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Music

Duff McKagan Wants You to Be a Man

The former Guns N’ Roses bassist also says smoking crack on a private jet is a bad idea.

Duff McKagan is leaving a meeting in Hollywood when we ring him on the Duff Hotline. Over the last several years, the former Guns N’ Roses bassist and current Velvet Revolver/Loaded/Kings Of Chaos/Walking Papers member has taken up a second career as a writer, penning columns for Playboy.com, the Seattle Weekly, and ESPN.com in a flurry of activity that led up to the release of his best-selling 2011 autobiography, It’s So Easy (and Other Lies). Now he’s back with his second book, How To Be A Man (and Other Illusions), which offers life lessons and hard-won wisdom from the former hard-partying high-school dropout who found sobriety through martial arts, family, and—of all things—sports radio. In it, McKagan dishes priceless advice on traveling, the veracity of Bon Jovi lyrics, and why it’s not a good idea to smoke crack on a private jet. “I was turning 50 as I wrote the book,” he explains, “So I was dealing with a lot of questions like, ‘Where the fuck am I at? Have I learned anything? Am I applying it now?’ A lot of How To Be A Man is me trying to figure out what that even means.”

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Noisey: Why did you decide to write another book after It’s So Easy?
Duff McKagan: I found a whole other art form in writing when I started writing for Playboy in 2008 and then writing for the Seattle Weekly. I started getting into that rhythm of writing weekly columns—at one point I had three deadlines a week—and I really loved it. I could articulate my thoughts much better in the written word than I ever could talking. That’s something I discovered. When you’re a teenager, you tell yourself you’re gonna be a lot of things. A writer was one of those things I told myself I was gonna be. And I’m a book nerd. I read so many great authors, like Erik Larsen and Timothy Egan, who have multiple books, and I aspire to be one of those guys.

In one chapter of How To Be A Man, you list and describe some of your favorite books. One I was pleasantly surprised to see on there was Jack Black’s You Can’t Win. That book is fascinating. His hobo lifestyle of jumping trains and safecracking in the late 1800s and early 1900s seems like a way of life that doesn’t exist anymore.
Oh, you read that? That book is fascinating. When I first started playing punk rock, there was this hobo culture in Seattle—all these punkers would ride the trains. They knew where the tunnels were where you’d have to cover up with a handkerchief so you wouldn’t suffocate. So in my lifetime, that culture was still alive. But I think, like you said, it’s probably dead and gone now.

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Did you ever hop a train and take a quick trip down to Portland just for the hell of it?
I never did. [Laughs] I always got a ride. But I knew who to ask if I had to hop a train. That was still a possibility as a lifestyle. These guys I knew were the real deal. They usually came from broken families or whatever, and it was a totally male society, but it was a brotherhood. They’d share cans of food. I don’t think they had extensive camps like they did in the 19-teens and 20s, but they had hookup points.

You’re doing some book signings in New York soon. Will you read from your book as well?
I’ve done book shows before where I’ve read with a band playing behind me—either songs from my career or, like, the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog”—but it’s all on a pedal steel. So it’s really toned down, but it’s really cool. And it kinda masks the bare reader. I’ve seen some great authors read—there’s a mystique there—but then you see them read and they stumble over words. I might be one of those guys if I just read. But I’m doing a conversation with [former Nirvana bassist] Krist Novoselic at the Neptune in Seattle. He and I wrote together at the Seattle Weekly and became good buddies, so that’ll be a cool one.

How did you decide on the title How To Be A Man? It sounds like a self-help book.
[Laughs] Yeah, yeah. Well, you write, so you know how it goes: Writing for the Weekly, I turn in a column a week. A lot of times I would have a title for the column, but sometimes the brain trust at the Weekly would re-title it without telling me. So I wrote this column called “Man Up”—it wasn’t like rules or anything, just discoveries I’ve made along the way—and they retitled the column “How To Be A Man.” I think maybe they felt it would get more internet hits or whatever. But I basically got a book deal off of that column. They were like, “Can you write a book-length version of this column?” And I said, “I don’t know. But I can certainly try.” [Laughs]

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I actually used my editor from the Seattle Weekly [for the book]. But I probably use an editor in a different way than most people do. To me, he’s like my professor. I’ll start turning in 2000 or 3000-word things, and then he’ll go, “Okay, document two, paragraph three, line four. Can you write about what that felt like?” And he suggested that I put all the lessons I talk about into a story. It was a cool idea. So instead of me just writing, there’s actually a timeline in it.

Continued below…

The book starts off with a funny story about you going to a tanning salon to get a “pre-tan” so you don’t get sunburned down in South America. Within about three or four pages, you casually mention that you used to drink your own vomit to get the alcohol out of it. It goes from very lighthearted to super-dark within the space of a few pages.
[Laughs] Yeah, the truth is always stranger and sometimes darker than fiction. But both of those things really happened. I saw this big tattooed-up dude at the tanning salon and he just gave me this look, you know? At first I thought I got “rockignized”—that’s what I call it—but it was a different kind of look. When I came out, he told me heard me on The Jim Rome Show. He told me he had been strung out on heroin or some kind of opiate, and he’d heard me talking about my experience with that on Jim Rome. The day I was on that show was stunning. I just ended up talking to Jim Rome and telling him all this shit. My last book had just come out, but I went more in detail, you know? [Laughs] And this guy in the tanning salon was telling me how he was listening to Jim Rome when he got sober—which is exactly what I did. I think the moral of that story is that you never know—whether it’s alcohol or drugs or depression—what’s gonna save your ass. It could be some dumb sports radio show. That’s what happened with me and this guy.

