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Allman after an Allman Brothers concert in Florida, their guitars talked to each other for hours. It was and always will be the music. The music bonded us for life.

      THE FIRST JAM

      The first time we actually performed a song, we were at some black guy’s house, a kid we met at the Granada Hills music store. He played the drums, his brother played guitar, and they performed the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” for us. I closely watched him play, sort of learning from his movements.

      They let Saul and me have a go at it. For the first time I actually played on a real drum set. From watching the guys play, we mimicked what they did and played as best we could. We made some kind of whacked-out sound. But for kids who had no idea what they were doing, the seeds were there. We were born rockers.

      Although Saul had just started playing guitar, he was really amazing from the very beginning. Saul was also writing kick-ass original songs, cool ones that had great hooks. In comparison, I wasn’t very good on the drums. That wasn’t going to stop us though. After that jam, Saul and I were all psyched to come up with a name for our band. After kicking a few around, one of us just blurted out “Road Crew.” It’s like when Robert Plant wrote the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven,” and he said that two-thirds of that song just poured out of him in like twenty minutes. He felt like he was channeling more than writing, and that’s how we felt with “Road Crew.” It was just sitting there in the cosmic realm, waiting for one of us to pluck it out.

      God, we loved that name. It summed up our warrior attitude about bringing great rock ’n’ roll to the masses. That was going to be our thing. Taking music from the streets to the streets. And when you think about our later success with GNR, that’s what helped us click with our fans. They immediately recognized that this was their music, their own street brand of rock ’n’ roll.

      BLOOD BROTHERS

      I had a skateboard and Saul had a bike. I would shred over to his house or he would ride his bike to mine. I was pretty much with Saul every day now, all the time. The music was our sacred bond, which is why I had drifted away from Ricardo and Jackie. I still loved those guys, but I loved rock ’n’ roll more. Saul and I were slaves to the beat, hanging out on the stairway at his grandma’s apartment building, writing music and lyrics. We were such good friends, so close, even doubling up to make it with chicks.

      When we were both fourteen we said, “Let’s do that blood brother thing.” We got a knife, slit our hands, pressed them together, and said, “We’re going to make it in a rock band and we’re going to be huge.” That promise formed an unbreakable bond between us. After that we felt we had sealed our success as a team.

      STONER GIRL

      Saul and I believed in sharing. Everything I had, he wanted. Ha! One time I was running over to his place when I passed by this guy and girl who were sitting out on their porch. The guy was rolling a joint, and the girl asked if I wanted to smoke it with them.

      The girl introduced herself as Kerry. She was so beautiful. She had dark hair, big lips, blue eyes, and was extremely pretty, very exotic. I don’t even remember the guy’s name, but he was her roommate. This girl was twenty-three years old, and we just started hanging out every day while I was on my way to Saul’s. I was only fourteen, but it didn’t matter. After about two weeks of seeing her every day, I decided I was going to try to fuck her.

      One night we just started making out, and I was so into her. I mean, right when my cock would touch her hot, wet pussy, I would pop. Three times it went like that. I just couldn’t hold out. I had only fucked my little windup Marcia by then, and this older woman really rocked my world. My balls actually ached. And I was hard again in like ten minutes. Afterward, I went over to Saul’s house and told him about it, all the facts in minute detail. Saul just got this odd, pinched-up look on his face, then disappeared for about fifteen minutes.

      When he got back, I asked him where he was. He said he forgot to take out a load of garbage for his mom. I started laughing. “Yeah, sure. You had to get rid of a load all right.” Saul got mad. He flipped his guitar pick at me. Stuff like that could really set him off. Then the next day, just to make peace, I introduced him to Kerry. Within just a few visits, he managed to score with her too. But unlike me, he knew what he was doing.

       4 LEARNING the HARD WAY

      ROLL IT OVER

      Saul’s main squeeze at this time was a beautiful young blond girl we’ll call Melissa. We used to go over to her house all the time. I could just walk out the back of Grandma’s house and I’d be on Melissa’s street.

      I learned how to roll joints from Melissa’s mom, Carrie, who had a big bowl of pot and papers ready for me when I visited. One afternoon we were the only ones in the house. She was a very pretty lady, about thirty-six years old. She was twenty-two years older than me but as we were getting stoned I thought, “Y’know, I’m horny, what the fuck.” I went for it. I started making out with Carrie, and she started moaning softly. I gave her a big wicked smile, then pulled out my cock and stuck it in her face. She started sucking on it, and it was incredible, a real blow job from an experienced lover. Although I was still learning, I felt like the hero of eighth graders everywhere. I wanted to get up on the roof and scream it out to the whole world. “I’m Steven Adler, the fuckmeister of grade-schoolers everywhere. Kneel before me!”

      Without ever discussing it, we agreed it would be our little secret, once and done. There was no awkwardness between us, and the proof was that we remained good friends after our horizontal tango. It was natural, it was fantastic, and neither of us regretted a thing about it.

      THE THREE OF US

      But when it came to hanging out, it was just Melissa, Saul, and me. The three of us were inseparable for nearly four years. If you saw one of us, the other two weren’t far away. I wouldn’t come home for days. I slept over at Saul’s grandma’s house sometimes and at his mom Ola’s too. Ola was incredibly talented, a lovely, artistic black woman who lived near Olympic and Crescent Heights.

      Melissa had a friend, Michelle Young, who became a part of our tightly knit little group. She was a thin brunette with attitude. Michelle would be immortalized in the song “My Michelle” years later.

      I remember the first time we went over to her pad, I was surprised by the stacks upon stacks of pornographic videotapes. She said her dad made his living as a producer in the porn industry and asked if I wanted to watch one.

      I’d never seen one, so why not? This one took place in a jail cell, which was actually a really terrible set. These guys were getting their dicks sucked through the bars of this woman’s cell. I was a horny young kid and found it difficult to hide my boner. But it was so damned cheesy, I had to laugh.

      Every so often, we would visit Saul’s dad, Tony Hudson. His dad hung out with a lot of rock ’n’ roll people. He was a well-known album cover designer who did art for sixties folksingers like Joni Mitchell. I remember he took us to a couple of parties up in Laurel Canyon. It was so cool, a beautiful hippie house, everyone smoking pot, munching mushrooms, and it was the first time we ever tried wine coolers. The wine coolers were too lightweight for us. But everything else was just right. It was just nonstop sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

      WEED VERSUS WINE

      Saul didn’t like smoking weed as much as I did, so we would mostly drink when we hung out together. One week we’d have peppermint schnapps, another we’d switch to Jack Daniel’s, and then another it would be vodka. Every week it was something different, depending on whatever struck our fancy (or what we found in the cupboard).

      My grandpa always had a couple of bottles in the liquor cabinet, so we’d skim a little

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