My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns ‘N’ Roses

My Appetite for Destruction

Sex & Drugs & Guns N’Roses

Steven Adler

With

Lawrence J. Spagnola

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Oh my God, this is the highest I’ve ever been in my life. I can barely hold on. Sweat is pouring out of me, my eyes sting like hell, and my gut is jumping. I’m completely soaked, my arms and legs flail, my head shakes, and my heart is thumping out of my chest. I am flying, and I love it. I desperately want this feeling to go on forever. I’m Steven Adler, the drummer for Guns N’ Roses, and tonight we opened for the Rolling Stones. It’s October 18, 1989, and after a brutal but amazing journey, this should be the happiest moment in my life. But as we explode into our last song, “Paradise City,” I’m already terrified of leaving the stage and losing this incredible buzz. Just like the “pre-high” addicts get right after they score but before they use, I’m experiencing a devastating “pre-crash” and I fucking hate it. If only I could find some way to maintain this intense natural high, I would never need drugs, never want drugs again.

Guns N’ Roses gets a standing ovation, but as the Stones take the stage with “Start Me Up,” I’m already alone, tucked away in my trailer on the backstage lot with the door locked tight. Why? Because I’m the undisputed all-time booze-chugging, pill-gobbling, drug-shooting, Katrina-caliber fuckup. Throughout my wretched life there isn’t a friend, family member, or fantastic opportunity that I haven’t shoved into a blender and mutilated.

But people love train wrecks. They just can’t look away from the ODs, lawsuits, prison terms, rehabs, reality shows, meltdowns, and more ODs. So before one or all of the above happens again, I want to set the record straight. And I’m finally sober enough and angry enough to do it right.

COMING CLEAN

While part of this comes from a deep desire to come clean with my family, friends, and fans, another part is fueled by an inner rage to represent. From Chuck Berry to Janis Joplin, from Hendrix to Cobain, many beloved, gifted musicians have had a lot of totally false, negative crap written about them. It turned them into bitter, reclusive artists and may have pushed some into an early grave. But I don’t need the media to bury me; I’ll do that on my own.

The bastards who write the lies about us do it because they think rock fans are gossip-starved, tabloid-trained morons who will swallow anything. They figure the more bullshit they pile up, the more fans will be eager to roll around in it. And they’re always sure they can get away with the most outrageous lies because they know if we hire a bunch of lawyers to go after them, they’ll just get more free publicity and rake in more cash. You’ve got to admire Carol Burnett, Kate Hudson, and others who brought suit, hung in there, and won judgments against these bloodsuckers.

The truth is I’m healthier and happier than I’ve been in twenty years and I refuse to be destroyed by all the negative news about Steven Adler. I’ve made it way too easy for these jerks to write me off as just another has-been junkie asshole.

And hey, I admit it. I am a has-been junkie asshole. But there’s a lot more to this drummer boy. With the help of Dr. Drew, and a lot of other dedicated professionals, I’ve begun to live again and love my family, friends, and music again. I know I’ve let them down, but that’s not going to stop me from trying to get back up and make things right.

MY GNR BROTHERS

Axl, Duff, Izzy, and Slash, I pray you’ll respect my desire to go on the record and tell everyone what actually happened. My goal here is to dig deep and, to the best of my knowledge, tell the whole truth and nothing but.

Now, that’s not to say those guys don’t recall different things, or things differently. But when it comes to writing about my life as a rock musician, Axl, Duff, Izzy, and Slash will be the first to tell you that I’ve been my own worst enemy. And I’ll be the first to agree. This isn’t about laying blame, it’s about accepting it. And in spite of all the fuckups I’ve had, the love is still there. A lot of it. I still love every one of those guys, and I hope they know it.

One of the things Slash writes in the closing pages of his memoir Slash is that he’s truly happy that “Steven Adler is doing better.” I got very emotional when I read that. Slash and I have been through so much. Since we were thirteen! The fact is Slash has had a lot to do with my seeking help and letting the light back in my life. Thanks, Slash!

