Duff On GN'R, VR: 'We Were Torn Apart By People Who Weren?t In The band'

Duff McKagan

May 16, 2011

In Set List, we talk to veteran musicians about some of their most famous songs, learning about their lives and careers in the process, and maybe hearing a good backstage anecdote or two.

?One In A Million? (from 1988?s Lies)

Duff McKagan: I come from a family that?s multi-racial, Slash is half-black, and ?One In A Million,? from where I sat in 1988?and I was convinced of it and still am, and people look at me cross-eyed?to me it was a commentary on America from a third person, and I thought it was the most genius thing ever, and I thought it was pretty bold of Axl to take that stance. We weren?t the huge band we?d become when Lies came out, but people knew who we were, so we knew people were gonna hear this song, but it wasn?t done for the shock value. It was kind of just recorded and done and out, and we were moving on.

David Geffen had us on this AIDS benefit in 1989 or ?90, and it was gonna be at Radio City Music Hall, and we were the headliner for this thing. And the Gay Alliance or Rainbow Coalition or something gave David Geffen so much grief that we were kicked off. And it was really like, ?Are you fuckin? serious?? And that?s when it first started to dawn. I remember taking a flight home to Seattle and there was an empty seat next to me, and the flight attendant sat down, and she was a black woman. She said, ?So, are you in the band Guns N? Roses?? ?Yeah.? ?Are you really a racist?? She wanted to sit down and talk to me and try and turn me from being a racist. She was a nice Seattle chick, and I was a nice Seattle guy, and I just shrank in my seat. I didn?t know what to say.

?November Rain? (from 1991?s Use Your Illusion 1)

Duff McKagan: I think you give [?November Rain?] to Axl. That was his thing. He worked on it for so long, but that?s Axl. It?s a three-chord song, you know? But it took seven years or something, and at some point, you?re kind of like, ?All right, dude, it?s a beautiful three chords.? The guy?s one of the best vocal melody writers ever, I think. By the time we finally recorded that song, it was like, ?Okay, good, we finally got that up and out of the way.? You could tell it was gonna be a big song when we recorded it.

?Sympathy for the Devil? (from 1994?s Interview With The Vampire soundtrack)

AVC: This was the last song recorded by the ?classic? GNR lineup, or at least with the same personnel as Use Your Illusion. What was the atmosphere for these sessions like?

Duff McKagan: It wasn?t good. The huge difference for me was, I was sober, so I was rising, you know? I was really focused on reclaiming my life, and I knew very much that I just survived something. I really gave up. At 29 years old, I told myself ?If I live ?til I?m 30, I?ll be lucky,? and I was cool with it. It wasn?t a morbid thought. I was like, ?Fuck it, live fast, die young.? And I realized at 30 or 31 that I had a chance to become the guy the 14-year-old me had envisioned. So the band was secondary to that goal at that point. It wasn?t the band first and me second, it was me first. So my whole outlook on what was happening in the session didn?t take over my whole fuckin? thing. I saw it for what it was. Paul [Huge], Axl?s friend, the guitar-player guy, really saw an opportunity. I saw opportunities being taken advantage of, I saw management freaking out, I saw Slash in a fucking awful, black, and darkened malaise, and Matt had gotten sober. A lot of people were coming to me, management and the record company. I didn?t get a second to be sober, and [they said], ?Now that you?re sober, you gotta save this thing.? And I really kinda thought I did for the first year or two, because so many people were saying that to me. I started to figure out in my second year of sobriety, ?Oh, I don?t have to do shit.?

?Slither? (from 2004?s Contraband)

AVC: Fast-forward more than 10 years, and you?ve reunited with Slash and Matt in Velvet Revolver. When ?Slither? broke out as a single, did it feel like coming full circle?

Duff McKagan: Commercially, for sure. Again, it?s never been the commercial highs that have also informed my musical high. But that was a good story, in that Scott [Weiland] got sober, we did it as a band, we worked on each other. We knew people were gonna talk about it, [and] we can fall far if we?re not on point with songwriting and wearing our hearts on our sleeves. Talk about transparent?we gotta be transparent as fuck. So when it all kind of worked, and everything went to No. 1 and all that stuff, and people were showing up to see us play?when it goes madly beyond your expectations?you go, ?Fuck, we just wrote some songs. We had good intentions, but we didn?t know it was gonna cause this much of a stir.? So it was satisfying for sure. We weren?t out to conquer how big we were in Guns N? Roses or prove a point. It just felt right.

AVC: Slash has said he?s remained friendly with and supportive of Weiland. How is that situation different from your guys? separation from Axl?

Duff McKagan: Scott?s thing was substance-related, and I?m not throwing him under the bus. It?s pretty well-documented. It wasn?t like, ?You?re a fucking dick.? Scott and I especially went through a lot of stuff in that band together. I went up to the mountains with him in Washington and we did martial arts and did some soul-searching together, just him and me. He didn?t let me down. I?m fine, you know? I still care for him very much, and always will. We?re bros when it comes down to it, and that?s it. We were having a hell of a hard time working together at the end. It wouldn?t come to blows, but it was just difficult when certain elements came back into the picture, but we?re all good.

I never had a personal beef with Axl, truth be told. Lawyers and stuff in that instance, it was kind of treacherous. They make money and try to create enemies between clients. I wish they?d teach that course. If there was a rock ?n? roll textbook, I could add some shit to it, real valuable shit. We were torn apart by people who weren?t in the band, and that?s really what always happens. Same thing, in a way, that happened with Velvet Revolver. When you gotta have managers and agents, you can?t protect everyone from addiction. And it?s addiction, you know? It?s a modern world we live in, with everything at our fingertips, and if it?s not at our fingertips, you can dot-com anything.

Full interview here: http://www.avclub.com/articles/duff-mckagan,56106/