Guns N’ Roses’ former drummer Steven Adler never forgot the first time he smoked crack cocaine. It was the spring of 1985 at Bob Welch’s place in the Hollywood Hills.
Adler’s girlfriend at the time had told him about a “fun dude” she knew. When they arrived at Welch’s house, they discovered he was recovering from a heroin overdose in Cedars-Sinai hospital. Nevertheless, Welch’s housemate let them in, fired up a glass pipe on the living room table and offered Adler a taste. “I inhaled, and had never experienced such a dire need to get high again, right away, now,” he wrote in his autobiography, My Appetite for Destruction.
Adler soon joined the other waifs and strays at the property and moved his drum kit into the garage. Bob Welch re-joined the party as soon as he was out of hospital. But the 20-year-old glam rock wannabe and the 40-year-old former Fleetwood Macguitarist made an …