It's So Easy and Other Lies Page #4

the scale of what we were witnessing.

"Much of the venue was already in ruins.

"And people

"were getting hurt."

And it was like opening the door,

it was like the one of the many doors

in the hallway of Yellow Submarine,

the Beatles movie, when you go...

And there's a train coming.

And it was just like we opened

that door to go back out there,

and it was pandemonium out there.

I vandalised some property here

and I pulled out some plants

and I threw it against the wall.

I was mixed up in the commotion.

I know I shouldn't have done that,

but I just let my adrenaline take over.

The scariest part is, they were

actually kicking apart the plastic seats

and throwing up pretty large chunks of

plastic seats with metal on them.

"But we could hear it all,

the screams, the crashes,

"the thunder of thousands of feet."

About 15 people have been

arrested in last night's incident.

They will be charged with everything from

disturbing the peace,

to destruction of property.

"The band was shoved

into a small van

"and told to get on the floor

so we weren't visible.

"But Slash's hat was sticking up.

"The driver asked him to take it off."

I remember that, yeah.

"Clots of cops ran around with

batons and pepper spray.

"Kids ran this way and that.

"Medics rushed around

treating bloodied fans.

"Police had people in cuffs.

"And it looked like a f***ing war zone."

Slash and Duff were pretty good drinkers,

when I first met them.

They obviously became world-class drinkers

towards the end of, uh...

The big GN'R tour.

He was so young when he started drinking,

it's just hard to know

what his brain was really like.

We used to get up every morning,

make a f***ing cocktail

of a big Solo cup of vodka this high,

with a splash of cranberry juice.

And we did about a half-gallon to our heads

a day, just out of the refrigerator.

And then, we went to bars and f***ing...

So, it was 24/7 for years.

Well, at some point it becomes maintenance.

It's not like he's getting higher and higher.

He just needs that, so

he doesn't feel crappy.

I think Duff pushed it about as far as

anybody could humanly push it.

"I opened my eyes.

"Thirsty as a motherf***er.

"Vodka.

"I sit up, drape my legs

over the edge of the bed,

"elbows on knees, head in hands.

On the ground.

"Vodka.

"Where the f*** am I?

"That sound, that ominous sound."

Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse.

"Scheisse.

"Not a good word. The change in tone.

"The bad rumble in the stadium of

fans becoming foes.

"Again. Not again.

"That much vodka and that much cranberry!"

He would take his first sip of it and he

wouldn't realise right off the bat that it

wasn't the mixture that he wanted, so he

would just chuck it into the barricade.

And he'd look over at me,

he'd turn his back and go.

And I had to make him a proper one,

unfortunately. So...

He could go through

and would go quite frequently through...

A half-a-gallon and a

fifth of vodka in a day.

"I spit on the hotel carpet again

and rubbed my eyes.

"Knock at the door. Thank f***. Ice.

"I pour a tumbler of vodka

over the fresh ice cubes.

"Back at the jet, snort some more coke.

"Vodka. Vodka. Vodka.

"No, Izzy. It's not going down like this.

"Don't go.

"The whole room is

vibrating with anger from within

"and more ominously,

"from without."

Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse.

"I see the line,

I'm standing with my toes right on it.

"Time for a line. I've got to sober up.

"I disappear behind a stack of amps.

"Get me the f*** out of here, Wembley!

"Vodka. Only an hour and a half gone by

since the openers.

"On we go. I can stand. I can see.

"Izzy.

"This was your band.

"This was our band.

"Our band.

"This is a f***ing war of attrition."

Well, I remember when he decided

he was going to stop drinking.

I remember we went to his house and he was

a holding a half-gallon of wine, Gallo.

He says, "I stopped drinking."

- And he's holding a jug of wine.

- I said, "What's that?"

He said, "Oh, I stopped drinking vodka."

I'd tapered off of vodka. I was drinking

wine, which I thought, in my head,

you're trying to, like, okay,

wine's less potent than vodka.

But not if you're drinking

10 bottles a day.

To be honest with you, from my experience,

if you're a drug addict

or you're an alcoholic,

which to me is the same thing...

You have that thing. It doesn't go away.

Duff definitely had a blackout

period. I wasn't aware of it at the time.

He definitely had that.

He was at that point

where he didn't remember a lot of

the stuff that we had been doing.

Like trapped in a jail

that you can't find a way out of.

It's a scary place, because an addict

doesn't want you

to tell them what they already know.

At some point, Duff,

something had to shock him enough

for him to make up his mind.

It was like another morning,

waking up, like,

what the f*** did I do last night?

And then, when I rolled over, there was

like a shooting, stabbing, sharp pain.

So, I rolled over again and then,

that pain spread.

It spread down lower into my guts.

That's not f***ing heartburn.

So, I get a call from Duff,

"You need to get over here right away."

So, I go upstairs

and I find him laying on the floor,

sort of in a half-fetal position,

naked as a jaybird.

It spread and I couldn't move. It was so...

Like I was on fire.

So...

I suddenly thought, "Well, this is it."

Let me hear you.

Basically,

half-flung him over my shoulder

and get him into my car

and we go to Dr Thomas's office,

which is about four blocks away from here.

Basically, alcohol is a poison.

In his case, it was just direct toxicity

to the pancreas cells and they just get...

Pissed and release all this

nasty juice into themselves.

And they got me to the hospital

and I asked everybody. The RN and...

"Just kill me. Just kill me. Just kill me."

I was barely whimpering.

There was a guy with a broken back and

there was me and they had morphine in.

And, uh, it wasn't working, man, and the

guy with the broken back said, "Man...

"I got a broken back, but I'm just glad

I don't have whatever you have."

Well, he said, "Dude, my pancreas exploded.

I got to slow down."

I guess that was pivotal for him.

That moment.

And I think his life changed after that.

My pancreas had expanded

to the size of a football.

And it burst.

So, I did have third-degree burns

on the inside and so, I was on fire.

No, I mean, not like you'd think

of a colon exploding

or a gall bladder or an appendix exploding.

But it basically just started chewing

itself apart from the inside out.

I remember them asking Andy

all these questions about me.

"What's your friend on? What's your friend..."

Like I wasn't there, and I really wasn't.

I remember at one point...

Telling me that...

It's a good chance

he's not going to make it through this.

And so, I went out to the hospital

and I saw him out there.

And his mom was there,

just like he talks about in his book.

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