Metal Sludge The Power and the Glory
20 Questions w/ X-Guns n’ Roses drummer Steven Adler.
Steven Adler back in the day.
What can we say but this was not easy getting to an original member of Guns N’ Roses. Sometime back a sweet Sludgette and her friends tried to make this happen at a AA show in person, but the stars were not aligned, and the ducks were all not in a row. A day or two later, a phoner was set up, Steven even answered but got side tracked in less than a minute. So, it didn’t happen that time either. But today was different, we’re guessing the full moon and the date had something to do with it.
Metal Sludge spent a good part of the day with Adler’s Appetite on the opening date of their World tour. That day happen to be Friday the 13th of January. The band did a few southern
We conducted a few different interviews with various members and they were pretty different than most others we’ve done. Too say the guys opened up would be an understatement. We asked traditional questions, but some took on a life of their own. It’s safe to say we asked Steven upwards of 50 questions.
The following is part I of our long and extensive conversation with Steven. This is only half of what was said, check back next week for part II. We’d like to thank Steven for being so open and candid about the past, the present and the future. Enjoy…
Metal Sludge: Steven let’s talk about the band, past present, and all the Sludge! What happened with that recent stuff surrounding the old band members?
Steven Adler: Hey don’t get me wrong, I’m not too fond of Robbie or Jackass Jizzy, but Keri Kelly, I love Keri Kelly. As a person I love him, a business man he’s great, a player he’s phenomenal, there is no bigger jackass on stage – and I mean that in a good way.
MS: You mean a ham?
SA: You say ham, I say jackass! Nobody can perform and entertain like him. And I want to write songs with him, when I start working on our record.
I wanted to get away from (pauses) because I had a lot, a lot of problems with the other guys. With money, respect, and I wanted, the only reason (pausing) Keri, I had to, you know, let him go on this…. Keri, (pauses) I just wanted to start fresh. And the things that those guys, Robbie and those guys were doing to me behind my back. I don’t think for a second he was a part of it, but I know he knew it was going on. And so, I don’t blame him for nothing.
I just wanted to start it fresh. And I’m glad I did. And I’m glad I got Michael (Thomas) back. He did a European tour with me before and he’s great. Chip (Z’Nuff) I’ve known Chip for a while, we’ve played a few times together, and even before I met him, and knew him, just hearing his music and seeing him perform in videos, I wanted to play with him more than anything. And you know who else I want? Is, I want fucking Ronnie Younkins from KIX. I got to play with him for a little bit… I love Ronnie Younkins, he’s the shit!
MS: Let’s do this; we want to ask you some Sludge style questions. This is your chance to plug your dates. You got a European tour coming up, tell us about it?
SA: It’s a dream come true. Basically we’re starting off in Spain, and ending off in
MS: How does the new AA line up compare to others?
SA: I’m having so much more fun. We are so much more, (pause) we like each other. There are 5 personalities, but we’re all one. We’re all just, (pauses), we love each other. And we play, we work off each other so, I mean so easily. We know what the other guy is doing before he does it. And that’s a rare-rare thing to happen, starting right off. You know what I mean?
Adler (far left) in Guns N’ Roses during the hey fucking day!
MS: Tell us about the earliest memories of GnR, and when did you realize that something really FUCKING huge was happening?
SA: Umm…we would rehearse in this studio behind
I worked 4 or 5 jobs at the same time because I knew, that’s what paying your dues was. If you believe in yourself, and you practice, and I figured if I had one job I’d be paying my dues this quick. I could get to where I want to be in life this fast. If I had two jobs, I could get there twice as fast. I had four jobs going man; I made this shit when I was 18 years old, just like I always knew I would.
MS: What about your last days in GnR. What was it like, the good the bad and the ugly?
SA: It was great until umm… I wanted to get off heroin and, because I just started doing it with the guys. And I didn’t know you got sick. The first day I got sick I called up my manager and I said; “dude, I don’t what the fuck is going on, but I feel sick.” And (pauses) he took me to this doctor and this doctor gave me an opiate blocker. But you can’t take an opiate blocker when you’re on heroin. And then if you did do heroin, nothing would happen. But you can’t take it until you’re completely off the heroin. And I got completely, so sick, and they wanted to go in and record “Civil War.” I said: “Slash dude, I’m so sick I can’t do it right now.” And he said; “We can’t waste the money, we got to do it now!” I said dude; “Don’t even tell me about wasting money, we know one other person who is wasting SO much fucking money, we can wait another week.”
