how you said that, the GN'R-

SD: Yeah, the passwords and the buzzwords were like, you know, at the time, if you're either into kind of like Motley Crue and Wasp and Ratt and not even Poison yet, because Poison was just starting. But some of those bands that were playing around the Strip that had grown out of playing the Strip and gone on to make records. But then there was the Strip bands that were real pretty boy, a lot of pink and a lot of stripes and kind of like London and bands like that who later entered into the story too. Or everyone was, the people that were into that, it was just straight up Maiden and later Priest and Accept and you know, that kind of stuff, which I liked musically, but like I said, I wasn't really going for that, like all the way, like they were just, you know... Those kinds of bands. And so he was like looking for people that were a little more dialed in to like kind of a niche, you know, like gotta be into Aerosmith, you gotta be into the Dolls, you gotta be into the Stones, you gotta be into a handful of other things. If you like Priest, it's okay. If you like Maiden, that's okay. You know, you like, you know, whatever it's, but you know. And then, "Have you heard Hanoi Rocks?" I was like, "Yeah, I got their, you know, single, a couple of posters," he was like, "Whoa! Okay." You know, and then it was like, they were looking for drummer and...

B: When you say that you played, I guess, like, cause you, do you played both at the time or you still?

SD: I was playing drums all like almost exclusively at that point. That's what I'd been playing. And then it wasn't until... I knew how to play other stuff just at home and I'd recorded with people and jammed with people playing guitar. But I was, you know, a drummer, I had a drum kit and I was like, thought I was the shit of a drummer. I thought I was bad ass. And I probably was for my age back then. At this point I was just barely like 18 or 19 probably. Anyway, so he said, "Well, yeah, I got this singer. I live in West Hollywood, singer lives in Beverly Hills," and, "We're into this," "We're into that," "and we got some gigs coming up if we could just find the right people," "We got some record...." And it like sounded real top drawer sort of, like he had his shit together, like these were real Hollywood people that were real showbiz guys. And I was like trying to figure out like, "Who could that be?" Hell, I was like...

B: Cause you knew everybody? You were trying to figure out, you know-

SD: I kind of knew at least, you know, I knew about most of the movers and shakers. So anyway, it was a phone tag after that. Well, it turns out, you know, they didn't really live anywhere. They were just couch, you know-

B: There was couch service.

SD: He had an answering service where he'd check in whatever a couple of times a day to get his messages and then he'd go to a combo to whoever's house he was hanging out at, make phone calls, call back. And then, you know, if he happened to call back and he wasn't at someone's house or a phone booth, it was like you'd miss him and it would be a week before. [...] And anyway, so we had figured out a time, he goes, "Well, we've got this guys we're working with, this guitar player and then I play guitar, and our singer", you know, he didn't say anything about like their sound. I mean, he didn't say, "We got this awesome singer that sounds like," you know, "He's going to be the biggest thing in the world." He was just like, "Yeah, singer Billy," you know-

B: -singer Bill.

SD: -"living in Beverly Hills," and I was like, "Okay." These are obviously, like I said, like, picturing them to be like someone in Rainbow or someone, you know, a big band like that. And then he goes, "Well, when we get a rehearsal set up for an audition," boy, you know, like, because they didn't really have a place to live. And they couldn't even play in the garage at their house because they didn't have a house, you know, they'd have to rent a hourly place, and then they'd have to get money to rent the hourly place. So that took a whole other, you know, stretch of time for that to come through. So anyways, it was a good couple of weeks. And I was like, "Okay, I want to check these guys out. These guys sound promising." You know, I got a list of five calls and you know, this one sounds like definitely one I want to check out just because it's so weird, but it sounds like it's, you know, it has potential. And anyways, so it took a really long time for that to actually happen. And then one day I was actually, I didn't even have a car at that point, I was borrowing my mom's car and then I drove to Hollywood, [?] even half hour away. But if you weren't in Hollywood, everything was like, you know, it's kind of like if you live in New York City, anything that's past the tunnel is Mexico. You know what I mean? Mentally. So I was in Hollywood and I pulled over to a phone booth and I had Jeff's number scrolled down on some eyeliner somewhere and I was like, "Okay, I'm in Hollywood. I think I should call these guys maybe we could get together and meet," you know, because I'm only here for whatever. In couple hours I got to take the car back. And so I called and it was like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, hey, which one were you?" like he was a little bit confused. Like he probably gotten a lot of calls or a few calls. And I go, "Yeah, I'm just down the street, man." I could come over. I'll probably be there in 10 minutes," and he was like, "What do you look like again? How long is your hair?" And he was like trying to like filter, you know, filter the idiots out, you know, the posers and the not cool rockers out. And he goes, "Okay, we're here. I guess. Can you come over in like a half hour?" And he told me where they lived. And he goes, "Okay, you go on Sunset and you'll see the Coconut Teazer and the Liquor Locker there," which is a liquor store, you know, literally on the corner about a hundred yards from their little place they live, "You drive up there and then for about, you know, half a block north of Sunset, you'll see this sign, you know, a one way street and a sign that says, 'Do Not Enter', enter when you see that sign, enter, and we live right there." And I was like, "Okay, well that's kind of fancy pants," like, you know, "These guys have a nice pad," because that's like getting into Hollywood Hills, real estate in the big houses and, you know. I don't know if you heard of the Coconut Teazer?

B: I've heard of it. Yeah.

SD: It was before, it was always there. It was like this bar/barbecue restaurant. It was always right on a big corner of Sunset and little Canyon Boulevard and really prime real estate. It's like a super fancy dance club now, but it wasn't really back then. It was just basically a bar. It wasn't really known as a rock club yet, but that's just where they live. And so I pull up on this road and there's this little, it looked like a kind of a tool shed. It was like the sort of garage where like from the big house, it was whoever they were renting this room from lived in a big kind of house up the road a bit. And then this little one door and it was like this place, like literally like a place where you would have kept your bicycles or something if you were at a nice big house or, you know, pool house almost, but really small, and maybe had a bathroom, I guess, and enough for like two cots, you know, and that was it. And so I pulled up in my car and there is this door, like right on the street, like no lawn, no yard, no nothing, just this door open, and I see Jeff, Izzy, and I go, "Oh, that's that guy." I'd seen him a bunch around town over the last few years. Just driving around, I'd see him at clubs, I'd see him walking down the street. And you know, he'd see me as well. And there are kind of like this weird little head turn, like no one ever said anything because it wasn't cool. But like, "That guy looks weird. He looks wrong. He looks really cool, but he's always in this kind of wrong place and he has his pink leather jacket and you know, Nikki Sixx hair but he'd be like in some kind of nice part of town." You know, like places where those people wouldn't... I even saw him on a Judas Priest concert at Long Beach arena once. Like in this huge crowd of thousands of people, like Point Of Entry tour or something like that, you know, all these people spilling out and the one person that I just caught his eye was Izzy, you know, of these millions of people. And so anyway, I was like, "That's that guy, okay. Now it's all making sense. I wonder who this singer is." So he's like, "Oh, hey, yeah, come on in." And their room wasn't much bigger than the car I was in. And it was just him. And there was somebody else there that I don't remember who it was. It wasn't someone in the band. It was just a friend, maybe a friend. And it's okay, you know, quiet, self-spoken Izzy. And so, "Well, yeah, hey, how are you doing?" Blah, blah, blah, "Do you got any tapes?" you know, and, "Play some stuff that we've done, we've been working on." They had these little tapes and ghetto blaster, you know, like boom box, cassette, you know, a portable cassette player. And just with built in mic, he'd sit there and put the guitar amp two feet away and the singer would get close and, you know, try to record little ideas. And so they just kind of had that. And he still played me some ideas and it was literally just him and Axl, like Cold Hard Cash, you know, Shadow of Your Love and stuff like that. And then they had done that demo with Chris Weber before that, which had, you know, Johnny Kreiss and those guys on it, at Mystic Studios. So it was like, "You guys, yeah, this is the stuff we've been doing. This was like, you know, a little while ago, it's kind of, we're kind of not... It's an idea that you could tell what we're up to, but we're sort of going in a different direction than that," you know. And there's still no Axl. And then out of the bathroom, which was like just, you know, 10 feet away, other side of the house, the door opens and this guy comes out, you know, you know, three quarter length rock Jersey on it was like shredded, tied back together and real quiet. "Hey, how's it going?" You know, and he wasn't like, you know, he was just very quiet and reserved and Izzy was doing all the talking and all the action and stuff. So, "Okay, hey." And I was listening to this stuff and going, "Yeah, okay, this is pretty cool. I like this." Iit was not what I was expecting. It was cooler.

