As a member of one of rock’s all-time biggest bands, Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan has crossed paths with countless personal heroes and fellow superstars alike. In 2008, as part of Classic Rock’s regular Ever Met Hendrix? feature in which musicians look back on the great and the good they’re encountered, Duff shared anecdotes about jamming with Iggy Pop, ignoring phone calls from Aerosmith and getting smashed with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It’s still early in LA when Duff McKagan calls. He’s got a pre-tour doctor’s appointment to attend after we’ve finished talking, although it’s just to get the all-clear for the next leg of Velvet Revolver’s ongoing world tour. Since he’s cleaned up he’s been in rude health and his only habit now is a ritualistic dose of martial arts that’s given him the torso of an action hero. Given that Duff wasn’t born until 1964, we were going to skip asking him if he’d ever met Hendrix, but he cuts us off to tell us, surprisingly, that he nearly did…
Jimi Hendrix
I actually came close to meeting Hendrix when I was a kid in Seattle. His family were best friends with my best friend’s family. My friend actually did meet him. He was, like, four at the time, and I think I was five. This was in ’68 or something. Jimi had come back to town to see some of his friends and family, and even though I was five I was cognisant of who Jimi Hendrix was. You have to understand I was the last of eight kids – we were a big family – and there was always music playing in our house, so we were all aware of Hendrix.
Steve Jones
Guns N’ Roses was actually the first band I played bass in. Before that I’d been playing guitar and drums in punk bands in the northwest like the Fastbacks and Ten Minute Warning, and all my licks and stuff were fashioned after Johnny Thunders and Steve Jones. When I first met Jones he had that long, swept-back hair thing going on and the leather pants, you know? But he was still very much Steve Jones. And he recognised where I’d lifted my playing style from straight away. He totally got it. He’s the one of the funniest men I’ve ever met in rock’n’roll, too. And he’s a complete geezer, a complete pervert.
I’d just got sober, this was around ’94, and I was terrified that I couldn’t play without the booze, that it defined me, and that without it I wouldn’t be able to do my thing. Matt Sorum [ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer] called me up and asked me to come and play with him and Steve. He told me Steve’s sober. Matt said they were going to play this Monday night residency thing at the Viper Room in LA. So we ended up playing covers there once a week. There was no pressure; it was exactly what I needed at the time.
That was how the Neurotic Outsiders got started, from those Monday nights at the Viper Room. That’s how a lot of bands do it traditionally, if you think about it: work up some covers and then start bringing in original material. Of course with us, people like Iggy Pop and Brian Setzer started getting up to sing. It was insane. I remember Sporty Spice getting up to do the Pistols’ God Save The Queen and she nailed it. Simon Le Bon [Duran Duran] got up once and did a few Damned covers – he was great, too. He sounded just like Dave Vanian doing it.
Iggy Pop
I had this really vivid dream when I was 13. In that dream I was Iggy Pop, and I was on stage and being full-on punk, you know. I was singing and rolling about on glass and cutting myself and jumping into the audience, all that shit. And it was so real – I was him. I still think about that dream even now.
I think it must have been ’90 when I first spoke to Iggy. I finally had my own house by then. The phone rang, I answered it and there was this really deep, distinctive voice at the other end. I immediately knew it was Iggy and not someone jerking me about. I completely freaked out. I remember just standing there holding the phone and sounding like a complete goof as he tried to have a conversation with me. Then he asked if I would play on the Brick By Brick album – and that’s the biggest honour I could have got right there.
Eventually I end up becoming friends with him. Honestly, it still amazes me every day. I was asked to present The Stooges with one of these lifetime achievement awards. I’d written this whole thing that I wanted to say, and Iggy just jumped up out of the audience and hugged me. It just blew my mind. He’s such an icon to me, so things like that stay with you.
Talking about icons, I remember seeing The Clash at the Paramount in Seattle in ’79. There were, like, 200 people in this club, and I was 14. It just blew my mind. It changed the way I look at live music; it still affects the way I think about a band when I’m watching someone live now. When Guns first came over to London for the Marquee gigs it was the first time we’d been anywhere outside of LA. But we got into London and the audience at the gig were singing our lyrics. I recognised it at the time, how we were part of something, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was in one of those bands now, that once-in-a-lifetime thing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
That guy was awesome. He had Slash and I over to his house after we’d met him when we did You Could Be Mine for Terminator 2. He was drinking with us and we were all really drunk. Then he broke out this Austrian version of Everclear [a potent grain alcohol]. Slash and I could drink anyone under the table, but he was a challenge. And he was smoking and swearing all the time. We met his wife, and she’s a Kennedy, and his kids. We ended up having this afternoon with Arnold, it was the craziest thing. But he’s one of the good guys. I’ve met a lot of actors over the years and he was one of my favourites. He was a lot of fun.
