Who wasn’t excited the first time they saw Guns ‘n’ Roses back in the day? There was just this passion and recklessness that made them completely compelling. In the days before selfies and cell phones 80’s Rock certainly had its moments but arguably there was none bigger than ‘Appetite for Destruction’ which many people I know still consider it the best debut album of all time. I was lucky enough to be there the first time they hit the UK and was back again on that second tour when ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ was just about to push the record up the charts and break them in a huge way.
Seeing the Gunners in a room of 400 people is something I will always remember and I still have the cigarette that Slash gave me when they played my hometown to remember it all by (I didn’t smoke so put it behind my ear and it was still there when I got home!). That’s my piece of history along with the ticket with scrawled signatures on the back and one of Steven’s sticks and a guitar pick. I’ve always loved the album and so when Marc Canter’s book Reckless Road came out in 2007 I grabbed a signed copy. I never spoke to Marc before but when his publicist called about his new Podcast ‘The First 50 Gigs’ I jumped at the chance.
If you crave the detail about the early days then you will love this. I tried my hardest to edit it but it lost so much – it’s far more enjoyable just listening to Marc and me just talk though it all (I’ll admit it’s mainly Marc) so we plan to have the audio up soon. It was a very long chat though so for starters here’s part one with part two coming next week!
Pull up a chair, grab a drink and enjoy!
Mark: Hi Marc!
Marc C: Hi Mark!
Mark: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit. I’ve spoken to so many people over the years who cite Appetite for Destruction as the greatest debut album ever. I’ve just been watching the first few Podcasts in your ‘First 50 Shows’ programme, it’s a great idea and wonderful to explore the history, find out some new things and hear from those that were around in those early days. I loved the book ‘Reckless Road’ what was the impetus to go on and expend with the Podcast?
Marc C: When I first started working with Jason who was my co-author for Reckless Road my book it was back in 2006 and we published in 2008, but we always agreed that we would go deeper and do something whether it was a documentary or whether it was a movie, just something because I have all of this great input and the book could only do so much. But we never really got around to finishing it and during the pandemic when everyone was doing Zoom and Jason wasn’t working as much as he normally would be. He said since Zoom is working why don’t we find some people we weren’t able to get for the book like Rob Gardner the original drummer, or people we did get that we didn’t go deep enough with – so we just started doing it, talking, going in blind not really knowing where we were headed. We always knew we would start at teh beginning but we didn’t know how deep we would go or how many seasons it would be or even if it would work! But it came out really good and it worked so now we’re just on it and where it stops we donlt know. We’re just going to keep going from gig to gig, what was going on, where they were staying, what songs they were writing, when they debuted songs like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Rocket Queen’ and ‘Paradise City’ and how that came about, when they recorded their demo tapes. You know I have all of that documented so you just dig into that subject and then you get people to talk that were involved – whether they were a Roadie, or someone’s girlfriend, or just someone that was in the room – someone that was an eye-witness. It might even be a band member themselves, and sometimes they’re great but sometimes they don’t remember everything – you just get more details when you have more input.
Mark: I remember buying a signed copy of Reckless Road from your website when it came out, I loved the stories and the photos but this podcast is a wonderful addition to that. Just remind everyone who maybe hasn’t read the book of your early connection with the band – you were drawn into the the orbit as a friend of Slash and have been called the ‘sixth member of Guns and Roses’. What was it about Slash that you knew even at a young age was going to lead him down a very special path?
Marc C: Well I grew up wit Slash, I’d know him since he was about eleven and he was always a little bit special. You know with his artwork, with his bike-riding abilities, he was just a little stronger, a little faster, you just knew something was there. I didn’t pay too much attention to it, I just knew it was there. And I actually documented some of that you know, I kept his drawings and I took pictures when he did radical things on his bike. But we lost touch for a about a year as we went to different middle schools around the 8th grade or so and then we met up again after the 9th grade, and by that time he had picked up a guitar and started playing for a bout a year. And at the time we left off we weren’t really listening to music we were just riding bikes and causing havoc, but when we met up again I had an Aerosmith shirt on and he had a Zeppelin shirt on, so we had both individually gotten into music and we had the same musical taste. So he told me he played guitar, I also played guitar but he was also in a band, so instinctively I knew that it was gonna be something special so I went with him that day to rehearsal. I wasn’t shocked to see how good he was and what he was doing and the sound he was getting and from there it only got better and better. So I kind of put the effort in to make sure he was able to continue doing that and that he could get to the next level.