B: It sounds like nothing was what you were expecting.

SD: No. And like the way that their raw, their tapes, their demos on the boombox were just so raw. I mean, it was more punk rock than any of the shit that I'd been hearing, but with Axl singing. So it was like, you know-

B: What did you think of his voice at that time?

SD: I listened and it was... Because all he used anyways was like one section of his range at that point. It was just [mimicking shrieking] all the time. It was just on 11, all the time. There was no Mr. Brownstone voice or ballad voice, or it was just, you know, scream. So after about the third song, I looked over to him. He still wasn't really saying much, you know. I go, "Do you like Nazareth by any chance?" And he looked at me and kind of like, "Yeah." I was like, "Right on, that's awesome." Because no one really sings like that, you know, like anymore. Like, at that point, there weren't, you know, it was just the real like, kind of David Lee Roth voice or like, you know, operatic metal voice, nothing much in between. And so I was like, "Yeah, well, shit, this is crazy. This is this is pretty, this is cool." He's like, "Well, yeah." We hung out and we just shot the shit and it was kind of comfortable like we got along, I think. And we hung out and then I had to go and Izzy, "Yeah, we'll be in touch, we'll be in touch." You know, "We got this going on, we got this going on, we just got to find the right people. We got to find the right people. Not really happy with the situation we got now." I don't even know how long they stayed in that room that they were renting, but probably by the next time that I talked to him, they were already moved out. Maybe a little after that. But so anyways, I started getting these more frequent calls from Izzy. Like sometimes before I'd wake up, sometimes in the middle of night. My mom got a little bit frustrated because I lived in the garage behind the house and she'd have to come out and get me and blah, blah, blah, "Telephone!" you know, 10 minutes later, I'd come in, "Hello?" "Hey! Yeah, so can you get out here? We got this, you know, if we can rehearse and get these songs down, we can get this gig opening for a friend of mine's band." And that didn't happen. And then there was this crazy, he had a friend, he always had a scheme. He always had a plan. He always had things going on, stuff going on. Even back then. And there was somebody in Finland that had some sort of Hanoi Rocks connection. Like I didn't even know what the connection was if he just maybe knew them or was from Finland, so it was enough of a connection. He was like a guy that was trying to get, you know, like a promoter type guy. There's always those guys that are like, "Yeah, man, get your shit together and come on over here and I can make sure you have like the best gigs," and you know. And so Izzy, I guess been carrying on these late night conversations with this guy, you know, on the phone, like talking to this guy, I forget his name, he had a funny name and was like, "We got to do this, man. We got to just get shit together and get a band together and just fucking go over there. They'll pay for it."

B: To go to Finland?

SD: Yeah! And I was like, "Well, okay, sure." And so anyways, they had finally gotten to the point where they rented a room for audition/rehearsal type thing, right? An our hourly rehearsal place down... It was kind of far out of town in a way because it was cheaper. I think they had some girl, maybe a girlfriend, that drove one car. And I went with my mom's car with my drum loaded. It was a Toyota, like sedan too. It wasn't like an SUV or a station. Mostly drums in the back seat and a few in the front seat and a couple of stands here and there. And I went to their place and picked up, I think Axl rode with me with a drum on his lap after he got in, you know, in the front seat. And Izzy had his little one amp that he had and a guitar and the girl, and then we took off down to the studio. And I remember we stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way because it was like probably a 15 minute drive and Axl got a cup of coffee to go. And I got one too. And we're driving and it was like, "Okay, let's go to the studio now." We stopped and we've got our shit, you know, beer and coffee. You know, I put the gas on and it was a stop sign and le like spilled some coffee on his lap and he just went like... I was like, "Are you okay?" He's like, "Yeah..." There was some coffee on my lap and he was like, "You spilled coffee on my lap". That feeling. I was like, "Okay, well, you'll get over it." So he was already kind of like on edge, you know, so we got to the studio and set up and big mirror on, you know, it was almost like a dance, ballet rehearsal studio like in a way they had a big full-length mirror so they're doing their thing in the mirror and I was like sitting on my drums and Izzy just had... So it's just us three really and the girl was there just kind of waiting for it to be over so we could drive them home. So we jammed and Axl sang and there was piano in there and Axl played like a little bit piano, "Wow," like, "this guy's got some weird talent." And it turns out in the long run, after the thing, you know, called them a couple days later, "So when are we going to jam again?" The short end of the story is they didn't like the way I played drums. Even though I've been playing longer than they had been playing, it just was not right. The style wasn't right. I was, you know, a crazy sort of 70s style of drumming. And they were just looking for somebody really straightforward. And at the time, most of the drummers in town were aspiring to be like Tommy Lee and stuff like that, you know, very flashy and very animated and lots of fills and lots of stuff. And they were just, in Izzy's mind anyway, they were really looking for something different than that. Really straightforward, really just almost Ramones simplicity, but more hard rock for like AC/DC, which wasn't what I was doing at all. So anyways, they're like, "Yeah, we've got another couple of drummers who want to try out before making the decisions," and blah, blah, blah. Just kind of blown me off basically. He goes, "Come out and hang out and stuff and we'll go see blah blah blah show, we'll hang out, we'll go to the bar," whatever, "but we got some other guys we want to try out first," and then, "if first comes to worst we can use our old guy to play drums for the shows we got coming up." You know, it's always like, "Oh, it's kind of disappointment when that happens. So I kind of was still searching for bands and stayed in touch with them, called them every once in a while and got you know got the answer machines and then I find out where Bill was and try to call him and leave messages to his girlfriend that he was living with and stuff like that.

[...]

SD: And so anyways, Kerry and the guitar player, they knew about Izzy a little bit. They knew about, they made friends with him just on a scene, you know, and they knew Axl maybe, and they were aware that they existed. And they're like, "Oh, those guys are cool. They look really cool." And they come to our show sometimes, we see them out. "Invite them to one of the shows," you know, and so I'd invite them to the show and sometimes they'd come, sometimes they wouldn't, you know, Axl and Izzy.

B: But did they know like now that you played bass? Were they looking for a bass player?

SD: Well, that's the funny thing. I think that I'd told them, but whether or not it registered or not, I don't know. Because, like I said, they were already couch surfing in three or four different places since I had initially met with them and had a little few gigs popped up that they done like real like, you know, small like the Orphanage and stuff like that, you know. And so what happened is there was a couple times when Kerry Doll would play like a high up on the bill either its headlining or co-headlining show and Rose would actually be like the opening act. We did one show with them at Madame Wong's West, which is in Santa Monica. There's two Madame Wong's. You've probably seen the early gigs listed. There was one early today's date, June 28th, 1984. That was at the other Madame Wong's in Chinatown near Downtown. There was a bigger Madame Wong's in Santa Monica and it had two levels, like a big room upstairs and then downstairs, they had another bar and another restaurant, a smaller stage. And of course the more popular bands would play upstairs in the big stage. And then the local kind of bands would play downstairs, but you could go to both, you could see both bands. If you paid to get in, you could choose wherever you wanted to see. So for some odd reason, and we didn't know about any of this at the time, I didn't, but Kerry had gotten this gig as a headliner at Madam Wong's West. And the opening band was this new band that Kim Fowley was bringing out from Pennsylvania called Poison. And they were just visiting LA for like a week and they had like a couple gigs and Kim Fowley was courting them around town trying to hype Poison into letting him produce them and write songs. "Oh, I did Kiss, I did Alice Cooper, I did the Runaways, I did all this stuff," you know, "and you need me." And we didn't know about Poison and we just kind of... Kerry might've heard of them or something like that but there were just these kind of guys from back East. And then this other band, forget what they're called, they were another kind of local real straightforward, almost Journey type of hard rock band. And then downstairs was Rose playing in the small cheap room. It was Rose and this band called Pyrrhus, Tracii Guns' first band and another band, which I forget, but there was... If I look at the list, I'll remember they had some sort of connection in the whole soap opera. So this is the first time I met Tracii Guns. He came into the dressing room and we were putting on a hair metal outfit. He comes in in his white lace suit. "Does anybody have a match? I got to light up my eyebrow pencil." And he was just like, "Whoa, who is this guy?" And I was like, I ran down and saw, you know, Izzy and Bill's band, because it was like, these guys are kind of, and I ended up hanging around with them in their dressing room more than the band that I was in. You know, my now wife, who was not even my girlfriend at the time, came to the show.

