Duff's not loaded nowFriday, 12th September 2008
FROM THE dizzy heights of super stardom with Guns 'n' Roses, Loaded/Velvet revolver bassist Duff McKagan talks about debauchery, getting sober with the Sex Pistols's Steve Jones and why he loves Girls Aloud.
"WE WERE having these AA meetings and we were looking around and going 'wow, we're the guys who lived,' says Loaded bassist Duff McKagan, as he reflects on Velvet Revolver's tour last year, during which grunge band Alice in Chains supported Velvet Revolver (in which McKagan plays alongside fellow Guns 'n' Roses guitarist Slash).
The tour was not one of rock and roll excess. It was a tour in which each band supported each other's sobriety.
"I partied hard with (Alice in Chains] Jerry (Cantrell] and Sean (Kinney], and of course with Slash and by the grace of God or whoever, the four of us are sitting in a room talking about how to stay sober and there was insanity going on right outside the door. We had a lot of fallen comrades. It was pretty heavy," recalls Duff ? looking back to his twenties. "By the time I was twenty one, two of my best friends had passed away ? it really seemed like a war zone, guys were going down left right and centre because of drugs."
Now McKagan's clean, sober and living in his hometown, Seattle, with his wife and two daughters. "I'm taking my daughters camping this week up in the mountains," he says, describing Seattle as "gorgeous and more 'neighbourhoody' than LA. "It's more compact and cultural - people talk about film and music and art, you can go to a coffee shop and talk about some weird thing to do with history."
It's hard to imagine McKagan twenty one years ago. Barely twenty three, he was bassist in Guns 'n' Roses when the band released its monumental Appetite for Destruction. It was during his thirteen-year tenure in Guns 'n' Roses that McKagan learnt the ropes of rock and roll ? some, he reveals later, were darker than others.
But while his current lifestyle is one of sobriety, it's not devoid of rock 'n' roll. This year he embarked on a hectic US tour with Velvet Revolver and is now touring the UK with Loaded, the band in which McKagan expresses his 'other side.'
"With Loaded I can write songs that are a bit more autobiographical ? maybe a bit more tender, while also being dark, maybe, or melancholy. Whereas with Velvet Revlover it's more of a chemistry that is Slash and myself - and it's a chemistry that we've had for over twenty years - you can definitely hear it."
"With Slash I only paint with oil but with Loaded I paint with watercolour. It's just a different way to do it."
But despite the stratospheric success of Guns 'n' Roses (Appetite for Destruction is certified as fifteen-times platinum in the US) and Velvet Revolver, Duff expresses relief that he's never been pressured to write a 'hit.'
"Wouldn't that be a horrible thing? There are people who are really good at it like Britney or Girls Aloud," he says, tailing off the sentence in contemplation, "You know, I'm always fascinated by bands like Girls Aloud. I don't know who writes those songs, it's kind of fascinating but I can't do that."
While McKagan has little faith in his pop writing, he is eloquent about the subjects of Loaded's songs. "Songs depend on my experiences and sometimes my experiences aren't always joyful and happy. For me going out and playing songs is almost like going into the boxing gym and hitting a bag, getting that shit out. At least that's where I dig it up from. I've been asked 'how do you go out and play that song every night?' and I'm like, 'Shit, it's great ? it's like going to the boxing gym."
Among Loaded's songs is Seattle Head, a fast, heavy, punk-fuelled number which relates to McKagan's experience of LA at 19, when he re-located to the city after answering an advertisement for a bassist. "In that lyric I say '19 years of age / I packed my bag when Hollywood was all the rage,' and that song was about me going to LA. It was a pretty broad stroke of a lyric because it covers me being a kid, getting there and being caught up in the whole thing, using drugs again. I quit drugs at 17 but when I went down to LA it all started back up again and before I knew it I was addled with alcoholism and drug abuse and it nearly killed me."
"I got to the point and I crossed the line and the line was 'ahh well, f**k it, I'll live fast and die young.' I didn't care. I look back now and I think 'was I insane?' and I guess I was. You've got to be insane to drink a gallon of vodka and inject as many drugs. But I've never been a dark guy. I was just an alcoholic and I couldn't find my way out."
Despite McKagan's previous addictions his physical appearance defies his age (44). "I think it kind of pickles you. I see guys my age who I went to junior high school with and they look older than me ? and I'm the one who did all the damage to myself. Though I don't suggest you do it."
But Loaded's lyrical territory goes beyond dark tales of debauchery. "There's a song called Misery that I wrote just before my Mum passed away. My Mum was somebody very special ? there were eight of us and she made every single one of us feel like we were the only one. It takes a special kind of woman to have eight kids. My mum should be sainted. With a song like that you treat it gently - you mould it and nurture it."
It was among his eight siblings that McKagan got into music: "There were always instruments around my house, my brothers and sisters were always playing music and there was always great music playing on the stereo like Sly and the Family Stone and Hendrix," he says, citing Prince as his favourite song writer. "The way he puts the melody and the music underneath it it's just like 'where the f**k did that come from?' It's always genius."
While the teenage McKagan played his bass along to Prince, he idolised Iggy Pop and The Sex Pistols' Steve Jones ? whom McKagan would later collaborate with. "I got to be in a band with Steve Jones ? it was the most amazing thing ever. He and Iggy Pop were my two idols when I was growing up. (Jones] was sober and it was right when I got sober, he really helped me out and held my hand through a lot of it. He was a big influence in getting me into music and a big influence in my sobriety. I've led a pretty charmed life so far."
http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/music/Duff39s-not-loaded-now.4484615.jp
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