September 11, 2026 • 37 mins
We're joined by "The Pigeon Master," aka David MacPhee. David worked at the famous Record Plant during the Use Your Illusion sessions as a runner/2nd engineer. His stories feature a "menacing" Steven Adler, carrying drunk Slash & Duff, Axl's piano demands, accidentally scaring Izzy, and more!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And I'm just grabbing picks and I stood up and
Izzy was there and I scared the shit out of him.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to the podcast. As I'm looking at your Zoom here,
do I call you the Pigeon Master or do you prefer?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
You can call me the Pigeon Master. Absolutely. Okay. That's
my alias.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
All right. Well, because some people know David McPhee, but
the Pigeon Master. I've heard of the Squirrel Master from Half-Baked.
I don't know, of the Pigeon Master. Is that like
the Pigeon Lady?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You may have stolen that from me, actually. I had
to go over to a different name, actually. That could
have been mine in the beginning, and it was stolen,
so I was forced to transition. Pigeon Master works, though.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Why the Pigeon Master, if you don't mind me asking
you that quick story?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
We had gotten, this would have been about 1990, we
had gotten some Lebanese hash in L.A.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
At $ 100 a gram. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And anyway, they had some pigeons in little cages at
this party that they were rehabilitating, hanging where the garden,
like where the tomatoes and stuff were. And I just
happened to get the hankering to go up to it
and start going, and this pigeon just started doing its
mating dance and spinning around in circles. And I guess
the whole party just said from now on, man, you're
(01:17):
the pigeon master. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I'm glad I got that story. See, that's why this
is an episode. These guys got stories, not just Guns
N' Roses stories.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Got a bunch.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
You got a bunch. So you're zooming in from Texas?
Is that where you are?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Whereabouts? San Antonio. Yes, sir.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
San Antonio. Oh, I love that. So the reason why
the Pigeon Master, a.k.a. David, is here. So something I
like to do and haven't done in a while, mainly
because I have a three-year-old, and today was his first
day of school orientation. I can't believe he's going to
school soon, so I'm going to have more time, and
(01:57):
I miss doing Guns N' Roses fan stories. I would
have fan obsessions. I used to have a soundbite queued
up that would just, you know the song Bad Obsession
by Guns N' Roses? Yeah. And I would just insert
my voice very stupidly, just going, fan obsession, and just
into the sound.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Right on, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
A low-budget show gets low-budget soundbites. So I haven't done
those in a while. And the fan reviews, obviously Guns
N' Roses is on tour right now. People reaching out
to me saying, hey, if you want to do a review.
And it's just so hard to schedule. And I'm glad, David,
we were able to schedule my sons with The Babysitter
now and all that. So using the time wisely. I
(02:38):
can interview rock stars. The Kingdom Comets find them very,
very grateful. But there are so many stories that will
never be heard because... I'm sorry. Well, I mean, in
your community, I understand that Pigeon Master is famous. And
amongst your friends, they may have heard these awesome Guns
N' Roses stories.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
They have. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
So you're not going to, like the previous interview I
just did with Chuck Billy, who has his stories in
a book. You don't have a book. So let me
be your book. Let me be your Guns N' Roses book.
So there's a transition to YouTube. That's how I quote
unquote met you. What am I? My clips that I
made of a long interview I did with Chips Enough
a couple years ago, really nice guy, about Steven Adler,
(03:21):
about the reunion, about conversations he's had with Chip, Chip
with Steven before and after those 2016 Guns N' Roses
reunion dates with Steven showing up. And you commented that
you worked at the, where did you do, the record plant?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Right, record plant, LA, correct.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
In LA, so. You told a story that got my attention,
and I said, wow, if you want to come on
and tell it, please do. So you're here. So do
you want to mind, and you have more stories. What
did you, because you were there for just a year.
What did you do at the record plant, the now
defunct record plant?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, 1991, I started just before the second half, somewhere
in that area, around the second half, I suppose, but
It was on the calendar that they were coming, but
I was a runner in a second. So primarily I
was a setup guy. I'd set up everything before the show.
I'd sit through for the most part, the recording process,
mix process. At the end, I'd be the guy who's
(04:23):
got to clean up, tear down, roll up the cables.
But in the process of the recording, even though I
wasn't necessarily always in the room, I was doing whatever
they needed, running tapes back and forth as a courier,
going and getting the food, answering the calls, taking the messages,
making sure the break rooms were clean, the food was stocked.
So I was in the capacity of being there, but
(04:46):
not always submerged in every aspect of the recording process.
I was kind of just in and out of the room.
But I was able to see a lot of things, obviously.
That session took place over two, two and a half weeks.
So there was a lot of time. just to catch,
you know, especially in the middle of the night when
I was getting the night shifts, I was getting, you know,
(05:07):
the carrying them out drunk in the middle of the
night and getting all the after, you know, recording things
that the day guys weren't seeing at all. So a
lot of the mischief was on my shift, you know,
three or four o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I think that's what people want to hear, the
fly on the wall. I know that you weren't there
to watch, you were doing a job, but you're kind of,
if these walls could talk, you know, kind of person
there for Use Your Illusion while they're taping that. You know,
the year that you worked there was, out of all
the years you could have worked, I mean, that was
a very famous, you know, place to record, right? I mean,
(05:43):
you could have worked any year and probably saw something fascinating,
but of course, for our purposes, the Witness Use Your Illusion,
parts of that. So what was the, please tell me,
tell us the story of, of course, we Guns N'
Roses fans know that's, Steven would get fired. Matt would
be his replacement. Steven, the whole thing it came down to,
(06:04):
Steven couldn't perform. It wasn't just because he was doing drugs.
They were, other than Axel, they were all doing stuff.
You know, Axel had his own issues, but it really
wasn't substance abuse. He couldn't perform. So that's when they
brought Matt in. So what did you see?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, and like we talked about that before, I didn't
remember Stephen actually playing on a track to that. For
the life of me, I didn't remember it. So like
I said, before we talked, a buddy who was also there,
Craig Brock, who was one of the engineers, just reminded me.
A few months back, well, maybe a year now, time flies,
but he actually did say he was on a track,
(06:42):
and I think he said he was on Civil War.
But when he came in, maybe that wasn't it, but
he came in. I was at the desk. They were
already on lockdown, which means do not bother, take all
messages on phone. He came in, and nobody had notified
me that he was coming. It wasn't on the big
old calendar telling me who was coming in. It was
just out of the blue. And like I say, I
thought of falling out had already taken place because the
(07:04):
new drummer was already there and he was in there
with with the lockdown. So he came in and I
could have misread this. So I'm at the desk. He
kind of just storms in and kind of menaces over
the desk. And again, I could have just misread that
as menacing, but he said, where are they? And I said, well,
(07:24):
first of all, do I answer this? And I'm like, well,
I got to make a call. So I told him
they're all the way down the hall to the left.
And he goes, okay. And he takes off down there.
And again, I'm like, am I going to get in
trouble for this? Because like I say, at that point,
I'd already just like you said, I'd already understood there'd
been a falling out and there'd been a bunch of problems.
So when nothing happened, Um, I just kind of quit
(07:47):
worrying about it. Well, if I was going to be
in trouble by now, I would have known for the
life of me. I don't remember seeing him again. I
don't remember him even leaving. So he may have been
there all night doing a track, but like I say,
I thought that was just going to be something I
was going to get in trouble with, but he came
in late 10, 10 30 that night and, uh, asked
(08:09):
where they were and then disappeared into the night. Literally
never saw him leave. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, the one track he does play on is Civil War,
and I think that took him something like 60 times
or something ridiculous to get it down.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
That would explain why I never saw him leave. See,
I had no idea about that until just recently, like
I said.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Okay, but that's still crazy to see, that they had
to get Matt in there, and he didn't know what
was going on. He's still in the band, but obviously
he had a lot going on at that time.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Um, why did they allow him just to do the
one track?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I just think he, I think they had the intention.
I mean, if somebody can correct me and I'm wrong
in the comments, but, uh, I think they had the intention.