Talking about acting, I actually did appear in an episode of Sliders here, pretty much because Roger Daltrey had been in an episode before that. Also, I hadn’t long been sober and I was getting confident again and doing martial arts and stuff. I thought to myself: “You only live once, do everything.” It’s that kind of mind-state you get into. They cast me as this punk rock vampire character. I sucked. I hated it, but I’m sort of glad I did it.
Andrew Wood (Mother Love Bone)
I’d known Andrew since around ’80, maybe ’81. In Seattle he’d always been around in the scene, and then he started his band Malfunkshun. I’d actually left the city for Los Angeles by the time when Mother Love Bone were breaking through. I loved what he was doing with Malfunkshun though. They’d be opening up for all these hardcore bands and he’d be there just covered in make-up. They were hilarious, just so much fun, while everyone else was so serious about everything. Andrew was always so up, and he would always do the best for you that he could. He was the last guy I thought that heroin would affect. It wasn’t his thing in the early days at all. That was really tragic. That was the thing with all those bands in Seattle in that scene – they were all hilarious, even the so-called ‘dark’ bands like Alice In Chains. They were really funny people.
I remember it was around ’82 when the first wave of heroin came through, and it was really decimating the guys in my band. Everyone in Seattle was fucking high and I just wanted to play music. Then when I was 18 or 19 there weren’t even any gigs left in town. After I left, things started turning around again and bands like Soundgarden were coming up.
I used to work in a restaurant with [Sub Pop founder] Bruce Pavitt and he used to do this music column in The Rocket. He was one of the few guys doing anything significant. He was one of the people who really encouraged me to leave town and take my chances, he was one of the people I could talk to about it. I’m still jealous of bands like Alice In Chains and Soundgarden, because they made it and they got to stay home.
Johnny Thunders
Izzy [Stradlin] was going to take Johnny’s place in the re-formed New York Dolls for some shows, but as soon as he realised they were going to do press around it he didn’t want to do it. One of my old punk bands played support to Thunders at a show in Portland. I was the drummer. And after the gig he wanted to jam, so I got to play with him. I was 17 at the time. And even though being in Guns was great, especially in the early days, when people ask me for the highlights it does come down to stuff like playing with Thunders. We played You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory, Pirate Love, Vietnamese Baby… We were just up on the stage after the gig. He’d stopped the show, went back and got high and then came back out and finished up, even though by then most people had left. He was pretty cool to me, but it wasn’t a great period in his life. I’m sure he wasn’t the greatest guy to be around, but I played with a hero, you know.
Angelic Upstarts
I played with them when they came to Seattle to play. I went to see them; I was a big fan of that Oi! stuff at the time. The drummer at the time was that guy who had played with Roxy Music, Paul Thompson, and they were staying out at this punk house in the city. Someone there mentioned that I could play drums, and so I got to go through their set with them at this place. Then they went down the coast, down through Portland towards California. I’m not sure what happened to their guy, but I got the call to go out and play with them, to finish up the dates. I was 16 and scared. I had a band and a girl, so I turned it down. Later on I’m sure that’s what pushed me to leave town and move to LA – recognising that I turned down that opportunity at the time.
Steven Tyler
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry would call me up to check in on me, to see how I was. And this was how bad things had become: I would sit there listening to the answering machine and wouldn’t pick up the phone to Aerosmith! I wouldn’t call them back. I just used to sit there at home, thinking: “Those guys want to get you sober, stay away from them!” I freak out around guys like that anyway – people who’ve been doing this successfully for a long time. At the Classic Rock awards Jeff Beck came up to me and asked after my mom, as he’d met her three years before, and he was so nice to me. Alice Cooper, Jimmy Page, Lemmy too, they all say hello. And I’ve got this internal voice going: “Calm down, be cool.” But then there’s another part of me that’s, like: “Jeff Beck! Jesus, I remember listening to Wired when I was eight years old.”
Originally published in Classic Rock issue 117, March 2008
