2008.11.03 - Music Radar - Duff McKagan Talks Guns N' Roses, Velvet Revolver And More

Duff McKagan talks Guns N' Roses, Velvet Revolver and more

By Joe Bosso

"Velvet Revolver needs the best singer around"

Duff McKagan has spent more than 20 years in the rock 'n' roll fast lane, first as bassist for the legendary Guns N' Roses and now as a member of Velvet Revolver. After all this time, he's still keeping irregular hours.

As proof of this, on the day of his interview with MusicRadar, McKagan rescheduled our conversation three times. But the reason wasn't what you would think: he and his wife, Susan, had to attend a parent-teacher conference (the couple have two daughters, Grace and Mae Marie).

"Going to talk to my little girl's teacher is a far cry from what people probably think I spend my time doing," says McKagan during a pre-interview chat. "But after wasting years trying to kill myself with drugs and alcohol, and coming close to succeeding, real life is a relief. Unfortunately, there's other people who haven't gotten that message."

McKagan could be speaking about anybody, but during our talk he makes it clear that he's speaking about ex-Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland, and he makesno bones about the fact that the real reason for the singer's dismissal from the group was his unrepentant drug use. "The people around him, they don't really care," says McKagan. "They just want to keep him out there. But the thing is, if you really want to change, you've got to do it yourself."

These are busy days for McKagan, who divides his time between Los Angeles and his hometown (and now home base) of Seattle, Washington. In addition to rehearsing with potential replacement singers for Velvet Revolver, he's been touring with his side band Loaded, in which he plays guitar and sings lead. (They'll have a new EP, Wasted Heart, out soon.) He also pens a weekly column for the Seattle Weekly.

The interview

In a frank talk with MusicRadar, McKagan spoke about the Velvet Revolver singer conundrum and about the problems the band had with Scott Weiland. He also talked candidly about his relationship with Axl Rose and his thoughts on Chinese Democracy. And he happily strolled down Guns N' Roses memory lane before answering your questions.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/duff-mckagan-talks-guns-n-roses-velvet-revolver-and-more-179647

Audio and transcription:



Part one - Duff on Velvet Revolver's singer search, early punk days and Weiland's drug use

Joe Bosso: This is Joe Bosso from Music Radar, the place for music makers, and I'm speaking with duff McKagan, bassist for Velvet Revolver, leader of the band Loaded, ex-bassist with Guns N’ Roses, Renaissance man… is there anything else I'm leaving out?

Duff: Yeah, uh, kickboxer.

Bosso: Kickboxer!

Duff: Well, you know, aspiring kickboxer, I suppose.

Bosso:  And writer for the Seattle Weekly.

Duff: That's right (chuckles).

Bosso: You write a very good column, I must say.

Duff: Yeah, I saw something… oh, it was on ESPN. I did a live chat on ESPN last week because of a column I'd written. And at the top ESPN said “rocker/blogger Duff McKagan.”

Bosso: Oh!

Duff: First time I'd ever been referred to as a blogger.

Bosso: A rocker blogger.

Duff: “Rocker/blogger.”  

Bosso: Wow. That's a new term I think they coined.

Duff: Yeah.

Bosso: And just for you.

Duff: Yeah, yeah.

Bosso: I guess we should open up first with Velvet Revolver and your search for a new lead singer. How's things stand right now?

Duff: This is a tough one to really talk about, because we wrote a bunch of great material. Things were going so amazing for us. Even maybe because of the adversity at the end with Scott, the remaining four of us really came together and we were really gelling on stage - you know, even with Scott going to the direction he was going, we really started to gel, probably better than we ever had on stage. And we got off the road, we let Scott go, and we went and wrote a bunch of material, and we thought, really, we'd get a singer right away. We just kind of thought, “It's not going to be tough.” And we've worked with Royston Langdon from Spacehog. We really had high hopes for him, and he is a great singer and a great guy. So he just didn't… it wasn't the right thing for us, alas. You know, about three weeks into it, four weeks into working with him, we really could see that there's just a couple of things that didn't fit, and no fault of his, no fault of ours. So we are back to the drawing boards and there's been a ton of singers.


Bosso: A few people have been bantered about Lenny Kravitz. I mean, were any of the people, other than Royston, that we read about - were any of those realities?