They wanted Steven to be the drummer, but it's like,
he can't, it's like, he's put, maybe he's like put
all this effort into this. They got the one, but
Matt's got to finish the rest of it. I mean, like,
we're never going to finish this. We're going to wait
(09:06):
for Steven to do two albums worth of material, you know? Uh,
so that's, that's my, you know, my, how I, I
think it happened. And, you know, again, somebody can correct me. I,
you know, that sounds right when you're, I mean, I know,
but you're, you're just learning things just because I'm, I
do a GNR pocket. I said, this is the beginning
since episode one. I don't care if it's 10 years in,
(09:27):
I'm not an expert. I know a lot, obviously from
just being a fan and absorbing a lot, but I'm certainly,
I don't, My listeners know more than I do. So
that's how I.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Well, and that makes sense when you're spending 250 plus
an hour for studio time and you've got a drummer
who may or may not perform and you've already got
time booked. That could be the explanation right there.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It could be. I mean, I know they like to
waste a lot of money then with all those late fees.
So I don't know if it was a monetary thing
or just be like, this is... we got to make
something happen. You know, we just, we got to move forward.
So it's, it's nice that there had some been some
reconciliation in last decade in 2016. But yeah, you hear
(10:15):
about these stories and I know it's old news, but
it just helps paint a picture of, Of just how
crazy it was at that time. And I know you
have more things to paint that picture because I know
you said you're kind of doing a lot of different things.
And you mentioned some of your, you know, if you
have to answer phone calls, if you have to set
up certain equipment, things like that. But on your job description,
(10:38):
it didn't say that you had to carry out Duff.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, Duff and Slash. But Duff for the most part.
I carried out Duff probably a dozen times.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And it would typically be about four in the morning. Yeah.
So he'd come out. They had hordes of girls. It
was usually the same girls kind of flirting with Slash
and flirting with Duff. But the girls would bring them
out and see they'd be leaning on the chicks. Right. See,
I'm not allowed to do that. I've got to intervene,
get him because it's a liability issue. I'm the guy
(11:10):
who's got to help them through the door, out the door.
So he'd be coming down the hallway with the chicks.
And I'd have to say or whatever me and whatever
runner was there. Hey, we've liability. I've got to carry
him out the door because they are just. you know,
they've got these chicks, but there's one chick on each
side and all the other chicks are just embracing other chicks.
That isn't going to hold anybody up. So, so yeah,
(11:32):
it was primarily Duff, but I do remember a couple
nights where Slash is just being Slash. He's just, you know,
Hey man, is he going to make it down the hall?
We got to just, and he didn't like it either.
Hey Slash, we got to Duff was just so wasted.
He didn't know whether I was carrying over from Adam or,
But Slash didn't like it. But if he falls or
he hits a wall or he runs into the door,
(11:54):
like I say, there's certain things I'm going to get
in trouble for. And so I did carry him out
a few times. But it was Duff. Poor Duff was
a soak, man. When he came out of there, he
was pickled. I mean, God bless him. He's clean and
sober now. And I'm here to tell you that surprised
me when I heard those two guys were sober. I
never thought that was going to happen. But I know
(12:16):
horrible things happen to them both to scare them straight.
I heard Duff's story and that was horrible. So I
guess he got that disease with his pancreas and all that.
He's lucky he survived that. So, you know, God bless him.
The ones you think will pull through, don't. And the
ones you think will never, ever come out of it
(12:37):
alive somehow, I don't know, but good for him.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's life. And I know, I think I wouldn't enjoy
talking about it so much if they weren't so well
off now. For sure.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Oh, it'd be depressing.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, it would be depressing. And I wouldn't, yeah, it
shows you, you can look back at it, and at
least I do, and some, you know, there's a disconnect
to it, obviously, for me. But I mean, you live
these things. So I mean, I do take that into
account that these are real people. I always found the word,
(13:10):
people always use the word, I see online junkie, and
I hate that word. I find it very dismissive of
somebody with an addiction issue. But even then, when you
have chicks around your arm and doing all that, there's
addiction stuff going in. And I'm glad you kind of,
you answered that question of being like, how did that
interaction happen each night? Or being like, hey, hey, David, hey,
(13:34):
Pigeon Master, can I, give me a shoulder? But no, no, no,
the chicks are taking them down the hallway and they
had to be kind of like.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, they were bringing them out.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
A passing of the baton.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, they were bringing them out. They were passing the baton. Well,
and that environment, as you know, is conducive to those
kind of problems. I'm basically just a runner and a nobody.
And let me put it this way. I got everything
I wanted, be it the grass. Luckily, I was always
scared of the real hard stuff. I knew if I
did that, I was going to be in trouble. My
(14:03):
crutches were the booze and the weed. And the problem
didn't help that the Coke machine was full of beer bottles.
There wasn't one Coke in the Coke machine. So we
had a giant Coke machine. You put in your money
and you pulled out beer bottles. You almost couldn't escape it.
You come to work one day going, you know what?
Today's the day I'm going to go today sober. I'm
(14:24):
not going to smoke any weed or drink any beer.
You made it an hour until somebody lit up next
to you. It was just the maintenance guy. His name
was Mitch. And he was just I haven't kept in
touch with him since I left. But the dude was
just cool as hell. But he wasn't going to go
a shift without sparking one. And you're just like, well,
Mitch is on my shift.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Twist my arm.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
But there is everything we do. We were cleaning one night.
It was me and the senior runner who had been
there forever. His name was Ron or something like anyway,
it doesn't matter. But he's like, Dave, come here, man.
And we're like, he goes, what's that smell? And we
smelled this pine smell. And we're like, what is this?
And we followed it into one of the main offices.
And of course, we finally found the source of the smell.
(15:09):
But it was a it was a Wonder Bread. Like
with just Wonder Bread, like somebody had their lunch in it.
It wasn't Wonder Bread. It was a kilo of the
best weed you could get in L.A. It was called
Spruill Bud, named after the man that was dealing. And
it was right when hydro had come out. It was
the beginning of hydro, the, you know, the real strong stuff.
(15:29):
So it was literally that eager. So man, you could,
you just wouldn't believe that. I mean, it was what
it was.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I just feel like I missed out on so much.
Cause I know I didn't, didn't work at a record studio,
but just being in radio and the stories I hear
about the DJs of yesteryear sounds very similar. And it's very,
no matter where you work, it's a, it's very corporate now.
So that that's a, that's again, that's, that's too funny.
(15:57):
It was the beer thing. A Guns N' Roses request,
or was that just the way it always was?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Oh, it was the way it always was.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
You know, it was just the nature. And as we've
discussed before, when have you ever heard of a recording
studio or a radio studio facility ever getting raided or busted?
There is a protection over it. it's a mafia thing,
I'm sure. I don't know. I'm guessing. But it has
to be. Because you know that's going on there. And
(16:32):
you never once have a cop walk through the front
door the whole time I'm there. So there's no other
way to explain that. There's protection. There's money changing hands.
When people like David Geffen are involved, I don't want
to say a lot I did sign a disclosure thing.
They're out of business. So like we've talked about, I
(16:53):
don't want to say too much, but he was involved
in one incident for sure. I don't think this ever
got published, but what was the real piano-y song? It
was real piano-y. November Rain? November Rain actually insisted that
he had his piano brought from his condo or his
(17:14):
apartment that he had. I don't know if this story
was ever out there either. He had it all lined
with glass mirrors. So you'd walk into his apartment. It
was just glass mirrors. There was no nothing in there.
And again, I'm not sure if this story ever got
out there or not. He insisted on his piano and
it pissed everybody off. This wasn't on my shift. This
was on the day shift. I didn't hear about it
(17:35):
till I got, so I was not involved, but it goes,
he wanted that piano. Well, it's going to cost thousands
to go get it out, wench it out, bring it
down to Sycamore street, get it inside the record plant,
have to assemble and get it there. He, long story short,
he gets it there. He changes his mind. So there
(17:56):
was a big piss off that day when I got
there at maybe four to six o'clock at night, this
had all gone down that day, but apparently it was
a big deal. And a lot of people were pissed off.
So only to get it there and have him kind
of pitch one of those fits and then not even,
not even use the piano. So I don't know what happened.
(18:16):
That's just one of those weird stories I heard when
I got there, you know, for my night shift.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
It, I mean, if you read anything about Axl during
that time period, as the kids say, it tracks. I mean,
it sounds like something that might have happened. And I
also don't want to lose this too because I don't
want to get you in trouble because I know your
stories have to remain limited. I don't think I mentioned
it yet on the podcast. So episode 500, I had
(18:41):
Alan Niven on. And at the time, I didn't know
he had a book. Like when I first booked him,
the junior manager during Appetite. And, of course, I knew
once I reached out to him, I was just going
to make it a big 500th episode. And so we
spoke a lot. And he got picked up by a
lot of news sites. And then I see, thanks to
(19:02):
some great research that's on MyGNR Archive. It's spelled differently.
