1992.06.DD - Hit Parader (Duff)

HP: Your tour is getting great reviews.

Duff:  Well....I mean I read a few reviews, but you gotta take it with a grain of salt. If you’re in a band, you can’t believe all that’s written about you, good or bad.

HP: In your words Duff, what is Guns N’ Roses all about?

Duff: Ya know, it’s that basically rock and roll is meant to be anarchy and that’s what it’s all about. We’re not your normal MW band with perfect hair and all that stuff. And I think people are getting off on that.

HP: Give me an example of anarchy.

Duff: The simple fact that in our set, we play for like two....two and a half hours and it’s never the same. We don’t even know what song we are playing next, ya know.

HP: Wait a minute, you don’t even know what song is next in the set?

Duff: No, Never. It’s like five seconds before we go on we know what song we’re playin’ first....we just all decide at the last second. Ya know, but that’s what rock and roll is all about. It shouldn’t be like....I’m not gonna name any bands or whatever, but you go out and see a band and it’s the same show every night. That’s not rock and roll. That’s a 9-5 job.

HP: You guys have a reputation of being some pretty serious partiers.

Duff: And people expect us to live up to those expectations. Sometimes we aren’t partiers. Put yourself in our shoes... put five, six guys together and put them on the road and they’re not going to be little angels.

HP: I assume you guys gotta have your share of wild parties and groupies.

Duff: You can have it if you want, ya know. But it’s all up to you the individual. How’s that for dodgin’?

HP: I mean is it girls under the bed and in the closet?

Duff: Well... you said that, not me.

HP: You released Use Your Illusion Volume I and II at the same time. That’s pretty unorthodox.

Duff: We did it, number one, because nobody’s done it before. But also, we had so much material built up when we went into the studios, we decided.... “Well we got all this material; let’s record until we’re burnt out”. If we can only do one record, we’ll only do one record. But we never burnt out. We just kept goin’ and it turned out that we recorded over forty tunes. I mean there is another record in the can.

HP: But why release two records at the same time?

Duff: They did come out simultaneously, but they’re two different records. We didn’t do it as a double record because....I don’t know how much a double record is these days, but it’s gotta be like thirty bucks. This way, two friends will be able to go out and like buy one....and one will buy the other....the record company will kill me for sayin’ this...

HP: Yeah, and then they will record it.

Duff: One will buy the other right....yeah. We don’t want to rip off the kids.

HP: We won’t tell Geffen Records about this.

Duff: Right. I’m sure they won’t hear this at all, but you know this way we won’t rip off our fans. If we put out a double record, there could be only one choice....to buy it or starve.

HP: There has been a lot written about Axl. You know him as well as anybody. How would you describe Axl?

Duff: He’s about 5’9”. He’s got red hair....a hundred and forty pounds.

HP: Ha.

Duff: No, he’s a...he’s a good guy. Everybody’s got their own personality, but he’s basically . . . he’s down to earth.

HP: You haven’t done a lot of interviews in the past couple of years.

Duff: No. We’ve pretty much shied away from it. There are reasons for it.

HP: Like?

Duff: There has been things said about us.. .ya know.. .We’ve been there for the interview and like trusted the guy.. .ya know....because we were always good to them. And you think this guy’s cool....give him a beer or whatever and hang out with him and you do the interview. And then this totally slanderous interview comes out two months later. Ya know....like I thought this guy was my friend.

HP: Did you get burned by reporters more than once?

Duff: It happens more than you can imagine....or happened I will say now.

HP: Now at one point, there was a form that an interviewer had to fill out...

Duff : I don’t really wanna get into that.

HP: No really. This form gave the band the right to control the material in the interview later.

Duff: Well that’s yeah....1....yeah. And there still is a form. It’s not as harsh as the old one was. It was so harsh because we had over the years accumulated all this crap on us that wasn’t true. And we got fed up. It was like.. .OK, if you want an interview you got to sign this, and we get to go over everything that’s gonna be printed. And if you don’t print exactly the way you show it, then you get faced with a libel suit.

HP: A libel suit?

Duff: It is totally against our.. .you know....were just five, six guys out playin’ and we don’t want to do that. But then again, you don’t wanna look back when you’re fifty years old and look at these interviews sayin’ garbage.

HP: I didn’t fill out a form before this thing.

Duff: No.

HP: No. So...

Duff: This is live.

HP: Right. This is live, and there is no form, and I didn’t agree to any preconditions on it.

Duff: Which is great. I mean, I can refuse to answer anything, but I mean, you’ve been cool about it. As long as nobody insults us, we’ll follow back with them. And that’s the fact.

HP: So are other interviewers having to fill out contracts like that?

Duff: There’s a different contract now. I don’t wanna talk about this because it’s got nothing to do with rock and roll.