Duff: No, not even close. Lenny was… I mean, I read about it when everybody else did that he was in our band (laughs).

Bosso: (Laughs)

Duff: So that was just really a blatant rumor from start, from who knows where. The fact of the matter is, we don't have a singer. At some point we hope to. I think we've all realized that we don't need to rush this thing. We need the right singer. Our singer’s got to be great, he can't just be good. And we've had a lot of really good singers who send us mp3’s through our management and wherever we get them from - really, really good guys, but not the great guy for our band.

Bosso: I spoke with Matt Sorum over the summer. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of love lost between him and Scott.

Duff: (Laughs).

Bosso: Did you have real personality clashes with Scott? I mean, was he really… was there that much animosity between Scott and the rest of the members?

Duff: Not so much with me. I've just come to realize - and maybe it's because of my age and how long I've been going through this band sort of situation – [that] being in a band is really tough. It is like being married to, you know, four other guys - in our case.

Bosso: Sure.

Duff: There's emotion in it, because you're creating art together and it's probably… I've said this before, it's, you know, the closest you get to… that a heterosexual male will get to another heterosexual emotionally, because you're sharing -nyou're writing songs together and you're playing on stage together; and then you're living together, you're on the road together, you're eating together, you've got to deal with business decisions together. Then, you know, you also have your own… with my case, I have a wife, and two kids, and a home life, and, actually, a whole other life that I've created for myself.

Bosso: Sure.

Duff: And maybe because I have created another life - going back to school, practicing martial arts - I have another band that I created when I moved back to Seattle and kind of, sort of kept together. We would play and I had this basis of other guys that I really loved playing with. And definitely not taking anything away from Velvet Revolver, but when Scott started to go south – [that’s] my point to all of this - I could see that it was irretrievable. I didn't take it personally. I realized at that point that this indeed is life, and not just in rock music. It's just life. Any business you're in, this can happen, and whether it's drugs and alcohol or, you know, somebody at your workplace finds a better job – a part of your team, man, part of your makeup - you gotta move on and adapt. That's all I look at this as.

Boss: Was Scott just pulling away from you guys and wanted to go in another direction? Was he behaving like a diva? You know, if there's any one thing you can point it to, really?

Duff: Oh well, the one thing is drugs.

Bosso: Oh.

Duff: I didn't think that was really a secret. No, it was… You know, diva stuff and all that, I can handle, I get it.  

Bosso: But it's his drug use.

Duff: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Bosso: Obviously you've been down this road personally and with other band mates, and he's been in and out of rehab. Is somebody close to him really trying to sit him down and get him straightened out?

Duff: No. No, he doesn't have that, and that was really… The people around him, they don't really care about that. They want to keep him out there.

Bosso: Because the pictures I've seen of him on stage this summer with Stone Temple Pilots, he didn't look well.

Duff: Yeah, and that's too bad. But Joe, you know, the thing is, if you really want to change whatever situation you're in, you've got to do it yourself. And as you grow up, and become an adult and a man, you really realize that; nobody's going to do it for you. Especially in the music business, managers etc. etc. say they care for you, but, hey man, they're out to make a buck. Sure, they'd probably rather see you sober and more functionable, but they're not going to go the extra mile. I think, myself, I'd gone the extra mile for Scott a couple of times, you know, and I’ve realized now that, if somebody's not going to come back and respond to what you're trying to do, you can't keep trying, or… it’s not with me. I’m a sober guy. It's not good for my sobriety to keep on trying to help somebody and there's no response.

Bosso: At this point, with the lead singers, do you feel like you have to give them a sanity test first?

Duff: (Laughs) Yeah, I mean, I don't really care about the sanity or the vanity. I get the craziness, and a little bit of it is great. You know, you don't want some homogeneous dude. And there’s a lot of homogeneous white rock out there, which I don't think - you know, it doesn't move me at all.

Bosso: Right.

Duff: I like a little craziness, and I grew up playing punk rock, which was - you know, back in the day it was really about pure adrenaline and emotion, and there was a lot of characters in there, and it made it great.

Bosso: Let me talk to you about that, your pre-Guns N’ Roses days, your favorite bass players, your heroes… Who really influenced you as a player?