Or you can go to My Appetite for Discussion, which
is different than Appetite for Distortion. Because they did the legwork,
so I don't want to take credit for it. They're
looking at the current... between Alan about his book and
(19:23):
Guns N' Roses. And some stuff that he says on
this podcast is quoted by their lawyer. It's in the
deposition or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So I do have to be careful.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Was there anything about certain guns going off inside an apartment?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Was there anything covered about that?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well, here's another one. Again, I washed my hands. Let's
just say I'm saying this hypothetically.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Hypothetically.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
But around that same time with the piano incident, there
was a bit of rage going on with You know
who was, you know, he goes through calm and then
he goes through storm. But what I had heard, if
not that same situation with Piano, but therein very shortly,
is that he had taken a pistol and gone crazy
(20:17):
and shot all those mirrors out inside. I can't remember
if it was a condo or an apartment, but he'd
lined with those mirrors. But he went kind of cuckoo.
And I did hear that from a very reliable source
that was also working in the sessions. So... It was
primarily Craig Brock, Jim Mitchell were the engineers, but Kyle
Bess would come in and do similar. He was higher
(20:38):
up than I was, but he would come in and
do certain things that, you know, if they needed extra
stuff done and he needed to come in, he ended
up working for baby face for a bunch of years
and retiring, working for him. But I had heard about
that too. So there was some rage incidences going on,
you know, and that is what I heard. Like I say,
(20:58):
I can't confirm it, but. you know, I don't imagine
anybody was going to lie to me about it, you know,
cause every day you'd go in and you'd hear something
from the day crew, you know, just, and there's some,
I'm never going to remember. And fortunately for you and myself, I,
I have a journal and I have pieces of it
out now, but I have a journal buried in an
army trunk and it'd take me days to find it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
But I appreciate you remembering anything, you know, talking about weed,
you got the tie dye shirt on. Like I, I,
I appreciate you remembering anything.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
All right. Well, and you had talked to me and
I want to bring it up just so we don't forget.
But the incident in the lounge where Slash had heard
the bad news on one of the reviews on the
television set and he got upset and took his and
I don't remember if it was a beer bottle or
his Jack Daniels bottle. I don't recall him drinking a
lot of beer, but there was beer all over the place.
(21:52):
So it probably was one of his. But anyway, I
told you I was up front and I just heard
a smash. They had left the door open. All the
doors are usually closed. But at night, you know, everybody's
just nobody cares. So anyway, I hear a smash and
I'm like, oh, he's just dropped. He's in the lounge
and he's dropped. You know, I got to go sweep
it up. Right. Well, I got in there just to
see him back away from the TV. And what he'd
(22:14):
done is there had been some BS about Guns N'
Roses or about him on the TV. And at that time, 1981,
those large screens TVs that are. You know, basically small
movie screens at that time were thousands of dollars. And
he had taken the beer bottle and gouged from the
top corner to the bottom corner with that broken bottle
(22:34):
and literally gouged. He gouged it so hard that he
didn't just mess the plastic up. He had peeled and
separated the plastic from the whatever is behind the plastic.
And again, another thing I thought I was going to
get in trouble for, he walked past me. And I
was just like, well, you know, there's not much I
can clean up.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Sorry, dude. I guess they're in a certain mindset.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
He stormed past me. I don't even think he saw
me when he left the room. And of course, I
had to answer to that the next day. And again,
we talked about that. Well, why didn't you do anything?
And I just had to say, well, what exactly did
you want me to do? Even if I'd caught him
in there before he did it, I'm not going to
stop him. He's got a broken bottle and he's pissed
(23:20):
off and he's three sheets to the freaking wind. It
is what it is. But there were crazy. There's going
to be some I'm going to forget, which really sucks.
But those are some of the big ones. The other
one that I'd forgotten to tell you. when we were
just talking was you said the Izzy contact. And I
know I told you a lot of Axl for me
(23:41):
was just peripheral. I don't remember having any real main
contact with Axl other than just there he went. I
wish I did, but I don't. But anyway, Matt Sorum, similar.
I remember Matt sitting down making phone calls. I don't
remember really talking to him a lot other than, hey,
how's it going? Hey, how's it going, man? And that
being about it, you'll like this one. So we'd all
(24:04):
torn down. And the thing I would do when either
we had two studios there, one that was front behind
my desk and to the right. The other one was
way down the hall across from the kitchen all the
way back to the left hand side. Because they separated
them because of sound, obviously. But I had gone back
there when we had completely torn down and they had
(24:25):
all left. And like I say, Izzy again was in
my peripheral. I don't remember speaking to him. But I
had climbed under the consoles underneath all the outboard gear.
Because I don't know, you know how studios are. There's
holes in the floor. The carpet's got holes because all
the wiring's going under there. All the patch bay cords
are going under there. And I always learned that when
(24:45):
these guys are in there, they're throwing their picks. They're
using up their picks and they're chunking them. So one
of the first things I did when I'd get all
the boards zeroed and I'd get all the cables wrapped
up and I'd be like, okay, I'm going to be
able to eat something now and just chill out is
I'd climb underneath all that gear and pick up all
the signature guitar picks. So I'm under there, right? And
Izzy had the triangle ones. And unfortunately I only found one,
(25:06):
you know, those weird big triangles instead of the little.
So I found Izzy and I'm like, holy shit, this
is rare. I had at that time, my friend, I
had a handful of Slash. They were purple. And over
years and years and years, they turned pink. So over
years and years and years, I started giving them all away,
which now I regret. I should have kept one. I
gave them to chicks. You know, that's like martinis to chicks.
(25:28):
You know, hey, how about, oh, I'll see it. You know,
I'll see in a few hours. Anyway, anyway, man, yeah,
they did all turn pink, but I'm climbing under there. Right.
And I'm just grabbing picks. And like I say, slashes
all over the floor. And I stood up and Izzy
was there and I scared the shit out of him.
(25:50):
so anyway that was my my one little izzy thing
was just you know seeing him for 30 seconds till
he looked at me like i was crazy and he
walked out the door hey that's.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Something i would tell all the time that you scared
is he you know usually when.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah yeah he didn't jump or anything he just kind
of was caught aback like what do you do and
climbing underneath the and i did just kind of innocently
say i'm just picking up the.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Guitar my precious yeah There's.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
A reason I'm under there, man. You're not hallucinating this time.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That's pretty funny. I can imagine what that looked like
to him. That is pretty funny. It was crazy. No,
that's cool. All these stories I appreciate and they're entertaining.
And again, over the years, I would be sharing them
all the time at parties. I would probably hand out like, hey, look,
(26:40):
you want a slash pic? That's a good opening line.
I probably had 20 of them at the time.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
That over the years I've given away. So like I say,
I should have kept some of them. I had them,
not just their picks, but I had picks in collections
and just over the years. you know, you start to
become kind of a minimalist and I just got rid
of some of them. I could have kept some, but
I got a few here, like from Lukather and the
guys from men at work. And I still got a
couple I kept because I either meet them in person
(27:09):
and they signed something for me. So they're framed with
like signatures, but these were just picks and like a
little sandwich bag. And I just, for whatever reason, man,
I just gave them all out. I was working at
hard rock too. And that was another good way to
get chicks when we were closing and you know, table
full of chicks and Hey, you know, well, like I say,
it was kind of a calling card, but another cool story.
(27:29):
I didn't hear a lot of, of mixed down and
what was going on, but I do have a vivid
memory of being there at about 10 o'clock at night
and hearing a lot of a strange coming out of
the door. They left that one open because they're probably
playing through it. They're not actually miking anything, but that
was one real cool specific thing. I remember because like
we talked about, before we got on air was I
(27:51):
just remember thinking how different that was for a Guns
N' Roses. It was a little more refined. The solo
was a lot longer. It was one of those epic
things that you just don't think Guns N' Roses is
going to do. But one of my favorite memories out
of all those is just kind of leaning up against
the wall and just going, you know, holy shit, that
just sounds really good. It was a little more commercial,
(28:12):
but I kind of like that. The rawness was still there,
but it was a little more a little more produced,
a little more polished. That's just the way it sounded
to me. But I just thought, man, that's just, holy shit.