Mark: So that would have been Titus Sloan?
Marc C: Yes, it was. Adam Greenburg was the drummer and it was in his garage. I’d know Adam from the 7th grade and he had randomly bumped into Slash and started working with him. But right away you could tell. After the rehearsal I picked up his guitar and was diddling around with it and I wasn’t getting the sound he was getting. Same guitar, same amp but different players. He had a really hick rich sound and the cover songs they were doing like ‘Heaven and Hell’, some Aerosmith songs, that kind of stuff, a couple of originals, but he really played those covers well. You had to tip your hat at how well he was doing those songs, the musicians that wrote them would have been very happy with the way he was representing them. But besides that when it came time for him to improvise a solo or do a Blues jam or even an original, the notes that he picked – they did something, they meant something, you felt them. So it could only get better from there. And I knew that maybe he wasn’t going to make it in that band but I knew he would make it as a guitar player in someone’s band at some point. So I stuck with him gave him rides to different cities to look at guitars or amps or helped him with a pack of strings, whatever was needed really I tried to help. I got on his back about trying to learn something that was difficult just to get him to better himself – whether it was the Michael Schenker solo from ‘Strangers in the Night’ or whatever. And he of course would pull it off note for note with the tone that Schenker had and it wasn’t difficult for him to do that. I knew that not everyone could do that and if they could they would find it hard to get the same tone. He definitely had that extra ability.
Mark: And that of course led him and you to Guns and Roses.
Marc C: Yes, we met Axl and Izzy and all the rest of the guys, we’d briefly met them a year before Guns ‘n’ Roses in Hollywood Rose. We knew Axl was good he had a bunch of registers and octaves and they were working with Steven at the time who was playing double bass drum, so Axl was kinda getting drowned out and the music was kinda Heavy Metal , Speed Metal and it was good but it wasn’t fantastic. So when they hooked up again a year later after Axl left L.A. Guns and restarted Guns ‘n’ Roses as a project with Tracii Guns – that way it would be half each of the band rather than Tracii joining Hollywood Rose or Axl joining L.A. Guns. They figured that if they did it as a side project and still kept their original bands neither would take control and they wouldn’t get into fights it would be more likely to succeed. It was a good idea and it was a good band, but it didn’t work out, Tracii left and soon after Rob Gardner the drummer left, but they had gigs booked and Duff was already in the band. Duff had met Slash briefly maybe six months before when Slash had an ad in The Recycler’ for a bass-player, and they’d jammed for about a week but it didn’t stick because there was no singer so Duff moved on and met Axl and Izzy so when it was time for another guitar player Axl said “OK maybe we’ll get Slash back” and Duff already knew who Slash was so they got Slash and Steven and they removed one of Steven’s bass drums and everything just clicked. Right there, that was it – there were the five guys that were going to go on this journey and all they needed to do was get a little help.
Mark: Is that when you knew Marc? That that line-up had what it took to be more than just another Sunset Strip band?
Marc C: Well of course I knew how it worked with Axl in the past and Slash had never worked in a band with Izzy as just when Slash joined Hollywood Rose, Izzy stepped out so they didn’t even play a gig together. But we knew Izzy had good ability and good stage presence and good song-writing skills. And Duff was just cool everyone loved Duff.
Mark: So what was the first show like?
Marc C: Well I didn’t go to the first rehearsal but at that first gig my mouth was open like “Wow!” I knew all these guys, I was friends with all these guys so it wasn’t like I was star-struck – they wee just my friends, I knew them but my mouth just dropped to the ground based on what I was hearing.
Mark: So what did they play at that very first show?
