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Welcome Back To The Jungle
Duff McKagan
RELOADS WITH VELVET REVOLVER
BY JOHN FERRANTE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNAMARIA DISANTO
the scene: Late
afternoon at a hit-making recording studio
in North Hollywood. Intense energy buzzes
around the building. A guitar player known
as Slash sits inside the green room drinking
coffee. Duff McKagan emerges from Room A
looking balanced and full of positive energy,
having just completed tracking with Velvet
Revolver, a powerhouse band featuring former
members of Guns N’ Roses (Duff, Slash,
and drummer Matt Sorum) and former Stone
Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland - an
explosive combination of talent and history,
and a group of men not without their demons.
One of history’s most
volatile and exciting bands, in the late
‘80s Guns N’ Roses brought it’s
high-energy, sleazy blues riffs and attitude
to a mass audience with huge hits like “Welcome
to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child
o’ Mine.” At a time when metal
hair bands pumped out formulaic commercial
pabulum, GNR provided a shot of honesty
and reckless excitement into the music biz.
Unfortunately for their fans, the band’s
best-known lineup self-destructed shortly
afterward, scattering the members in various
musical directions.
Since departing from the
Roses camp, McKagan has been living in Seattle
with his family, studying finance, and touring
as a vocalist and rhythm guitarist with
the band Loaded. We sat down with Duff to
discuss his new project.
Is your playing different
with Velvet Revolver compared to GNR?
Bass is a very important element of a band;
if done right, it can be awe-inspiring.
With Scott’s complex melodies, I can’t
get in the way, so I am playing simpler.
Not that I’ve ever overplayed in the
first place - I’m not going to dazzle
you with really fast runs - but I might
hold back on runs that I would have done
before with Guns N’ Roses. I play more
back in the pocket with Matt now. The songs
that we’ve written aren’t extremely
difficult to play, but the most important
part about them is that they all have this
deep pocket, the deepest pocket I’ve
ever played in. It’s important for
me to be in the pocket; if I’m not,
then it’s all going to fall apart.
It’s all about the groove, man.
How would you describe
the chemistry you have with Slash and Matt?
It’s intangible. It goes all the way
back to when Guns N’ Roses formed -
there was a different first lineup, with
a different guitar player and a drummer,
and it wasn’t great. As soon as Slash
and [drummer] Steven Adler joined, it clicked.
In the first five minutes we could tell;
there was like electricity in the air. After
Adler, we went through a lot of drummers
but we just weren’t finding that guy
with the connection. We finally saw Matt
playing with the Cult; it was their last
gig on the tour, and Slash and I went down
to check it out. We were blown away. The
three of us just have this special thing
when we play together.
How did Velvet Revolver
come together?
Slash, Matt, and I played at a benefit in
Los Angeles for our friend Randy Castillo.
Josh Todd from Buckcherry got up and sang
with us, as did Steven Tyler from Aerosmith.
It felt good to play with Slash and Matt
again. We had kind of forgotten about the
chemistry we have together.
What
is the Velvet Revolver sound?
Matt is always saying, “We’ve
got to keep it modern,” so he is always
listening to records and coming up with
great drum beats. With him it’s easy
just to find the groove, and then all of
a sudden there’s the song. Then Scott
comes in and sings a melody. He is a master
melody writer; he can write a melody over
a turd. And [guitarist] Dave Kushner adds
a whole other element; he’s got all
these effects. He is a classic rhythm guitarist.
To play with Slash you can’t play like
Slash - you have to play in a whole different
place. [Former GNR rhythm guitarist] Izzy
Stradlin played completely different from
Slash; when Slash was hitting down, Izzy
was hitting up, and it worked. Dave came
in and knew what to do. Whether our sound
is modern or not, it’s our own thing.
It’s us.
How do you write
songs?
It’s really a band process. Nobody
ever brings in a complete song. Slash might
have a riff and he’ll just start playing
it. Maybe we’ll play the exact same
thing, or maybe we’ll turn it upside
down. Or Matt will start a drum beat, or
I’ll bring in a bass thing. It’s
a band process.
Do you have a daily
practice routine?
Hell no. For me, playing bass without drums
or other instruments - just to practice
bass - is so unfulfilling. It doesn’t
make me any better of a player. Instead,
I’ll strum an acoustic guitar at home.
I like my playing to be a little rough around
the edges. I’m not technically the
best bass player in the world, but I grew
up with a musical family, so I know how
to feel - and that’s so much more important
than anything else. I worry that if I get
too good technically, I’ll lose something
in my feel.
Do you stay up to
date on music technology?