His solo was just different on that one. It was
just kind of took off.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
And took off some more. That's a special memory. I mean,
you were there for that. No one else heard that.
I mean, of course, there might have been some engineers
and stuff, but that's a special moment that not many
people heard. And to bring it forward, The recent concert
I went to, I'm always going to think of Estranged
because that's kind of when my wife passed my son,
(28:51):
my sleeping son, over to me who just falls asleep
at rock concerts. Yeah. And he's sleeping on me during Estranged.
And Axl sounded great on it. And it's something I'm
going to remember forever. So we both have our estranged
stories now.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
It's weird how it does that. And, you know, it
was disappointing that that song didn't get, you know, they
play Freebird and all that, that are 15, 17 minute songs.
But it was just weird to me that that song
never got that radio play. You get those four or
five gun songs and you don't hear estranged. It's like, again,
like you say, everything's gone corporate and there's... There's certain
(29:29):
rules and regulations, but to me, it's mind-blowing that that
song doesn't get... I know they made a music video
for it and it did all right, but yeah the
fact that i got no airplay just tells me how
ridiculous the industry is going.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I certainly haven't that's just me someone who grew up
working and listening to radio that's not a song i've
heard maybe like a handful of times on the radio
but november yeah november rain's the outlier the one you
mentioned before but i want to uh touch on this
because it's You know, as I call this, if I
want to call it a fan obsession episode, but you're just,
you're a guy who worked there. So, you know, as
(30:01):
you were struggling to find the name for November Rain,
I don't think it's a leap to say that you're
not the biggest Guns N' Roses fan in the world.
But it's, where do they rank for you? What's your...
Are you a grateful dead guy?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Let me tell you, when Appetite came out, I was
working at Blockbuster Video, and I was playing that video
at work, and I was playing that thing until I
had to go get a copy probably every six months.
It's not that I'm not a fan of them. Obviously,
that whole time, when we've talked again, I miss that time,
that exciting, just kind of scary time where you don't
really know what's going to happen. It's kind of unpredictable.
(30:34):
But at the same time, my friend, I'm 60. I'm
just kind of getting out of that loud, you know,
the Metallica, the real loud Guns N' Roses. I'm not
going to tell you when I hear some Guns N'
Roses in the car, I don't crank it up. But
it's not something anymore that I put on a turntable.
You know, what's the hardest thing I've listened to lately
is probably Queensryche. I just got a hankering to put
(30:54):
on the warning and then rage for order that I
probably hadn't spun in a decade. You know, but Al Stewart,
you know, just some more of these more that kind
of older contemporary. And I'm an old man. You know,
I don't have the ear. I don't have the ears
to just. you know, do that to my ears anymore.
So it's not that I don't like them. I think
(31:17):
they're a great band. It's just I don't have that
youthful listening attention span that I did. And I also
just don't have time to listen to music all the time.
So it's just kind of a double-edged sword of just
simply getting older and life just transitioning you into kind
of a different page in the book without whether I
like it or not.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Oh, I mean, well, I understand that. I mean, listening
to music, I either have to be driving or doing dishes.
It's like, it's completely different, but I'm, Hey, I'm like
you while I still listen to, you know, Guns N' Roses.
It's not all hard. The one I like, and I
know I'm in the minority of it and it's an
old song. So maybe that speaks a lot to, you know, I'm,
I'll be 43 in a couple weeks. They do a
(31:59):
cover of Glen Campbell's Wichita Linemen.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I just love it.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Oh, I've never heard that.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, they've been doing it since he passed. And to
some fans' chagrin, they're like, oh, cut it out.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
No, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I hope they do a recorded version of it. It's
so good. Not everything has to be It's So Easy
or Perfect Crime. I mean, those are amazing, amazing songs.
Sometimes I just want to... I hope in the future
they do an acoustic tour. You know, I love the
fact that they're going on early and leaving early, man.
If I, I don't know if I would have survived
the nineties. I've always been like an old man wanting
(32:35):
to go to bed early. So, so yeah, no, I appreciate,
as you say, you'd like to go back to that time.
I like, I like to go back to that time
because in 91, I was eight. I really was.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Jeez. I would have been 20. I think I turned, 24, 25.
I think I turned 25 that year. Yeah, I turned 20.
I turned 25 at the record plant because my first
paycheck was on July 19th and I turned 25 on
the 23rd. So I had probably not been there long
(33:10):
when I turned 25. So yeah. Just a few days
after I got, I photocopied all my first paychecks. So
I have date references, my A & M' s up here
and my Sound City's back there. And then my record
plant stuff is all right here. But I was smart.
I was like, every paycheck I get, I'm going to
photocopy it. So I have a copy of my first paycheck.
(33:32):
you know, my first paycheck. So, you know, don't make no,
I don't know what made me think of that. I
just did it.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Surrounded by memorabilia, even your paycheck.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Oh, you should see it. I've sold a lot of
it off, but if you could turn the room around,
there's stuff in here and there's just this whole wall's
plastered Martha Quinn autographs, Gordon Lightfoot. I've got Huey Lewis
up here. I've got Mark Blankfield from that movie Jekyll
and Hyde together again. We ended up kind of being
friends and I've got letters from him and letters from
(34:02):
him when my dad passed and a bunch of cool stuff.
I've gotten rid of some of it, but the real
sentimental stuff, like I say, I'm going to keep if
I associate it with a friend or I associate it
with a really cool night. I used to hang with
the guys from Marillion and I've got all their autographs
and guitar picks and photos with those guys. And that
(34:23):
was my last big hurrah was with the guys in
Marillion out in Montreal and LA. That was 2012, 2013.
So really since then, other than a few minor radio things,
and like I say, hooking up some people with the
guy here who wanted to do an archive about San
Antonio music and some of the bands that got their
start here. I really haven't been that involved until you
(34:44):
called me up. But, you know, which is really cool
to me that you did that. So it does give
me kind of that excuse to bring those passions up,
because honestly, people don't want to talk about it anymore.
And the people who do want to talk about it
are usually the other people who were in it. Sometimes
the regular people that weren't there just go, yeah, yeah, dude, whatever.
And you're just like, you've got to be around the
(35:05):
people who are around you. for that like-minded kind of
music thing, because you're not always on the same page.
Musicians are a different breed and it just is what
it is. So.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
No, I dig it. And I dig your stories and
I appreciate you, uh, sharing them with me. And if
any of any more pop into your head, I'm sure
that you never know. I'm sure there's full of them. Uh,
I know it's not all guns and roses, but if
there's more than pop, if you scared Izzy, uh, a
second time or something like that, but feel free.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
To go back.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Poor guy. I think it was just that one time.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
You scared him away. You're why he quit Guns N' Roses.
That's what, you're the reason. You scared him. I can't
go there again. I can't record with that guy, David.
It's creeping me out.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
There's other industries, my friend, where people have probably left
because of me, but that's okay.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
It's the pigeon master.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, there's more. somebody else to blame it on somebody else,
but there's stuff in there, my friend that I just
haven't recalled. And I may never recall for whatever reason,
but it was a crazy industry. And if you ever
want to talk about, you know, there were stories like
this from, from Skid Row and some other bands that
had similar. So I was there for a lot of
(36:14):
those guys. You know, you don't do actors, but Shelley
Duvall did voiceovers there for interactive video games. She did. And,
They did movies there. We did For the Boys and
things like that that you probably don't cover on your show.
But there was a lot of bands that came through
there and a lot of movies, you know, that came
through there.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
If there's ever a six degrees of what I call it,
GNR bacon, you know, if there's any way to tie
it to Guns N' Roses, I'll do it.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Right on.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I had Pollyanna McIntosh. I like to bring this up.
I had Pollyanna McIntosh on from The Walking Dead. And
her one big story was that she was in an
elevator with Slash once. And that was it. It was
just an excuse to talk to her. I mean, I
know Slash liked The Walking Dead and stuff like that.
But it was just like whatever excuse. Not everything is
going to be pillar to post Guns N' Roses. So whatever.
(37:04):
But the common thread needs to be there, the common theme.
And I'm just the one steering the ship somehow of
this crazy podcast night train. So, David, thank you for
your time. And I hope we get through this again.
You got it. So that does it for this episode
of Appetite for Distortion. When will you see the next one?
