Steven Adler report

Steven Adler

It was the end of the road for Steven Adler, the end of the rock star trip, the end of his lifelong dream.... "I had just shot up some coke. I was in the bathroom, puking my guts up for the fourth time that day. A little coke, a little junk, just mix it together and get the needle.... Man I was good at that. But I must have mixed in too much coke..I knew this was going to be some helacious speedball trip, and the only thing I could do was hang on for the ride.

In the next moment, I was on my stomach, my face uncontrollably hitting the tile floor. My eyes were open - I was aware of what was happening, but I couldn't stop. I could glance over to the tub where in arms reach was a towel draped over it. All I had to do was grab the towel and shove it underneath my face. But I couldn't do it. I could feel my face hit the tile floor- up and down over and over again. And i couldn't stop as the convulsions swept over my body.I felt my teeth loosen as they broke away from my gums, I felt the lacerations on my face. The last thing i remember was pounding my face in to a pool of blood."

This turned in to Steven Adler's first stroke, there was to be another, plus a heart attack, and an estimated 31 trips to the emergency rooms of various LA hospitals.

Still living in North Hollywood, Steven Adler's nature is as sunny now, nearly 15 years later, as it was back in the halcyon days of the 80's, but his voice betrays him now, the soft drawl is not all sun and surf any more, you have to listen a little more carefully to understand him through his slur, the most obvious side-effect of his travails, his own private little track mark.

"Yeah, I'm a rocker", he laughs at himself, "I'm a roller, too, baby, it's the only happiness I ever really get".

Steven was a hyperactive child who lived with his grandmother in LA at the age of 12, he was a doer not a thinker and was obssessed with Kiss since a family outing to Magic Mountain where Kiss were performing, from then on he would tell his mother that he wanted to become a rock star, she said, "that's nice, Stevie, and I thought that would be that!"

At school, Steven found a freind in Saul Hudson, later of course to become Slash, another displaced, slightly unorthodox boy who also lived with his grandmother in LA.

Adler recalls, "At school there was this three story building, and there was a metal rail around the balcony there, I used to sing this little song, King Tut, it was called, and it went like this, King Tut...God works in mysterious ways, well, me and Slash used to climb out on to that rail, three floors up, and we sang King Tut as loud as we could, we had this really nice young teacher, and when she saw us we hopped down, really laughing, and we ran down the hall and ditched school. After that we'd ditch school nearly every day. Me and Slash would walk up and down Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, and each day we had this thing where we'd take a different type of alcohol, and we'd walk up and down, and what we'd be talkin about was how we'd be living when we were rock and roll stars, it was like this dream that I always knew would come true.

We'd go out and meet chicks- older women- who would take us back to their Beverly Hills homes. They'd give us booze, coke, they'd feed us, really. All we had to do was fuck them. Occasionally a guy would pick me up. In return for a blowjob, I'd get a little dope and maybe 30 or 40 bucks. I lived about 5 or 6 blocks from Santa Monica Blvd, so if I was with Slash, we'd get back to my house first, I had two rooms, a living room, and a bedroom, and I'd always sleep in the living room. In the bedroom, I had this guitar and a little amplifier that I was learning to play, and one day I just showed it to Slash. I knew two chords and two scales and I tried to play along to Kiss Alive- strike all the Ace Frehley positions, man! Well, Slash just fell in love with that guitar. I gave it to him, and within a week he was writing songs. He was just made for the guitar. Made for it. I just wanted to be a rock'n'roll star, the guitar was too complicated for me. I set up all these pillows and coathangers and got my first drumsticks and played along to Kiss and Boston. Music made me feel special. Rock'n'roll is in my heart and in my soul and the lifestyle was a huge part of it. It's like, sex and rock'n'roll, that was the lifestyle I was living, right from then. It was never heavy drugs at that age. The heroin thing didn't come until after we were successful, I was a big pothead, thats what I liked, the three P's man - Pot,Pussy and percussion! We had waaay more fun before we got success than after.