There is still so much affection there, so much shared pain and joy. You can’t ever take that away. Not from me and Slash. And not from me and Duff, Izzy, or Axl. The only way to make these pages matter to me and you and everyone who has loved or hated me over the past forty years is to make the whole truth the price of admission—and Adler’s admitting everything.

FOREWORD for the DUDES

NOW IT ’S A MIGHT Y LONG WAY DOWN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

AS YOUR NAME GET S HOT, YOUR HEART GROWS COLD…

–“ALL THE WAY FROM MEMPHIS,” MOTT THE HOOPLE

Those lyrics are from Ian Hunter, lead vocalist for one of my favorite bands, Mott the Hoople. And it kind of sums up what we went through with GNR. The bigger we got the more stuck-up and out of touch we became. Hunter also wrote one of the greatest books ever about life on the road, called Diary of a Rock ’n’ Roll Star. It takes all the shine off the glamorous rock star image and puts it in its proper unfiltered light. It is a frank, many times joyless account of what rock ’n’ roll is like from the inside looking out.

Hunter was determined to get it all down in his personal account of Mott’s five-week American tour in November and December of 1972. It should be required reading for all kids before they start smoking cigs, skipping school, and jamming in garages. Hunter talks about Mott’s equipment getting stolen, concerts being canceled, and fans being abusive. Believe me, fifteen years later, when GNR toured the world for eighteen months straight, not much had changed.

Ian leaves nothing out because he knows that’s the only way to offer the story. If you’re going to tell it, tell it all. I want to thank Ian, Mick, Overend, Phally, and Buffin for inspiring me to give my readers the truest, most unflinching account of rock ’n’ roll since Ian penned his masterpiece. If I can get close to the honesty and guts on those pages, then this will be a great book. And I will owe it all to you guys. You are and forever will be the Dudes, the original lineup, the first and the best.

SORTING OUT THE MESS

Great rock music, whether it’s Mott or Mötley, has helped me crawl out of a hole where I’ve been living a permanent nightmare. For two decades I’ve been haunted by a shady, drug-addled past that sucks any desire to face life right out of me. But in the past year, leading right up to November 2009, when I performed with Slash, Duff, and David Navarro in a sold-out show at the Palace in L.A., the music’s inspired me more than ever. It’s lifted my spirits and made me want to live again so I can create music with my band, Adler’s Appetite. I want to get back together with the faithful companion that never betrayed me, my drums.

Now, understand that many of the interviews I granted during and after Guns N’ Roses are a lot of garbage. I tended to treat them like a game, varying what I said to dick around with whoever was interviewing me and drinking heavily before and during them, because a lot of interviews were tedious and repetitive.

Being sober changes everything. The light is harsh at first, and there’s a lot more I’d rather forget than remember. But I’ve fought hard for the opportunity to come clean here and that means everything to me. Although it’s terrifying to revisit how things got so twisted, it’s also the only true way to get my life back. So let’s start this journey at the beginning, so we can understand how things began to unravel until they got so fucked up.

1 TROUBLE from the START

CLEVELAND COLETTI

I was born in Cleveland in 1965, during a time when my father had sunk to physically threatening and beating my mother. Things had really deteriorated between the two of them over the six months before I was born, and Mom was already plotting her escape from this monster by the time I arrived. I was named Michael after my biological father. Poor Mom probably battled a gag reflex every time she said my name. My older brother by three years was named Tony. This was to honor the Italian tradition of naming the firstborn son after the paternal grandfather in the family. The second son gets either the maternal grandfather’s name or, as in my case, the father’s name.

I guess this goes on in other cultures, which is why Bobby Kennedy named his first son Joe, after his father, and his second son Bobby Jr. But the tradition doesn’t fly with Jewish families, where you absolutely do not name your kids after anyone who is living. I’m sure my Jewish mother never confronted my Catholic dad with that fact, because she probably wasn’t eager for another beating.

My pop, Mike Coletti, was sadly just an Italian gangster-wannabe with a bad gambling problem and a worse temper. He and my mother, Deanna, married very young, before they were fitted with brains. A short time after they wed, he became verbally abusive with her, and it just kept getting worse. In fact, the last time my parents were together was the day he beat the hell out of my mom and left her bloody and unconscious on the front lawn of my grandmother’s house.

