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Slash - I used to live there. I was born there.
Interviewer - Yeah, I know. Stoke-On-Trent
Slash - Stoke-On-Trent.
Interviewer - The only trouble is in American it's Stoke-In-Trent. "In" instead of "on".
Duff - Yeah, Stoke-In-Trent.
Interviewer - Yeah.
Duff - We call it...
Slash - I don't know what I call it.
Duff - Oh, it's...
Slash - Actually lucky enough to spell it right once... [inaudible] It's Stoke-En-Trent, right?
Interviewer - No, on. Stoke-On-Trent.
Slash - It's on?
Interviewer - Stoke-On Trent, yeah.
Slash - Wow.
Interviewer - So... what? You moved over there when you were little, or what?
Slash - No, I was born there. I was born in London.
Interviewer - Oh, I see. It's...
Slash - My dad was British. And so I lived... I was born in London. Lived there for eleven years and moved to LA.
Interviewer - Uhu.
Slash - So there's certain little things I remember and shit, you know.
Interviewer - So you're part British educated then?
Slash - Huh? Yeah, I went to school here, yeah.
Duff - We say "rather"...
Interviewer - It doesn't sound...
Duff - It's been... [inaudible]
Slash - ... [inaudible] Americanized.
Duff - We say "rather", he still says "rather". We say "aunt", he still says "aunt".
Slash - I got a couple of little things left in there. Otherwise it's basically all "yeah, yeah, yeah".
Duff - Do you still say "tomato"?
Slash - No, no.
Duff - Or "potato"?
Slash - No, I don't say any of that shit.
Interviewer - [inaudible]
Slash - That's Del.
Duff - This is our road crew.
Slash - And this is where we dwell. Ask us some provocative questions.
Interviewer - Tell me about the groupies.
Slash - About what?
Interviewer - Groupies.
Duff - Groupies?
Slash - Groupies?
Interviewer - Yeah.
Duff - Love 'em.
Interviewer - Are there a lot of around?
Duff - Yeah, yeah.
Slash - They're worth a treck around the block anytime.
Duff - In LA... I mean... There are a lot of groupies here in London too, but they're all ugly and fat.
Slash - We've been doing all right, though.
Duff - Yeah.
Slash - All in all.
Duff - All in all.
Slash - All in all, considering when we first got... [inaudible] and within three or four days time, we managed to screw in there. Find some...
Duff - LA is... LA is the Mecca.
Slash - LA is the Mecca when it comes to that.
Duff - We've all moved from different places to LA, you know.
Slash - Salute to American... [inaudible]
Duff - You get to LA, it's like... Have you been to LA?
Interviewer - No.
Duff - It's like... a Mecca, man. You fuckin' just drive down the street, drive down Sunset...
Slash - And they're eager...
Interviewer - I'm not going before I can afford to buy Excalibur and Crystal.
Duff - Yeah?
Interviewer - You know Excalibur?
Duff - Yeah.
Interviewer - I get to them. I'm gonna get enough money to...
Duff - Yeah.
Interviewer - [inaudible]... Oh, nothing.
Slash - Can I have it?
Interviewer - Umm?
Slash - Have some more mentos?
Interviewer - Oh, sure, yeah. Have you heard of Terence Trent D'Arby?
Slash - Who?
Interviewer - Terence Trent D'Arby. He's an American who was in the army in Germany. So, he's started to making a musical career here.
Slash - Yeah.
Interviewer - And he started his... [inaudible] and I sort of liked it so...
Slash - Is he a cool guy?
Interviewer - He's very much like Prince, so...
Duff - Oh, Prince canceled a week, huh?
Interviewer - No, he's playing... It's postponed for a week. So he's playing the small place.
Duff - Oh, he is?
Interviewer - Yes.
Duff - Next week or tomorrow?
Interviewer - No...
Slash - Indoors, right?
Interviewer - First, second, third and fourth of July.
Slash - He's doing indoors?
Interviewer - Yeah, indoors. Officially he was afraid of being electrocuted because of the weather.
Duff - No shit? That wasn't...
Slash - He would look great electrocuted, though.
[everybody laughs]
Interviewer - I suppose he would.
Slash - Real purple and everything.
Duff - Real purple!
Interviewer - So, ok guys. Tell me, how long...
Duff - The groupies are great. In LA... you know... it's pretty much...
Slash - Next to a show... pretty much the life and blood of to keep you going.
Duff - Yeah, next to playing live.
Slash - Yeah. After a show, if you don't have something to fuck, for the sake of sounding glid...
Interviewer - I mean, all that adrenaline running, you really have to get rid of it.
Duff - Yeah, you have to... you know, venture.
Slash - [laughs]
Duff - Venture... your tension.
Interviewer - Hasn't all this AIDS-talk make it more...
