Free Slash by Slash, Anthony Bozza

friend John Cassavetes. He’s been in too many films and TV shows to name; in recent years, director Wes Anderson has been his champion: he’s cast Seymour in Rushmore , The Royal Tenenbaums , and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou . Seymour is a Hollywood legend; he supported indie film making before it became an institution (his philosophy was that he’d playa role he connected with for the price of the plane ticket). He was also a figure in a hard-partying class of moviemaking royalty that included Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, Roman Polanski, and others.
    I could show up at Matt’s house, sit in his room, and play guitar for hours, learning stuff off the records he had: Pat Travers’s Live , AC/DC’s newest, Back in Black ; those albums provided hours and hours of riffs to learn. They lived right above Sunset on Kings Road, tucked behind the Riot Hyatt, next door to an A-frame house that is still there. There were porn movies being shot in that house all the time while Seymour was growing weed in the backyard of his place. The A-frame was a huge advantage to hanging at Matt’s: we’d wander over there and mix it up with the porn girls. It wasn’t appropriate, but they liked to get us teenage boys all fired up and frustrated by playing with each other.
    Seymour had the best parties, and he had raised his kids well enough to trust them to hang out. My mom knew Seymour, but she never would have condoned the goings-on over there. At Seymour’s parties there was a lot of freedom and it was full-on. His kids, Matt and Dilynn, were so smart and independent that he didn’t have to worry: they’d already figured out who they were amid this crazy existence. Seymour’s wife, Betty, never came out of her bedroom; it was a dark and foreboding mystery to me as to what went on upstairs. Coupled with the fact that Seymour ruled the house with a bit of an iron fist, Matt allowed only a select few of his friends, of which I was one, into their world.
    One day Seymour looked at me and bestowed upon me the nickname that resonated with him more than my proper name ever did. As I was passing from one room to another in his house, at a party, looking for the next whatever it was I was after, he touched me on the shoulder, fixed me with that affable gaze of his, and said, “Hey, Slash, where ya going? Where ya going, Slash? Huh?”
    Obviously it stuck. My friends who hung at Seymour’s started calling me Slash back at school and soon enough that was the only name everyone knew me by. At the time, my friends and I just thought it was a cool name, but it wasn’t until years later that I caught up with Seymour and he explained it properly. I was on tour during Use Your Illusions , and happened to be in Paris, with my mom along, when Seymour was there, too. The three of ushad lunch and he explained that the nickname embodied my sense of hustle, in every sense of the word. He was proud of the fact that I’d actually made a name for myself and that he’d been the one to give me that moniker. His reason for calling me Slash was that I never stood still for more than five minutes; he saw me as someone who was always working on his next scheme. He was right: I’ve always been coming or going more than I’ve ever stayed still. I am perpetually in motion, often saying good-bye while saying hello and Seymour summed that quality up in a word.
    I met a ton of people at Seymour’s—including the Stones. After they played the L.A. Coliseum they came by for an after-after party at his place. I had seen the show that night; they played “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” so soulfully that I’ll never forget it. I managed to shake Ronnie Wood’s hand; I was fifteen and little did I know that he’d be one of my best friends later in life. In fact, my first son, London, was conceived in his house.
    My other close friend, Mark Mansfield, has popped in and out of my life ever since we first met back in high school. Mark’s dad, Ken, was a