Duff: Yeah, you would have to really be an early “punkrockophile” to know stuff I did. But it was such a small scene back in ’79, ’80, ‘81 - you know, ‘79 through ‘83 - and all of us knew everybody else. There was little fanzines and there would be compilation records - a band from Seattle, a band from Minneapolis, a band from Dayton, Ohio, a band from L.A. - you know, we would all be on the same record. But I was in a band - I grew up in a musical family, there was instruments around the house. So, by the time I was 6, and 7, and 8, I was pounding on drums to keep in time.

Bosso: Right.

Duff: Because I had to, you know, for family jam sessions or whatever. And I was hearing great music, my older brothers’ and sisters’ music, which was James Gang, Sly and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, whatever.

Bosso: All the classic stuff.

Duff: Great, great stuff. So I understood what time was. My brother - one of my older brothers - showed me a G chord, an A chord and a D chord, alright? And an E chord. Okay, well, my fingers didn't quite fit on there, but I just kept kind of playing and I thought, “Well, guitar is knack.”  And he showed me how to play the Birthday Song, the Beatles song, on the bass. Now I play it all left-handed because he was left-handed, and I actually write left-handed.

Bosso: Okay.

Duff: So there was left-handed guitars at the house. So that's how I started playing and my fingers just really didn't work too well on the strings. Then I started to grow into it, and by the time I was in eighth grade, I started playing with some other guys at school, just jamming. We played Led Zeppelin songs and whatever.

Bosso: And you were playing-

Duff: We played them all wrong.

Bosso: And you were playing bass at this point?

Duff: I was playing bass, I was playing guitar, and I was always playing drums.

Bosso: Oh, okay.

Duff: I didn't really have a direction. I just liked playing all three. Punk rock in Seattle hit… Seattle is a very cultural city. I think punk rock… it was one of the earlier cities, like New York, to get, like, a punk rock record store and a club. So I saw this punk rock guy walking down our street, the street where I lived, this guy with a mohawk - a pink mohawk.

Bosso: (Laughs).

Duff: And I talked to him. I just said, “Wow, dude. So what do you do?  Where do you…,” you know, “what kind of music should I… what record should I get?” and he took me to this record store.  He showed me, like, “Check this out” and “check this out.” He goes, “What do you play?” and I said, “Well, I play everything,” and he goes, “Let's start a band.” So we started a band. It was called the Veins and we put out a single. Our first gig was opening for an early version of Black Flag. It was an amazing first gig for us and we started playing gigs. That was ‘79 and, I guess, I was about 13 or 14, and it was just great. So I was playing bass in that band. The Fastbacks, which were a band that lasted about 25 years, or 20 years, out of Seattle, I was the first drummer. They asked me to play drums, and the first song I learned to play on drums was Baby Blue by Badfinger.

Bosso: Oh, great song.

Duff: Yeah. All of a sudden, “Okay, well, I'm a drummer.”

Bosso: (Laughs).

Duff: They had a drum kit for me, you know, a pretty good pearl drum kit. Then I started playing guitar in another band. So I kind of played… I was playing in three bands at one time, all the time.

Part two - Forming Guns N' Roses, working with Slash, and thoughts on Chinese Democracy

Duff: So now it’s about 1984 and I’m left with a choice. The recession hit the U.S. at that point and it hit the North West, I think, the hardest, because of the Port City and… All the clubs closed down. It was kind of the time to shit or get off the pot for me, and a friend of mine said, “Hey man, you better get out of here. You’re the one guy that has any hope of doing something in music.” And I heard him. I had about $350 in my bank account, I quit my job and I moved down to Hollywood. And that was, you know, when I met Slash and Steven. Then, within a month or a month-and-a half, Izzy moved across the street from me in Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Bosso: Now, when you moved to L.A. and hooked up with them, and you come from a punk rock background - the music that Guns N’ Roses made, while it had some punk elements, it certainly wasn't a punk band. So did you feel that you meshed with these guys pretty well?

