London Calling

REVERB
For Guns N' Roses, London Called Early

By Duff McKagan, Thursday, 11 March 2010

I am in London this week looking at a bunch of unsigned bands for a new venture that I am part of. It is fresh and fun to see some of these bands: startled kids with huge and hopeful eyes that see a world that is theirs for the taking, energetic, unjaded, and full of piss and vinegar. I need to see this now and again to remind me what music should be all about. It also reminds me of the first time I came over here: It was with GN'R in July of '87, a few weeks before Appetite for Destruction came out.

The year before, we had put out the Live Like a Suicide EP. This fast and furious collection of songs sort of just died everywhere else in the world except for the UK. Unbeknownst to us, a cult following of fans was building over here who were chomping at the bit for any news on the band. When Kerrang magazine sent a photographer to Los Angeles to shoot us for the cover, we couldn't actually believe it. We had received press coverage in LA at this point, but KERRANG?! Are you kidding me?

After we finished Appetite and were waiting for its release and tour opportunities, we were approached to go to London and play the famous Marquee club. The only place I had been outside the US was Vancouver, BC, to play punk-rock shows with my various Seattle bands when I was a teenager. This was BIG! Huge! Magnificent!

I think it's assumed these days that GN'R kind of "broke" straight from the get-go after the release of AFD. Truth is, it took us nearly a year of straight touring before anyone paid attention to us in a significant manner--except for the UK.

An odd clash of circumstances occurred in Britain about a year before Live Like a Suicide came out. Back then and before the Internet, the youth over here would sort of latch on to one rock-and-roll band and identify it as their clarion light. That band was Hanoi Rocks, an amazing group of Finns who had relocated to England and were writing some of the best and dirtiest rock songs. When Hanoi finally came to tour America for the first time in 1985, their drummer Razzle died in a car crash while making a booze run with Vince Neil in LA I had just moved to Hollywood, and Slash and I had tickets to that Hanoi gig that never happened. It was an incredibly sad moment not only in rock and roll, but all the way around. Hanoi Rocks never quite recovered.

Flash forward to our gig in the UK, July 1987. After the first Marquee gig sold out in record time, they added a second date. That sold out just as fast, so they added a third. By the time we arrived here (we stayed at a rent-by-the-week apartment because it was much cheaper than a hotel), we were kind of like little mini-celebrities. There were times that people would stop us on the street and they actually knew who we were! It was quite weird, even on a small scale.



I learned to ride the tube everywhere, and it just seemed that there were great gigs every night we were there. Slash and I went out to a suburb one night to see the Replacements, and got so drunk that we lost track where we were. We caught a tube to somewhere that was not anywhere even close to our apartment in Kensington. We got into a drunken fight when we got to the end of the line, and realized that there were no more trains running and that we didn't have anything close to the amount of money to take a cab. Come to think of it, I doubt we even knew the address of where we were staying; we only knew how to get there from our local tube stop. To this day, I am not sure how we ever got back that night. Did we sleep in the train station? Ah, the luck and providence shown to the young and drunken and foolish!

But the real reason we were here, of course, was to fucking rock. I must say that back in that period of the band's career, nobody did it with more purpose, sneer, and reckless bad intent than us. This is not me bragging - it's just that we were hitting on all the right cylinders at the same time. When we walked to the Marquee on that first night, we were met by the crowd that was in line surrounding the block. We were absolutely fucking amazed that all these people came to see us. We hung out there in the street with them before and after those three gigs. We found that we had suddenly become "that" band that the youth of England had been looking for to fill the void left after Hanoi Rocks' tragic demise. Within four years, we would be headlining in stadiums here.

I am here now as a real grown-up, an adult doing very "adult-like" business and meeting with real-life businessmen. I am glad to be taken seriously in these meetings, and for certain feel that I have earned the right to be doing the things that I do outside of just playing music. Coming back to London, though, always puts a smile on my face. That first 10-day stay here as a young man will forever be a brilliant memory that will always keep me from becoming jaded.
REVERB

Duff's Story (Part I)

Part one of Duff's life story, from his Seattle weekly blog.

I packed my bags and cut my ties with my hometown of Seattle in September 1984. The idea of driving to New York in my beat-up 1971 Ford Maverick became moot as soon as I realized that, on a budget of $360, the East Coast was just too far away. I decided Los Angeles was a safer place for me than the heroin-infested punk scene of the Pacific Northwest. I was badly mistaken.



