2018.05.09 - Amazon Music - Duff McKagan Talks Seattle Music

Transcription:
-----------------

Duff: I don’t really exactly know where to start with my thoughts on why I think the Seattle music scene is special. It’s always been different. I grew up playing in punk rock bands here. My first gig was in ’79. There was a small punk rock scene here, but it was – it opened my eyes to other players, people that taught me how to play guitar, and bass, and drums. And everybody shared ideas, and shared practice places, and shared gear, and shared gigs. And we'd rent union halls here in town and tell them we were having – you know, we'd lie to them that we weren't having a gig there, “Oh god no,” but we would.

And the scene started to grow here, and grow, and, actually, in the early '90s, it blew up here. Sub Pop started here. I had a bird's eye view of Sub Pop starting because I worked at a restaurant with Bruce Pavitt, who started Sub Pop. And he was writing a column for a little newspaper here called The Rocket, called Sub Pop. And he made a cassette, a compilation cassette, and put that out, and that's when we were working together.

A lot of heroin had hit this area in about 1981 or '82. And I was getting at an age, 19, where it was either put up or shut up. There was so much drugs in this town And it permeated our poor little scene. I was at this job as a cook, and Bruce Pavitt was a cook, and I said, “I'm going to go to LA. I think it's my only chance to do something.” I should have stayed here. I would've been in Soundgarden or something maybe. I always think of that (chuckles).

The music here maintained through that huge influx of drugs. And Sub Pop really started discovering and putting the music out of these bands, like TAD, and Mudhoney, and Soundgarden, and Nirvana, etc. I remember being down in LA in the late '80s and just being jealous of, like… because I love Seattle. I never left Seattle because I didn't love Seattle; I left because of my musical health. I had to. I was at the age to do it, and I had to go. And I landed on my feet. We formed Guns N' Roses, you know, months after I moved to LA, so I did okay there.

But as soon as I could, I bought a house back home, back here, in the early '90s, and got to really watch the scene here and meet a lot more new players, a lot of people through Mike McCready and a lot of people through Martin Fevier, who runs a studio here in town. And then getting to know Mark Lanegan from the Trees, and Mark had this really nice solo career going. I got to play on some of his records. And going to Sonics games, me and Kim Thayil. We used to have this - there's this league, it's called the NBA, I think it's called. We used to have a team in that, called the Sonics. They were the best. They're actually undefeated this season, did you notice that? No losses. So Kim and I would go to Sonic games.

But the tight-knit community I talked about - in '79 and '80 and '81 - has never gone away. And when all these bands broke in the early '90s, or late '80s-early '90s, from Seattle, I would tell people down in LA, I'm like, “The scene in Seattle is amazing, and there’s no…” I moved to LA and it was, like, super competitive, and people were trying to thwart your shows, you know, like, steal some gear right before you went on. Or they would put flyers over your flyers. You know, you’d go out flyering all night, and you had the glue, and water, and a bucket, and you’d go flyer the city. And then, the next day, some other band would flyer over you. There was all this sort of diabolicalness to the scene down there. And so I'd tell my bandmates, I'm like, “It's not like this everywhere else, and especially Seattle.” And this camaraderie thing, the shared space, practice space thing still goes on all over town, sharing gear, sharing musical ideas.

You know, and this town has also seen its fair share of struggles and, unfortunately, deaths from drugs. And I don't know whether it was because Seattle was a port city in the early '80s. It still is a port city, but, I mean, maybe drugs came in through here, or came up the back spine of the Cascades from somewhere. But they arrived in this town big time. And I think the scene has really survived that, and I know there's a really astoundingly good, sober backbone to this musical scene here. And I continue, even at my age now - I'm 54. I started playing here when I was 13 and 14. It's really still the same scene and it's very supportive. But you don't need to move here, we've got enough people (laughs).

Transcribed this (short and easy).