In Less Than a Decade, DUFF Mckagan Shot
36-43 Duff feature 3/16/04 2:10 PM Page 36 36-43 Duff feature 3/16/04 2:14 PM Page 37 Bulletproof In less than a decade, DUFF McKAGAN shot from strung-out GUNS N’ ROSES megastar to sober bass-groovin’ dude for VELVET REVOLVER. Bass Guitar’s E.E. Bradman gets the rock-solid bass man in his sight. BG 37 36-43 Duff feature 3/16/04 4:25 PM Page 38 36-43 Duff feature 3/16/04 5:22 PM Page 39 “Every good rock band has to . You need that something that moves people.” uff McKagan knows covers-only Spaghetti Incident and the so-so Live Era didn’t measure up to the band’s HAIR FORCE ONE: about missed opportuni- Duff, with Rose and Slash, debut, and by 1992 Izzy and Adler had been in his GN’R daze ties. He was, after all, the replaced by Gilby Clarke and Matt Sorum. In founding bassist of the 1993, McKagan released his first solo album, legendary Guns N’ Roses, Believe in Me. Guns eventually crumbled, leaving an uncompleted (and still unreleased) whose rock-star excesses, album, tentatively titled Chinese Democracy, volatile live shows and incendiary in the balance. albums made them the biggest band in McKagan’s second effort, Beautiful D Disease, was lost to record company politics, the world before they spluttered to a but he stayed busy producing Betty Blow- messy close a decade later. But McKa- torch, playing several instruments with gan—who after a drug-and-alcohol- Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan, and related pancreas explosion 10 years ago handling guitar and bass duties for Iggy Pop, was told by doctors that his next drink Ten Minute Warning, Loaded, the Neurotic Outsiders (with John Taylor of Duran Duran would kill him—also knows a thing or and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols) and the two about second chances.
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