B: Oh, that's awesome.

SD: Yeah. She came to the show with her, you know, current significant other back then, because I invited him, I said, "Yeah, come see my band," You know, "I know you like the Dolls and they're like this kind of stuff so you might like these guys." And they were sort of in the deathrock scene, but they were kind of disenfranchised and they were always looking for more of a rock and roll outlet and stuff. So I go, she had the hugest hair, she was blonde, but she had like the biggest, like those pictures you've seen of Sebastian Bach when he was in Madame X, you know, like her hair looked like that. I was like, "Can you help me with my hair?" She came in our dressing room, which was the Hollywood Rose dressing room. And their girlfriends were like, "Excuse me," you know, like, "Who is this?" And I was like, you know, "I got to go on stage upstairs in like a half hour, she's just helping me out." It's like, okay. So anyways, we watched them play and watch Pyrrhus a little bit. And then it kind of go back up downstairs, checking, checking things out, you know, with the bands and saw Poison for a second and saw them backstage. And they were really different looking too at that point. So anyway, it's just long story short, which is not that short, but, you know, in Kerry Doll days we crossed paths with all those bands, like, before they were really, you know.

B: And it's just bananas that you could see them in the same venue. Like you just go upstairs and downstairs.

SD: It happened a lot, actually. Like, you just have to really do your research and look at the old club listings and stuff. And you know, and see, "Wow, really?" And there was a few clubs that had like, you know, the upstairs and downstairs are two rooms, and then a couple of other clubs that would just be, like they just put whoever on a bill with whoever, it was really eclectic, you know? And so that was where I kind of met Tracii for the first time and was really sure where he was coming from, but I knew that he was buddies with those guys, he's like, "Hey, you know, Bill!" and stuff, like, "Yeah." And so, I kind of just as a bro, I was more hanging out with those guys more, even when I wasn't playing. If I'd go out to a show and see if they wanted to go or give them a ride or whatever-

B: You were connecting with them, it seems.

SD: Yeah, and then it's sort of like they had ended up... So we were bros, friends, whatever. And we'd see each other maybe once, twice a month, you know, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on where they were. They actually started playing some gigs, you know, with Weber and, you know, Johnny Kreis and whichever bass player. And I'd go and see them just to support them, you know, like we'd go to the Troubadour, lucky enough to get a show like a Troubadour Cafe de Grand or something, and on a weeknight real early, and there'd be really hardly anybody there, you know. Me and Axl had this thing where even not on stage, I'd have a drink, like a cocktail, I'd take an ice cube and throw it at him. He'd be like, "What?" He'd get all into it. He'd throw something back at me. Like, "Come on, come on!" Now that's not like violent, just like a fun kind of angst-

B: Like a brotherly thing, it sounds like.

SD: Just he brought in the punky sort of energy to their show. And Izzy was looking cool, striking poses, and Weber was shredding away. But Axl was always about running around back and forth and you know doing his thing if he could, if he was allowed to you know. And then so that went on and then they came to see me when I played with Kerry Doll at the other Madame Wong's in Chinatown, they came. And it was Izzy and Bill, and I'm not sure who else came with them. And we were playing, you know, it was like a pretty full house and we were headlining. I think it was Leather Wolf, actually. And so it was after the show, after, you know, I had kind of like cleaned up some of the sweat and gotten our equipment off the stage. And I was just kind of not ready to go home yet, but I was just sort of hanging around the stairs. And I saw Izzy finally, you know, and he had been downstairs chatting to some chicks, you know, and like, he came up the stairs and I was like, "Oh, hey, what'd you think?" He's like, "Oh, that was crazy, man." I go, "So I heard, you know, a couple of weeks ago or something, Bill told me you had a show booked on," whatever date. I go, "That's cool." He's like, "What are you talking about?" I go, "Well, who's playing it?" He's like, "What are you talking about? You're playing at it." I'm like, "I am?" Like, "is Kerry Doll on the same gig? They didn't tell me about that." He goes, "No, you're playing bass." I go, "I am?" "Yeah, we need a bass player. You're perfect." And like that's back to your question of, you know, 20 minutes ago, like, "Did they know you were playing bass?" It's like, they kind of did. But once they like came and saw the band, they were like, "He can play bass as good as anybody," you know.

B: Yeah. You weren't the right style for drumming, but you were for a bass.

SD: And I wasn't the right style even for Kerry Doll necessarily. But hey were smart enough to connect the dots and whatever. So, I go, "Oh, okay. Well, I could be in both bands. That's no biggie." You know, "I'm all for it." Cause I've been like gone like almost a year of not playing with anybody. And I'd moved back to my dad's for a while and it was just like itching to play.

B: You were hungry.

SD: Yeah.

B: Literally probably.

SD: We did that and I didn't even remember the gig really, but that's where things get convoluted. Only because of, you know, the fact that, you know, Izzy was driving the bus back then and he was booking the gigs and he was booking the rehearsals and he was calling the shots of who was going to be in the band and not. And then by the time that first gig actually happened, he was out of the picture. So it was just this really short, maybe month, three weeks, two weeks of like he was there and then it was like, "Where's Izzy?" Can we do a pause real quick? I got a pee.

B: Oh, sure. Absolutely. So, yeah, no worries about the break. I had to take pee breaks.

SD: You know, like is a huge glass of Jack Daniels that I'm downing in the middle of the day.

B: Oh, nice. I got my, my thermos, my Ninja turtles, thermos of water.

SD: Are you down with that turtles thing?

B: I know I could have done a Ninja turtles podcast, but now it's a GN'R podcast and I didn't expect to-

SD: you know, there's gotta be somewhere.

B: Oh, there is. There's rumors of Axl being late because he was watching Ninja Turtles 2.

SD: One of the many times.

B: I don't know. I want to believe that. I don't know if that's true. But before we get back into it, I know I'm keeping you here for a while. Thank you. I'm just like, I'm hanging on every word because it's another side of the story that we haven't heard.

SD: No, that's fine. That's fine. If you want to steer me in a different direction, just let me know.

B: No, it's good. I was just making sure. Cause my cat didn't press any buttons. I know you have some cats and your cats are all fat.

SD: Yeah, they're he's going to sleep until it, you know, midnight. I started to wake up and then it'll, you know, but yeah, people think that like we sleep until three in Hollywood and we drink Jack Daniel's all day. It's just iced tea. I stopped drinking when I was about 21. Like kind of the secondit  became legal for me to drink, I stopped.

B: Oh, wow. Good for you. Yeah. I don't, I don't drink either, but not-

SD: That kind of made it difficult in the rock world to like, well, "Let's go have a couple of beers and get all fucked up." And you're like, "Well, no, I'll watch you."

B: I got to imagine, especially with Izzy, you know, maybe that's part of the where's Izzy. So that's where we, I guess, kind of left off. At that time it was Rose. Like I guess where, where's Hollywood Rose?