We recorded this album to tape, but we used
Pro Tools as well. Matt and Scott are great
at it. I try not to get caught up in Pro
Tools; I’d rather play a song all the
way through than sit there and edit parts
together. We tracked this record as a live
band, and on most of the tunes, we didn’t
use a click track. Sure, some of the tracks
speed up at the end, but they do so for
a reason: because the music and the feeling
are getting more intense. I think the listener
wants to hear that, too.
You’re studying
finance. Do you see a correlation between
math and music?
Yes. Math to me is easy. I didn’t graduate
from high school, so in college I’ve
been taking algebra and business calculus
- lots of math. It just makes sense. It’s
a puzzle, like doing a crossword puzzle.
There is totally a correlation with music,
absolutely.
What is the connection
exactly?
None of us reads music - we never have -
so we have to remember sequences and stuff,
how many verses, where are the choruses,
is your verse going to lead to a pre-chorus?
How many times? Not that we have an equation
for a hit song; we don’t. We’ve
done songs that mathematically don’t
make any sense, but they still make sense.
I don’t know how many formulas I have
in my head and how many songs I remember
how to play - too many - but with music,
you’ve got to put feeling into the
math.
What are your expectations
regarding Velvet Revolver?
We know how high the bar is raised, so we
wouldn’t have done this unless we were
confident. Initially we were hesitant to
say anything officially; we said, “Oh,
we’re just jamming together.”
But once Scott came in and sang the first
song with us, it was like, “Okay, now
we can go ahead and do this.”
Are you looking forward
to getting on the road?
Playing live is what this band is made for.
This is going to be Old School in the way
that we are real players. It’s not
politically correct; it’s going to
be questionable what will happen every night.
Scott is a rational and sane guy, mild-mannered
in everyday life - but when the guy gets
onstage, he is fucking great. Stone Temple
Pilots are a great live band, but the other
guys don’t move; Scott was the mover.
In Velvet Revolver, everybody moves and
there is a lot of energy. Scott, Dave, and
I all do martial arts together, so there
is a whole other intensity level that we
know we each have. Martial arts are pretty
violent and the workout is intense. That
brings a lot to this band.
How so?
If you’ve ever played a sport like
football, sometimes there’s that one
teammate you can count on to knock the shit
out of somebody else. All three of us are
that guy - so we can all count on that guy
being onstage. And for me, going onstage
is almost like going to war. It’s combat.
It sounds like the tour
will be entirely different from the GNR
days.
Absolutely. I don’t remember the Guns
tours. There are literally stamps in my
passport where I’m like Whoa - I went
there? I’ve toured a lot since the
Guns N’ Roses days, since I’ve
been sober, with the Neurotic Outsiders
and Loaded. Touring when you know what’s
going on is a lot more fun. It’s a
lot easier than trying to cop drugs in every
city you are going to.
What do you think
about the current state of music?
I wish I could say there are a lot of new
bands that I absolutely love, but the groups
I love are guys that are my age - bands
like the Foo Fighters and Audioslave. I
really like the new Jane’s Addiction
record. Some great bands have come out in
the last ten years, but they are underground.
I love the Refused, and Queens Of The Stone
Age are a perfect example of a great, dangerous
rock band, especially if you see them in
a small place. They are great players, but
you never know if one of those guys will
jump off the stage and kick your ass - I
love that! I miss that about a band. When
I see the Queens, I am so glad I play rock
& roll. BP
Appetite for Distortion
 Duff
McKagan’s main bass is an inexpensive
mid-‘80s Fender Jazz Special with Seymour
Duncan Hot Stack pickups and Rotosound strings.
“Before we started recording I was
playing a Music Man bass instead, to get
more of a growl,” he says. “It
was great live, but when we made the Velvet
Revolver record I went back to playing my
Fenders.” A longtime devotee of Gallien-Krueger
amps, Duff’s current tone is based
on the classic G-K sound but with a bit
more aggressive rasp and bite. In the studio
and on the road, he’s using a 2001RB
head into two G-K RBH 4x10s, an 800RB head
into a G-K wx15 for distortion (G-K is designing
an 8x10 for touring), and for extra bite,
a Marshall JMP guitar head, THD Hot Plate
power soak, and a Marshall 1x12 guitar cabinet.
“The combination of the Gallien-Krueger
bottom and the Marshall growl is perfect
for me,” says Duff. “I still own
and us the G-K rigs from the Guns N’
Roses days. They’ve never broken down
on me.”
McKagan uses Dunlop Tortex
picks, straps, and straplocks. He sometimes
also goes through an MXR —80 distortion
box, and he used a Z-Vex Woolly Mammoth
on the tune “Set Me Free” from
the Hulk movie soundtrack. “Those
are great pedals. On the road with Velvet
Revolver I’ll probably end up using
some delays and stuff, but not a lot. Mostly
I go for a straightahead sound. I’m
not going to get too trippy.”
Thanks to tech Mike “McBob”
Mayhue for help with McKagan’s gear
details.
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