Now, I know I was too young to remember that day. And most doctors would probably agree that such behavior wouldn’t leave any lasting psychological scars on a newborn. But Mom said that unlike my older brother, I used to cry all the time, day and night. Even that used to piss off my dad, who was too cheap to pay the $30-a-week child support ordered by the judge after they split up. We never saw Dad again. My older brother did a Web search for him recently, finding out that he passed away in 2004. I honestly believe that I sensed there was no love between my mom and dad right out of the womb.

ONE STEP AHEAD OF HITLER

So Mom left Dad and now, twenty-four, with two little kids, realized she had nowhere to go. She was in desperate need of help. Her relationship with her mother was nonexistent, but with absolutely no alternative, she asked her parents for assistance.

My grandmother, “Big Lilly,” as I knew her, came to America from Warsaw in late 1939. She arrived in the United States just three days before Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. Big Lilly lost her entire family to Nazi butchers during the Holocaust. This experience forged her into a fiercely independent woman. Our Jewish heritage was her raison d’être. It formed the basis for everything she held sacred in life. My grandmother’s faith ran so deeply, it was the foundation of her very existence. And Judaism was the one solid rock my grandmother and grandfather could stand on when everything else was threatened. If they ran out of money, if their little bakery business failed, if they were sick, cold, or hungry, they were still the Chosen People with God on their side. They had the Jewish faith and that would get them through anything.

My mom pretty much pissed on that whole belief system. Screw the Jews, I’m marrying a capicola Catholic. I’m in love outside the faith, and to hell with everything you’ve tried to beat into me over the past twenty years. When Mom did this, the family’s rabbi interpreted it as the most vicious attack on everything the Jews stood for and everything they sacrificed during the Holocaust. Big Lilly thought this could not be her child, because no one she raised could be that irreverent, that disrespectful. Imagine how humiliating it was for my grandmother to face the other Jews in her neighborhood, particularly at synagogue.

So Big Lilly believed she had no choice but to disown her daughter. I am torn because my mother was very young and married out of love, which is often so blind. But I guess if love is blind then marriage is an eye-opener.

CLASH OF CULTURES

After such banishment, what could possibly send Mom crawling back to my grandmother? It’s simple: she had no other choice. We were freezing and starving. We needed to eat, and we needed someone to clothe us and keep us warm.

Now, Grandma wasn’t totally heartless, but before she agreed to help my mom, she made it clear that certain conditions must be met. First, my brother and I had to change our names to adhere to the strict Jewish custom that I mentioned that allows no newborns to be named after living people. So to please Big Lilly, my mother renamed us. I was now Steven, and my brother was Kenny.

Grandma Lilly’s second condition was pretty radical: Mom had to give me up. I was to live with and be raised by Big Lilly and my grandpa “Stormin’ Norman.” I literally became their son and spent most of my childhood under their care. Mom couldn’t believe her son was being stolen away from her by her parents. I remember my mother’s constant sobbing during this time when she’d be allowed to visit me. With an innocent child’s perception I’d be thinking, “Ma, what’s wrong? Ain’t you happy to see me?”

My mom was completely crushed. It wasn’t that I was her favorite or anything like that, it was just that I was her darling tow-headed son, and that was enough. Now, I don’t know about you, but that rates right up there for all-time fuck-yous. It was payback time, and Big Lilly wanted to show my mom that Italians aren’t the only masters of revenge.

WILD CHILD

At this point in my life, I was pretty much like the free spirit in that song by the Doors, “Wild Child.”

NOT YOUR MOT HER’S OR YOUR FAT HER’S CHILD

YOU’RE OUR CHILD, SCREAMIN’ WILD…

I was one wild, crazy, fucked-up kid, a born contrarian. Anything, and I mean anything, I was told to do, I would instantly do the opposite or just completely reject it.

My earliest memories are of my getting into trouble. I was kicked out of school during the first week. I gathered up and threw wooden blocks as hard as I could at the window. I still remember the sound it made. At any moment the glass could have shattered. I kept laughing at the way the other kids would wince at the sound. Fuck ’em.