In the words of Axel Rose concerning Chinese democracy, I
(37:25):
don't know how soon is the word, but you'll see it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Thanks to the lame-ass security, I'm going home.
And I'm just grabbing picks and I stood up and
Izzy was there and I scared the shit out of him.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to the podcast. As I'm looking at your Zoom here,
do I call you the Pigeon Master or do you prefer?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
You can call me the Pigeon Master. Absolutely. Okay. That's
my alias.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
All right. Well, because some people know David McPhee, but
the Pigeon Master. I've heard of the Squirrel Master from Half-Baked.
I don't know, of the Pigeon Master. Is that like
the Pigeon Lady?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You may have stolen that from me, actually. I had
to go over to a different name, actually. That could
have been mine in the beginning, and it was stolen,
so I was forced to transition. Pigeon Master works, though.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Why the Pigeon Master, if you don't mind me asking
you that quick story?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
We had gotten, this would have been about 1990, we
had gotten some Lebanese hash in L.A.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
At $ 100 a gram. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And anyway, they had some pigeons in little cages at
this party that they were rehabilitating, hanging where the garden,
like where the tomatoes and stuff were. And I just
happened to get the hankering to go up to it
and start going, and this pigeon just started doing its
mating dance and spinning around in circles. And I guess
the whole party just said from now on, man, you're
(01:17):
the pigeon master. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I'm glad I got that story. See, that's why this
is an episode. These guys got stories, not just Guns
N' Roses stories.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Got a bunch.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
You got a bunch. So you're zooming in from Texas?
Is that where you are?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Whereabouts? San Antonio. Yes, sir.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
San Antonio. Oh, I love that. So the reason why
the Pigeon Master, a.k.a. David, is here. So something I
like to do and haven't done in a while, mainly
because I have a three-year-old, and today was his first
day of school orientation. I can't believe he's going to
school soon, so I'm going to have more time, and
(01:57):
I miss doing Guns N' Roses fan stories. I would
have fan obsessions. I used to have a soundbite queued
up that would just, you know the song Bad Obsession
by Guns N' Roses? Yeah. And I would just insert
my voice very stupidly, just going, fan obsession, and just
into the sound.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Right on, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
A low-budget show gets low-budget soundbites. So I haven't done
those in a while. And the fan reviews, obviously Guns
N' Roses is on tour right now. People reaching out
to me saying, hey, if you want to do a review.
And it's just so hard to schedule. And I'm glad, David,
we were able to schedule my sons with The Babysitter
now and all that. So using the time wisely. I
(02:38):
can interview rock stars. The Kingdom Comets find them very,
very grateful. But there are so many stories that will
never be heard because... I'm sorry. Well, I mean, in
your community, I understand that Pigeon Master is famous. And
amongst your friends, they may have heard these awesome Guns
N' Roses stories.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
They have. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
So you're not going to, like the previous interview I
just did with Chuck Billy, who has his stories in
a book. You don't have a book. So let me
be your book. Let me be your Guns N' Roses book.
So there's a transition to YouTube. That's how I quote
unquote met you. What am I? My clips that I
made of a long interview I did with Chips Enough
a couple years ago, really nice guy, about Steven Adler,
(03:21):
about the reunion, about conversations he's had with Chip, Chip
with Steven before and after those 2016 Guns N' Roses
reunion dates with Steven showing up. And you commented that
you worked at the, where did you do, the record plant?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Right, record plant, LA, correct.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
In LA, so. You told a story that got my attention,
and I said, wow, if you want to come on
and tell it, please do. So you're here. So do
you want to mind, and you have more stories. What
did you, because you were there for just a year.
What did you do at the record plant, the now
defunct record plant?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, 1991, I started just before the second half, somewhere
in that area, around the second half, I suppose, but
It was on the calendar that they were coming, but
I was a runner in a second. So primarily I
was a setup guy. I'd set up everything before the show.
I'd sit through for the most part, the recording process,
mix process. At the end, I'd be the guy who's
(04:23):
got to clean up, tear down, roll up the cables.
But in the process of the recording, even though I
wasn't necessarily always in the room, I was doing whatever
they needed, running tapes back and forth as a courier,
going and getting the food, answering the calls, taking the messages,
making sure the break rooms were clean, the food was stocked.
So I was in the capacity of being there, but
(04:46):
not always submerged in every aspect of the recording process.
I was kind of just in and out of the room.
But I was able to see a lot of things, obviously.
That session took place over two, two and a half weeks.
So there was a lot of time. just to catch,
you know, especially in the middle of the night when
I was getting the night shifts, I was getting, you know,
(05:07):
the carrying them out drunk in the middle of the
night and getting all the after, you know, recording things
that the day guys weren't seeing at all. So a
lot of the mischief was on my shift, you know,
three or four o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I think that's what people want to hear, the
fly on the wall. I know that you weren't there
to watch, you were doing a job, but you're kind of,
if these walls could talk, you know, kind of person
there for Use Your Illusion while they're taping that. You know,
the year that you worked there was, out of all
the years you could have worked, I mean, that was
a very famous, you know, place to record, right? I mean,
(05:43):
you could have worked any year and probably saw something fascinating,
but of course, for our purposes, the Witness Use Your Illusion,
parts of that. So what was the, please tell me,
tell us the story of, of course, we Guns N'
Roses fans know that's, Steven would get fired. Matt would
be his replacement. Steven, the whole thing it came down to,
(06:04):
Steven couldn't perform. It wasn't just because he was doing drugs.
They were, other than Axel, they were all doing stuff.
You know, Axel had his own issues, but it really
wasn't substance abuse. He couldn't perform. So that's when they
brought Matt in. So what did you see?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, and like we talked about that before, I didn't
remember Stephen actually playing on a track to that. For
the life of me, I didn't remember it. So like
I said, before we talked, a buddy who was also there,
Craig Brock, who was one of the engineers, just reminded me.
A few months back, well, maybe a year now, time flies,
but he actually did say he was on a track,
(06:42):
and I think he said he was on Civil War.
But when he came in, maybe that wasn't it, but
he came in. I was at the desk. They were
already on lockdown, which means do not bother, take all
messages on phone. He came in, and nobody had notified
me that he was coming. It wasn't on the big
old calendar telling me who was coming in. It was
just out of the blue. And like I say, I
thought of falling out had already taken place because the
(07:04):
new drummer was already there and he was in there
with with the lockdown. So he came in and I
could have misread this. So I'm at the desk. He
kind of just storms in and kind of menaces over
the desk. And again, I could have just misread that
as menacing, but he said, where are they? And I said, well,
(07:24):
first of all, do I answer this? And I'm like, well,
I got to make a call. So I told him
they're all the way down the hall to the left.
And he goes, okay. And he takes off down there.
And again, I'm like, am I going to get in
trouble for this? Because like I say, at that point,
I'd already just like you said, I'd already understood there'd
been a falling out and there'd been a bunch of problems.
So when nothing happened, Um, I just kind of quit
(07:47):
worrying about it. Well, if I was going to be
in trouble by now, I would have known for the
life of me. I don't remember seeing him again. I
don't remember him even leaving. So he may have been
there all night doing a track, but like I say,
I thought that was just going to be something I
was going to get in trouble with, but he came
in late 10, 10 30 that night and, uh, asked
(08:09):
where they were and then disappeared into the night. Literally
never saw him leave. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, the one track he does play on is Civil War,
and I think that took him something like 60 times
or something ridiculous to get it down.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
That would explain why I never saw him leave. See,
I had no idea about that until just recently, like
I said.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Okay, but that's still crazy to see, that they had
to get Matt in there, and he didn't know what
was going on. He's still in the band, but obviously
he had a lot going on at that time.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Um, why did they allow him just to do the
one track?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I just think he, I think they had the intention.
I mean, if somebody can correct me and I'm wrong
in the comments, but, uh, I think they had the intention.
