by Duff McKagan
The beds were impossibly comfortable, and the hotel manager left us fresh fruit and a handwritten note—quite a nice touch. Even a jaded traveler like me appreciates the little things, like the button on the phone to ring “Butler Service,” even if I couldn’t bring myself to try it. The view included what had to be every inch of Mexico City, and I couldn’t help but think that it really couldn’t get more pimpin’ than this.
My ladies are excellent travelers, and you’ll never catch them pulling rookie moves like leaving a belt on through the x-ray machine or forgetting a passport. But I don’t think they realize that if they leave clothes at home, they’ll still be there when they get back. Each of their suitcases for a three-day stay dwarfed my monthlong bag by half.
But I don’t complain. This is part of the fun for them—the bags, choosing what to wear. I mean, which shoes will go with the purse that I think I should bring tonight? If I wear those shoes, should my hair be up or down? If you show skin in one area, don’t show it anywhere else. Do I look hot in this? Is this outfit “indie”? Is this outfit Tumblr-ready? Totally have to take photo! SO cute! “Mom! Don’t put that on Instagram!!!”
I sat, listened, and smiled. My black T-shirt, pants, and boots were on for a good ninety minutes before the girls were ready. I’ve learned to be proactive with this extra time. I applied some man-perfume when it started to lose its potency. I scanned some baseball scores, put a new bed together, and painted the exterior of the house. . . . Well, I could have. If I ever speak at one of those writing workshops where people ask when I write, I’ll simply point to times like these.
We met the rest of this band for dinner in an überfancy restaurant at the St. Regis. The fine-china plates were five deep (I always thought this a waste of clean dishes, but, hell, I grew up in a house of ten and without my baby fingers wrapped around a silver spoon). I do like the elegant stuff and have gotten to know how to handle myself with the classiest. And now I’d be really classy in the company of family and friends.
It’s common knowledge that teenagers have a hard time adjusting to adult company. They think we are all so damn boring. It’s an awkward time for kids this age, and I remember it well. I tell my kids, “Just try to not be too bored,” but even I know it’s a futile suggestion. As parents, all we can do is wait for the teen years to pass.
Our girls picked the best time ever to start coming out of the awkward stage.
Matt talked to Grace and Mae about an animal foundation he volunteers for, and they fully engaged back—even before Susan and I could brace ourselves for their public eye rolling at “those boring adults.” Glenn told stories about hanging with David Bowie in the mid-’70s. Grace was just getting really into Ziggy Stardust and was struck by the relevance of Mr. Glenn Hughes. “You know David Bowie?!” she blurted out, completely enthralled.
Most of the guys have kids of their own and were delighted to have Grace and Mae at the dinner table. My girls do have great manners, and suddenly all of these old dudes seemed really, really cool to them (Note: I didn’t say that Susan or I was cool).
“Thanksgiving dinner” was a highfalutin, five-course affair. Family-style turkey dinner was replaced by posh, small-portion sweet potato puree à l’orange and smoked duck. Like the end of A Christmas Story, we all laughed and had fun in this foreign interpretation of a traditional day. By the time we all went upstairs to go to bed, the girls were actually pretty psyched to see their new friends perform the next night (naturally, the fact that I was also playing was of little interest).
We played the Palacio de los Deportes to 15,000 people. In the middle of the gig, we broke down for a mini acoustic set that featured Steve Stevens playing a mind-numbing flamenco guitar. My girls were off side stage rocking hard when Matt suddenly invited Grace up to sing backup on our take of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” He introduced her as my daughter, and the crowd went crazy. Grace was so taken aback that she cried in happiness for a few minutes afterward. It was a very good night.
Grace had just started writing songs and had performed live twice in front of small audiences. Singing onstage that night inspired her to get serious about starting a band, the Pink Slips. The bug has bitten her. I was thrilled to see her find something she loved. That it’s something I can also speak knowledgably about—and could possibly bring the two of us closer—felt incredible. I couldn’t have been prouder.
Before our family day got started the next morning, we had to circumnavigate a few hundred fans in front of the hotel. They are very passionate in these parts, and I’ve learned that if you just try to talk to them a bit, they’ll be cool and won’t follow you around. I was with my family after all, and family is something they really understand and respect in Mexico.
We had an armed security guard with us, and I told the fans outside, through an interpreter, that I’d happily sign stuff when I came back from our day out. “But I can’t do photos. OK?”
The no-photo thing may seem like an asshole move. If there had only been a few people, I’d have no problem doing photos. But hundreds of pictures would have taken hours: iPhones are turned off, people want reshoots, batteries die, and lens caps are left on. I’ve been through this before, and I wasn’t going to chew up valuable time with my family because someone’s eyes were closed in a photo. Sorry.
Susan always has very specific plans written out when we travel. She is the absolute queen of researching cool stuff for us to do. That girl will record Rick Steves’s travel shows and research the best sights, museums, castles, and churches for us to see in every town. When momma has “the list,” we all know it’s gonna be a busy day. (One time in London, we saw the David Bowie exhibit, Churchill’s War Rooms, AND took a train and toured Windsor Castle, all in one day!)