MS: What person is that? (everyone laughing)
SA: Who do you think? Axl! And then this. (pauses) It went from being the closest, bestest friends, that, you know, (pauses) that had your back, and knew that you, you had their back, and it was so close (pause) and then the drugs, I, I don’t, we were all doing drugs together, and that ruins the whole thing. Everybody kind of went on their own little separate way (pauses)
doing their drugs by themselves then. And it just went down, and the love wasn’t there, (pauses) the respect wasn’t there, and it was very sad.
But we were still, so great. The last show I ever played with them was over at Farm Aid. And to this day, I never heard the original version of “Down on the farm.” I guess some punk band (
a sudden Axl goes; “This is a song ‘down on a farm.” And I yelled at Duff: “I go, Duff, Duff, what the fuck is this, how does this go?” And he just clapped his hands and just says; “just do this (clapping hands) boom, boom, boom.” And that song came out so kick ass, because I knew what Duff was gonna play before he played it. Yeah, each of us knew what we were gonna do before, we were, each of us were gonna do it. And I mean, if somebody was gonna hit a wrong note, which rarely happened, or something, (pauses) we knew it was gonna happen before. It just was so tight. It was just wonderful, and then for them to just turn on me – that was pretty much the worst moment.
MS: Let’s do rate a drummer 1-10. 1 being a horrible drummer and 10 being
a really good drummer!
Tommy Lee = Fucking amazing! That guy is sick, anybody who can, I spun on that thingy (rotating drum kit/riser), you know that he use to have in the show. I had to put my feet in the snare drum or they were going right behind my head. And that motherfucker would spin, and kick ass. It’s just amazing! The highest drummer to me in the world, a billion and ten, is Roger Taylor from Queen.
Tommy Lee with long hair & Adler.
Bobby Blotzer = He doesn’t get as good of recognition as he should, he really does throw a couple good grooves in there. He is really good. He did some great stuff on the records. I’ll give him a, a ten.
Alex Van Halen = Ten Thousand!
Stephen Riley = Oh dude, he’s awesome too. He surprised the hell out of me; I’ll give him a ten.
Neil Peart = Umm…I don’t think the number is high enough.
Vikki Foxx = (Steven talking to Chip) Can I say Vikki Foxx can kiss my ass? Or should I give him a ten? (Chip says something to Steven) Okay, I’ll give him a ten, because he’s got a fucking 13 inch cock!
Carmine Appice = Is God!
Terry Bozzio = Umm…dude he is phenomenal, he’s sick! He’s way; he’s in the Ten thousands too!
Rikki Rocket = He gave a great blow job! (pauses then starts laughing) No I’m kidding! Rikki, he’s one of the best showman, and he can still throw in some cool fills, that fill the song, I’ll give him a TEN!
Matt Sorum = Can kiss my ass. Sorum, I’ll give him a five. Cause he don’t do nothing special. And I have nothing against him because he took my, you know, he was hired to do my job. But, it wasn’t his fault; you know it’s just a gig to him. But he ruined all those songs that I wrote, cause Use Your Illusion, me and Slash and Duff wrote all that fucking shit.
(Editors Note: Stevens answers to these questions were lightning fast. His wit and charisma was very clear and evident. For someone who has admittedly had a serious drug addiction and severe health problems because of this, he has not lost a step.)
MS: Do you remember filming the video for “Welcome to the Jungle?”
God damn that was so much fun. We filmed that where Robert Kennedy got shot, in the
(Editors Note: The "Welcome to the Jungle" video was shot August 1st, 1987 at the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Hey Hosejob, thanks for doing the dirty work! Fun fact, Heavy Metal Thunder & Mud featuring: Tuff, Wildside, Bill Gazzarri & Jessica Hahn was also shot at the LA Park Plaza Hotel location.)
MS: Do you remember the girl you were sitting on the bed with in that video?
SA: Wait, uuh, Julie! Julie Angel, yeah, yeah, she was wonderful. Her and this girl named Lisa, I was there roommate. I rented out their laundry room. Oh yeah, I put this futon mattress in there, and I had a TV I put in there, and I had the cable put in, and I had you know, my own little door, they were my roommates. Those were the greatest girls.