They wanted Steven to be the drummer, but it's like,
he can't, it's like, he's put, maybe he's like put
all this effort into this. They got the one, but
Matt's got to finish the rest of it. I mean, like,
we're never going to finish this. We're going to wait
(09:06):
for Steven to do two albums worth of material, you know? Uh,
so that's, that's my, you know, my, how I, I
think it happened. And, you know, again, somebody can correct me. I,
you know, that sounds right when you're, I mean, I know,
but you're, you're just learning things just because I'm, I
do a GNR pocket. I said, this is the beginning
since episode one. I don't care if it's 10 years in,
(09:27):
I'm not an expert. I know a lot, obviously from
just being a fan and absorbing a lot, but I'm certainly,
I don't, My listeners know more than I do. So
that's how I.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Well, and that makes sense when you're spending 250 plus
an hour for studio time and you've got a drummer
who may or may not perform and you've already got
time booked. That could be the explanation right there.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It could be. I mean, I know they like to
waste a lot of money then with all those late fees.
So I don't know if it was a monetary thing
or just be like, this is... we got to make
something happen. You know, we just, we got to move forward.
So it's, it's nice that there had some been some
reconciliation in last decade in 2016. But yeah, you hear
(10:15):
about these stories and I know it's old news, but
it just helps paint a picture of, Of just how
crazy it was at that time. And I know you
have more things to paint that picture because I know
you said you're kind of doing a lot of different things.
And you mentioned some of your, you know, if you
have to answer phone calls, if you have to set
up certain equipment, things like that. But on your job description,
(10:38):
it didn't say that you had to carry out Duff.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, Duff and Slash. But Duff for the most part.
I carried out Duff probably a dozen times.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And it would typically be about four in the morning. Yeah.
So he'd come out. They had hordes of girls. It
was usually the same girls kind of flirting with Slash
and flirting with Duff. But the girls would bring them
out and see they'd be leaning on the chicks. Right. See,
I'm not allowed to do that. I've got to intervene,
get him because it's a liability issue. I'm the guy
(11:10):
who's got to help them through the door, out the door.
So he'd be coming down the hallway with the chicks.
And I'd have to say or whatever me and whatever
runner was there. Hey, we've liability. I've got to carry
him out the door because they are just. you know,
they've got these chicks, but there's one chick on each
side and all the other chicks are just embracing other chicks.
That isn't going to hold anybody up. So, so yeah,
(11:32):
it was primarily Duff, but I do remember a couple
nights where Slash is just being Slash. He's just, you know,
Hey man, is he going to make it down the hall?
We got to just, and he didn't like it either.
Hey Slash, we got to Duff was just so wasted.
He didn't know whether I was carrying over from Adam or,
But Slash didn't like it. But if he falls or
he hits a wall or he runs into the door,
(11:54):
like I say, there's certain things I'm going to get
in trouble for. And so I did carry him out
a few times. But it was Duff. Poor Duff was
a soak, man. When he came out of there, he
was pickled. I mean, God bless him. He's clean and
sober now. And I'm here to tell you that surprised
me when I heard those two guys were sober. I
never thought that was going to happen. But I know
(12:16):
horrible things happen to them both to scare them straight.
I heard Duff's story and that was horrible. So I
guess he got that disease with his pancreas and all that.
He's lucky he survived that. So, you know, God bless him.
The ones you think will pull through, don't. And the
ones you think will never, ever come out of it
(12:37):
alive somehow, I don't know, but good for him.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's life. And I know, I think I wouldn't enjoy
talking about it so much if they weren't so well
off now. For sure.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Oh, it'd be depressing.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, it would be depressing. And I wouldn't, yeah, it
shows you, you can look back at it, and at
least I do, and some, you know, there's a disconnect
to it, obviously, for me. But I mean, you live
these things. So I mean, I do take that into
account that these are real people. I always found the word,
(13:10):
people always use the word, I see online junkie, and
I hate that word. I find it very dismissive of
somebody with an addiction issue. But even then, when you
have chicks around your arm and doing all that, there's
addiction stuff going in. And I'm glad you kind of,
you answered that question of being like, how did that
interaction happen each night? Or being like, hey, hey, David, hey,
(13:34):
Pigeon Master, can I, give me a shoulder? But no, no, no,
the chicks are taking them down the hallway and they
had to be kind of like.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, they were bringing them out.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
A passing of the baton.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, they were bringing them out. They were passing the baton. Well,
and that environment, as you know, is conducive to those
kind of problems. I'm basically just a runner and a nobody.
And let me put it this way. I got everything
I wanted, be it the grass. Luckily, I was always
scared of the real hard stuff. I knew if I
did that, I was going to be in trouble. My
(14:03):
crutches were the booze and the weed. And the problem
didn't help that the Coke machine was full of beer bottles.
There wasn't one Coke in the Coke machine. So we
had a giant Coke machine. You put in your money
and you pulled out beer bottles. You almost couldn't escape it.
You come to work one day going, you know what?
Today's the day I'm going to go today sober. I'm
(14:24):
not going to smoke any weed or drink any beer.
You made it an hour until somebody lit up next
to you. It was just the maintenance guy. His name
was Mitch. And he was just I haven't kept in
touch with him since I left. But the dude was
just cool as hell. But he wasn't going to go
a shift without sparking one. And you're just like, well,
Mitch is on my shift.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Twist my arm.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
But there is everything we do. We were cleaning one night.
It was me and the senior runner who had been
there forever. His name was Ron or something like anyway,
it doesn't matter. But he's like, Dave, come here, man.
And we're like, he goes, what's that smell? And we
smelled this pine smell. And we're like, what is this?
And we followed it into one of the main offices.
And of course, we finally found the source of the smell.
(15:09):
But it was a it was a Wonder Bread. Like
with just Wonder Bread, like somebody had their lunch in it.
It wasn't Wonder Bread. It was a kilo of the
best weed you could get in L.A. It was called
Spruill Bud, named after the man that was dealing. And
it was right when hydro had come out. It was
the beginning of hydro, the, you know, the real strong stuff.
(15:29):
So it was literally that eager. So man, you could,
you just wouldn't believe that. I mean, it was what
it was.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I just feel like I missed out on so much.
Cause I know I didn't, didn't work at a record studio,
but just being in radio and the stories I hear
about the DJs of yesteryear sounds very similar. And it's very,
no matter where you work, it's a, it's very corporate now.
So that that's a, that's again, that's, that's too funny.
(15:57):
It was the beer thing. A Guns N' Roses request,
or was that just the way it always was?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Oh, it was the way it always was.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
You know, it was just the nature. And as we've
discussed before, when have you ever heard of a recording
studio or a radio studio facility ever getting raided or busted?
There is a protection over it. it's a mafia thing,
I'm sure. I don't know. I'm guessing. But it has
to be. Because you know that's going on there. And
(16:32):
you never once have a cop walk through the front
door the whole time I'm there. So there's no other
way to explain that. There's protection. There's money changing hands.
When people like David Geffen are involved, I don't want
to say a lot I did sign a disclosure thing.
They're out of business. So like we've talked about, I
(16:53):
don't want to say too much, but he was involved
in one incident for sure. I don't think this ever
got published, but what was the real piano-y song? It
was real piano-y. November Rain? November Rain actually insisted that
he had his piano brought from his condo or his
(17:14):
apartment that he had. I don't know if this story
was ever out there either. He had it all lined
with glass mirrors. So you'd walk into his apartment. It
was just glass mirrors. There was no nothing in there.
And again, I'm not sure if this story ever got
out there or not. He insisted on his piano and
it pissed everybody off. This wasn't on my shift. This
was on the day shift. I didn't hear about it
(17:35):
till I got, so I was not involved, but it goes,
he wanted that piano. Well, it's going to cost thousands
to go get it out, wench it out, bring it
down to Sycamore street, get it inside the record plant,
have to assemble and get it there. He, long story short,
he gets it there. He changes his mind. So there
(17:56):
was a big piss off that day when I got
there at maybe four to six o'clock at night, this
had all gone down that day, but apparently it was
a big deal. And a lot of people were pissed off.
So only to get it there and have him kind
of pitch one of those fits and then not even,
not even use the piano. So I don't know what happened.
(18:16):
That's just one of those weird stories I heard when
I got there, you know, for my night shift.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
It, I mean, if you read anything about Axl during
that time period, as the kids say, it tracks. I mean,
it sounds like something that might have happened. And I
also don't want to lose this too because I don't
want to get you in trouble because I know your
stories have to remain limited. I don't think I mentioned
it yet on the podcast. So episode 500, I had
(18:41):
Alan Niven on. And at the time, I didn't know
he had a book. Like when I first booked him,
the junior manager during Appetite. And, of course, I knew
once I reached out to him, I was just going
to make it a big 500th episode. And so we
spoke a lot. And he got picked up by a
lot of news sites. And then I see, thanks to
(19:02):
some great research that's on MyGNR Archive. It's spelled differently.