SD: It was always a bit of a blurry line, at least in everyone's timeline, is when it was Rose, when it was Hollywood Rose, it kind of went back and forth a few times. But definitely before I was playing with them, they were called Rose, just straight up Rose. And I think, I know Axl had mentioned to me, he was still Bill, and he goes, "Yeah, we got a handful of different names kicking around that we want to play with like Rose's", you know, "That's cool." "But, you know, that's kind of like the last name I use sometimes, but I wanted to call the band A-X-L." I was like, "Oh, what does that stand for?" Because in the punk world, there was always UXA and GBH and all these like, you know, they always had these gnarly political like initials for something. MOD and SOD. It was like, I go, "What does that stand for?" And he goes, "Axl." "Oh, that's cool." And then that's probably when I went, "Well, that's pretty tough. It's not like a super glammy name, you know, go for it." Because he was like always pushing for like a tougher street, you know, metal hard rock image and Izzy was hanging on to the other part of it. Maybe I've read that you're the guy that convinced Axl to call himself Axl. And I don't really remember doing that, but I also pretty much figure that that's something that I would have done. So that probably happened right then. At that point, if it did, you know, I go, "Why don't you just call yourself Axl? Because you live and, you know, you just live and breathe Axl, you know." The band Axl, it never was called Axl. And so I, you know, once they were playing with the name Hollywood Rose because A), they were all, you know, wanted to be associated with living in Hollywood and it was more like New York Dolls, more like Hanoi Rocks, HR-HR, get it? And a lot of bands were doing that, like the Something City, something, you know. So it sounded a little bit more everything. Rose was kind of like the soft side and Hollywood was like, you know, the kind of glamorous glitzy side and seedy side at the same time. So I really can't tell you exactly what happened as far as Izzy not being around other than everything to my knowledge he was around. He organized the rehearsal, he'd, you know. They had met Slash and I had met Slash just on the street in front of Gazzarri's one night and they were all introduced and Steve was there. There was talk of, "Well, we got these guys that Axl's been you know talking to and the drummer is really good, double bass, you know, long blonde hair, and this guy Saul plays guitar, he play just like Joe Perry and talks about checking them out, like audition, and see how that works, you know, you should come and play the bass." I go like, "Okay, just tell me," you know. It had nothing to do with really like, they were bantering back and forth over a period of a few months or whatever. I didn't know about Road Crew then and, you know, I didn't know about any of that stuff. And so anyways, I guess at some point they had gotten together, just maybe Slash and Izzy or Slash and Bill had gotten together and traded riffs, traded lyrics and stuff like that. And traded tapes maybe. And Slash learned the songs that they had going, like the simpler, Anything Goes and stuff like that from those days. And then Slash was slowly bringing in his slower, more Slash-y, complex, more complex riffs, you know, and they were trying to, you know, make it meld somehow. So anyways, we go to the rehearsal. It was everybody. It was me, Izzy, Slash, Steve, Axl at Programmer Studios, which is over across the street from Hollywood High. And it was the cheapest place in town. And so we did the rehearsal and then they go, "Okay, let's get together," and like, "either next week, you know or a week after," and by that rehearsal there was no Izzy. Right? So somehow and you gotta understand, everyone's got to understand, in the GN'R world back then, that was really not uncommon like even once they became a band, as far as I know, like the Appetite lineup, there were like people were dropping out and coming back and dropping out you know, a lot. Like temporarily someone would get in a fight, someone's feeling was get hurt, someone would just go, "Fuck this shit, I'm out of here!" And then a week later they'd all be like, "Okay, so let's go." And so in the early days it was like that too. And don't really know who's who, where it's down from, we all know that Izzy had disappearance issues, which I didn't know about, other than the fact that sometimes I wouldn't hear from him for a couple of weeks, because he didn't have a phone and a place to live. So I just figured it was that. And so anyways, by the next rehearsal it was just Steve and me and Slash and Axl. And he says, "Yeah, we're just gonna give this a try with one guitar thing. You know, I got these other guys in mind maybe for playing guitar if we need a second guy. But Slash is a guy like, he can play circles and round, you know, all kinds of people and I think we could do it with just one guitar." I mean, shit, Motley Crue just got one guitar player, Van Halen just got one guitar player. And Slash really was like back then, he was like a bit different. Like he was, you know, he had the BC Rich and the tremolo bar and he was like more in the 80s metal style. Still had his thing coming through, the Aerosmith stuff and all that, but he was able to sort of, you know, shred with the rest of them. And that's another thing, like I watched a bit of YouTube thing the other day with Roy Orbison Jr.

B: Okay. Sure. Yeah.

SD: And I know he kind of went off on this Marshall amps and guitar sound and thing, which I totally like latched onto. Then you're probably going to go, "No, I don't know what he's talking about," but-

B: There are people that do, I wish I knew-

SD: And I was fascinated because that's kind of, you know, trivia that I'm fascinated by, I didn't know that about Roy, knew about, you know, the Marshalls and the Roy Orbison, I knew about other people and other guitars and other amps and stuff like that. But, and then he went and grabbed his silver jubilee Marshall amp and said, "This is the Slash amp", you know? Well, it kind of is for a time. And it kind of isn't, but yeah. And he's talking about here, you know, walking by someplace and hearing the Queen song, coming over the speakers somewhere and having like a light bulb moment, you know, "It was like that sound, that tone, that weird, you know, nasally sharp singing lead tone," that, you know, you associate with Slash. But Queen had it all these years before, you know, and it's like, "Yeah..." And so did a few other people like two words that aren't Brian May, Mick Ronson. [?] not cutting them down or anything, but Mick Ronson and there's a Bellway connection with Slash. You know, and he was doing that thing, you know, a couple of years before Queen was even formed and as well as a couple of other guys, but it's the combination of their amps and their tone settings and the another two words "cocked block[?]", which isn't, isn't erotic code for anything, it's to do with having a wallop pedal and keeping it in one spot instead of that classic, wah, wah, wah. You keep it about halfway and it gives you this woooo. Which Slash, you know, that classic November Rain kind of sound is similar to the classic, you know, Ziggy Stardust kind of sound. And [?] was probably trying to cop Jeff Beck's weird tone, you know, from the Yardbirds days. And so it goes back farther than that. But anyway, so Slash at that point was also super into Michael Schenker. I was like, "Oh, okay," you know, UFO and Schenker was just starting to go solo then and it didn't really like to have that kind of a band like what Schenker was doing wasn't really in the in the same trajectory as like a Hanoi Rocks type of band or Aerosmith. It was more, you know... But Slash still had that ability to do that kind of thing and he was doing a lot of stuff that was more similar to that in the early days. And then slowly it sort of, you know, simplified into the-

B: Were you able to connect with him as easily, maybe on a personal level, as you seem to have with Axl and Izzy or Bill and Jeff?

SD: Yes and no, personality wise, for sure. And musically, because he knew more about building a song and building riffs and building melodies and choruses and stuff. And I think Axl was actually sort of like at the same time too, because I think he had a lot of stuff brewing that he wasn't really able to get out. Axl's, you know, he's older than all of us a little bit, and not much, but you know, enough to where being in Indiana and Midwest, you mean he was seriously growing up with those Elton John and those Meatloaf and those Billy Joel and, you know, those really classic Midwestern, not metal, but hard rock, you know, overproduced epic records, you know. And even the later Alice Cooper, like when he was working with Bernie Taupin and stuff, like, you know, the late seventies Alice Cooper, like, you know, From The Inside and stuff like that, they had this really weird epic kind of songs with a lot of parts and they were really super produced and super FM radio, but they weren't just kick-ass three chords fast rock songs, you know? And Thin Lizzie, too, he was a huge Thin Lizzie fan.

B: Were you hearing any of that, I guess, early on? Obviously with the, you know, you were talking about Axl and his one, he only knew how to control that one octave. I think it was hard, but it was released when they had the box that come out, the nine minute piano version of November Rain and Don't Cry was, you know, written well before the Illusions. So did you get to hear any of that early stuff?

SD: I did. Well, I mean, I heard him play piano and I didn't... I heard him sort of kind of mimic... Like I wasn't aware that he was that well-rounded. I knew he had it in it, definitely, and he had it in here. You know, I just didn't know that he could have that kind of broad range. You know, I heard him mimic like old blues singers and stuff, playing piano and that, you know, and I saw he had that like, and his talking voice, his speaking voice is very gruff and low, it's not [speaking in a high voice], you know. And him and Slash both are super low key soft spoken when they, unless they're pissed, I guess, or really want to scream, but they're both really breathy and both really, you know. And to hear Axl, you know, speak and be kind of calm and then like go out there [screaming], you're like, "Well, okay." And then completely turn red, his face, and then go back to being like, "Hey."

B: Sounds like Axl was just acting like my cat who was just clawing at the cat.

SD: Exactly. It was like the cat, like the crazy kitten. It was just like, come on, come on, come on, come on. And then he, you know, Izzy on the other hand was pretty much the same, I think more or less the same keel most of the time. Slash, once I got to know his personality, was, you could tell he was like, he wanted to get shit done too. Like he was the mover and shaker, but he was also from California, so he was kind of laid back and lazy, you know, too, a little bit. And then Adler was just, Adler, you know, he was that, "Yeah, come on! Yeah," everything was groovy, everything was great. He was on a party and played drums. He was living in his car at that point. He wasn't even living like in a small room. He was living in a Pacer. Do you know what a Pacer is?

B: I've heard of it.

SD: Google it. If you're anywhere over like, you know, 50 years old, GMC made these really bizarre, stupid cars in like the mid seventies that were just ugly as hell. And Pacer was just like, kind of like cross between a Pinto and a Volkswagen. It was just fat, but short weird car and you know-

B: I know Pinto is the standard for terrible cars.

SD: Yeah. And like, it was small enough to be like a compact car, but big enough to load your whole drum set into.

