There are wild scenes in the McKagan household as Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan logs in to a video call for a chat with Classic Rock. Hadley, his puppy, is chewing up the room – which has stunning, peaceful views over a Seattle lake – desperate for someone to throw him a ball. It’s a scene of domestic contentment a million miles from the chaos of GN’R at their most hedonistic, and it’s the perfect backdrop for McKagan as he prepares to tour with songs from his solo albums Tenderness and Lighthouse, which themselves show his softer side.
“The way I wrote these songs is with an acoustic guitar up against my chest,” McKagan says. “I finally learned to listen to that reverberation of the guitar against your chest cavity, and that’ll tell you what to say and what melodies to sing. It just comes to you, guiding you.”
With this in mind, it seems like a good time to channel that inner voice and discover what wisdom he’s learned over the years.
Everything you need to know about rock’n’roll, you can learn from the Rolling Stones
My god, Mick moves like he’s thirty years old. I’m an athlete, I work out every day. You have to be an athlete to do what we do, three-hour shows. You’ve got to be fit and you’ve got to train in really smart ways. Be lighter than you are. And he’s just next-level on that. His posture’s straight and his feet are really light and he sings great. Ronnie and Keith’s guitar sounds are amazing. The band’s really gelling right now. It’s great to see.
Seattle is a city of survivors
The early days here, the punk rock days into what’s called the grunge days, all this heroin came into this area. It was a port city. That’s why I left for Hollywood. I found out going to Hollywood, you couldn’t pull a geographical on heroin, it was there too. But it really did a number on this city. So there’s a lot of survivors that are my friends. And that kind of thing is heavy.
The secret to a happy marriage is putting each other first
I’ve been with Susan [Holmes] twenty-seven years. I think the secret is we really like each other, we really dig each other. But what I’ve discovered in the last ten or fifteen years is she’s got my back no matter what; my best interests are her best interests. And the same the other way around. We trust each other. If one of us wants to make a move on something, it’s for us. It’s not a selfish thing.
Ayone can develop a business brain
I delayed myself in my twenties with the drink and the drugs. And I knew, even during that time, there’s way more to you than getting loaded, and I hated being addicted. But when I came out of that, and met Susan, I’m like, I’m gonna go to college, I’m gonna stop going on the road loaded, and we’re gonna be here for our children.
I went to Seattle University, the business school. You know, business school, there’s no big secret. It’s just there’s terminology and stuff that’s unneeded, and it kind of blocks the average people like me and you. Business school just unlocked all those dumb terms.
I really went to business school for selfish reasons. In my twenties I made money. I didn’t know what money was, I was afraid of it. I didn’t know if it’d last. Like: “How do I do any of this?” So that’s why I went in the first place, and then that kind of ballooned out a little bit to “I’m [an] expert guy in the business”, which I’m really not, but I’m attentive to it. I know how things work.
Addiction can be beaten, you can get sober
If I can do it, anybody can do it. Because I was just really a lost cause, I couldn’t figure out a way out. And I finally did, and once I got out around the corner there was no looking back on that. So there’s hope for you.
Making time for downtime can be tricky
I have to talk myself into chilling. I came up in a family with a work ethic and depression-era values: work hard, never let up. So I’m in the studio right now. I can’t just come to Seattle and do nothing. I stay busy. My wife and I finally went to Hawaii. I did want to put my feet in the sand after that long Guns N’ Roses tour. I brought my guitar, I wrote a lot of lyrics and songs, but I kind of learned how to just play ball with my dog, take him for walks. I was like: “I can actually do this. This is kind of amazing. I don’t feel like I need to do something.” But that’s a first.
Mothers are wise when it comes to world politics
I grew up in an interesting time; two of my brothers were in the Vietnam War when I was a little kid. I would ask my mom: “Why? What’s a war?” She said: “Well, two old guys don’t agree, and they send all the young men to go fight.” And I’ve found no better answer than that, to this day, that is the correct answer. It’s still the old fucking men doing this, for the most part.
