I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

by **Soulmonster** Sun Jul 18, 2010 7:32 pm

I thought about asking him to do a Q&A, but since the book comes out next year I don't see much point in it.

by **Soulmonster** Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:39 pm

Duff has now shed some more light on the book:

Mine’s not really a Guns N Roses book, where I think Slash’s really was… and I haven’t read [Adler's]. I’m not saying one’s better than the other. This is just my story. It’s really my demise into addiction and stuff, and then my way out and my journey into things. My Guns N Roses story is my Guns N Roses story. My Velvet Revolver story is my Velvet Revolver story. It’s my rock story, from my distinct viewpoint.

Exciting! Why Thank You

Source: http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/duff-mckagan-promises-different-guns-n-roses-story/

by **Soulmonster** Fri May 06, 2011 8:38 am

The former Guns 'N Roses bassist - who now performs with rock bands Velvet Revolver and Loaded – admitted while he isn't even sure whether the tome ‘It’s So Easy and Other Lies’ is any good, it will document his battles with drink and drug addictions.

He told radio station WDHA-FM 105.5 FM: "You get a cross section of my life. I almost lost a battle to addiction and I kind of had to relive it, but in a conversation where you understand what's going on in my life.

"I could tell you how much I drank or how many drugs I took in a day but a normal person would just not understand that. I don't even know if the book was even any good. It sounds lame but it was just so many damn words and endless hours of writing."

Despite documenting his musical career in the book, Duff recently revealed he still has "a
hundred" things he wants to accomplish.

He explained: "You know there's a hundred things I could think of I have left to do, but it's
been great so far. I've never really sat there and thought about it; about what I've done so far, and how does it feel. I probably should do that one day, but it's not happening yet. Probably a good sign."

Source: http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.aspx?id=130237&cat=985&fm=newsarticle%20-%20Entertainment,nur

by **Soulmonster** Sat May 14, 2011 8:47 am

Read more: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2011/05/hey_get_a_load_of_duffs_memoir.php

by **Soulmonster** Tue May 24, 2011 10:27 am

Advance copy will be use to market to book stores:

I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs Scaled.php?tn=0&server=610&filename=8x5sw

by **Soulmonster** Thu May 26, 2011 8:14 pm

From Duff's Reverb Coloumn:

A many of you very well know, I am a die-hard and hardcore book-nerd. Some of you may also be aware that I have been writing a book over the last year or so. The book, It's So Easy, is done, and has a release date now of October 4, 2011.

Cool enough. But now all of real fun begins. It is time now, for me and Touchstone/ Simon & Schuster, to actually go out and try to sell this book to all of the different booksellers out there.

Book Expo America has been taking place in New York all week. This is a closed convention, where all of the different large and small publishers show their new wares to buyers like Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, Costco, Target, Hudson (you know, the stores at the airports), as well as all of the independent bookstores like Elliott Bay, Powell's, and the like.

For my book--and what is a common practice--they made up what's called a "catalogue copy"; mine is the first 9 chapters and the prologue to my book. It's pretty cool to actually see all of my solitary work actually coming to an endgame.

The night before my signing at the Expo, my senior editor and her staff at Simon & Schuster threw a cocktail party in my honor at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan called Lamb (so damn posh, right?). It was actually one of the sweetest things I've ever been too.

The publishing community is VERY different from the music community...or probably to be more exact--the publishing community is like some wonderfully kitschy and nerdy indie movie. The mood and personality that filled the room at this cocktail party in my honor was really not unlike the mood that we strike here in the comments section of this column: Interesting, thoughtful, smart, nerdy, and diverse.

I have been trained to be a little (OK, a LOT) dubious of rock and roll press. They always want "the dirt," or are looking for some snidely and wise-ass way to catch me off-guard or mis-quote me so that it seems much bolder and dumber than the things that they actually ask me about. And there was press at this cocktail party.

I quickly pulled my editor to the side and frantically told here that I didn't know that the press would be here at this party, and that I didn't want to talk to them at the risk of being miss-quoted for the umpteenth time. She looked at me quizzically, and stated that "The publishing press would never dream of doing something like that!" Yeah, I guess Kirkus Reviews and the book side of Associated Press and whatnot, just don't want the dirt. The publishing industry, it turns out, is just still a quaint little field, that is still in the business of actually being excited about new things, and press and all of the different publishing companies are still in the business of helping each other out. They want their industry to be strong, and there just really doesn't seem to be any sort of under-handedness and BS happening behind the scenes. This may seem like a bold statement from a neophyte like me, but I am pretty sure that I am right on this fact.

At dinner after the party, I sat with a few of the mucky-mucks from S&S. We were talking about books we had been reading. I had just finished One Bullet Away by Nate Fick, and one of the gentlemen that I was sitting with had edited that book. Yeah, that's right, for a book nerd like me, that was like sitting with the guy who had just produced the latest Rolling Stones record. Pretty cool.

At the Book Expo, I signed copies of my 'catalogue copy' for a thronging line of like-minded book nerds. There were a lot of people from other publishing companies, book buyers for larger and small stores, and librarians (even one from our own downtown Seattle Public Library).

The one big difference--and I must say that I WAS a tad crestfallen--was that none of them asked for me to sign their tits.

Source: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2011/05/aint_no_business_like_book_bus.php

by **Soulmonster** Wed Jul 13, 2011 7:11 am

"I ended up in the hospital. That’s when there was a profound [moment]. Seeing my mom come in there, I’m the youngest of eight kids and there’s our mom with Parkinson’s, fine. It’s like, ‘OK, the order of things is f—ing wrong. You let your mom down, you let a lot of people down."

Source: http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/news/musicnews/79398/guns-n-roses-bassist-lucky-to-be-alive.htm

by **Soulmonster** Wed Aug 17, 2011 8:08 am

Excerpt from book posted in latest Maxim:

I've known a lot of junkies. Many of these addicts have either died or continue to live a pitiful existence to this day. With many of them, I personally witnessed a wonderful lust for life in them as we played music together as kids and looked toward the future. Of course, no one sets out to be a junkie or an alcoholic.

Some people can experiment in their youth and move on. Others cannot.

When Guns n’ Roses began to break into the public consciousness, I was known as a big drinker. In 1988 MTV aired a concert in which Axl introduced me—as usual—as Duff “the King of Beers” McKagan. Soon after, a production company working on a new animated series called me to ask if they could use the name “Duff” for a brand of beer in the show. I laughed and said of course, no problem. The whole thing sounded like a low-rent art project or something—I mean, who made cartoons for adults? Little did I know that the show would become The Simpsons and that within a few years I would start to see Duff beer glasses and gear everywhere we toured.

These days tours are run with an iron fist. The smallest possible crew, no private plane. The idea is to come out with as much profit as possible. It was completely different back then. By the time Guns n’ Roses spent 28 months from 1991 to 1993 touring the Use Your Illusion albums, the tour staff sometimes approached 100 people. We were carrying not only backup girl singers, a horn section, and an extra keyboard player, but also chiropractors, masseuses, a singing coach, and a tattoo artist. Each of us had bodyguards and drivers. Money poured into nightly after-show theme parties. There were gambling nights and toga parties; in Indianapolis the theme was car racing. The party staff was part of the paid entourage, too. The parties would go into the early morning hours.

Given what I’d seen, a reputation for drinking didn’t seem like a big deal. But by the Use Your Illusion tour, my intake had reached epic proportions. For the tour, Guns leased a private plane. It wasn’t an executive jet; it was a full-on 727, with lounges and individual bedroom suites for the band members. Slash and I christened the plane on our maiden journey by smoking crack together. Before the wheels had left the ground. (Not something I recommend, incidentally—the smell gets into everything.) I don’t even remember playing Czechoslovakia. We played a stadium show in one of the most beautiful cities in Eastern Europe not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the only way I knew it was because of the stamp I found in my passport.

It wasn’t clear anymore whether or not I would be one of those who could experiment in his youth and move on.

(From left to right): Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Slash, Steven Adler, and Duff McKagan

Every day I made sure I had a vodka bottle next to my bed when I woke up. I tried to quit drinking in 1992, but started again with a vengeance after only a few weeks. I just could not stop. I was too far gone. My hair began falling out in clumps, and my kidneys ached when I pissed. The skin on my hands and feet cracked, and I had boils on my face and neck. I had to wear bandages under my gloves to be able to play my bass.

There are many different ways to come out of a funk like that. Some people go straight to rehab, some go to church. Others go to AA, and many more end up in a pine box, which is where I felt headed.

Throughout the Use Your Illusion tour, I had recorded songs on my own, ducking into studios here and there. The project had served largely as a way to kill time I would otherwise have spent drinking, and I didn’t know what the demos were for, really.

I played a bit of everything over the course of the sessions—drums, guitar, bass. I sang, too, and it’s clear I wasn’t able to breathe through my nose on some songs; years of cocaine use had taken their toll. Then, at some point during the tour, a record label employee who was out on the road with us asked where I kept disappearing to on off days. I told him. When Tom Zutaut, who had signed Guns to Geffen records, caught wind of the demos, he asked me if I would like a solo deal. Geffen, he said, could release the tracks as an album. I knew he was probably being mercenary about it—by this time Nirvana and Pearl Jam had broken, and Zutaut probably figured leveraging my Seattle roots and punk connections could help the label reposition Gn’R.

But I didn’t care. To me it was a chance to realize a dream. Geffen rushed it out as Believe in Me in the summer of 1993, just as the Illusion tour was wrapping. Axl talked it up onstage during the last few gigs.

I had scheduled a solo tour that would start immediately after Gn’R’s last shows—two final gigs in Buenos Aires, Argentina in July 1993. My solo tour would send me first to play showcases in San Francisco, L.A., and New York and then to open the Scorpions’ arena tour around Europe and the U.K. Returning to L.A. from Argentina, I joined the group of friends and acquaintances I’d arranged to back me on the road. They had already started rehearsing
before I got home. Together we did whirlwind preparations for the tour.

Axl heard I was planning to go back out on tour. He called me.

“Are you fucking crazy? You should not go back out on the road right now. You are insane even to think about it.”

“It’s what I do,” I told him. “I play music.”

I also knew that if I stayed at home it would probably devolve into more drug insanity. I didn’t have any illusions
about getting sober, but at least out on the road—with a band made up of old Seattle punk-rock friends—I figured I had some chance of toning things down. And of staying off coke.

Duff with his early Seattle punk band, 10 Minute Warning

But Axl was right. Before the first gig in San Francisco, my then-wife Linda got into a fistfight backstage with another girl and lost a tooth. Blood spattered everywhere. Hells Angels packed the show at Webster Hall in New York, and brawls broke out. I shouted at the crowd to settle down, thinking I could somehow make a difference. After the show people tried to come backstage, but I wanted to be alone.

I toured the record as planned until December 1993. There was still a fervor for all things Guns, especially in Europe. Audiences knew my songs and sang along. And for the most part I did stay off the coke, though it was by no means a clean break. There were slipups. I also switched from vodka to wine.

Downshifting to wine was all well and good, but the volume of wine quickly sky-rocketed till I was drinking 10 bottles a day. I was getting bad heartburn from the wine, taking Tums all the time. I wasn’t eating, but I was badly bloated; my body felt awful.

Duff, Izzy Stradlin, Axl, Steven Adler, Axl, Steven Adler, and Slash in Gn'R's glory days

At the end of the European leg, our lead guitar player pulled a knife on our bus driver in England. I had to fire him—luckily the tour was finished. Back in Los Angeles, I called Paul Solger, an old friend I had played together with as a teenager in Seattle, and asked him to fill in for the next part of the tour. Solger had gotten sober in the 10 years since I’d last played with him. Needless to say, I had not. Still, he agreed.

I returned to my house in L.A. before the next leg of the tour in Australia. I’d bought the place in 1990. It was in Laurel Canyon, right at the top, perched on a cliff overlooking Dead Man’s Curve on Mulholland Drive. The place was up the hill from the old mansion built by Houdini. Here on the Hollywood side of the hills, Laurel Canyon was still quite countercultural. It was certainly no Beverly Hills. By the 1980s the Houdini mansion had been split up, and a bunch of unreformed hippies lived there in a sort of wizened dorm party milieu.

The pool behind the house offered a spectacular view out over the valley side of the Hollywood hills. At the time, I was partying for nights on end at various L.A. clubs, and that basin of blue water often ended up a naked free-for-all. One of the girls I started to hang out with was a newscaster. She had pictures in her office of herself with Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson. She repeated a catchphrase to close all her on-air reports. Years later she landed a job at a national news network, and every time I heard her finish up with that catchphrase, the image on TV would fade and I would see her paddling around nude in my pool.

Axl, Izzy, and Duff onstage at Giants Stadium in New Jersey

A circuit of clubs dominated Hollywood—Bordello, Scream, Cathouse, Vodka, Lingerie, Spice. There was a club to go to each night of the week except Wednesday. I have no idea why Wednesday was an off night. I didn’t care. Wednesdays—and after hours the rest of the week—the party came to my place. I plucked the stand-up bass to accompany Tony Bennett onstage one night in the VIP section of Spice. I got up and played drums with Pearl Jam the first time they came to L.A. for a show at the Cathouse. There was a lot of alcohol consumed that night, but I think we played a song by the Dead Boys together.

When Alice in Chains came to L.A. for their first gig—at the Palladium right as “Man in a Box” was blowing up as a single—they asked me to come down to the show and play that song with them. Awesome. After their gig that night, I invited the whole band and various hangers-on back up to my house for an after-show party. The party went on for three days straight.

But now, back home after the tour several years later, I felt as sick as I ever had. My hands and feet were bleeding. I had constant nosebleeds. I was shitting blood. Sores on my skin oozed. The house was awash in the fetid effluvia of my derelict body. I found myself picking up the phone to tell my managers and band that we weren’t going to Australia.

I’d bought a house in Seattle at that point—a dream house, right on Lake Washington—and I could feel its pull. I had bought it a few years before, sight unseen, in a neighborhood where I used to go to steal cars and boats when I was a kid. In the interim I had barely had a chance to spend any time there because of the endless Use Your Illusion tour. I thought it might be the right place to try to recover, relax, recharge.

Slash and Duff in 1990

On March 31, 1994, I went to LAX to catch a flight from L.A. to Seattle. Kurt Cobain was waiting to take the same flight. We started talking. He had just skipped out of a rehab facility. We were both fucked up. We ended up getting seats next to each other and talking the whole way, but we didn’t delve into certain things. I was in my hell, he was in his, and we both seemed to understand.

When we arrived and went toward the baggage claim, the thought crossed my mind to invite him over to my place. I had a sense he was lonely and alone that night.

So was I. But there was a mad rush of people in the terminal. I was in a big rock band; he was in a big rock band. We cowered next to each other as people gawked. I lost my train of thought for a minute, and Kurt slipped out to a waiting limo.

Arriving in front of my house in Seattle, I stopped and looked up at the roof. When I’d bought the place, it had been old and leaky, and I had paid to have the cedar shakes replaced. The new roof was rated to last 25 years, and looking up at it now I thought it was funny: That roof would surely outlast me. Still, staying in the house gave me the feeling that I had finally made it.

A few days later my manager called to tell me Kurt Cobain had been found dead at his Seattle house after putting a gun to his head. I’m embarrassed to say that upon hearing the news I just felt numb. I didn’t pick up the phone and call Kurt’s bandmates, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. I figured my condolences would be meaningless anyway—a few years prior I’d gotten into a scrap with Krist backstage at the MTV awards, where Guns and Nirvana both performed. I lost my shit when I thought I heard a slight of my band from the Nirvana camp. In my drunken haze I went after Krist. Kim Warnick from the Fastbacks—the first real band I played with as a kid in Seattle—called me the next day and scolded me. I had felt so low. Now I felt lower still, staring at the phone, incapable of calling to apologize for the earlier incident and to extend my sympathy for his loss and Dave’s.

Not that Kurt’s death made any difference in how I dealt with my own funk. I just didn’t deal at all. Until one month later.

The morning of May 10, I woke up in my new bed with sharp pains in my stomach. Pain was nothing new to me, nor was the sickening feeling of things going wrong with my body. But this was different. This pain was unimaginable, like someone taking a dull knife and twisting it in my guts. The pain was so intense I couldn’t even make it to the edge of the bed to dial 911. I was frozen in pain and fear, whimpering.

There I was, naked on my bed in my dream home, a home I had bought with the hopes of one day having a family to fill it.

I lay there for what felt like an eternity. The silence seemed as loud as my raspy, muffled moans. Never before in my life had I wanted someone to kill me, but I was in such pain I just hoped to be put out of my misery.

Then I heard Andy, my best friend from childhood, come in the back door. He called, “Hey, what’s up,” just as he had ever since we were kids. Andy, I’m upstairs, I wanted to answer. But I wasn’t able to. I heard him start up the stairs—he must have seen my wallet in the kitchen. He made it upstairs and came down the hall.

“Oh, shit, it’s finally happened,” he said when he reached my room.

I was thankful to have my friend there. It was comforting to think I would die in front of Andy. But he had other ideas. He pulled some sweats on me and began to try to move me. He must have felt the jolt of adrenaline—otherwise there is no way Andy could have carried the 200 pounds of dead weight of my bloated body. As he carried me down the stairs and out to his car, the searing, stabbing pain in my intestines spread further down to my quadriceps and around to my lower back. I wanted to die.

An early Gn'R flyer designed by Duff

The doctor I’d had since I was a kid lived just two blocks away, so Andy took me there. Though Dr. Brad Thomas was my longtime physician, I hadn’t let him see me very often once I’d descended into full-blown alcoholism. Together Andy and Dr. Thomas carried me to his first-floor office. I heard my condition being discussed, and

I felt the prick of a needle. Demerol. Nothing. Another shot of Demerol, and again nothing, no relief whatsoever. One more shot. Again nothing. The pain kept on spreading, and I was starting to panic. I groaned as my spirit began to blacken and fade.

They decided to rush me to the ER at Northwest Hospital. Dr. Thomas told Andy to drive me, as it would be faster than waiting for an ambulance. Andy drove as fast as he could without jerking the car too much—every movement made me moan.

As they put an IV drip of morphine into my left arm at the hospital, the staff asked me questions I could not answer.

“Name?” “Address?” Andy answered.

“How much do you drink on a daily basis?”

“Are you on drugs right now?”

I just whimpered.

I was mute from pain. The morphine wasn’t working as I knew it should. I knew a thing or two about opiates by that stage in my life. I knew the warm rush they offered, yet I was getting none of it.

They wheeled me into a room next to another guy on a gurney. The motion made me writhe in agony.

“Dude, I broke my back,” said the guy in the other bed. “And I’m glad I don’t have whatever you have.”

It's So Easy (And Other Lies) by Duff McKagan

Dr. Thomas and a technician ran a scanner over my organs, and I saw my doctor’s face go white. My pancreas, apparently swollen to the size of a football from all the booze, had burst. I had third-degree burns all over the inside of my body from the digestive enzymes released by the damaged pancreas. Only a few parts of the inside of your digestive tract can handle the enzymes, and the outsides of your organs and your stomach muscles are definitely not among them—it just burns all that tissue.

A surgeon with thick glasses explained the surgery. They had to take out the top part of the pancreas—cut it off. Sew me back up. And then I’d have to be on dialysis for the rest of my life.

Suddenly I understood the pleading mouthed by miserable souls back to antiquity, those left breathing after being run through with a rusty sword or scalded with hot oil. I was there.

I summoned all my power to whisper to the ER doctor.

“Kill me.”

I begged over and over.

“Please, kill me. Just kill me. Kill me. Please.”

by **Johan** Thu Aug 18, 2011 3:42 pm

It is out now? I'm almost finished reading Slash's book.

by **Soulmonster** Thu Aug 18, 2011 3:44 pm

Johan wrote:It is out now? I'm almost finished reading Slash's book.

No, it is coming in October.

October is going to be a good month Smile

by **Soulmonster** Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:29 pm

Johan wrote:It is out now? I'm almost finished reading Slash's book.

Just from Duff's twitter:

DuffMcKagan64
Let there be words! This will serve as my official statement, that I
have a book-It's So Easy (and other lies)- coming out 10/4. So there!26 minutes ago ·
reply · retweet · favorite

by seely Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:40 pm

Duff's a great guy, should be a great read, much better than Steven's and probably just as god as Slash's

by **Soulmonster** Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:44 pm

I am really, really, really looking forward to it. Not the least because I need more quotes from him on the other band members (see the member database). I actually decided to not contact him about an interview since the book is coming anyway.

by seely Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:51 pm

Meeting the guy before his gig at Nottingham Rescue Rooms back in 2009 was great. Solid guy...and he is literally a giant.

He's probably the most 'educated' out of all the members (certainly out of the original 5), his column for playboy is well written (from what I've read of it), so this book should be a good read for sure.

by **Soulmonster** Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:04 pm

seely wrote:Meeting the guy before his gig at Nottingham Rescue Rooms back in 2009 was great. Solid guy...and he is literally a giant.

He's probably the most 'educated' out of all the members (certainly out of the original 5), his column for playboy is well written (from what I've read of it), so this book should be a good read for sure.

I haven't read his Playboy column, but I do read his Reverb column regularly, and that is usually quite good. We have a thread for that column here: http://gnr-afd.forumotion.com/t635-duff-s-reverb-column

by DruDiet Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:29 pm

I wait for the release of this book with great anticipation! He is an excellent author (of what I have read) and this book should be one of the best rock and roll books of recent years! I must comment on the cover though, it is a little amateurish but holds no actual weight to the quality of the book I suppose!

by **Soulmonster** Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:55 am

The dates for Duff's book signing tour:

Tuesday, October 4 - NYC

Strand Book Store Event 7pm

828 Broadway NYC 10003

Wednesday, October 5 – LONG ISLAND

Bookends Event 7pm

211 E. Ridgewood Ave.

Ridgewood, NJ 07450

Thursday, October 6 - NJ

Book Revue Event 7pm

313 New York Avenue

Huntington, NY 11743

Saturday, October 8 – ORANGE COUNTY

Barnes & Noble Costa Mesa Event 2pm

901 B South Coast Drive

Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Sunday, October 9 – SANTA MONICA

Barnes & Noble Santa Monica Event 2pm

3rd St. Promenade, 1201 3rd St.

Santa Monica, CA 90401

Tuesday, October 11 - LA

Book Soup Event 7pm

8818 Sunset Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90069

Sunday, October 16 – TWIN CITIES

Mall of America Event 2pm

60 E. Broadway

Bloomington, MN 55425

*Signing

Tuesday, October 18 - PORTLAND

Powell’s Books Event 7:30pm

1005 W. Burnside

Portland, OR 97209

Wednesday, October 19 – SEATTLE

University Book Store Event 7pm

4326 University Way NE

Seattle, WA 98105

Thursday, October 20 - SEATTLE

Third Place Books Event 7pm

17171 Bothell Way NE

Lake Forest Park, WA 98155

Friday, October 21 - SEATTLE

Elliott Bay Book Company Event 7pm

Saturday, October 22 – SAN DIEGO

Warwicks Event 6:30pm

7812 Girard Avenue

La Jolla, CA 92037

by **Soulmonster** Mon Aug 22, 2011 7:40 pm

Publishers Weeks short review:

It’s So Easy: And Other Lies
Duff McKagan. Touchstone, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4516-0663-8
In this honest, well-written memoir, former Guns & Roses bass player McKagan recounts the age-old rock and roll saga of rise and fall—complete with private jets, busted marriages, drunken brawls, and drug addiction. But as McKagan relates, he took an unusual path to recovery, healing himself with martial arts, mountain biking, and meditation. Along the way he also earned a finance degree from Seattle University. McKagan’s musical career started early—at age 15, the Seattle native was already playing in several punk bands. In 1983 he left for Los Angeles, where he met the other members of Guns & Roses. The 1987 release of Appetite for Destruction made the group an international phenomenon. For a rock star, McKagan is surprisingly self-aware and candid, and he doesn’t let himself off the hook easily. The first half of this book alternates chapters between his youth in Seattle and early career in L.A., and he vividly evokes both music scenes—drugs and all—and his own enthusiasm, desperation, and joy. As the years progress, McKagan, who wrote a financial column for Playboy and currently writes a weekly column for the Seattle Times and ESPN.com, is more cautious and measured but no less insightful. 16 pages color photos (Oct.)

Source: http://reviews.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4516-0663-8

by **Soulmonster** Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:21 pm

DuffMcKagan64 Woke up this AM and received my 1st official copy of the book. It smells GREAT! http://t.co/wNZoUN8 about 1 minute ago · reply · retweet · favorite

I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs Scaled.php?tn=0&server=739&filename=avkea

by **Soulmonster** Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:36 pm

And the book's got a website: http://www.duff-itssoeasy.com/

There's a long excerpt available on the website, too I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs 3677276761

I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs 3677276761

by DanyYo Fri Sep 23, 2011 2:37 pm

IMO it'll be a good read. For me Duff is the ex GN'R member who the deserves the most respect.

by **Soulmonster** Wed Sep 28, 2011 5:38 pm

by DanyYo Wed Sep 28, 2011 9:48 pm

Soulmonster wrote:

That's why I respect this guy. He's a fighter and he survived all the shit. Besides he stayed in the old GN'R to the end when it was obvious that the situation is hopeless.

by **Soulmonster** Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:42 am

I hope to get the book this Christmas, if not I will buy it myself.

But here's a nice review:

Even a rock star can feel like a dork.