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Was the drinking-your-own-vomit incident when you realized you’d hit bottom?
No, that was kinda daily shit for me. [Laughs] That wasn’t my bottom, dude. Those were the kind of things I just thought were kinda normal. But yeah, looking back? Of course it’s fucked up. But when you’re in it, it’s like you just gotta do what you gotta do to get where you wanna go.

You also give some priceless advice about smoking crack on a private jet.
Yeah, just some tips that every fella can use. [Laughs] I guess it’s useful information. I don’t actually know if the smell got into everything, but I assume it probably did.

Another thing I thought was cool and unexpected is that you talk about doing these huge stadium tours with the all-star band Kings Of Chaos and then going right into a van tour and sleeping in cheap motels with your band Walking Papers. I think a lot of people would assume that you’re accustomed to a certain level of comfort and would never go back to that style of touring.
What I realized on those tours that went back-to-back like that is that I’m really in it for the music. I’m not in it for the moist towelette. That was a relief for me, especially having two teenage girls that are just coming into rock ’n’ roll, that I haven’t got too jaded. It really is about the music still. But I’ve also gotta learn to slow the fuck down. I got pneumonia really bad just from touring so hard and writing the book at the same time. Sometimes you learn something about yourself from writing, you know? When I wrote it all out, it was like, “Dude, you’re going too hard. No wonder you got pneumonia.” But when it was happening, I was like, “Fuck, why am I the guy who always gets the goddamn bug?” But no, it was because I was going really fucking hard.

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I love that you have a band called Walking Papers and your daughter Grace’s band is called the Pink Slips. Is that just a coincidence?
[Laughs] Yeah. She got the Pink Slips thing from this New York Dolls cover version, this girl does it with a pink slip on. I think it was a joke for her, but then the name stuck.

You named Grace after the Jeff Buckley album.
That’s correct. She was conceived while listening to that record. Good record to conceive a child to. And now she’s really into the record. She’s at the age now where she’s discovering cool music, and she’s like, “I’m so happy I was named after this record!” It’s an amazing record.

Agreed. But that doesn’t seem like the kind of story you wanna hear from your dad.
[Laughs] I probably left out the conception part. She’s figured it out by now, though. She’s a bright kid.

You’re tight with Mark Lanegan, who’s been consistently making some of the best music of the last 25-plus years. How did you guys meet?
Mark is just one of those guys, I write about him whenever I can. He’s one of the best artists walking this planet, and a lot of people don’t know about him. He’s an American treasure, if you ask me. I wasn’t really aware of the Screaming Trees when they were happening because ’91 through ’94 were kinda my dark years. I pretty much wasn’t cognizant of anything except whatever gig I had to do that night. When I was just getting clear of that stuff, Mark was just getting clear of some of his stuff, and somebody thought it would be a great idea for us to meet. So that’s how we met—just a couple of guys trying to hang on and figure out life without all the other shit we were relying upon. And we became friends. He was at my wedding 18 years ago. He actually put up a fence in our backyard, which is on a lake in Seattle. He had a nightmare so he called and asked me if he could have a fence put up so Grace wouldn’t go in the lake. I just said, “Thank you.” He’s that kind of guy. What’s funny is that Grace just “discovered him” quote-unquote. She goes, “Dad, do you know who Mark Lanegan is?” And I’m like, “Babe, you know who Mark Lanegan is. It’s Uncle Mark.” She says, “That’s not the same one!” [Laughs] She has a lot of uncles like that, like Uncle Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols. “You never told me it was Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols!”

To switch gears completely, can we talk about the influence of Cameo’s Word Up! on Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction? You mention it in the book, so I figure it’s fair game.
Oh, yeah. I was trying to learn how to become a real bass player at that time, and I loved groups like Sly & The Family Stone and Cameo. The Word Up! record was huge at that time, and it was just so rhythmic. It was probably a drum machine in there, but the way they set it, it’s so far back in the groove. So [former Guns N’ Roses drummer] Steven [Adler] and I would just play along to a cassette of that album. We took Steven’s big kit away from him—he didn’t have his double-kick or rack toms or any cymbals—so all he could rely upon was the groove. We developed a groove together and became a real rhythm section because of that. If you listen to Word Up! and then listen to the songs with more of a groove on Appetite—like “Rocket Queen”—you’ll see the connection.

Last but not least, you opened yourself up to about 20 more years of Guns N’ Roses reunion questions when you joined Axl and the current band onstage a few times last year. Did you think about that aspect of it after you’d done it—like, “Fuck, now I really do have to answer this question for the rest of my life?"
No, I don’t really think about all that. It’s not like I have to deflect anything because I’m hiding something, because I’m not. I had a good time playing with Axl. It had been a while since I’d spoken to him—too long—so it was a great chance to reconnect not just musically, but as friends. And that’s more important at this juncture in my life than anything else is. You know, I’ve been with my wife for 20 years—a long time. But all of it was after all that shit happened [with Guns N’ Roses]. As close as I am to my wife, there’s no way I can explain to her what happened. The five guys who were in that band, there’s conversations we don’t have to have, because we were there. It was a heavy, amazing experience, and we probably learned the lion’s share of our life lessons in the eight years we were together. So when you get severed from one of those people, there’s something missing. If answering reunion questions is the sacrifice for making a friend back, that’s fine with me.

J. Bennett plays guitar in Ides Of Gemini. He frequently enjoys listening to “Rocket Queen” on repeat.