It's So Easy and Other Lies Page #6

"I know she was more scared

than she'd ever been in her life.

"But she never quit,

"and she never cried,

"and then it happened.

"Our daughter.

"My daughter?

"My baby girl.

"I have a baby girl?

"I have a baby girl!

"We named her Grace.

"And now life made sense.

"This was why I survived my pancreatitis.

"I was here to be a father of a baby girl.

And I was, at last, ready for it."

"And then,

we were blessed for a second time.

"Susan gave birth to

our second daughter, Mae.

"She was a big, round Buddha baby,

"and Susan's labour was much shorter

and easier than it had been with Grace.

"I never thought my life

could be this full.

"For a middle name,

we gave her Marie, after my mom."

It was pretty funny.

That first day,

I called roll, and I got

to Michael McKagan,

and he said,

"Here, but you can call me Duff."

And, um,

I didn't quite understand him,

so I said, "Duff? Duff McKagan?"

And the class kind of

tittered, and I thought,

"Hmm, okay," and went on,

and that was it,

I still did not know who he was.

Ann Dawson was

my first accounting professor.

So we're into really serious

day-in, day-out classes,

and it's going fast,

and she, I think, she kind of caught on.

Eventually, that even though I was 32,

I was a new student.

And that I was there for

a different reason than the 19-year-olders.

And I think maybe looking down

the road at his future,

wanted to have some options.

And also, yeah, maybe wanted to have

more control over his income.

When Duff, having

graduated business college

and having a full-on knowledge,

basically, how

the record business works

and how royalties work

and how publishing works,

and how percentages work...

And all this other,

you know, detailed stuff that he'd

gone in there to really get a handle on.

He was a stellar student.

And I'm not really talking about

A's, B's and all that.

Although I think he did very, very well.

But he was a very interested student.

For some reason, me and Duff

decided to take the subway downtown.

We came out of the subway

and we were going up towards our hotel,

and this guy came, "Hey!

You're Matt and Duff from Velvet Revolver!"

You know.

And we'd been these guys in

Guns N' Roses our whole life, you know?

And we were like, oh, yeah,

we are, you know?

That was a really good moment for us.

We have a new life.

You know? A new beginning,

which was cool.

I remember when we went in

to the premiere of The Hulk,

we didn't have a name.

And Slash had Revolver,

but we couldn't trademark that,

because there was a million Revolvers,

you know?

I remember, we were walking through the

door to watch the premiere of the movie,

and Scott goes,

"What about Dead Velvet Revolver?"

And Duff said, "Why don't we just get rid

of Dead and call it Velvet Revolver?"

And it happened

almost overnight,

and it was all about Velvet Revolver,

and that band really...

Um, I think came along at the right time,

just like Guns had in 1987.

"At this point,

I should have taken a step back

"and assessed the situation.

"Never before had I felt I had

so many people depending on me.

"I was now juggling being

a good father and husband

"with trying to get a guy sober,

so that he could do the same.

"But I was also doing this

"because I saw real possibilities

"for this new band, with

Scott as our singer."

I remember saying to Slash and Duff, going,

"Are we sure this is the guy?"

It's like marrying a stripper or something,

you know what I mean?

It's like, you know you're in for trouble.

"With the national exposure, there was

a lot of interest in Velvet Revolver.

"And for the first time ever,

"I was mixing the spiritual healing

of martial arts

"with commerce."

And it was major success.

The record went to number one,

the single went to number one,

we sold a lot of records,

and we headlined arenas, you know?

Sold out arenas all over the world.

"Seeing Scott nodding and jonesing up there

"reminded me of some

not so pleasant memories.

"In hindsight,

"I see that this was the moment

"I swerved away from the path I'd been on.

"A path that shielded me

from the dark parts of my past.

"Each of us makes

a handful of decisions in life

"that can have a drastic impact

on subsequent events."

We fly out to New York

to master the record,

and when the record was finished,

we were at Sterling Sound,

and high up on a shelf

somewhere in the studio there was

an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels.

And, so, I fell off the wagon that night.

I remember I was the

first one that fell off.

Everyone kind of looked at me

like I was the Antichrist, you know?

It's like...

This sucks. I remember this is

the f***ing most boring sh*t.

I'd go backstage,

and it'd be sitting there, but these guys

would be reading books and sh*t.

I'm like, what the f*** just

happened to rock and roll?

You know, really?

Is this how we're going to do this?

You'll get an extended adolescence

by being a musician

that's working. Period.

So there's just no rules, really.

One of my lowest bottoms

during that and I allowed it,

I watched it happen,

and I allowed myself to go down that path.

I actually was very aware of it

and conscious of it.

And just kept following,

going down that rabbit hole to see where

it was going to lead.

And when I finally got to the bottom,

I was like, you know what?

After all these years, and this and

that and the other, this sucks.

You know, by the end of 2005, everybody

was pretty f***ed up on something.

It was like living the old life again.

You know, so Slash is drinking,

I was getting drunk

and doing my share of drugs.

But Duff had gone into this

sneaky pill-popping thing.

"I looked at the bottle

for a few minutes.

"Then opened it,

"and shook one of the pills

onto the palm of my hand.

"I swallowed a Xanax pill

sitting in a hotel room,

"because everything

"seemed to be coming down

on my shoulders.

"F***."

I think in his mind...

"Pills will be okay.

"That won't affect my pancreas, right?"

I remember the moment thinking

about, are the pills in my backpack,

and I knew...

I knew the moment I thought about it.

You're in trouble.

What kind of game? What kind of game?

And Dave, you know,

is like,

"Dude, what's going on with you?"

And, you know, I lied to him.

It's what you do.

I'm like, "Dude, what did you take today?"

He's like, "Oh, I just took some,

blah, blah, blah." And he bullshitted.

You're f***ing off the wagon, dude.

Xanax is in the same family, actually,

as alcohol. It's a benzodiazepine,

which is the same feeling you get

when you drink.

"Then the pill kicked in."

"Everything's fine.

"The next day I took two pills.

"My high tolerance for

drugs came right back.

"By the third day, I was figuring out

how to get a hold of more pills.

"Lots more pills."

In a week's time, I was at 22 milligrams,

so 22 of those pills a day.

He just was like everything

was slow motion.

I knew at that point, like,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes