2004.12.15 - Interview with Duff for Thrasher Magazine [Unedited version]

Interview with Duff

By Patrick O'Dell

Duff: Hey Patrick!

Patrick: Hey what's up!

Duff: Sorry about the mixup earlier.

Patrick: It's all right.

Duff: I was kick boxing.

Patrick: You were kick boxing?

Duff: Yeah, that's what I do everyday, I've been doing it for a long time. I got sober in 94, martial arts always intrigued me, through the whole time I was fucked up, like "maybe that's my answer" like deep down back in there somewhere in the recess of my brain. I got pancreatitis, I was in the hospital.... (he talks for a minute about kick boxing, but I can't hear anything) that's kind of like my AA... .Drinking is the only thing you can die of withdrawals from.

Patrick: I saw you on like one of those entertainment tabloid shows talking about Scott Weiland when he came out of rehab.

Duff: Oh, he was coming out of court.

Patrick: You said you were taking him rock climbing.

Duff: I took him up to the mountains to learn martial arts... he said to me "dude I've been to rehabs and obviously it doesn't work, so whatever you did, can I try it?" So I took him up to this guy in the mountains, 1200 miles away from LA, you know, no way out of there, and he really caught on to it. And so he's doing it now too.

Patrick: Not to brag, but I got a Guns N' Roses tattoo.. did she (the publicist) tell you about that?

Duff: No!

Patrick: I got it on my arm, it's kind of an ultra-fan out. I was always like 'I'm going to get a Guns N' Roses tattoo' so I got the Appetite cross...

Duff: yeah!

Patrick: But I moved Axl off to the side, and I put you in the middle.

Duff: No shit! That's great!

Patrick: My other friend Ryan, got your skull on his arm.

Duff: No way! I've done Thrasher interviews throughout the years, like since the band, fuckin' Guns N' Roses started, since '87.  I was the guy that always did the Thrasher interviews. And even my other band, Neurotic Outsiders, I did a Thrasher interview.  This guy John Stainbrook, he writes for Thrasher in the Midwest, or did.  He has that band Stain.

Patrick: Me and my friends have some lingo, one of my friends claims that used to bend your cigarettes so that the smoke didn't get in your eyes when you were playing bass, is that true?

Duff: I used to what?

Patrick: Bend them, like if you bent it and were playing guitar or whatever, the smoke wouldn't go in your face. That's something that never happened So then for some reason, we'd be like 'we gotta Duff our cigarettes'.

Duff: Ah no!  I don't want to fuck up your myth man... I'd just let the smoke go in my eyes, I didn't really give a fuck.

Patrick: Do you remember saying 'Drum-wise I play a conductor like position.'

Duff: What?

Patrick: It was in the Use Your Illusion videos, never mind...

Duff: You mean as far as the whole band, I was the bass player.

Patrick: I know! That's what we were always wondering about!  It's a video you can go get anywhere...

Duff: I know what your talking about.  It might have been taken out of context. Like for that band I was always the guy that was like "O.K. that fits there, that fits there' Like we all came in with riffs, nobody came in with a whole song, ever.  So we had a riff, and another riff, like a true band.  Like Velvet Revolver is the same thing, nobody is coming in with a whole song. So I was always the guy who would be the bridge keeper, 'let's not let it get out of hand here.'  Slash would always want to do a solo for another four minutes, I'd be like 'no, no.'

Patrick: Would you say that the drinking and drugs are responsible for Guns N Roses dissolving?

Duff: No, it was Axl. Drinking and drugs were a result of really the times, we were that band, we lived on the streets of Hollywood. We drank a lot and did what ever drugs we could find.  And then when Appetite finally kicked and we started to get money, we could afford fuckin' drugs, and it was kinda gnarly. And drug dealers delivered to our house and we found a whole new world.

Patrick: When you recorded the album did you think it would be big?

Duff: I was from punk rock, I played in thirty punk rock bands before Guns, and I was only 19 or 20, when we recorded the record I was 21.  I moved down to LA from Seattle, and I was in every punk rock band up there, and toured opening for Black Flag and the Dead Kennedy's back in the day. You know, I thought if we sold 50,000 copies, the Circle Jerks that's what they sold on their big record back then.  If we sold 50,000 records that be amazing.  And that's what we all thought, you know, because we were not what was going on at the time, we weren't a glam band, and we weren't Milli Vanilli, we weren't Paula Abdul, we weren't New Kids on the Block. We were a real raw fuckin' kinda almost punk rock band, but not because of Axl's high vocals.  We were kind of a throwback to Zeppelin, but not because we were for that time modern.  There was another good band in town, luckily that was off beat also, and that was Jane's Addiction, which was at the same time.  At least a couple kooky records will come out at the same time and maybe it will start an LA revolution.

It always surprises me how raw that record is, the lyrics and everything, for being so popular. I think it took... the kids at the time were so sick of all the shit they were getting, you know, a real kid, like a skater kid or whatever, they don't want to listen to Poison or Warrant... or Milli Vanilli or Michael Jackson, especially back then... skaters were like they are now, they just want to rock.  And they lived the real life, they'd fuck around and fuck chicks and get fucked up. They'd been through broken families, or whatever.  And skating is what they do, skating is their thing, and that's living on the edge.  I think our record identified with a whole lost generation.

Patrick: I'm a lot younger, and I remember having no idea what the songs were about, like 'Nightrain' I pictured like a train, and Mr. Brownstone as like some guy... I was in like the sixth grade, and I was still obsessed with it.  

Duff: Yeah, that's heroin and Nightrain is booze.  

Patrick: Do you have resentments towards how Guns N Roses turned out?  

Duff: How it ended you mean?  I'm not the kind of guy who will sit around and resent something for years.  What happened happened. I look at it as a glass half full.  We did a lot for 5 guys who stuck to this thing we wanted to do.  We didn't change for anybody.  We didn't sell out publishing, somebody wanted to buy our publishing and we were like 'no, these are our songs, fuck you.'  We wouldn't take stupid tours.  We did it our way.  We ended up playing stadiums, multiple nights, sold out.  We went from nothing to quite a lot.  I've been able to live off the publishing alone because the record still sells so many units a year.  Plus the money I made then, I live a comfortable life, I have no regrets.

We had die hard fans. It was such a surreal thing for us to get so big, you'd have to be there.  We couldn't leave hotel rooms in some places, we couldn't go out to have dinner in some cities.  America was the most slack about that, the most cool about it, in New York or LA, you could go someplace, even Des Moines Iowa, people wouldn't freak out too much. In Japan or Europe you'd have police escorts and all that shit...

Axl, in a way, believed his own hype, and now it's his downfall.  You gotta realize when your that big, you're still just a rock n roll band.  Look at the Stones, they've been through it, and they realize, if you talk to Keith he'll say 'we're just a rock n roll band, were not going to change the world...' What I do regret is we let down a huge fan base that was there waiting for a next record, and Axl made us all... we all bailed at one point or another.  We couldn't deal with him.  There wasn't any sort of rationality... it's just too bad.  God, I don't want to come off bad mouthing him, because the guy has a lot of great attributes...

But how it worked before was the band would write all the music and rehearse it all and kind of give it to Axl and he'd write lyrics to it, or Izzy or I would already have lyrics, and he would just come in at the end. Later, he wanted to be the ringleader, and it didn't go anywhere, and I guess it still hasn't. On the recent Video Music Awards, even Jimmy Fallon was like 'I've always wanted to see them' and they kept saying 'them' and it wasn't...

It's kind of embarrassing for us, like a lot of people from middle America still think I'm in the band, and Slash... like 'Oh you guys are all going on a tour,'' you know, when they did that tour last year.  I've been out of the band for seven years.  There's nobody left in the band...

Patrick: It should have been called just Axl Rose.

Duff: Yeah, he should have just done that. Whatever, I have no resentment, I moved back to Seattle had a couple kids, I married a skater chick.

Patrick: I remember when I told Thrasher I wanted to interview Duff, they were like 'his wife was in here...'

Duff: She's like a full on skater, surfer chick from San Diego.  She's hot. We had a couple kids, I went back to school in Seattle, I went to college, and I didn't graduate high school.  So I went to this pretty heavy Jesuit school.  And I had this band Loaded and we'd play shows on weekends just so I could play music still.  My focus was really on school and getting my MBA in finance.  I was really into it and then this thing happened, I got a call from Matt (Sorum), I kept in touch with Matt and Izzy and Slash of course.  Matt called and said 'Randy Castillo died and we're going to play a benefit show because he died broke, to pay for his funeral and stuff... so me you and Slash should play and Steven Tyler will sing," and I thought 'Wow, really?"

So I came down to LA, we rehearsed the day before, we had this set of songs, and as soon as we played together we were like "oh fuck" because we forgot about the chemistry we had.  And we did this show and it was insane, the minute they heard we were playing it was sold out in five minutes.  And the crowd was just out of their minds.  So the next day we decided 'maybe we should just... the time is kind of right to do something again.'

We found this guitar player that was in Wasted Youth and all these great punk rock bands. A really great foil to Slash's guitars, it's hard to be a guitar player next to Slash, it's not something where you can find just any guy.  But we found this guy Dave Kushner, who actually played in my band Loaded. I found him and I said 'Dave would fit perfect in this band' and he did.  And then we found Scott...

Patrick: Were you looking at other singers?

Duff: Yeah, we had people sending in tapes.  A lot of them were really awful.  There were a lot of good singers but maybe too metal.  We wanted to play the rock but we wanted to be contemporary.  We didn't want to be some fucking throwback band.  The minute we gave Scott a riff, we gave him a song and he wrote the lyrics to it and he came in and he sang it, it was like... Stone Temple was done, and he redid it and was 'why don't we make a band, man' and that was that. And this song, we sold it to the Hulk, got a bunch of dough, which was great for everyone in the band like Dave, who didn't have any money, and Matt who was running out of money.  And it paid for our rehearsal joint, like it financed the band basically.  We did the song for The Italian Job 'Money' that gave us enough money to be comfortable and not have to go search for a record deal all that did was make the record companies salivate.  So all these record companies started coming around.  We did this show at the El Ray down here, like a five six song show, we ended it off with Negative Creep by Nirvana, almost in a death metal style, killer you know?

And people freaked out, and all these labels came around and were flying us around to New York and the whole thing, and we started writing the songs, and the songs were starting to crash. And Clive Davis from RCA, he signed everyone from Janis Joplin up to the Foo Fighters and the Strokes and Alicia Keys... he signed Aerosmith back in the day.  The guys been around forever, he's the king, he's the godfather, and he swooped in and made an offer that we basically couldn't refuse.  He's a good guy and he loves the music, he came out to out dirty fuckin' rehearsal space, he sat there and we play really loud, and he sat there and watched us rehearse you know.

The record's done you know.

Patrick: I listened to it, I went down there, to do this interview they made me go listen it.

Duff: Where did you go?

Patrick: RCA in LA.

Duff: You went to the publicist.  Oh, you did the whole deal.

Patrick: It was fun, I went with one of my friends and we sat there and listened to it.

Duff: That's cool, things can get out on the internet so fast, something we never dealt with with Guns N Roses, we'd pass out fuckin' copies of our fuckin' record to our friends, what are they going to bootleg it? I doubt it.  

Patrick: This was like, I sat in this room and they hit play.

Duff: It's cool, it still has guitar solos, but not like... Slash was himself.  It's a real rock record.

Patrick: I went with Erik Ellington who is a pro skater that's Guns N Roses obsessed, he tried to use Reckless Life for his part but couldn't get the rights.

Duff: Ahh, it's hard to get the rights...

Patrick: One guy used a GNR song for his part but when the DVD came out they had his part to another song and it wasn't as good.

Duff: You know, we've had so many offers to put the music out, but I think it would cheapen the record, to put it on everything we've had it offered on. So we just kinda held on to it, you know, we've had some big offers. One day we might pull a Led Zeppelin and sell it to a Cadillac commercial for 7 million bucks, or whatever they got paid.

Patrick: I heard when you got your money from Appetite you invested it in Starbucks...

Duff: ... Ah yeah... man, a lot of people know about that... I got in early. Ah... a lot of people have heard that.  It's been kind.

Patrick: I want to brag one more time about something I did.

Duff: All right.

Patrick: Someone asked me to be in a photo, cause they needed skaters to be in a photo with Stephanie Seymour for Harpers Bazaar.

Duff: Oh nice.

Patrick: It was kind of cheesy, so I was like, 'only if I can wear whatever I want' and they were like 'all right' so I made a shirt that said "Kill Buckethead."

Duff: Oh nice!

Patrick: ...As my new Guns N Roses protest. And it came out in the magazine. It was in a Harpers Bazaar six months ago.  She was like "Who's Buckethead?" and I was like "he's this guy I don't like, he's in this band that used to be really good."

Duff: You didn't say shit huh?

Patrick: I didn't want to bring it up, I thought it would be a bad thing to bring up... but she was like I've heard of that, who is it? What band is he in?" and I was like Guns n Roses... and she hit me with her bag.  But she was like if I was to make that shirt it would have a different member of Guns N Roses name on it.  

Duff: Yeah...

Patrick: Then we ended up talking more about it and she was like "It's not Guns N Roses without Slash" and she was like "I love Duff..."

Duff: That's awesome dude! My girl might have that, she was a fashion model for ten years, she might have that issue.  That's classic dude, I gotta check that out... That's fuckin hilarious, good thinking!  Buckethead is great for like prog rock, he's a pretty amazing guitar player, but kind of a circus you know?

Patrick: I don't know anything about him other than that he's in one of my favorite bands and shouldn't be. That's about it. Can you use the word Later'd in a sentence?

Duff: Later'd?

Patrick: It's my crew's lingo...

Duff: How do you use it?

Patrick: Well, if you don't like somebody you say 'that dude's later'd' or if you're drunk you say 'I'm so later'd'.

Duff: That's a good word.

Patrick: But now you gotta use it for me, just think of something...

Duff: Well the obvious is... yeah... no I won't use the obvious... shit... you're putting me on the spot, dude...

Patrick: But this is so important... we use it for everything...

Duff: I guess you could say the metal group I was in was pretty much later'd... I think this interview is handled.

Patrick: Later'd dude, I'm fucking later'd, I gotta get out of here... I like that. Or with sex... 'I later'd that chick'.

Duff: Oh nice! I threw down and later'd my chick last night.  I had to sneak into my closet dude because of my kids. That was a stealth later'd.

Patrick: I'll let you know when the story comes out...

Duff: We're subscribers to Thrasher so we'll get it.  

Patrick: Thanks for your time...

Duff: All right, So... you know, I'm buddies with Tony Alva, I remember the first time I met him back in the punk rock days I was like "I met Tony Alva, man"  the guy is the nicest guy in the fuckin' world.  He's really a good guy, he's old school.

Patrick: I've seen photos of Izzy skating.

Duff: Oh yeah, Izzy is a good skater... That dudes good at anything he does... we were on the road once, and he had gotten his own bus cause he had gotten sober and we were all fucked up and he had his dog and his chick and he had a trailer in the back with all his toys, like skateboards and motorcross bikes and a Harley.  And he went and entered into the Kentucky State trials, like a motorcycle trial, and won a Kentucky State Championship!

Patrick: Have you played with him in awhile?

Duff: Yeah, we just played this gig down here.  We have this jam band called Camp Freddy, we get all these cool different people to come play, and Izzy actually played with Velvet Revolver for the opening of my wife's swim wear company's fashion show.  And we played at this big fuckin' place, we played two songs, to open up her show.  Izzy played with us, it was great. Izzy is a good guy, my birthday was last week and he drove eleven hours from Baja, to get to this birthday party.  He's just a straight up good dude. And he's a skater.  

Patrick: I remember on this one interview, Axl was talking about skating, but I think he was making shit up.

Duff: Probably. He's not a skater.  He's later'd.



http://www.epiclylaterd.com/duffinterview.html

The edited version of the interview that appeared in the January 2005 issue of Thrasher Magazine (not surprisingly, the parts about Stephanie and Buckethead were edited out):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'M CLAIMING THE MOST EPIC BAND of my lifetime was Guns 'N' Roses. I think most of us can agree on that. But who is the most epic member of GNR? Axl? No way! The dude was epic in '87 but then he went schitzo and ruined the whole program ... and have you seen GNR lately? Just terrible--Buckethead? God no! But Duff and Slash are still out there shredding; they formed up a new band called Velvet Revolver. Recently, I had a chance to see them; I was wary at first of Scott Weiland being the singer, but he won me over. And seeing Duff and Slash on stage made me lose my shit. When they played "It's So Easy," "Used to Love Her," and "Mr Brownstone," it was as close as I'd ever come to seeing GNR again. As for the most epic member of GNR, I'm claiming Duff... Here is my fan-out interview with the most epic dude ever born.--Patrick O'Dell

I got a Guns 'N' Roses tattoo. Did the publicist tell you about that?

No.

It's on my arm; it's kind of an ultra fan-out. I was always like, "I'm going to get a GNR tattoo," so I got the Appetite cross.

Yeah!

But I moved Axl off to the side and I put you in the middle. My friend Ryan got your skull on his arm.

No way! I've done Thrasher interviews throughout the years, like since fucking Guns 'N' Roses started, since '87. I was the guy that always did the Thrasher interviews. And even for my other band, Neurotic Outsiders, I did a Thrasher interview.

Remember saying: "Drum-wise I play a conductor-like position."

What?

It was in the Use Your Illusion videos...never mind.

You mean as far as the whole band? I was the bass player.

I know. That's what we were always wondering about!

... I know what you're talking about. It might have been taken out of context. Like for that band I was always the guy that was like, "OK, that fits there, that fits there." Like we all came in with riffs, nobody came in with a whole song. Ever. So we had a rift and another rift, like a true band. Velvet Revolver is the same thing, nobody is coming in with a whole song. So I was always the guy who would be the bridge keeper, "let's not let it get out of hand here." Slash would always want to do a solo for another four minutes. I'd be like, "No, no."

Are drinking and drugs responsible for Guns 'N' Roses dissolving?

No, it was Axl. Drinking and drugs were a result of the times; we were that band, we lived on the streets of Hollywood. We drank a lot and did whatever drugs we could find. Then when Appetite finally kicked and we started to get money we could afford drugs, and it was gnarly And drug dealers delivered to our house and we found a whole new world. When you recorded the album did you think it would be big?

I was from punk rock. I played in 30 punk rock bands before Guns--and I was only 19 or 20. When we recorded the record I was 21. I moved down to LA from Seattle and I was in every punk rock band up there, and toured opening for Black Flag and the Dead Kennedy's back in the day. You know, I thought if we sold 50,000 copies--the Circle Jerks, that's what they sold on their big record back then. If we sold 50,000 records that'd be amazing. And that's what we all thought, because we were not what was going on at the time. We weren't a glare band, and we weren't Milli Vanilli. We weren't Paula Abdul; we weren't New Kids on the Block. We were a real raw, fucking kind of almost punk rock band, but not, because of Axl's high vocals. We were kind of a throwback to Zeppelin, but not, because we were modem for that time. There was another good band in town, luckily, that was off beat also, and that was Jane's Addiction, which was at the same time. At least a couple kooky records will come out at the same time and maybe it will start an LA revolution.

It always surprises me how raw that record is, the lyrics and everything, for being so popular.

The kids at the time were sick of the shit they were getting. A real kid, like a skater kid, they don't want to listen to Poison or Warrant...or Milli Vanilli or Michael Jackson, especially back then. Skaters were like they are now: they want to rock. They lived the real life. They'd fuck around and fuck chicks and get fucked up. They'd been through broken families or whatever, and skating is what they do. Skating is their thing, and that's living on the edge. Our record identified with a whole lost generation.

Do you have resentments towards how Guns 'N' Roses turned out?

How it ended, you mean? I'm not the kind of guy who will sit around and resent something for years. What happened happened. I look at it as a glass half full. We did a lot for five guys who stuck to this thing we wanted to do. We didn't change for anybody. We didn't sell our publishing. Somebody wanted to buy our publishing and we were like, "No, these are our songs. Fuck you." We wouldn't take stupid tours. We did it our way. We ended up playing stadiums, multiple nights, sold out. We went from nothing to quite a lot. I've been able to live off the publishing alone because the record still sells so many units a year. Plus the money I made then I live a comfortable life. I have no regrets.

We had die-hard fans. It was such a surreal thing for us to get so big; you'd have to be there. We couldn't leave hotel rooms in some places, we couldn't go out to have dinner in some cities. America was the most slack about that, the most cool about it. In New York or LA you could go someplace. Even Des Moines, Iowa people wouldn't freak out too much. In Japan or Europe you'd have police escorts and all that shit. Axl, in a way, believed his own hype and now it's his downfall. You gotta realize when you're that big you're still just a rock and roll band. Look at the Stones. They've been through it and they realize. If you talk to Keith he'll say, "We're just a rock and roll band. We're not going to change the world."

What I do regret is we let down a huge fan base that was there waiting for a next record, and Axl made us all--we all balled at one point or another. We couldn't deal with him. There wasn't any sort of rationality. It's just too bad. God, I don't want to come off bad mouthing him because the guy has a lot of great attributes. But how it worked before was the band would write all the music and rehearse it all, and kind of give it to Axl and he'd write lyrics to it. Or Izzy or I would already have lyrics, and he would just come in at the end. Later he wanted to be the ringleader and it didn't go anywhere. And I guess it still hasn't. Whatever, I have no resentment. I moved back to Seattle, had a couple kids; I married a skater chick.

I remember when I told Thrasher I wanted to interview Duff, they were like, "His wife was in here."

She's a full on skater/suffer chick from San Diego. She's hot. We had a couple kids; I went back to school in Seattle. I went to college, and I didn't graduate high school. So I went to this heavy Jesuit school. I had this band Loaded and we'd play shows on weekends just so I could play music. My focus was on school and getting my MBA in finance. I was really into it and then this thing happened, I got a call from Matt (Sorum). I kept in touch with Matt and Izzy and Slash, of course. Matt called, and said, "Randy Castillo died and we're going to play a benefit show because he died broke, to pay for his funeral and stuff. So me, you and Slash should play and Steven Tyler will sing." And I thought, "Wow, really?" So I came to LA, we rehearsed the day before, we had this set of songs and as soon as we played together we were like, "oh fuck," because we forgot about the chemistry we had. We did this show and it was insane; the minute they heard we were playing it sold out in five minutes. The crowd was out of their minds. The next day we decided, "the time is right to do something again." And then we found Scott. We wanted to play the rock but we wanted to be contemporary. We didn't want to be some throwback band. The minute we gave Scott a tiff, we gave him a song and he wrote the lyrics to it and he came in and he sang it. Stone Temple was done, and he redid it and was like, "why don't we make a band, man." That was that.

I went to RCA in LA to do this interview and they made me listen it.

That's cool. Things can get out on the Internet so fast, something we never dealt with Guns 'N' Roses. We'd pass out fucking copies of our fucking record to our friends. What, are they going to bootleg it? I doubt it.

I went with Erik Ellington, a pro skater into Guns 'N' Roses too. He tried to use "Reckless Life" for his part but couldn't get the rights.

It's hard to get the rights. We've had so many offers to put the music out, but it would cheapen the record to put it on everything we've had it offered on. So we just kind of held on to it; you know, we've had some big offers. One day we might pull a Led Zeppelin and sell it to a Cadillac commercial for seven million bucks or whatever they got paid.

I've seen photos of Izzy skating.

Izzy is a good skater. He's good at anything he does. We were on the road once and he had gotten his own bus, because he had gotten sober and we were all fucked up. He had his dog and his chick, and he had a trailer in the back with all his toys like skateboards and motorcross bikes and a Harley. And he went and entered into the Kentucky State trials, like a motorcycle trial, and won a Kentucky State Championship. Izzy is a good guy. My birthday was last week and he drove 11 hours from Baja to get to this party. He's just a straight-up good dude. And he's a skater. In one interview Axl talked about skating. I think he made shit up.

Probably, he's not a skater. He's later'd.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Duff+McKagan.-a0126312404

When skater bros meet.