Get In The Ring

And Duff’s brought in one song - Duff said it all in one song- it’s called ‘Why do you look at me when you hate me?’ and it’s just bad-assed.

Do we have the tape decks rolling? We recorded a song last night that was the last song from the new album. We were up in Toronto until about 7:30 this morning working on it. It used to be called “Why Do You Look At Me When You Hate Me.” Now it’s called “Get In The Ring,” where we proceed to tell Andy Secher, and Spin Magazine, and Circus Magazine to “Go ahead, fuck with me. Fuck with me, motherfucker.” Anyway, we’re gonna tape this, if you guys wanna help. All I need is about three good “get in the ring’s” out of you and it will be on the record that this show helped (?) So if we get this going, all you gotta say is, “Get in the ring!” [Get in the ring chant] Thank you very-fuckin’ much! […] We got it, alright. Thank you very much! And if you didn’t yell, don’t tell your friends you sang on this motherfuckin’ record. I wanna see you guys at parties going, “Hey, I didn’t see you yelling,” “Shut the fuck up!”

'Get In The Ring' was a song that was… basically put together by Slash and Duff, and I came up with the low vocal part. And Slash and I wrote that part together. We wrote different verses. And we wrote a whole song that when the whole band actually had the song together, the words didn't fit the arrangement of the song. And so, we were in Toronto, playing a show in Toronto. And we had one last song to finish recording, that was 'Get In The Ring'. So, we went in the studio and just kind of started putting things together.

And then Duff decided that I should express my feelings about how we've been treated by the press, because that was his initial concept for the song, and that I should just go for it. And I was kind of like: "Are you sure? You sure I should do this?". And then Tom Zutaut, of Geffen, was there and he was like: "Go for it." So I got behind the mike and went for it. And everybody was really happy and we just decided to do it. And this naming names, and things like that, were because most bands can't afford to express how they feel about how they're treated in the press, because they need the press so much. And I know that this could hurt us, but we're in a position where I think we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to an element of the public....

[Asked if the magazines named in the song were that bad] The ones I mentioned in the situations that I touched, yeah. You know, it’s like, one of the reasons that I did that was because I remember some of those same mags doing the same things to Zeppelin; and I couldn’t get a decent Zeppelin interview and learn what I needed to do to put a band together right. And when kids, you know, are reading these magazines and they’re getting false stories, or twisted stories, or things saying I’m running over dogs, you know, and everything confused of who is in the band and when and stuff... It really doesn’t help a kid out to know about a band, or his favorite band, and it doesn’t really give this person anything to work with. And they’re paying good money for it, you know. And there’s distribution companies and stuff that are putting out the magazines, and I don’t really approve of their methods and things like that. So yeah, it is that bad.
[Asked about name-calling Bob Guccione Jr.] [...] I did hit him below the belt with my comments. [...] And you know, that’s a problem of mine, but he wouldn’t let up. But this Get in the Ring thing isn’t necessarily literal about getting in the ring with boxing gloves, you know. Otherwise I would be a boxer.

That was not my idea, you know, that was Tom Zutaut and Duff McKagan's idea. Because there was this blank space in the song, and I was 'We've gotta do something,' and they were like 'Why don't you just go in and go off on Andy Secher and Bob Guccione Jr?' and 'Sure, yeah, yeah' and eventually I did and everybody was happy with it. But when it hit the fan everybody disappeared. And I was naive and didn't realize the political wars going on between the different publicists at the record labels and their relationships with The Rolling Stone and Spin, and whatever, so I was set up but no one stepped forward to say anything.