Duff: Yeah… Punk rock had been dead since 1982. I'm a punk rock purist, but I didn't just listen to punk rock - you know, I grew up with this really rich musical history. And the thing about punk rock kids and people, they were the hippest on all the new music. You know, when AC/DC was a new band and all, like, the rest of the country thought they were punk rockers (laughs). The punk rockers were like, “Τhis is the greatest band ever.” And Rose Tattoo, and Cheap Trick was always a big band, and Motorhead… as well as the Clash. So, by the time I moved to L.A., I think music - there was a first wave of sort of metal like Quiet Riot down here, those type of things, that was dead, and there was an air of excitement in Hollywood, what's gonna be next. And when the five of us in Guns N’ Roses met and played our first few chords in the same room, we knew that we had something that was different. We didn't have any ambition of being the biggest band in the world, but we knew, musically, that we could make a difference and that's what was really important to us.

Bosso: Let me ask you about your working relationship with Slash. I mean, obviously, you guys have formed a tight bond, personally and musically. How did you guys mesh so well? When you met, did you know that you guys had something that was going to work together?

Duff: We just struck it off well. We were 19 and 20 years old. I gotta be honest. We were just five guys trying to survive. I got along great with Slash, but I got along great with everybody in the band. We were tight, man; we were like a little family. All we had in L.A. was each other, but we just kind of took it day by day, and worked on songwriting and paid attention to every little part in a song, and we wanted the transition from this verse to that chorus to be perfect and not just sort of an afterthought.

Bosso: Obviously it's a hindsight kind of question, but did you have any inkling when you started working with Slash, “Wow, this guy could be a guitar hero,” like, “really this guy has something”?

Duff: Oh, yeah, yeah. He was always good. He was an old soul blues player in a 19-year-old's body, so he was… Yeah, there's certain guys that are just good. (Chuckles) You know, he found the thing that he was supposed to be doing.

Bosso: Right.

Duff: And that was playing six-string guitar. He's naturally gifted at it, he works his ass off at it, you know, and so the combination of those two things… he's the real article.

Bosso: How would you describe your working relationship through the years, as it's changed?

Duff: How as it changed… There's still the old thing. We never talk about music, never have. We don't talk about the song that we're writing, we don't talk in terms of chords like, “Hey man, let's try to go to the 4 chord here,” or any - you know, nothing like that.

Bosso: When Guns N’ Roses was clicking musically, how fast did it click?

Duff: I gotta say Guns N’ Roses always clicked musically, even when the things got out of hand, and the band became super huge and it brought all the other kind of managers, assistants, employees and such and such into it where it became a machine, we still clicked musically. You know, some people might say, “Well, Use Your Illusions was…”  I've heard, you know, people say there's filler on there, or that it was disjointed, or what have you. But I think that just proves - on Use Your Illusions it proves one point, in that none of us would stop another one's idea.

Bosso: Right.

Duff: If you had an idea, we would play it to its fruition. We would see it through and we would back you at.

Bosso: It's interesting you say that, because the perception is - by the time of the Use Your Illusion albums it was that Axl was really calling the shots and driving the band.

Duff: Yeah, I mean, it just really wasn't like that. We were still a band. You know, I think what really changed Illusions more than anything else is that by the time we started recording that and writing for that, I guess, we'd started to see money.

Bosso: Right.

Duff: And none of us had any experience with money or how it affects you. We didn't have… we didn't go to therapists… (laughs).

Bosso: (Laughs).

Duff: …Or, you know, anything like that to kind of sort out what was going on in our lives at the time. We were just… things were happening fast, and we all had our own houses [and] cars, we started having these other lives - girlfriends and it's like, steady girlfriends - and really, you know, we had a lot of hangers on. Through all that, we were able to accomplish all of that writing.

Bosso: Before we get on to some reader questions, one last thing. You know, there's this record coming out soon. You might have heard something about it, people are just starting to talk about it now, and I think it's called Chinese Democracy?

Duff: Yeah?

Bosso: Yeah…

Duff: (Laughs).

Bosso: Have you heard about this?

Duff: Yeah, like… yeah!

Bosso: (Laughs) Well…

Duff: I've heard about it for years.

Bosso: Have you actually heard the record?

Duff: No. I heard a song from Rock Band.

Bosso: Okay.

Duff: I don't know the name of it. I just heard it once-

Bosso: Um, Shackler’s Revenge.

Duff: Yeah. And that's all I've heard.

Bosso: Talk about a record that is just weighted in anticipation. What are your thoughts about this record?