As soon as the teacher stopped me from doing that, I tricked some kid into helping me get something out of a closet filled with board games and toys. As soon as he stepped in front of me, I backed off and slammed the door, locking him in.

He immediately had some severe claustrophobic episode. He started screaming at the top of his lungs and pounding on the door. To compound things, the teacher couldn’t find the key to the door right away, and the whole class became freaked out listening to this kid lose his shit.

When the teacher tried to discipline me, I threw a temper tantrum and pushed her as hard as I could. It seemed like I was locked into this other world and every time teachers told me to do something, they threatened the universe I lived in, and I had to fight them with all my might to defend my world. How dare they be a menace to the galaxies I ruled?

To their credit, the school principal and the teachers believed I had a likable side but had some control issues. They put up with an awful lot for a little time, and then they expelled me from preschool.

SPOILED EGG

Regardless of my behavior, Big Lilly was determined to spoil me. She really did everything for her little bratty, impulsive grandson. But sometimes I’d go too far even for her and she would ship me downstairs to be with Kenny and Mom. This was when the whole family lived in the same claustrophobic complex in Cleveland. Of course it took only a day before I would get on Mom’s nerves and she would send me to my room. Now, that’s not going to work, Mom.

I would just open the window and scream out, “Grandma. Grandma!” We lived on the fifth floor and my grandma lived on the ninth. She’d come down, forgetting all about the terror I had been the previous day, and run to my defense. She always stuck up for me. She seemed to take pleasure in ordering my mom around and demanding I not be punished because I was “a very sweet boy.”

She delighted in seeing Mom squirm. Mom was livid with the way Grandma Lilly and I would gang up on her, and there was really nothing she could do about it. When I’d get back upstairs, I could do no wrong until I wore Big Lilly down again.

WESTWARD HO!

One of my mom’s older sisters lived in California. They used to keep in touch over the phone at least twice a week. Whenever they talked, my aunt would always tell my mom how great it was to live in Southern California. She would excitedly brag about the weather, the beautiful beaches, the ocean, canyons, and mountains. You could do anything at any time, because it was always sunny and warm, even in the winter.

Eventually this got my mom thinking about busting a move out of Cleveland, where, in all honesty, things couldn’t have gotten much worse for her. One day, Mom started asking her sister about job openings, and my aunt was ready. She grabbed the paper and actually started to rattle off openings she had circled out of that day’s classified ads.

Mom would usually tell us all about their chats after she got off the phone. When she was on the phone with her sister her voice would actually get sweeter and go up about an octave. She’d even speak faster and we could tell she was getting more and more excited with each call.

Finally, the chance for a fresh start and a new life overcame any fear or reservations she had. Moving was something she had been mulling over for months, and one day, when I was having dinner at her place, she just sat us down.

I’ll never forget the look on her face. She took each of her boys by the hand and told us we were going on an adventure. We were going to visit her sister out in California, and maybe even stay out there if things went right.

The fact that she picked one of the coldest, windiest, wettest days of the winter to tell us certainly sealed our approval. Kenny and I were all for it. I never saw my mom so wired. She talked about our move nonstop. Maybe that was to hide how scared she was during this whole time. She would make lists, then make more lists, then tear them up, make some phone calls, and start a new list.

She read travel brochures on Southern California. Then she boxed up everything we owned, from her sewing kit to the salad bowl, and labeled it all with Magic Markers. The entire time she had this look in her eye, like a runaway train. God pity anyone who got in her way. That’s probably why I never heard Big Lilly put up a fight for me when the time came to head out.

I could feel the excitement as the date neared. This golden opportunity to get a bad start behind her and begin again with a new home gave her boundless energy. She could have sprinted to L.A. So, at the lucky age of seven, we drove to California to get a fresh shot at life.

2 GOING to CALIFORNIA

MADE UP MY MIND TO MAKE A NEW START,

GOING TO CALIFORNIA WITH AN ACHING IN MY HEART.

–“GOING TO CALIFORNIA,” LED ZEPPELIN