Think about this, Guns n’ Roses, one of the coolest, biggest bands, and we’re filming “Welcome to the Jungle” and none of us could find a fucking girl to be in it with us. Nobody could think of a girl. And I go: “Hey, let’s get Julie man, she’s got a great ass.” She was so fine. I said: “Let’s call Julie and get her to come over here.” So I call up and say: “Hey Julie, can you be in this video with us?” And she says: “Yeah, okay.” And I say: “We’ll be by to pick you up in 10 minutes.” And that’s why she was in the video. Cause none of us could get, well, obviously I could, cause I got her.
MS: What rock star deserves a big smack in the mouth and why?
SA: Umm…Oh God, I wanna say Axl, I really want to. Yeah, so, not that, (pause) I love Axl, I wanna kiss his face, and slap it, well first I wanna kiss it, then I wanna kick his ass. Umm…God, see, you know…(pausing) I, yeah, there is nobody I wanna slap in the face. There are a couple of people I wouldn’t mind getting a blow job from, but nobody I really wanna slap. (everyone laughing)
MS: Who do you wanna get a blow job from?
SA: (still laughing) I’m just kidding, I just wanna get people thinking.
Steven thinking about blow jobs?
MS: If you had to join any 80s band from the start besides Gn’R who would it
be and why
SA: Oh God, from the start? Hmmm, I’m trying to think,
MS: What do you do everyday when you wake up, for the first hour or two?
SA: Umm, I smoke a joint, I jack off if I don’t have a woman with me, umm, well, first I’ll pee, than I’ll jack off. And then just hang around, eat and play with my dogs. And then play my drums whenever I hear a cool song that comes on the Tv.
The early days of Gn’R. Axl sporting max hair spray!
Steven front and center.
MS: Name the 3 high points and the 3 lowest points of your career to date?
SA: Okay, I’ll tell you the best, the best moment in my life, and the worst moments of my life. The best moment of my life was having sex with Stephen Tyler in the back of a tour bus. The worst moment of my life, was when the second time I did heroin was on the last show of the Aerosmith tour, and you know you had those meet n’ greet rooms. And, you know I opened up the door and I’m standing there in my rock star pose, all looking all cool and Stephan Tyler is like, 5, 10, 8 feet in front of me, talking with this girl laughing, and he looks up cause he noticed my presence. And he has the biggest smile on his face, and then he could just see in my eyes, that I did heroin, and he made the saddest face and umm… my heart just dropped, and I wanted to die right there.
Because Stephen Tyler is the greatest person in this whole world, and I love him, and there is nobody in the world like him, and I (pauses) hurt his feelings, and it just hurt me so bad. The best and the worst times were with Stephen Tyler. Greatest person in the world, there is nobody cooler, it, there is nobody cooler in any and every way, that person could be in this whole universe.
MS: The epitome of cool?
SA: Yeah, beyond, I mean, nobody comes close! I mean, I’m a cool motherfucker…but I’m on, you know on a scale of 1 to 10, I’m a 10 for a cool motherfucker but he is just peeked, a number like I say, there isn’t even a number for him. The greatest person I ever met. That was really sad that I disappointed him.
MS: Is the legal stuff with Jizzy, Keri & Robbie for real or is that all talk?
SA: That is just, oh my God, unbelievable! Dude, I have the copyright to my name Adler’s Appetite, in my desk at home, okay. They don’t own jack shit! They’re just jealous because they, (pause) took advantage of me, they ummm…(pause) treated me like shit, they ummm…were, very-very, I mean so disrespectful to me, that they’re jealous, that, and they didn’t think I was, and they thought I was so fucked up, that I wouldn’t be able to put a band together.
They wanted me to cancel the
Juciy? Gossip? Wait til you read part II. As Metal Sludge comes outright and asks about Steven liking men, sucking cocks, making love to rock stars, smoking crack, and even some raunchy stuff too.
Steven holds back nothing and blows his load several times.
He shows the sincerest of all sides. A sad side, the mad side, the drug addict side that talks about not sharing heroin when you only have a little left. He also talks about Andy McCoy and his wife, Axl & Erin Everly, Duff and Slash all in depth. The word association alone is an interview in itself.
He really shows his heart and soul. See ya next week…
Metal Sludge
Use Sludge Illusion