B: Would you rather have that or would you rather have your mom's car?

SD: It would have made more sense as a working drummer to have the Pacer. But in the early eighties, a Pacer probably was like, you know, 180 bucks out of the Recycler. The Toyota was maybe a grant, you know-

B: So I guess, how often did you play? Cause it's one person removed from what would be Guns N' Roses. Like, so how many times did you get to play with Axl, Slash-?

SD: Not that many looking back on it. It seemed like a bunch, but again, it was all spread out and it would be like kind of like two or three gigs in a month and then like nothing for a long time. And then another batch and then nothing. And then it, you know, so it's probably half a dozen shows altogether, but it sure seems like more to me because of the, just all the, all the soap opera of being involved in it, the phone calls-

B: -the map getting there and then the path afterwards. So I guess how did you exit?

SD: That's a mystery too. The best way to describe it is I didn't quit and I wasn't fired. It was just sort of like this odd thing where they kind of just got somebody else without telling me for a gig that I booked. I booked this gig... And so this is going back to the Poison thing again. You know, in the interim of when I was in Kery Doll and say '83 or whatever I'm playing and those bands all opening, Slayer and blah blah blah. Okay. So probably fast forward a year, year and a half I'd been playing with Hollywood Rose and since then Poison had moved to LA and said, "Fuck it, we're going to be LA band." They weren't working with Kim Fowley, they were just being Poison, being a band on the street, and they got CC DeVille eventually, they had a different guy before.

B: Slash tried out.

SD: Yeah, yeah. It was weird because once they came to LA, they sort of just dove head, like they had that East Coast like, "Come on, let's get shit going!"

B: Yeah, it's the New York thing.

SD: Literally out there, flyering every night, meeting their nicest shit to everybody. I mean, they were great guys even to me and they probably wouldn't remember me now, but they'd, "Hey man, how's it going?" You know, and they were just making friends with everybody, flyering every show, you know, going and seeing everyone else's band. And they were much more in the pretty boy glam thing. And they were letting everybody know, you know, that they were really meant business in that world. So anyways, Poison was sort of becoming more like, you know, like a band that was moving up. A guy that was a friend of a friend was booking a night or two at the Troubadour, like one night a week or two nights a week. And I had called him trying to hustle gigs for my band, which was Hollywood Rose at the time, you know, trying to help out instead of just having it be Izzy or Axl getting the gigs, you know, cause I had some different connections and stuff, not necessarily in that world, but I was using the ones that I did have. You know, if it was like in the Jackson Brown world or something, it would have been all over with, but no one was doing that, you know, but-

B: You were trying, you were pulling your weight.

SD: Yeah, just helping out. And so I booked this gig and because I got this band Poison and "Oh, yeah, I know those guys. Oh, cool." "I get your band to play first or second on their show. It's Tuesday in August," blah, blah, blah. And so that show was then, you know, presented to the guys and like right on, you know, cause we've got these other shows like earlier in the summer and stuff like that. And then, so anyways, long story short, it was like, I kind of just, this date was approaching and I kind of wasn't hearing from them and getting the phone calls and stuff. And I had gotten rid of like some of my bass gear and I didn't have a full setup all the time. So that was like, you know, kind of getting on their nerves. Like, "You don't have an amp," we have to always have to borrow something and rent something. And, and so I showed up one day where they're rehearsing, you know, in my van, I had gotten a car, my own car by then for Dodge van. And I showed up at the rehearsal place that they were rehearsing out. It was a different place, the Shamrock, where they actually had some of the early parties you might've seen them flyers for, sort of after hours parties. And showed up there and there's nobody there but Steve, "Hey bro, what's going on?" And I was like, "Oh yeah, where's everybody?" "Oh, they'll be here later," you know, it's like, "So, you guys, what's going on for that gig? I mean, you think we're gonna do it or are we gonna have to just call the guy and cancel it?" He's like, "No, no, we've been working with this other guy." And I was like, "Oh, okay." It wasn't like bad. It was just sort of like, "Hey bro, okay, well, take it easy and come back in an hour, you know, Slash be here," or whatever and I didn't go back. And then I actually went to this show with the Troubadour in August, like I just was in town and I bought by and I was gonna go see Poison and see what happened and their name was on the bill. No one really ever said anything. You know, the guy in the club didn't call and say, "Where are you guys?" You know, "Or what's going on?" Izzy and Bill didn't call or Axl and Slash didn't call. And it was just sort of like, so I just went down there and was walking up and of course there was hardly anybody there, it's the Troubadour, it wasn't a big, there was probably 25 people there the whole night. And I was just walking and parked the car, which was difficult. Had to park a couple of blocks away. And I was walking up to the front and there was nobody out there and I just saw Axl walk out. And he sees me and he's kind of like... kind of like... bows his head a little bit, like... sort of in that sort of sincere but shameful look. I go, "Hey, how's it going? What happened? You guys are here, right?" And he's like, "Yeah." I go, "Did you play?" He's like, "Yeah. I feel bad, man." You know, like he was manning up to it and he still didn't go into it. I go, "So, well, you just got somebody else then, right?" And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, we're going to use this guy for a while," and, "Okay. Well, cool. Keep in touch." And I was a little bit bummed, but I kind of expected it. So it wasn't like, "Ah!" I just went, "Okay, well, whatever. These guys are always crispy. They'll be back."

B: They were not consistent. You were like, all right, whatever. Yeah. Okay.

SD: The funny thing is that like in the, you know, decades of weird internet people trying to figure out who that bass player was between Steve Darrow and Duff McKagan. You know, it was like, still nobody really knows who that guy was. It wasn't Duff. It was Ole.

B: It was Ole?

SD: It wasn't Ole. No, it was some guy named Snake or Spider or something like that. And I still don't know who it is. And so I don't even know if they remember, to be honest, you know, but it was one of those other weird things you guys can all try to solve the mystery of.

B: I like that. Wow.

SD: Let me know when you find out. And so then, okay. So again, not long after that period, you know, I booked the show and there's a flyer, which you might've seen, it's Slash drew the caricatures of all of us and he drew all the flyers at that, from when he was officially in the band, he started doing the flyers because he was a really good artist and stuff. A lot of them had his character, he had this girl named Shirley that was his sort of cartoon character that he has tattooed. One of his first ones that he had tattooed on, she had like a row of teeth, you know, really big teeth. And Shirley always like made her way onto the flyers and stuff in those days. It's kind of like that was his thing. And so there was a picture of me on the flyer, but I didn't actually play the show. And Poison played and they played and I don't know if you know they even talked to each other that night, I don't really know. It was way later after that that Slash would audition for them. So and then things got you know, they frittered out again, like they just went for a couple of them... Where no one really was sure what was gonna happen next and they weren't really... They're always looking for the right guys, you know, like the perfect guys. They'd get guys temporarily, but they're always looking for like the formula. And somewhere in the interum, you know, Pyrrhus had turned into LA Guns. And LA Guns and-

B: -Hollywood Rose.

SD: Well, you know, LA Guns went in a bunch of differentstages as well. They went from sort of basically just being Pyrrhus with a different name. And they went into being like the Rob Jagosz' LA Guns and then they went into being... Also sort of getting these punk guys in the early days, which was sort of were the scene I came out of, you know, which was, I thought was really strange, but they had gotten this guy, Nikki Beat, the drummer, who was a legendary punk drummer from the Weirdos and the Bags and Venus and the Razorblades and he was in Chili Peppers early on. And you know, he was like this older guy, but he had the mop black hair, you know, and was simple. You know, Hugh too[?] was getting sort of sick of hardcore and was looking to do some more rock and roll because he was old enough to have been playing drums when Aerosmith was big, like the first time around, you know. Then they got Paul, the singer, who was actually also a drummer, Paul Mars, I guess he calls himself, or Paul Black. And he was a drummer in these punk bands that we were playing with, like called the MauMaus. And he was in the Joneses, which were like a real kind of stone-sy, doll-sy punk band. And so Tracii had that going on and then he had gotten the financial backer, Raz, who you probably heard about.

B: Raz Cue, sure.

SD: And then so there was all of a sudden all of this focus was on LA Guns. Even though they were sort of like second in line with the GN'R, Hollywood Rose. At one point Izzy was even living with Tracii at his mom's place, literally like 100 yards from Fairfax High.

B: That's right.