Guns N' Roses co-founder and bassist Duff McKagan opens his self-deprecating memoir with his daughter's 13th birthday party. While trying to stay out of sight so as not to embarrass her by his mere presence, he surprises two partygoers sneaking a kiss.

"My mind rushes through a checklist... of things I was doing at this same age," he writes: boozing, smoking pot, dropping acid, snorting cocaine, stealing cars, having sex. These kids are just kissing.

Embarrassed, he mutters a quick, "Sorry," and ducks back into the house.

It's a deft introduction to a refreshingly focused rock memoir, even compared to other GNR books alone. Aside from Mick Wall's controversial W.A.R.: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose, and Stephen Davis's typically breathless Watch You Bleed, McKagan's former bandmates Slash and Steven Adler have beaten him to the punch with Slash (2007) and My Appetite For Destruction (2010), respectively.

But whereas Slash's bloated account meanders, and Adler's is boastful and defensive, McKagan shows he can actually write.

The book's novel-like structure moves back and forth between key points in McKagan's troubled youth in Seattle, his time in Guns N' Roses and his later career.

He's got his war stories. Guns N' Roses toured as nobodies (they were too "punk" for the Iron Maiden audiences they opened for). They burned up the L.A. club scene (and abused record executives' expense accounts on liquid lunches). And when they finally achieved multi-platinum success with Appetite For Destruction and GNR Lies, they went straight to the top and stayed there.

It has a heavy price. McKagan switches from vodka to 10 bottles of wine a day, and starts doing cocaine to sober up enough to keep drinking. His coke abuse damages his septum, leaving him with a constantly runny nose.

"My L.A. house was awash in the effluvia of my derelict body," he writes, still breathing at age 47.

One brief chapter, in which he resolves to quell GNR's intraband feuding but instead drinks himself into a stupor, is poetic and chilling.

His periodic use of internal monologue brings vignettes to life. His pancreas burst from years of alcohol abuse. While in the hospital recovering, his wheelchair-bound mother, suffering from Parkinson's, takes care of him.

This is not how it should be, he thinks. I am such a f--kup.

Surprisingly, he manages to clean himself up, through mountain biking and then martial arts.

Later, his inability to understand his royalty statements prompts him to enrol in business courses at college and university. Discovering an aptitude for finance, he becomes an early investor in Amazon, Starbucks, and later Microsoft. While never duplicating GNR's success with his later bands Loaded or Velvet Revolver, he stays sober, settles down with his (third) wife and starts a family. He also works on his writing, becoming a columnist for Playboy, ESPN.com and Seattle Weekly.

Unlike other rock memoirs, such as Nikki Sixx's Heroin Diaries or, particularly Adler's Appetite, McKagan doesn't use his past debauchery to boast that he survived. "I didn't have this sh-t figured out -- and still don't -- but for me, especially after my relapse offered another glimpse of failure, the true essence of manhood was now clear: being a caring husband and father."

Sobering stuff -- and it makes for a compelling read.

From Winnipeg Free Press: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/134955343.html

by **Johan** Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:09 pm

I also want to read that one, although not too soon, since I only read Slash's book a couple of months ago.

by **Soulmonster** Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:24 pm

I need to read Slash's again and add quotes about concerts to the concert database. So much work before Appetite for Discussion is complete.... Total Shock

by **Johan** Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:40 pm

You really want to make it the most extensive source of GNR, huh?

It's gotta be a lot of work!

by **Soulmonster** Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:13 pm

It's not that hard to make it the most extensive source, since most other sites are so lacking in content Razz

. Collecting it all in one place it not that much work. But the idea of making a thread for all 640 gigs GN'R has ever done does take a lot of time Doh!

.

by **Soulmonster** Mon Jan 16, 2012 12:17 pm

I just got the book, reading it now. Nothing new so far, but some nice quotes for the databases.

by puddledumpling Wed Jan 18, 2012 2:41 am

Duff makes a point to lay credit and thanks on individuals throughout the book who aren't necessarily celebrities but just regular folks he and GNR interacted with along the way. Having finished it a while back and digested it a bit I get the feeling that one of Duff's primary motivations to publish as much of this story as he chose to share was a desire acknowledge persons and situations he didn't have the grace to appreciate properly at the time. The last page is sweet too.

by Sponsored content

I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Ain't no business like book business

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs

Re: I have to say I really look forward to Duff's memoirs