Duff: I mean, I'm glad if it's finally coming out. I'm glad for Axl, that probably that pressure is off him. I'm glad he's able to let the music go. He is a perfectionist, man. There's people that are just perfectionists and they can't let a single note, anybody hear a single note unless it's, you know, perfect. You know, some musicians will play everybody their demo in the band, and then they go with all the mistakes and they don't care, because they know that everybody else has got the vision to hear it.

Bosso: So I think it’s-

Duff: Axl is, you know, a different… he's a different breed. He's just a musician, man, and he's a caring guy. You know, I've always known him to be a good guy and a caring guy, and I'm glad he's able to finally get this thing out. But, beyond that, musically and all that, I don't really have thoughts or… It's not my band. It would be like me having thoughts on the new Tool record, you know, or something. I wouldn't have many thoughts. If it's good, kick butt, I hope I get something out of it, and if it's not, it probably wouldn't even come into my radar.

Bosso: I take it that the two of you don't speak?

Duff: Unfortunately we don't, yeah.

Bosso: Having worked with him back in the day, was there any inkling that it would take him this long to complete an album? I mean, this is quite excessive.

Duff: I mean, there was no inkling to me that the band would really… Well, no, I started having inklings, like, in the Illusions tour that the band was on its demise. I guess I probably didn't have an inkling that anybody would take the name Guns N’ Roses and move on - with the name. That was a little unnerving to me.

Bosso: Right.

Duff: You know, it's a name that I helped create and give wind in the sail of that name. But I've been over that for a good ten years. People would ask me questions about Chinese Democracy starting back in, like, ’99, ‘98 even.

Bosso: (Laughs).

Duff: (Laughs) And I'd say, “I have no idea!” You know, the people asking me the questions probably know more about that record – not probably, I'm sure they do know more about the record or the track listing and who's been on the record…

Bosso: (Laughs).

Duff: I have no idea who's even on the record.

Bosso: So when it finally comes out, are you going to give your free can of Dr Pepper to Slash?

Duff: Oh (laughs). Yeah, I’m really not hip on what's going on with the Dr Pepper thing. I don't get all the good juicy stuff.

Part three - Duff answers your questions

Bosso: We do have some reader questions now.

Duff: Great.

Bosso: A reader by the name of “Lola99” is totally blown away by your band Loaded and she wants to know if you ever see a day where Loaded becomes a full-time project for you.

Duff: Well, it's kind of been… well, I don't know about full time, but we just went out and toured on this EP that we put out.

Bosso: That’s right.

Duff: We put out an EP to sort of say, “Here, it's some songs from this forthcoming record” that we have coming out on Century Media.  We got in somewhere back… we always play every Christmas – we’ve played some sort of charity show up in Seattle. And this last Christmas I was going to, you know, I think Japan and Australia, [and it] just got cancelled because of semantics with the singer of Velvet Revolver.

Bosso: Right.

Duff: We played a gig and we had been writing songs over these years. And after the gig I was like, you know, “We should make a new record. My tour is going to be over in April.” Everybody was into it, “Why not?” And we got into the studio up in Seattle in about June, and it was one of those magical times when all those notes and those parts of songs that you hear in your head happened on tape. Loaded is something we all keep the fun around. I think it's a release valve for all of us in in the band from our lives. So I was like, “Okay, well, hey man, let's go…” – we had a talk, “Let's go tour, let's go play in the UK, we’ve never played in the UK.” “Oh wait, okay, let's get the record out before that.” I’m like, you know, it was, “Now it's July, we can't get the record out in a month and a half” (laughs).

Bosso: Right.

Duff: So we put out this EP with Century Media. We did a deal with them, and they put out the EP, and, well, it sold out. It was amazing. We put out, I think, 7,000 or 10,000 copies, which, in this economy, without any advertising…

Bosso: Oh. No, that's…

Duff: It's pretty killer.

Bosso: That's saying something.