Marc C: That night I heard ‘Donlt Cry’, and Slash ripped out that same guitar solo that you hear on the record, but that’s just what came to mind on the night and he remembered it and he played it the next time and the next time and it ended up on the record that way. But you really got to hear Axl’s vocals without it being downed out, they just had a great groove and it all fit, and they looked right. They had a purpose, nowadays you have one of two members who drive things and the rest are just there for the ride but that band was being driven by 5 different guys. They all were just adding to it, if you added up the percentages of what they were worth you couldn’t – if you did that it came to 200%
Mark: (laughs) I can actually imagine that
Marc C: It does – Axl has to be worth 50% and Slash has to be worth 50% but wait a minute look at the other three guys! If you add it all up you’re gonna get to 200% pretty quick! It was special what they were doing and the next thing I know ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ shows up at a gig on July 20th, just a few months later. I was recording those gigs as well as taking pictures and I thought at the time “This sounds cool” but you don’t really know it when you’re first hearing it especially live, but I knew it was really cool. So that night after the gig on the way home I popped the cassette in my car and I knew then it was a really important song – I played it like 4 or 5 time and I just kept rewinding the tape and playing it again. The next day the played a gig at UCLA at a Frat Party and they played the song again, but this time they slowed it down a little bit because they were still experimenting with it and they didn’t know how they wanted to do it, but the lyrics were still the same, and the guitar solo was the same and the song was structured the same, they were just fooling around with the tempo of it. But that and ‘Don’t Cry’ were the songs, yeah I knew about ‘Think About You’ and ‘Move to the City’ and those were good songs but ‘Don’t Cry’ was the one that I thought “This could end up in a soundtrack somewhere, or get played on the radio” I knew that right away. And then ‘Jungle’ was just as good and then ‘Rocket Queen’ showed up two months later and that was just the way you hear it on the record note for note. It was like Led Zeppelin – whatever the did it was working! And then sure enough ‘Paradise City’ was next.
Mark: That must have been so cool hearing it all incrementally like that.
Marc C: That was another song where I thought straight away “Wait a minute! That has a hook! That sucks you in!” Then the next came ‘Nightrain’ and it seemed like they were getting better and better and then two weeks later they had ‘My Michelle’ and not long after it was ‘Out To Get Me’ they didn’t have any songs that disappeared or didn’t work that didn’t make it on the record. The songs they wrote were ready to go! They all ended up on ‘Appetite’ – ten out of twelve songs on ‘Appetite’ I witnessed them debut.
Mark: An incredible set of songs and it must have been wonderful to see that unfold. My first taste of Guns and Roses came on their debut UK Tour in 1987 which for a lot of people was absolutely breathtaking.
Marc C: Were you at that Marquee gig that they played?
Mark: Yeah we drove down to London and caught that first date, couldn’t get tickets to the others shows. Then the next time was when they came back with the larger bill.
Marc C: That was when they came down with Faster Pussycat and somebody?
Mark: Yeah, Faster Pussycat and Dangerous Toys I think.
Marc C: That’s right.
Mark: Hearing you talking about the songs as they were aired live I know a lot of people always wonder with ‘Don’t Cry’ being one of the oldest songs Guns ‘n’ Roses wrote why it didn’t make it onto ‘Appetite’? I know it has a bit more of an ‘epic’ feel to it but I think it would have fit.
Marc C: It was definitely going to go on that first record. Until the wrote ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and hen they had that they didn’t want two slower songs on there and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ was the better song and it turned out to be the bigger hit. And when I say better, not that much better but just enough to beat it by a nose. But the interesting thing about ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and ‘Mr Brownstone’ is when Guns ‘n’ Roses got signed at the end of March of ’86 they were ready to put a record out they had a great list of songs that they wrote and put together and arranged and they were ready to go. They didn’t really need any producing they just needed to be ‘captured’. But Tom Zutat from Geffen records felt that maybe they needed one more song, maybe two more songs and he didn’t really want them in the studio before they wrote a couple more songs just to see what they could do. But nothing was really getting done except havoc!
Mark: (Laughs) I can imagine with those songs in the bank.