There was really no discernible rock scene there in the fall of '84--only the palpable hangover of a once-thriving punk movement, mixed with "cow-punk" and really bad heavy metal (Metallica had just moved back to S.F.). I met Slash and Steven Adler shortly after my move, through a "musicians wanted" ad I saw in a newspaper. Izzy Stradlin moved into an apartment across the street from me. (We lived on one of the most drug-infested lanes in Hollywood, visited nightly by dealers, hookers, and cops. Stories of this street alone would make a GREAT book.) Axl, a childhood friend of Izzy's, soon moved in around the corner in our cheap-rent neighborhood. We formed our band shortly thereafter, a happy bunch of malcontents!

My new musical comrades and I shared an uncanny similarity in the "fuck-everyone-except-us" approach to writing, playing, and living our music. We sought to do this thing on our own terms and in our own way. This was simply a way of life. At that point in life, you've just got nothing to lose . . . a relatable point to anyone reading, I am sure.



The first gigs we got back then were with bands like Social Distortion, Tex and the Horseheads, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The "glam" scene across town seemed to be a private club that had some mysterious secret handshake. The Troubadour was always packed on weekends. At the time, I think that we were thought of as a little too dirty to get an opening slot on those most-coveted Friday and Saturday night bills. We would have to get there on our own.

Our social circle soon included a group of recently transplanted New Yorkers who moved out West to--I always suspected--escape legal problems. "Red" Ed, Petey, and Del melded nicely into our lifestyle, which included 24-hour alcohol consumption, scoring any available drugs, sundry debauchery, and plenty of Rolling Stones, Motorhead, Sly and the Family Stone, and Rose Tattoo (Sly lived in the apartment right above me, as it turned out, but that's another story). West Arkeen was another co-conspirator who became valuable not only for his friendship but for his songwriting. West co-wrote "It's So Easy," which became a dark anthem for a legion of disenfranchised youth. West died a few short years later from complications stemming from acute crack and heroin use.



In 1985-86, AIDS was definitely something to think about, but not a huge threat yet in the heterosexual psyche. The scene in Hollywood became an orgy of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Perhaps there has been no other time in recent history when the doors were so wide open to EVERYTHING. Needles were shared as well as girlfriends and boyfriends. Everyone seemed to be living in and for the moment, and it seemed as if nothing was off-limits. A real feeling of camaraderie was felt within our band and small group of friends. "Live fast and die young" was our unspoken credo. Sounds corny now.

Our living and rehearsal arrangements became one and the same as we became closer-knit. We found a 10x14 foot bathroom-less space behind the Hollywood Guitar Center that became the center of our musical universe and HQ for all things hedonistic. We raided a nearby construction site for some two-by-fours and plywood that we used to install a ramshackle sleeping loft in our tiny new home. We rehearsed twice daily in this space. For $1.29 a bottle, we could supply ourselves with enough Night Train wine to get us by. Food was always optional in those days.



We slowly began to be a draw at local clubs, and our song craftsmanship really started to get a solid base. We were soon on weekend bills as opening slots gave way to headlining. A&R staff from major labels started to pop up at gigs, and our shows were now selling out. We settled on a record deal with Geffen Records that gave us free rein as far as artistic freedom went. At the end of the day, no one was going to tell us how to make our record. Our songs were by far the most important thing to us.

REVERB

Thanks to Emma [YouTube | deviantART] for the great artwork!

Duff McKagan's Loaded Drummer Quits

via Blabbermouth

Drummer Geoff Reading has left Duff McKagan's Loaded. He says in a statement, "The pressures of being in the 'Duff from Guns N' Roses' spotlight, while thrilling, have left me unable to get back to the performer I was pre-cancer, and unable properly provide for my family. This combination has plagued my mental recovery, and I need to take time now to focus on these things.

The fellas have hired the great Isaac Carpenter (Loudermilk, Gosling, Ours, The Exiles) to fill in for the UK tour, with a warm-up show at the Chop Suey in Seattle on October 3. I wouldn't miss this show for anything. Isaac is an AMAZING drummer and I, for one, will be right there in front of the stage, with all you Capitol Hill hipsters, arms folded, judging them.

Thank you all for the love and support you've shown me and Loaded."

For more information on the new Duff McKagan's Loaded drummer, visit his MySpace page.

GN'R Road Trip Parts I-III

A Lena Boone 'toon.

Loaded's European Tour Starts Tomorrow

Our hero, the white-Seattle-punk-who-became-a-world-famous rock-star, Duff McKagan, just wrote his first piece for the New York Times. Congratulations Duff. NYT also has a Q&A with Duff here. Loaded's European Summer Tour starts tomorrow in Helsinki.