We set out by foot, and our first stop was a street taco stand she had seen on Anthony Bourdain that’s popular with Mexico City’s business set. We saw swarms of men and women in their business attire gathered around open carts of cooking meat. We got in line with our armed guy, and no one really looked twice at us. I think armed guards are somewhat commonplace in the city.
We ordered up different tacos and sat there in the street gorging ourselves on the local fare. It was all delicious, and it felt good to be eating with the locals.
We continued our walk through a huge park with a statue that meant something about someone to some other people. We looked and nodded as our armed guy tried to explain to us the importance of the place. He forgot that we didn’t speak Spanish, but we could tell that his tone was serious and full of deference, so we nodded along respectfully.
Onward, we plowed through a street of artisans hawking handmade trinkets, dolls, and bootlegged goods. We bought some stuff to take home as gifts and kept walking.
When we got back to the hotel, there were still a couple hundred fans waiting, and I asked them to line up so that I could sign stuff in a somewhat orderly fashion. “Just one photo?” I heard from my right. I tried to explain through the interpreter that if I took one photo with this particular guy, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. The photo-asker nodded in understanding, and then said, “Yes, but one photo please?” This happens a lot.
I’m always appreciative that people are supportive of something that I am part of. I get it. I am a music fan and always have been. I snuck backstage to see the Clash in 1979. I went to the Girlschool in-store signing at Tower Records in Seattle in 1981. If I’d known where Aerosmith was staying on the Rocks tour in 1976, I’m sure I would have tried to hang out there and get an autograph. So, indeed, I get it, and I’m always appreciative and try to act nondickish. So I signed some of the really cool gear while my girls waited for me.
The irony is not lost on me: there are literally hundreds of people who want a picture with me, all standing right there, and Susan and I can’t get our own daughters to do one goofy tourist shot with us.
We spent the evening together at the hotel, ordering in room service and just simply having awesome fami
ly time.
In the morning, I had to leave quite a bit earlier than they did. I always hate this time. I try to be upbeat and nonchalant about leaving them, but it hurts. I’m fine on my own, and I can get a lot of shit done, but for idyllic guys like me who love their wife and kids so much that it hurts—leaving sucks.
In the morning, I kissed my daughters, and hugged and kissed my wife. I told them all that I loved them more than life. They all walked me down the hall. I pressed Lobby in the elevator, and they were gone.
6
CHAPTER
DON’T BE AFRAID TO GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
LAST WEEK I WAS GRUMBLING BECAUSE MY BUSINESS-CLASS seat didn’t recline all the way. Yesterday I was staying at the St. Regis Hotel in Mexico City with my family, playing for tens of thousands of fans who knew the words to every song we played.
Today, I’m in Dusseldorf, Germany. There are no fans clamoring for a picture. No armored guards. No promoter ready to send a chauffeured Cadillac. There isn’t even a hotel room. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby for the van that will be my home for the next three weeks. I’m sick as a dog.
I was bitten by the music bug before I can even remember. Most of my earliest memories involve music. And I can still vividly visualize two dreams I had before the age of ten that had a profound impact on me.
In the first dream, I’m an Iggy Pop–like singer, rolling around the stage in broken glass, oblivious to the pain. I’m all encompassed by the sound of loud guitars and booming drums around me. This performance is in the basement of our church, which would have been the only place I would have seen anything close to live music at that point. I know. Weird.
In the other, I’m in a folk band with all of my brothers and sisters—all eight of us—and we are so badass. In reality, I didn’t even know how to play a G chord, but in this dream I am playing guitar effortlessly. Our family band is huge. I woke up thinking it was all so real. I was so young that it took me half a day to realize that the dream was just a dream.
A lot of my peers who have spent their lives playing music were struck by the same beautiful and damning malaise that never went away. It’s a lifelong malady that will keep some of us churning and writing songs until the day we die.
I never meant for Guns N’ Roses to break up. We were just getting started. But that setback—stepping away from one of the biggest bands in the world—did not stop me from playing music. It was never the fame thing that made me want to play music. It was those dreams I had as a boy. Music had me. I’m a lifer. So I started over. And when you’re starting a band—like any other business—you start from zero and build from there. You start in the van.
My brain was adjusting to the move from the high-energy Kings of Chaos set of music back to the groove of the Walking Papers, so I listened to our record a couple of times while I adjusted to the fact that I’d be wifeless and kidless for the next couple of weeks.
I thought about getting in the hotel gym right then and there to try to shock and sweat this sudden onset of fever and chills out of my bones. But the German gal behind the reception desk barked that the “Gymnasio eez CLOSED!” OK, OK. Take it easy, overaggressive lady. I don’t think she liked the fact that I was just hanging out in the lobby without a room. There was no place to go and absolutely nothing to do. No TV. No newspapers in English. No city nearby. My fever was getting worse by the minute.