Or you can go to My Appetite for Discussion, which
is different than Appetite for Distortion. Because they did the legwork,
so I don't want to take credit for it. They're
looking at the current... between Alan about his book and
(19:23):
Guns N' Roses. And some stuff that he says on
this podcast is quoted by their lawyer. It's in the
deposition or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So I do have to be careful.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Was there anything about certain guns going off inside an apartment?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Was there anything covered about that?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well, here's another one. Again, I washed my hands. Let's
just say I'm saying this hypothetically.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Hypothetically.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
But around that same time with the piano incident, there
was a bit of rage going on with You know
who was, you know, he goes through calm and then
he goes through storm. But what I had heard, if
not that same situation with Piano, but therein very shortly,
is that he had taken a pistol and gone crazy
(20:17):
and shot all those mirrors out inside. I can't remember
if it was a condo or an apartment, but he'd
lined with those mirrors. But he went kind of cuckoo.
And I did hear that from a very reliable source
that was also working in the sessions. So... It was
primarily Craig Brock, Jim Mitchell were the engineers, but Kyle
Bess would come in and do similar. He was higher
(20:38):
up than I was, but he would come in and
do certain things that, you know, if they needed extra
stuff done and he needed to come in, he ended
up working for baby face for a bunch of years
and retiring, working for him. But I had heard about
that too. So there was some rage incidences going on,
you know, and that is what I heard. Like I say,
(20:58):
I can't confirm it, but. you know, I don't imagine
anybody was going to lie to me about it, you know,
cause every day you'd go in and you'd hear something
from the day crew, you know, just, and there's some,
I'm never going to remember. And fortunately for you and myself, I,
I have a journal and I have pieces of it
out now, but I have a journal buried in an
army trunk and it'd take me days to find it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
But I appreciate you remembering anything, you know, talking about weed,
you got the tie dye shirt on. Like I, I,
I appreciate you remembering anything.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
All right. Well, and you had talked to me and
I want to bring it up just so we don't forget.
But the incident in the lounge where Slash had heard
the bad news on one of the reviews on the
television set and he got upset and took his and
I don't remember if it was a beer bottle or
his Jack Daniels bottle. I don't recall him drinking a
lot of beer, but there was beer all over the place.
(21:52):
So it probably was one of his. But anyway, I
told you I was up front and I just heard
a smash. They had left the door open. All the
doors are usually closed. But at night, you know, everybody's
just nobody cares. So anyway, I hear a smash and
I'm like, oh, he's just dropped. He's in the lounge
and he's dropped. You know, I got to go sweep
it up. Right. Well, I got in there just to
see him back away from the TV. And what he'd
(22:14):
done is there had been some BS about Guns N'
Roses or about him on the TV. And at that time, 1981,
those large screens TVs that are. You know, basically small
movie screens at that time were thousands of dollars. And
he had taken the beer bottle and gouged from the
top corner to the bottom corner with that broken bottle
(22:34):
and literally gouged. He gouged it so hard that he
didn't just mess the plastic up. He had peeled and
separated the plastic from the whatever is behind the plastic.
And again, another thing I thought I was going to
get in trouble for, he walked past me. And I
was just like, well, you know, there's not much I
can clean up.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Sorry, dude. I guess they're in a certain mindset.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
He stormed past me. I don't even think he saw
me when he left the room. And of course, I
had to answer to that the next day. And again,
we talked about that. Well, why didn't you do anything?
And I just had to say, well, what exactly did
you want me to do? Even if I'd caught him
in there before he did it, I'm not going to
stop him. He's got a broken bottle and he's pissed
(23:20):
off and he's three sheets to the freaking wind. It
is what it is. But there were crazy. There's going
to be some I'm going to forget, which really sucks.
But those are some of the big ones. The other
one that I'd forgotten to tell you. when we were
just talking was you said the Izzy contact. And I
know I told you a lot of Axl for me
(23:41):
was just peripheral. I don't remember having any real main
contact with Axl other than just there he went. I
wish I did, but I don't. But anyway, Matt Sorum, similar.
I remember Matt sitting down making phone calls. I don't
remember really talking to him a lot other than, hey,
how's it going? Hey, how's it going, man? And that
being about it, you'll like this one. So we'd all
(24:04):
torn down. And the thing I would do when either
we had two studios there, one that was front behind
my desk and to the right. The other one was
way down the hall across from the kitchen all the
way back to the left hand side. Because they separated
them because of sound, obviously. But I had gone back
there when we had completely torn down and they had
(24:25):
all left. And like I say, Izzy again was in
my peripheral. I don't remember speaking to him. But I
had climbed under the consoles underneath all the outboard gear.
Because I don't know, you know how studios are. There's
holes in the floor. The carpet's got holes because all
the wiring's going under there. All the patch bay cords
are going under there. And I always learned that when
(24:45):
these guys are in there, they're throwing their picks. They're
using up their picks and they're chunking them. So one
of the first things I did when I'd get all
the boards zeroed and I'd get all the cables wrapped
up and I'd be like, okay, I'm going to be
able to eat something now and just chill out is
I'd climb underneath all that gear and pick up all
the signature guitar picks. So I'm under there, right? And
Izzy had the triangle ones. And unfortunately I only found one,
(25:06):
you know, those weird big triangles instead of the little.
So I found Izzy and I'm like, holy shit, this
is rare. I had at that time, my friend, I
had a handful of Slash. They were purple. And over
years and years and years, they turned pink. So over
years and years and years, I started giving them all away,
which now I regret. I should have kept one. I
gave them to chicks. You know, that's like martinis to chicks.
(25:28):
You know, hey, how about, oh, I'll see it. You know,
I'll see in a few hours. Anyway, anyway, man, yeah,
they did all turn pink, but I'm climbing under there. Right.
And I'm just grabbing picks. And like I say, slashes
all over the floor. And I stood up and Izzy
was there and I scared the shit out of him.
(25:50):
so anyway that was my my one little izzy thing
was just you know seeing him for 30 seconds till
he looked at me like i was crazy and he
walked out the door hey that's.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Something i would tell all the time that you scared
is he you know usually when.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah yeah he didn't jump or anything he just kind
of was caught aback like what do you do and
climbing underneath the and i did just kind of innocently
say i'm just picking up the.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Guitar my precious yeah There's.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
A reason I'm under there, man. You're not hallucinating this time.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That's pretty funny. I can imagine what that looked like
to him. That is pretty funny. It was crazy. No,
that's cool. All these stories I appreciate and they're entertaining.
And again, over the years, I would be sharing them
all the time at parties. I would probably hand out like, hey, look,
(26:40):
you want a slash pic? That's a good opening line.
I probably had 20 of them at the time.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
That over the years I've given away. So like I say,
I should have kept some of them. I had them,
not just their picks, but I had picks in collections
and just over the years. you know, you start to
become kind of a minimalist and I just got rid
of some of them. I could have kept some, but
I got a few here, like from Lukather and the
guys from men at work. And I still got a
couple I kept because I either meet them in person
(27:09):
and they signed something for me. So they're framed with
like signatures, but these were just picks and like a
little sandwich bag. And I just, for whatever reason, man,
I just gave them all out. I was working at
hard rock too. And that was another good way to
get chicks when we were closing and you know, table
full of chicks and Hey, you know, well, like I say,
it was kind of a calling card, but another cool story.
(27:29):
I didn't hear a lot of, of mixed down and
what was going on, but I do have a vivid
memory of being there at about 10 o'clock at night
and hearing a lot of a strange coming out of
the door. They left that one open because they're probably
playing through it. They're not actually miking anything, but that
was one real cool specific thing. I remember because like
we talked about, before we got on air was I
(27:51):
just remember thinking how different that was for a Guns
N' Roses. It was a little more refined. The solo
was a lot longer. It was one of those epic
things that you just don't think Guns N' Roses is
going to do. But one of my favorite memories out
of all those is just kind of leaning up against
the wall and just going, you know, holy shit, that
just sounds really good. It was a little more commercial,
(28:12):
but I kind of like that. The rawness was still there,
but it was a little more a little more produced,
a little more polished. That's just the way it sounded
to me. But I just thought, man, that's just, holy shit.
His solo was just different on that one. It was
just kind of took off.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
And took off some more. That's a special memory. I mean,
you were there for that. No one else heard that.