SD: [?] and Tracii. And so they had this crazy little apartment in Hollywood, or duplex. His mom lived there and Tracii and then they had like two or three or sometimes four like rock dudes would just like rent a floor space or a couch at Tracii's pad and stay there for however long. And so I remember going just in the interim when I knew I wasn't in the band, but I was still buddies with them. You know, I was like, "I get it, whatever. I'm looking for another band too." You know, I figured I could sort of do better. Bad mistake. But at that time they didn't know it was just, you know-

B: Right. How could you know at that time?

SD: Izzy would go, "I'm at Tracii's, come pick me up and we can go to," whatever, you know, "see the show, just pick me up at six o'clock," you know, "it's over by Fairfax High and by Canter's," I was like, "Okay." So I go and they're like, there'd be all these dudes at Tracy's house and we'd kind of hang out and shoot the shit and I got to know him and just see how, you know, a weird little situation they had going there. And then Axl would come over and knock on the door, you know? So it was just this... And so the bands were like that. I mean, if you really want to like just concentrate it, the bands were sort of like, inter-

B: Incestuous?

SD: You know, the guy that replaced me in Kery Doll came from this other band that, you know, the drummer... you know, it was like-

B: But it was cool that you were able to be friends with them after.

SD: Yeah. Yeah. I think the only time when things got a little weird temporarily was... So at some point after trying numerous times, like Hollywood Rose did never get off the ground, they tried and Duff was probably on the radar of everyone at that point, too, but whether or not... He was already playing with other people, too, around town, small bands, you know. The time once LA Guns started getting shit going, cause they had Raz and they, all of a sudden they had fans and they had new equipment and they had new clothes and they had a EP out and they had it, you know, he was really like helping them pipe the shit out of the band with paying for advertisements and all the stuff that you needed to get to be considered like a legit kind of band. And so Tracii asked Axl to sing and he just did it after, you know, he knew that, I think he knew in his mind that, "Well, this is just an opportunity because I'm not doing anything else," you know, "I'm working at Tower Video."

B: I know that's right. Axl, Raz got Axl to sing for LA Guns for like a little while.

SD: Yeah. And so I remember going to his show as just a... I might've even given one of them a ride, I don't remember, but at the Troubadour, something to do, and it was that LA Guns opening for London, who was of course always a big headline Hollywood band because that was the band Nikki Sixx and Blackie Lawless were in, and the guy from Mott and Hoople[?] was the singer and all this stuff, but it was basically just different versions. So anyways, they could always headline one of the nicer clubs in West Hollywood whoever they wanted, they could get to open. So it was like London, you know, and LA Guns. And at that point, Izzy had joined London, right? Because it was the same kind of deal. He was like, "Well, I'm not doing anything else, these guys know a lot of people. They get good shows. I'll just do it for a while. They look cool. They wear a lot of makeup, you know, and the chicks go and see them." Like when I was in the band and even before they were always struggling to get like decent gigs, like gigs where there was a lot of people and people just really into it, it was always like not enough people or the people that were there were there to see a different kind of rock, you know? And so didn't go over always well, you know?

B: So it's safe to say that none of like any of their success caught you, had to have caught you off guard.

SD: Yes.

B: So when they finally became Guns N' Roses, like I guess, where were you and what were you thinking? Cause I've, we've obviously gone over the story where it took like a year for Appetite to break, but when you, I guess two different things, when you first heard, okay, here's Guns N' Roses. What did you think? And then when Guns N' Roses finally became, whoa, Guns N' Roses, I guess, where were you, what did you think of that?

SD: Well, the thing is, it's like being, it was different, like being here in LA and being plugged into this, that scene and those people. Cause I was still, you know, sort of friends with them. I didn't see them as much cause they, you know, they'd all got into different drugs and things and different habits and moved on. And they had money from the label, the signing advance. So they, you know, they were sort of like having fun and they were sequestered at the same time, you know, like the management had them. So this is after they've signed with Geffen, but even before that, like from the point of say like, you know, '85 to '86, and then they got signed in '86. Did the record come out '86 or '87?

B: '87.

SD: Okay. So they got signed in '86. And I was out of the band by, you know, '85-ish, maybe a little, little into '85. So, but in that interim, say '85, that's when it was sort of like, this is when they, you know, after the hell tour, they'd gotten Duff, they'd solidified, they'd gotten rid of Steve Adler's, you know, huge drum set. They sort of, you know, toned down, they toned down the metal, made it more straight rock and roll, and they toned down some of the punkiness and made it a little more arena. You know, there's just, they'd really sort of all come together and focused on their thing. And they were starting to finally get those gigs that they wanted to. Like they were able to open for some, like they'd open for Kicks when they played at the Troubadour, you know, and Kicks were the band that we all knew from the back of Hit Parade or Magazine. You know, they were from like Pennsylvania or something and they finally came out here and you know, they got to open for them and they got to open for some of the bigger local bands and then they started getting their own crowd and then people were going, "You guys going to play like headlines, so when are you going to play Orange County? When are you going to play," you know, "Santa Barbara? When you gonna play in [?]?" and stuff like that, you know, like the suburbs of around here, not just Hollywood, you know, but like. It would be like our version of the tri-state area, you know, like.

B: I got you.

SD: And it's like, if you equate it to the Twisted Sister movie when they just pretty much just played Long Island, Long Island, and then the second that they branched out to those other places, they went, you know, every gig they got more and more and more.

B: That's a good analogy. Sure.

SD: But they were never that big to begin with so that's where the analogy has got to stop because GN'R was never... Even at the shittiest Twisted Sister show, there's probably 150 people like in the bar days when they're playing cover songs, you know. So GN'R was still, you know, plenty of times it was just our girlfriends, if we had them and then, you know, Tracii and Marc and that's it.

B: So were you surprised, I guess, when they got signed?

SD: Yeah. Well, so there was a thing because like I was saying, okay, so you're saying in timeline, you're at '85 to '86, right? There was this trajectory of them becoming a big local band before getting signed together. They didn't just go from like, "We got Duff, we got signed to Geffen, and we're platinum." It seemed like that to everyone else. I think by the time the record came out, like by the time Appetite came out, it just was like, I mean, it was on MTV that day, it seemed like, you know, and then it just rose and rose and rose and rose and rose from there. "Rose" meaning rising.

B: I gotcha.

SD: But there was this interim of a year or so when it was, they were like, that was the real chaotic time. I mean, it was just as shaky as it was in the days when I was playing with them, but they had more at stake because they were getting a good following and they were getting the right people to come see them and the right people evolved and right people hearing them and then different substances started coming in and making things better or worse, whatever, you know. There was even a time when there was another Hollywood Rose gig that was spearheaded by Izzy where Slash wasn't involved at all and it was, we did it on a New Year's Eve in San Pedro, which is like, you know, an hour south of here, like a coastal town. And another one of those things when Izzy had been in London and been quit or fired or whatever, and was like, "Okay, I'm ready to do something. I'm in London now, I got a name going. I got like clout. We gotta get this glam thing going again." And I had actually been in a couple bands and just wasn't happy. And I had actually sent an audition tape to Hanoi Rocks because at this point it was like Razzle had been killed when they were supposed to play here. And gotten in touch with them like, "You guys need a drummer? [?] You know I play drums," and that never happened of course but so Izzy was like, "Okay, well, I've met a handful of new people and I got this gig booked." And a lot of times it would work that way, a lot of times there'd be it you'd call a club and say, "Okay, I got June 27th," and it would be April or May and they go, "Okay, well, I got the gig, so now I got to get a band." And they'd work it out, they'd work it out. And then sometimes it wouldn't be a band the next day or a week later. And sometimes it would. So anyways, there was a lot of shit going on in that time when they were just starting to like, you know, play locally and be a headlining local band. And so I saw that rise and then, then they got signed and still no one knew who they were outside of LA. I mean, they were doing better stuff, obviously, and they had some money, but Joe Public anywhere outside of California didn't know who they were. There was no nothing, you know? So it was when Appetite came out and when they started hooking up on the bigger tours and stuff like that through Geffen, then they exploded. So I actually saw this sort of blurry, like there was times I swear I'd get news from the camp, you know, because we have mutual friends and I'd see them occasionally, girlfriends. We just get news, every week there was more soap opera from the Guns camp, you know, and it was just sort of like a little heavier than it was back then because they'd sort of, you know, like I said, they had a little money, they had a little substance, they started getting like serious girlfriends or serious strippers taking care of them and serious other bands starting to take notice. And the whole scene was moving in that direction, a whole genre was sort of like starting to happen. And it's funny because Faster Pussycat and I think LA Guns even got signed before they did, like to majors. Like I know Faster Pussycat got signed to the Electric and Jet Boy like a year before GN'R did. And they were sharing bills and they were friends and stuff in those days. But they were like sort of those bands and stuff were like sort of slated to be the next big thing. You know, more so-

B: They were supposed to be like Guns N' Roses before, you know, Guns N' Roses was a thing. So did you hear then, you know, obviously you heard the really the early stages of some of these songs that ended up on Appetite. When you heard Appetite, when you heard Anything Goes in that version, did you get it? Maybe like why the world's like, why Guns N' Roses elevated to the heights that they did as opposed to a Jet Boy or maybe some other bands? Was it different to you, you being so immersed in the situation, did it sound different to you? Did you be like, wow.