Duff: I was really stunned. So we did this tour, we played Spain, we played Italy, and we played the UK, and we played Ireland. We played just about every night. The places were full, and people were into it, and the band is a really fun band. The thing is, I’m the singer in the band and I've never considered myself… you know, I'm not a trained singer, but I sing from the heart and I think finally after singing this long - for 10 years - as a lead singer, I might be finding my stride and it feels really good. It feels really comfortable. I finally realized this last summer, when Loaded was playing some gigs, after playing all of these years, that I think all of these years I've been trying to convince a crowd that they were good – with whatever band, with Guns N’ Roses or Velvet Revolver or Neurotic Outsiders, or whatever (laughs). I think every musician has that in their back of their head.

Bosso: You're leading me into another reader question, a reader by the name of “Duff fan GnR VR” asks–

Duff: Ah...  

Bosso: Yeah, that’s a long one.

Duff: Yeah.

Bosso: He asks, would you ever consider taking over lead vocals for Velvet Revolver?

Duff: Um, people have suggested that. I don't think my voice is big enough to really compete with Slash and Matt, and even [with] my bass playing. And I think Velvet Revolver is more of a band where you need a singer that's not hindered by a guitar in front of them. You need somebody who's flailing around.

Bosso: The frontman per se.

Duff: A frontman - yeah, a proper singer without a guitar on, or a bass on, or whatever.

Bosso: A reader by the name of “The Dude5” wants to know, do you have any specific warm-up exercises that you do either at home or before a show? And I guess he means on the bass.

Duff: On the bass. Yeah, yeah. I actually started taking bass lessons about a year ago.

Bosso: Really?

Duff: Yeah. Out of nowhere, I really got re-inspired as a bassist, and I was listening to a lot of Duck Dunn…

Bosso: Oh, wow.

Duff: Some of the older stuff, just getting back to the roots of where modern rock came from, Jamerson and Duck Dunn. You know, it all stems from them.

Bosso: Great moving bass parts.

Duff: Great. Brilliant. And, you know, if you listen to them, you then obviously see John Paul Jones, okay, well, he's a Jamerson guy (chuckles). But it kind of all come… modern rock bass playing. I think it's been dumbed down since then, unfortunately. I would encourage any aspiring bass player to listen to any Booker T. & the M.G.'s stuff and definitely Jamie Jamerson, Motown. Go in order, so you understand where it's coming from, because I think that really… and then listen to what McCartney did with it, and listen to what John Paul Jones did with it. Yeah, I was really kind of just studying bass players, and getting really inspired to become better at my craft, and started taking some lessons from Reggie Hamilton here in L.A. It's a session guy, he's amazing, and he really showed me some killer things to do, warm-ups with some great techniques and stuff. So I warm up like I've never warmed up before, I play scales all the way up the neck, I do finger stretching exercises between my… more my index in my middle finger, and my middle finger in my ring finger, so I play ascending and descending scales with just those three fingers, just some sort of like finger twister riffs that I make up that helps your dexterity.

Bosso: Has Slash commented that he's noticed a difference in your playing?

Duff: I think, yeah. Matt and Slash both have been into… I'm playing with my fingers for the first time in my life.

Bosso: Oh, wow!

Duff: Yeah… That's really my bass lessons, what I was trying to accomplish, like, you know get acquainted with playing with my fingers on my right hand.

Bosso: A reader by the name of “Space Kid” wants to know if there's ever going to be a Neurotic Outsiders reunion concert.

Duff: Oh, I hope so. We played three songs at a charity gig here in Hollywood about… two years ago, I guess, two-and-a-half years ago? And it was great. We played three songs and I think we all wish we would have played the whole set. So, one day. I mean, Steve Jones is one of my idols, just guitar idol, and the way that he rolled and wrote songs, and everything. And John Taylor is a great bass player. And, of course, Matt Sorum.

Bosso: A reader by the name of “Mean Venus J” wants to know how… (laughs)… wants to know how he can apply for the lead singer gig in Velvet Revolver.

Duff: That's a good question.

Bosso: (Laughs).

Duff: I think you just contact Rick Canney at Sanctuary management here in L.A.

Bosso: Okay. Well, Duff, it's been great speaking with you. Thank you very much.

Duff: Yeah, it's been great!

Bosso: This is Joe Bosso for Music Radar, the place for music makers, and I've been speaking with Duff McKagan. Again, Duff, thank you very much for spending so much time with me. It's been great.

Duff: It's been great, Joe. Thanks a lot.

Bosso: Thank you very much. Take care now.