Marc C: Then in May they came up with ‘You’re Crazy’ which was a good song but not enough to say to Tom “Hey we’re ready” he just wanted to hear another one. So in that time they were waiting they almost went to jail, they got evicted, they could have got killed – a lot was going on! They were about to get dropped by teh Record company because they were causing so many problems in the city, they were taring through managers, no one could handle them. And what was so weird is that Slash’s birthday is in July and I remembered that back in ’81-’82 Slash used to have a Cry Baby (Wah) pedal – he used to use it for ‘Dazed and Confused’ when they used to cover it – Jimmy Page would have flipped out if he’d heard Slash. I still have a recording of that and it sounds like an early Zeppelin Bootleg! That’s how good it was! So Slash never asked for a Cry Baby for his birthday, he didn’t ask for anything but I bought him one and then the next thing you knew they did ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and ‘Mr Brownstone’ and they debuted that at the Whisky, and that is full of Wah-Wah Pedal! Imagine what it would be like without that sound – it just sucks you in! I almost want to take a little responsibility there because I came up with a really good birthday present!
Mark: (laughs)
Mark C: He put it good use! So after that gig Tom Zutat who had heard those two new songs said “OK that’s it! We are ready to go” Right after they went into pre-production so that they could rehearse and not burn up that valuable studio time so they wouldn’t make mistakes and whilst they were there they came up with ‘It’s So Easy’ which is one of my favourite songs.
Mark: Mine too.
Marc C: It gets your blood pumping, the best way to open a gig, it has everything they stand for! Just like the cherry on top of the cake! They already had the cake, that album would have knocked you off your feet anyway but they just added to it! You knew that record was going to go places and really do something, maybe not thinking it would be as big as it was but it would do something!
Mark: So with the album in the bag what helped push Guns forwards?
Marc C: MTV was just starting to do its work bring bands forwards, In those days if you had something to show MTV helped the whole world find out about it! So I think they helped a lot but they had sold like 200,000 records before MTV even caught onto them. But Geffen thought the album was dead by then and wanted them on album number two, but not Tom, the upper management thought that, Tom wanted to get them on MTV.
Mark: It wasn’t that easy though was it?
Marc C: No, the problem was that MTV didn’t really want to play them as they has a bad reputation and they had the album cover with ‘that’ art on it so there was that controversy. So I guess they didn’t want to risk losing their investors and their advertising. But David Geffen pulled a favour from someone at Viacom (part of MTV) and they agreed to play ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ one time only on a Sunday at 5.00 in the morning! And what happened was the switchboards blew up with people calling up and asking for it to be played again. And within a week they were in Top 10 rotation and not long after that they were moving 200,000 records a week and then ‘Sweet Child’ came out and took it to a new level and then the knock-down punch was ‘Paradise City’ that just sent them to another level altogether.
Mark: And you could see that from our side of the world too, every time and every single they got bigger till instead of me in a club with 400 fans we were in a field with 107,000 fans at Donington in 1988.
Marc C: It really was that fast.
Mark: A lot of people consider Appetite to be one of the greatest debuts of all time, even one of the greatest Rock albums of all time and time has really not done anything to diminish that, it has held up remarkably well. It must as well as it being a labour of love also be a great responsibility to record those times?
Marc C: (laughs) You know you’re right, you’re probably the only one that has realise that. Even those everyone else that was there, their girlfriends, their friends, other musicians no one took it seriously, but they knew I took it seriously and that one way or another I was going to document it all, whether I was video taping it, taking pictures or whatever, they knew I was right on it, and they knew what it meant to me to take care of that. You know, I had to make sure I got a good spot so I could take pictures and a good place for the tape so I could get a good recording, so it was a little stressful actually.
Mark: So what makes it so special Marc?
Mark C: In 500 years when kids are gonna hit 13, 14 years old and they learn about that record guitar players will be influenced to pick up a guitar and other musicians pick up their instruments and be inspired by it. It’s not just the great songs and the mix it’s about where they were in their lives at that time and how they were living – they weren’t sat down and writing – they were living the songs and writing about that – how they would survive and get to the next gig! And also it was a punch ack to society that music had taken a turn for the worst – they grew up with good Punk and good Rock and Roll, Aerosmith, Stones, Zeppelin – all that great stuff from the 60’s to the late 70’s and here we are in the mid 80’s and no one was really doing anything to compete with that! The closest might have been Motley Crue but they weren’t anywhere near that level. Nobody was really writing music like that! SO I guess it was their version of what great Rock and Roll should sound like.
END OF PART ONE
Many thanks to Marc Canter for being so generous with his time. Check back next week for more of the interview and more unseen pictures from the early days! Be sure to check out the whole story at first50gigs.com.