SD: Yeah, honestly, I was a bit surprised. I was like, "Really?" Because I knew it's like knowing somebody from high school and then, you know, when they're 25, they change their name, they got a completely different look and they're like, "Oh, that was what I was before. I'm this other guy now," you know? And you talk to them and you're like, you say their old name and they don't look at you, you know, and then you say their new actor name or their rock name and they're like, "Oh." You know, it's like, they sort of had really retooled like a lot of stuff. I mean, the songs like you mentioned, like that were Anything Goes and Shadow and stuff like that, they were way different than we were doing them before. And if you basically in a nutshell, if you took like Accept and Motorhead and mushed them with, you know, Aerosmith and Nazareth, that's kind of where we were, where everything was fast, double bass, real aggressive, but with that, you know, 70s rock and roll coming from the Aerosmith side and the Nazareth side and stuff like that, you know, and AC/DC and stuff like that. But with that early eighties, like frantic sort of aggression. And so all that stuff got stripped away and got sort of, you know, brought in more bluesy, brought in more melody, you know, and slowed down everything significantly just in the music part. And then I think Appetite too it's so all over the place, like song-wise because, in a good way, but like, because of different writers. You know, Izzy had his more say on certain songs that would have been the earlier songs or the more kind of bluesy, heartbreak-y kind of songs. And then, of course, the big riffy songs were, you know, like Welcome to the Jungle and tons of riffs and a lot of lead parts and, you know, wah-wah and stuff like that, you know, like was obviously Slash and then the ballads and stuff was more like Axl. So that was a surprise and I just was surprised that it got as big as it did because all of a sudden it was like the band that everyone was into. And it was like, "Well, we were kind of always there, in a weird, way you just weren't... I could have told you that, you know, two years ago, I told you I had this band, you know, and we wanted to play with you and you're like..." You know, and the whole music industry like treated them different afterwards too, I mean, even if they were, you know, associated with early on as they were climbing up, you know, the touring, like you probably heard the story about when they opened for Alice Cooper in Santa Barbara, right?

B: Which one, remind me, because there's like so-

SD: Basically one of the first, "Oh, where's Axel? He's really late," incidents. Because it was a bigger show. I mean, it happened around town. Like little clubs, but it happened to a lot of people on that level. So it wasn't a big deal, but it was like, they had been, it was at interim's, Alice had just made his big comeback in '86, right. Constrictor, I guess, right? So he hadn't been doing anything for years and he was retooling his whole band and his whole image to be more 80s metal, right? And in an interim, he would do these warmup shows in like the suburbs before he'd go on a full tour. Like he'd do them like an hour outside of LA, San Bernardino, San Barbara. Full on the same production in a nice big place or a medium sized place, but it just would be like a warm up show like before they were unadvertised, you know. And Guns N' Roses got asked to be because... When the Cathouse club with Riki Rachtman and Axl, they were all a big part of that scene. And Alice's people were sort of started hanging around noticing that this, "Okay, this is where the people that we need to reach are in this pool. We need to start grabbing from this pool of people." So they got GN'R, they had been signed, but still no record, no one knew who they were yet. They got to play in Santa Barbara, in a big stage, opening for Alice, which was all of our idols, even them. And we went to the show and it was, they were all up on stage, set up and we're, "Okay." And they were like, kind of like, "You only got like," a whatever, "40 minutes set" or something, you know, "'cause you're a developing band and no one really cares. They want to see Alice." And they're like just stalling a little bit, in five minutes. And there's like, Axl's not here. And you know, it's like, "Well, where is he?" "He called from somewhere, he said he was just leaving the Valley." It was like, you know, half hour before it was time to be on stage and it's an hour and a half drive, you know, that kind of thing. And so they stalled and stalled and stalled. And finally, they said, you know, the Alice people were furious, like they were like, "What the fuck is this? We give you guys a chance. This is what we get." And it's funny because that was one of Alice's tricks. If you read any, I'm a huge fan, was like, Alice would be up in the dressing room watching a hockey game, a horror movie. And like Madison Square Garden would be like, he'd be an hour and a half late to go on stage and finish this movie, you know. But at the same time, his people didn't think it was fun. So it turns out that Axl actually sort of showed up, but they were like, "We got to start playing. Let's just play. Let's play some instrumental. We'll just we got to make some sound because we only have 15 minutes to play now, because..." They started playing some songs and then Izzy would like kind of sing, try to sing and you could tell that they were just like, "Oh shit." And then Ronnie Schneider, you probably know his name, he was in Roadcrew, the bass player. And he was one of the early roadies for Guns N' Roses, like the whole first kind of wave of tours that they did. He was like the right hand man, cause he was buddy of Slash's and stuff. He was like the roadie and he just, he came up and he's like, "You want to sing?" And the did Whole Lotta Rosie, AC/DC, they used to do that in their set, you know, or some AC/DC song and kind of, you know, kind of got through it, but it wasn't like at an Axl level. And then they were sort of like, "Okay, thank you, good night." And people were just sort of like, "What happened?" You know, then Alice came on. And then, I mean, I was friends with some of the Alice people, manager, mint[?], and they were like, backstage, you know, going, "Okay, we fucked up. We're gonna set an example. Not only will you not ever play with Alice Cooper again, but we're gonna make sure that you have a really hard time playing anywhere," like almost like a mafia move, you know? And then within a year, there were like best buds. "Hey, come on, come on stage with me," you know? And it was like, they sort of, you know, cross each other in the trajectory.

B: Yeah, for your perspective, it just seemed like everything they could have gone wrong for this band did. And then all of a sudden for them...

SD: So and somehow or another, they were able to fly straight and land, you know, the skin of their teeth, you know, and that's kind of like, looking back on it, that's kind of the the lore of, or the sort of thing with GN'R. who knows, like a cloud of dust, it is part of their appeal, you never knew and something like that was going to just fall apart.

B: Mysterious.

SD: They claim that it made its way into their sound and into their vibe and you know, okay, the first record cover was banned instantly. You know, like the painting, the Robert Williams and stuff like that. And so that was like, "Okay, well that's off to a good start," you know, but it just didn't, it just sort of helped everything in the long run, you know, it's like the controversy kind of just added to the, you know, hugeness, I think.

B: How often did you, cause you mentioned at the beginning and I don't, we're going to have to do a part two. I don't want to keep you here that much long. It's like the longest episode I've done in a long time. No, it's all right. Cause I enjoy talking to you and, you know, it's when there's a guest that deserves the time, you know, then like, yeah, let's go into overtime.

SD: And we can do part two if you want one day.

B: Maybe we'll do a you and Roy Orbison, the same episode.

SD: I have a funny story about his brother too, but I'll tell that in part two.

B: So I want to, there's two things I want to get into before we wrap up, especially, you know, it's stuff that you're doing now with Sister Midnight. But you mentioned early in the interview that you, you have spoken to Slash, I guess, somewhat recently, like how often did you see friend? Like, who did you say stay friends with?

SD: Well, it's weird. Like I said, Izzy and Bill were the first bros in that set of people that I stayed in touch with. And they were always cool. And then even early on, like, Izzy just checked out. He just checked out. It had a lot to do with the lifestyles and the addictions and stuff that were going on. It's like, if you weren't in that set of doing that sort of stuff, people don't want to have anything to do with you, you know, so I didn't talk to him for years, still haven't even before he went AWOL, even like before the real "Where's Izzy", it was like before they got signed, he was sort of checked out. And it was too bad, because we're the ones that hung out the most. And Slash was the one I knew the most recent of the people. And I'm still in touch with him on and off. He still lives around here somewhere. And I'll see him some different events, and I'll get in touch with him. And he's very cool. The other people are sort of behind their, you know, the management wall or-

B:  "The moat," the metaphoric moat.