Slash - It makes it more of a...
Duff - More of a challenge.
Slash - More of a challenge.
Duff - It's more like a sport.
Interviewer - No rain coats?
Duff - Huh?
Interviewer - No raincoats?
Slash - What does that mean?
Duff - Rubbers, you mean?
Slash - Oh, rubbers. That's a...
Interviewer - I heard it from somebody from New York.
Duff - Really?
Slash - No, really.
Interviewer - Yeah.
Slash - I guess it's 'cause it rains so much out there. [laughs]
Interviewer - Yeah, maybe.
Slash - No, I mean... I think....
Duff - Raincoats are... If you're drunk you can't get 'em on.
Slash - I used a rubber once, and my grandmother found it in the toilet.
Interviewer - [laughs]
Slash - It's true. She said: "What is this?" [in mock accent] I said: "Umm... fuck. Tin-foil."
Duff - Tin-foil.
Slash - No, no.
Duff - Saran wrap.
Slash - Saran wrap
Duff - Did you?
Slash - [laughs]
Duff - Spilled a little mayonnaise on it.
Interviewer - Anyway, can we get a bit serious? Tell me about the...
Slash - We've been serious.
Interviewer - I know, I know... How long have you been together?
Slash - Two years.
Duff - Two years.
Interviewer - Two years? Was it difficult to get a deal?
Slash - No...
Duff - We didn't even try.
Slash - We weren't even looking for one.
Interviewer - Really?
Duff - We we're rehearsing in a little place about half the size this room. We built a loft that we slept on and we... all the equipment was underneath the loft. So we had about this much room... you know, between us and the wall. And we were just bashing out, playing gigs.
Slash - We used to write songs... so fuckin' loud in that room, it would blow your mind. And that's how we... that's how we.... We used to go in there...
Duff - We rent... There was no bath... There was a bath, there was a toilet. No shower or, you know, no stove or nothing. It was just a room. And there was a bathroom down the alley. We rent it for 400 bucks a month.
Slash - We were supported wholly by women.
Duff - And by... When we did gigs, you know...
Slash - No...
Duff - That's what pay our rent.
Slash - But that was like... It was like... We're in the there, we're rehearsing there. [inaudible] ....get somebody to loan us a car [laughs] Or something. And then we go and do gigs and come back and back and forth and back and forth. There was always like, 150 people there all the time, out in the parking lot. The cops busted a million times. It was a lot of fun.
Interviewer - What about the neighbors?
Slash - [inaudible]... any neighbors.
Duff - It was in a... There wasn't like, residential...
Slash - It was more like, business-type...
Duff - It was like, down the alley.
Slash - It was on the outskirts of the neighborhood.
Interviewer - Oh, I see.
Duff - There's a wood-shop and a... you know. Nothing, there was nothing. It's just like, you know, an alley that just ends where we were at. But it was pretty interesting time. We got a lot of songs out of that place. We used to drink this shit called Nightrain. They don't have it over here.
Interviewer - [inaudible]
Duff - Yeah, it's like... umm, just great wine. It comes in a little bottle for a dollar.
Slash - A dollar.
Duff - So, you could... You could round up a dollar somehow, you know. And we used to drink this shit. We fuckin' make the store run out of the stuff, you know. So, we got a song called "Nightrain", named after that stuff. It's called "Nightrain".
Interviewer - No problems with using the name?
Duff - Not yet.
Interviewer - Not yet?
Duff - They could... I mean, shit, it's a cheap little wine company. I'm sure they'll...
Interviewer - They could do with all the publicity they can get, huh?
Duff - Yeah.
Interviewer - So, how did you get a deal?
Duff - Just...
Slash - Well, what happened was... Umm, we we're out there just gigging and gigging and gigging and gigging, and we managed to get a pretty big following. And so all the record companies at one time all of a sudden decided to see who this band was. And we had pretty much every major record company down there, and Geffen was the only one that had Tom Zutaut in it, which is the guy that actually signed us, who was cool enough for us to actually relate to. Everyone else was like, signing the band because we had a crowd, and people were interested.
Duff - [inaudible]... you know.
Slash - Yeah, and Tom was cool. There's a perfect example of like, the record business nowadays, where Tom went up and saw us at the Troubadour in LA. And then came back to the front of the club after the show was over, and all the other record company guys said: "What'd u think?" you know. And he said: "Oh, they're terrible".
Duff - He said we sucked.
Slash - But he calls us the next day and said we're great. I mean, that's how this business works. "Are they good?" "Oh, really?". And everybody... Otherwise they wouldn't know the difference between shit and shy.
Duff - Yeah. We got... fuckin'... There was like, a two week period when all this was going down. Three weeks. Just brown-nosed by, you know, record companies. Being taken to lunch...
Slash - We ate well.