I mean, of course, there might have been some engineers
and stuff, but that's a special moment that not many
people heard. And to bring it forward, The recent concert
I went to, I'm always going to think of Estranged
because that's kind of when my wife passed my son,
(28:51):
my sleeping son, over to me who just falls asleep
at rock concerts. Yeah. And he's sleeping on me during Estranged.
And Axl sounded great on it. And it's something I'm
going to remember forever. So we both have our estranged
stories now.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
It's weird how it does that. And, you know, it
was disappointing that that song didn't get, you know, they
play Freebird and all that, that are 15, 17 minute songs.
But it was just weird to me that that song
never got that radio play. You get those four or
five gun songs and you don't hear estranged. It's like, again,
like you say, everything's gone corporate and there's... There's certain
(29:29):
rules and regulations, but to me, it's mind-blowing that that
song doesn't get... I know they made a music video
for it and it did all right, but yeah the
fact that i got no airplay just tells me how
ridiculous the industry is going.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I certainly haven't that's just me someone who grew up
working and listening to radio that's not a song i've
heard maybe like a handful of times on the radio
but november yeah november rain's the outlier the one you
mentioned before but i want to uh touch on this
because it's You know, as I call this, if I
want to call it a fan obsession episode, but you're just,
you're a guy who worked there. So, you know, as
(30:01):
you were struggling to find the name for November Rain,
I don't think it's a leap to say that you're
not the biggest Guns N' Roses fan in the world.
But it's, where do they rank for you? What's your...
Are you a grateful dead guy?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Let me tell you, when Appetite came out, I was
working at Blockbuster Video, and I was playing that video
at work, and I was playing that thing until I
had to go get a copy probably every six months.
It's not that I'm not a fan of them. Obviously,
that whole time, when we've talked again, I miss that time,
that exciting, just kind of scary time where you don't
really know what's going to happen. It's kind of unpredictable.
(30:34):
But at the same time, my friend, I'm 60. I'm
just kind of getting out of that loud, you know,
the Metallica, the real loud Guns N' Roses. I'm not
going to tell you when I hear some Guns N'
Roses in the car, I don't crank it up. But
it's not something anymore that I put on a turntable.
You know, what's the hardest thing I've listened to lately
is probably Queensryche. I just got a hankering to put
(30:54):
on the warning and then rage for order that I
probably hadn't spun in a decade. You know, but Al Stewart,
you know, just some more of these more that kind
of older contemporary. And I'm an old man. You know,
I don't have the ear. I don't have the ears
to just. you know, do that to my ears anymore.
So it's not that I don't like them. I think
(31:17):
they're a great band. It's just I don't have that
youthful listening attention span that I did. And I also
just don't have time to listen to music all the time.
So it's just kind of a double-edged sword of just
simply getting older and life just transitioning you into kind
of a different page in the book without whether I
like it or not.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Oh, I mean, well, I understand that. I mean, listening
to music, I either have to be driving or doing dishes.
It's like, it's completely different, but I'm, Hey, I'm like
you while I still listen to, you know, Guns N' Roses.
It's not all hard. The one I like, and I
know I'm in the minority of it and it's an
old song. So maybe that speaks a lot to, you know, I'm,
I'll be 43 in a couple weeks. They do a
(31:59):
cover of Glen Campbell's Wichita Linemen.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I just love it.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Oh, I've never heard that.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, they've been doing it since he passed. And to
some fans' chagrin, they're like, oh, cut it out.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
No, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I hope they do a recorded version of it. It's
so good. Not everything has to be It's So Easy
or Perfect Crime. I mean, those are amazing, amazing songs.
Sometimes I just want to... I hope in the future
they do an acoustic tour. You know, I love the
fact that they're going on early and leaving early, man.
If I, I don't know if I would have survived
the nineties. I've always been like an old man wanting
(32:35):
to go to bed early. So, so yeah, no, I appreciate,
as you say, you'd like to go back to that time.
I like, I like to go back to that time
because in 91, I was eight. I really was.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Jeez. I would have been 20. I think I turned, 24, 25.
I think I turned 25 that year. Yeah, I turned 20.
I turned 25 at the record plant because my first
paycheck was on July 19th and I turned 25 on
the 23rd. So I had probably not been there long
(33:10):
when I turned 25. So yeah. Just a few days
after I got, I photocopied all my first paychecks. So
I have date references, my A & M' s up here
and my Sound City's back there. And then my record
plant stuff is all right here. But I was smart.
I was like, every paycheck I get, I'm going to
photocopy it. So I have a copy of my first paycheck.
(33:32):
you know, my first paycheck. So, you know, don't make no,
I don't know what made me think of that. I
just did it.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Surrounded by memorabilia, even your paycheck.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Oh, you should see it. I've sold a lot of
it off, but if you could turn the room around,
there's stuff in here and there's just this whole wall's
plastered Martha Quinn autographs, Gordon Lightfoot. I've got Huey Lewis
up here. I've got Mark Blankfield from that movie Jekyll
and Hyde together again. We ended up kind of being
friends and I've got letters from him and letters from
(34:02):
him when my dad passed and a bunch of cool stuff.
I've gotten rid of some of it, but the real
sentimental stuff, like I say, I'm going to keep if
I associate it with a friend or I associate it
with a really cool night. I used to hang with
the guys from Marillion and I've got all their autographs
and guitar picks and photos with those guys. And that
(34:23):
was my last big hurrah was with the guys in
Marillion out in Montreal and LA. That was 2012, 2013.
So really since then, other than a few minor radio things,
and like I say, hooking up some people with the
guy here who wanted to do an archive about San
Antonio music and some of the bands that got their
start here. I really haven't been that involved until you
(34:44):
called me up. But, you know, which is really cool
to me that you did that. So it does give
me kind of that excuse to bring those passions up,
because honestly, people don't want to talk about it anymore.
And the people who do want to talk about it
are usually the other people who were in it. Sometimes
the regular people that weren't there just go, yeah, yeah, dude, whatever.
And you're just like, you've got to be around the
(35:05):
people who are around you. for that like-minded kind of
music thing, because you're not always on the same page.
Musicians are a different breed and it just is what
it is. So.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
No, I dig it. And I dig your stories and
I appreciate you, uh, sharing them with me. And if
any of any more pop into your head, I'm sure
that you never know. I'm sure there's full of them. Uh,
I know it's not all guns and roses, but if
there's more than pop, if you scared Izzy, uh, a
second time or something like that, but feel free.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
To go back.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Poor guy. I think it was just that one time.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
You scared him away. You're why he quit Guns N' Roses.
That's what, you're the reason. You scared him. I can't
go there again. I can't record with that guy, David.
It's creeping me out.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
There's other industries, my friend, where people have probably left
because of me, but that's okay.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
It's the pigeon master.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, there's more. somebody else to blame it on somebody else,
but there's stuff in there, my friend that I just
haven't recalled. And I may never recall for whatever reason,
but it was a crazy industry. And if you ever
want to talk about, you know, there were stories like
this from, from Skid Row and some other bands that
had similar. So I was there for a lot of
(36:14):
those guys. You know, you don't do actors, but Shelley
Duvall did voiceovers there for interactive video games. She did. And,
They did movies there. We did For the Boys and
things like that that you probably don't cover on your show.
But there was a lot of bands that came through
there and a lot of movies, you know, that came
through there.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
If there's ever a six degrees of what I call it,
GNR bacon, you know, if there's any way to tie
it to Guns N' Roses, I'll do it.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Right on.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I had Pollyanna McIntosh. I like to bring this up.
I had Pollyanna McIntosh on from The Walking Dead. And
her one big story was that she was in an
elevator with Slash once. And that was it. It was
just an excuse to talk to her. I mean, I
know Slash liked The Walking Dead and stuff like that.
But it was just like whatever excuse. Not everything is
going to be pillar to post Guns N' Roses. So whatever.
(37:04):
But the common thread needs to be there, the common theme.
And I'm just the one steering the ship somehow of
this crazy podcast night train. So, David, thank you for
your time. And I hope we get through this again.
You got it. So that does it for this episode
of Appetite for Distortion. When will you see the next one?
In the words of Axel Rose concerning Chinese democracy, I
(37:25):
don't know how soon is the word, but you'll see it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Thanks to the lame-ass security, I'm going home.
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