SD: Yeah, I mean, I haven't tried to get a hold of Bill or anything like that, but you know, I imagine that there was never any problems that I know of between me and any of those guys, you know, there was never that one fist fight or the one like, you know, so it was just more of a matter of like... And so there's really no reason and I got no nothing against him personally, anybody. So, but they've all gone through so many different changes from then to now. Even the like post-reunion changes that they've all gone through. And then we had 2020 in the middle of all that, you know, which fucked everybody up and changed everyone's priorities and perspectives and plans and knows how much money was made or lost in their world.

B: If anything though, I want him to say to you, thank you for naming me Axl Rose, if that's the truth, like to at least for him, cause he has a great memory according to Doug Goldstein, their former manager.

SD: And Slash, too.

B: So someone's got to remember how that, you know, that Axl thing happened. Cause if you did it, I want you deserve credit.

SD: I never even got a gold record. My name's on the record. You know, I mean, it's like there's plenty of people who are like, you know, you pay the 140 bucks and you can get a gold record if you're somehow connected with it. And they got them and that's the biggest thing in their house. But Slash was still Saul and he was, you know, wanted to be called Slash, but it was sort of took a while before everyone really like did it, you know? Like I said, they always thought that me and my girlfriend, who is now my wife, they always thought we were like way weirder than anyone else. "You guys say really weird stuff, cool and everything, but you know," and like, they called us the monsters. They refer to me and her as, "The monsters are here," you know, that's kind of as weird as we were. I mean, coming from somebody who those, that whole group of people who probably involved with so way more depravity and decadence and weirdness and abuse, mental, physical, whatever, then I had ever been, you know, exposed to, to be considered weird is kind of an honor, you know, but we're really not that weird. We're just kind of weird in an Addams family way, you know.

B:  I'm into it. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to the new monsters film by Rob Zombie. I hope that's gonna be good.

SD: I'm kind of not, you know, honest, but that's a whole other thing.

B: All right. So, but then here's, I guess the segue, cause with Slash, whoever got the opportunity to speak with him, a lot of it will be about horror films and looking at your, your background and I got to ask, who is that lovely lady behind you? Is that your-

[...]

SD: "How did you feel when you saw GNR get big and were you hurt? Were you disappointed or did you want to commit suicide? Yes and no." The biggest thing that got to me at the time, I was so surprised at the time, was how much they did... Even before the record came out, I mean, it was like right before that and up until they broke big, it was like literally they were jumping on stage with everybody who came through LA. I mean, they were on stage with Cheap Trick, they were on stage with Alice, in the Penelope[?] first movie, they're on stage, Iggy Pop, and all the rock bands and the metal bands. And it was just kind of like, that was the thing that you did. It was like one of the Guns N' Roses guys would show up all fucked up and say, "Hey man, I wanna play a song with you!" And they'd go, "Okay." And it was like that. More than the money in those days, that was like the thing that was like, "Hey, wait a minute." And Slash just continued to be that guy from Michael Jackson on down, you know, to everybody.

B: -they have those opportunities.

SD: And being able to play with Ozzy and be actually like almost be in Black Sabbath and, you know, being able to be in all those bands and just, even the Pink Floyd thing and the Cream things. I mean, all these really super duper... Not just like, "Okay, well, this is a hair metal reunion, you get to come up and jam with Skid Row," or "You get to come up to play with Cinderella." It's like, he's playing with the guys, you know, like Hendrix's band and Clapton's band. And, you know, the guy he's became one of the guys, you know, like the big guys.

B: But people, so with that, cause people actually ask you if you thought about committing suicide after?

SD: Yeah.

B: I mean, but did you really think about, like, did you really have a depression or it was just like, "Whoa!" like how did this happen or like-

SD: You know, it was both, but at the same time, I was sort of like, you know, I was relieved knowing that I probably wouldn't have, I probably would have left on my own at some point, whether I came back or not, you know, when things were leveled out a little bit, which they seem to never have happened, you know? I was just not into the drama. And same, I went through punk rock years, just everyone being chaotic and on drugs and drama and managed to just go, "You know what, I think I can just find some people who just want to make some shit happen." And you know, they seemed like they were into the same thing too. And so it clicked and then I probably would have, I've left bands for a lot less drama than they had.

B: You can't change that. I mean, that's the way it was.

SD: But that's also a game formula that makes them exciting, I guess. And same with LA Guns. I mean, I was like, played a lot of different projects with Tracii over the years after they sort of became big and he didn't need to come back and talk to his old friends but he did, you know. And I mean, I saw him more than I'd ever see Slash and Axl and stuff like that, we jammed a lot, we were supposed to do all kinds of things together and you know they'd fall apart before he'd get off the ground and or I'd get you know booted out. We went to New York actually and played in the mid-eighties with... It was me and Tracii and this singer who was a Penthouse Pet who flew us all out from LA to back her up. She wanted to be a singer. She wanted the cool LA, you know, crazy street rock glamour people to come to New York and sort of show them how it was done. You know, then we got, the guy that was later, two guys that were in Kingdom Come, remember them?

[...]

SD: And this is the thing with another thing between... It's always a big rival between Tracii and Slash in school and everything. And the bottom line is that they both can play. They both are good guitar players. And a lot of guys in that scene weren't. They were able to do one thing to get, like they had a Van Halen trick and that was all they could do. Or they had a Johnny Thunders, New York Dolls, trash kind of vibe, but they never could really go beyond that. And Tracii, both Tracii and Slash, especially Slash like he can, like I said, he can jam with Clapton's people or he could jam with the punk people or he could jam with the Foo Fighters or he could, you know, like, and be on TV, like Conan O'Brien or something like that. Play circles around everybody, you know? And so that was a difference in that too, you know, in that they've actually good players and they just want to play guitar, you know?

B: Did you get a chance to see Guns N' Roses after, have you seen the band now as a GN'R?

SD: Not the recent, not since the reunion. I actually inquired about getting tickets for Dodger stadium because I thought that would be like something that could be easy to happen and they told me how much it would be for me to get tickets.

B: Great.

SD: And I was like, "Okay, yeah," that's kind of a lot, to be on the guest list and have it be 300 bucks a piece is kind of, you know... I mean, some people out there are going, "Holy shit! I would have paid four times that much!" But at the same time, it was like, well, I was buddies with the guy who was in The Cult who opened for them too, and neither of them could make it happen. You know, and I said, "Okay, well, I'll see you some other time."

B: I want to know if that actually gets back to Axl. If Axl hears that Steve Darrow would like to come, or if that's just the moat around it-

SD: I think it's the moat. And if it is, you know, again, that's what you get to a certain point. I mean, I've only seen it from the bleachers, I mean, I know plenty of people who've gotten real successful. And when you get to that plateau, there's so much other shit that just, there's lawyers and there's promoters and there's insurance and then there's like the hangers-ons, and then there's the family and then there's the family's lawyers, and all these different levels of like stuff that you have to, "Okay, we need 50 tickets for..." You know, and then when there's kids involved, it's just like-

B: I get it. I do, but this gotta be some like, it's just people talking, "Hey, Steve Darrow, who gave you your name. You haven't seen each other in a long time. You know, maybe I'll give them a $50 ticket instead of," I don't know.

SD: I mean, that could happen. That could happen. Again, he's got more important people that to worry about that are maybe not on his... That are way higher up in the hierarchy of things than I am.

B: Well, it might make you feel better that Roy Orbison spent a grand on his ticket, but he's got that Pretty Woman money, so.

SD: Was that in back East somewhere or?

B: No, he's going to the L.A. show. Yeah, he's going to the L.A. show.

SD: Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, good for him. That's kind of the thing. Like, I mean, going back to the like the, you know, them opening for Alice Cooper and his warm up show. I mean, I was just happy to be getting to the show for free. And I got it through Alice Cooper. And I was like, "See," you know, "this is really cool. I mean, you guys got your thing, that the people at the bar that you can let in and the strippers and stuff. But you know, this is kind of more, like this is the real business". And then now that they are beyond the real business, you know, I mean, there's so much more to worry about. But at the same time, I know Slash and I know people who know him for a long time and know that.

B: Well, then we got to go back to Slash and you working together. So tell us, I want you to tell us about your project. Cause it's a really cool, interesting thing you have going on with Sister Midnight.

[...]

Finished with this. I was hard to transcribe since Darrow jumped from anecdote to anecdote, often without finishing either.