I can see bullshit where I see bullshit. And there’s just so much bullshit right now. I get to travel a ton, and what I found is people are mostly polite. Nobody asks you about your politics. I can’t watch CNN over here. In America, the news has become so divisive and Trump-centric. There’s just too much. It’s too much to watch on anybody. Biden or Trump or anybody. These guys are all full of shit.
Punk rock is a great teacher
I borrowed a Stiff Little Fingers record from a friend when I was fourteen or so, and I was playing it on our living room stereo. My mom’s dad came from Cork, so she was connected with what was going on in Ireland at that time, and she heard me playing this record. I didn’t know it was political. I didn’t know what a ‘suspect device’ was, I didn’t know it was a bomb. She heard this and she read the lyrics. She said: “Oh these poor boys. They’re growing up in war in Belfast.” So I learned history through Stiff Little Fingers and my mom. I got to get my worldview education through a lot of punk rock.
Fatherhood is a life-changing experience
It’s an honour to be a father of daughters. It’s a responsibility. When they’re growing up, what they spot in the male species comes from you, you’re gonna inform them. And it becomes pretty apparent early on. I gotta be careful what I say, what I do. My actions around them have been very pure and straightforward, and I gotta think first before I do anything. Which is always good, think first before you do. But it’s just been such a joy raising these girls. It’s super-fun. They’re really great young women. Susan and I are both really very pleased.
Artificial intelligence isn’t much of a threat to rock’n’roll
As far as music goes, for a rock band like Guns N’ Roses it doesn’t apply. I don’t think it could. There’s nothing better than sitting down and writing a song on an acoustic guitar. There’ll never be anything better than that. I see there’s AI art on Instagram on Guns N’ Roses, and some of the stuff’s great, and my skin always looks amazing in it. I’m like: “I like this AI, my hair! That coat! I wish I had that coat!” But in seriousness, I don’t know enough about it. As far as it applies to music, I don’t see it at all.
A sense of style never goes out of fashion
I like good clothes. I like a good cut of a suit jacket. I like a good button-down shirt. It’s got to hang just right. I look at style, and mine probably came from the punk-rock scene, Generation X and Johnny Thunders And The Heartbreakers. Those guys looked so cool. I still just try to look as cool as that.
Life’s too short to hold a grudge
I don’t hold grudges. There’s no time for that. I learned this in my teenage years. I know how I learned it, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I was able to move on from it, because I felt it was really causing tightness in my chest and not letting me be a full person. And when you’re sixteen or seventeen and you learn something like that, it kind of stays.
There’s things I’ve had to work on in my life, like big events that happened to me that left a mark. I’ve done some work about that. There was a waterskiing accident I got into where I almost drowned, that kind of fucked me up a little bit. We all have things like that in our life that we’ve experienced, and that was one of mine. So I did some work later on, but that’s not a grudge, that’s just working on some things that get trapped inside you, and those things can be a bit caustic. I didn’t see a reason to hold on to them.
Pactising martial arts can make you a better person
I do a martial art called Ukidokan. It looks like kickboxing. Being in the ring is just a representation. When you’re sparring with somebody in the ring, and you don’t know who that person is, and you see fear or you see anger, you can see it all. The more years you put into it, you can see the whole person, you know what they’re gonna do.
Outside of that ring, you apply all these lessons to life: relax and breathe, and smile. Smile at your scared opponent and help them. If he’s swinging wildly, chill him out. You’re gonna make him a better fighter if you show him the way, as opposed to knocking him out. There’s two different ways to do that. You can get angry too, and just start swinging wildly as well, or you can calm the situation down. You duck, you block them and you calm them down. You teach them how it’s done. And that’s fighting.
And it really works outside in life. It works in my family, being a dad. I’ll always reference that first, then it helps with your wife and kids and it always helps my friendships, it helps in business. It helps every facet of my life.
Duff McKagan’s solo UK and Europe tour begins on September 30. Tickets are available now. The expanded edition of Lighthouse is out now via UMe.