One of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked since I left GN’R in 1997 has been, “How does a guy go from Guns N’ Roses to [insert regular life experience here]?”
When I went to college after GN’R, I was asked a million times, “How does a guy go from Guns N’ Roses to a college classroom?” People assumed a lot of things about that band, and yes, we were a big band. But what being in a big band meant to me was that a lot of people liked our music. Period. I was honored that so many fans came to our gigs and bought our records. I loved those songs we wrote, too. But we were just regular guys. And we knew it. My dream of going to college was finally realized in the late ’90s, and I was as stoked about going to Seattle University as I had been about any other high point in my life.
I’ve also been asked, “How does a guy go from Guns N’ Roses to changing a diaper?” It ain’t gonna change itself. “Why is a guy from Guns N’ Roses getting into the ring as a sparring partner for Sugarfoot Cunningham?” He can’t be champion without help from his gym mates. “The guy from Guns N’ Roses has a column for ESPN?” I like sports, too. And, well, I went to college! “Why is the guy from Guns N’ Roses in the emergency room with a broken nose?” Surely you’ve seen the way Pete “Sugarfoot” Cunningham can throw a punch.
So, how can the guy from Guns N’ Roses go from the St. Regis Hotel, playing before tens of thousands of fans, to a van in Germany?
This isn’t my first time trying to break a new band. Some people assume GN’R arrived as a huge rock-and-roll entity. Of course we didn’t. We had to do it just like every other band: broke, starving, and playing small clubs to no one.
Even after GN’R went multiplatinum and started selling out stadiums, I couldn’t just start a new band and expect the same level of success—GN’R was a once-in-a-generation thing.
So, to get back to your question: if you have to ask why I would spend a month in a van touring Europe with a fever, then you’ve obviously never heard the sound of Jeff Angell’s voice.
I was just finishing a tour campaign for the last Loaded record when I got a call from Jeff, asking if I would play bass on a couple songs he’d written with drummer Barrett Martin. I jammed with Barrett a lot back in 1997 and slated him as a guy I wanted to make music with in the future. And dig this: Jeff Angell was the very first guy I thought of back in 2003 as Velvet Revolver started to look for singers before Scott Weiland came into the mix. Jeff is, hands down, one of the best songwriters, lyricists, and singers out there.
Would I play bass on a few songs you guys want to record? Hell yes.
Barrett has his own independent record label, Sunyata, that he uses to release jazz and world music recordings. Jeff and Barrett were going to put this record out on Sunyata and enjoy the process of making good music without the complication and stress of trying to find a major label deal and actually forming a full-tilt band. None of this mattered to me, of course. I was just happy to be playing with two guys I’d admired for years.
There are some posh recording studios left in this world, the kind of places the public envisions recording studios should look like: high ceilings, plush rugs, and a full staff of engineers and assistants at the ready to fetch dinner for the artists. But recorded music doesn’t generate the kind of money that it used to. So artists and bands are ever on the lookout for places they can record for next to nothing. A basement with a few microphones and a Pro Tools setup is increasingly the norm.
When I went to play on those first Walking Papers songs, I noticed that the studio shared a paper-thin wall with a rock-and-roll karaoke bar. The wall was so thin, in fact, that I couldn’t immediately discern what I was trying to hear through the speakers in the studio and what was going on next door. Jeff was on coffee and buzzing around me, excited with a million ideas. Barrett was calmly trying to tell me where the verse and the chorus of the songs met. I couldn’t really hear any of it over the chorus of “Crimson and Clover” coming from next door. I asked what key the song was in and did my best.
I thought the day was going to be a wash and that I would have to come back another time when the locals weren’t shouting “Hollaback Girl” next door. So I was surprised when Jeff sent me a mix of those songs. “You actually used what I played?” Barrett has such a clear drumming groove and Jeff’s guitar riffs are so deliberate and angular that through all of the noise and caffeine-fueled chaos, the chemistry of the three of us forced its way to the top. We added Ben Anderson on keys that week and watched the thing bloom.
Word of the recordings got out in Seattle, and we were offered a set at the Capitol Hill Block Party, a large
and rather prestigious modern-music festival in town. We played the show on the floor of some retail space that was completely packed. Jeff and Barrett are absolute heroes locally, and luckily a few of my friends came to check us out, too. When Barrett put the record out a few weeks later, gig offers from up and down the West Coast and a tour of the UK started coming our way. It all felt so natural and cool that we said yes. We wrote new music at sound checks and became a better band every minute we played together.
After we accepted a choice spot on the touring Uproar Festival, we were approached by the Loud and Proud record label, who wanted to release our record again with a bigger commercial push and broader distribution.
Record deals these days are a different animal than the ones offered back in the mid-’80s or even mid-2000s. Simply put, there just isn’t a lot of money going around in this area.
But Loud and Proud came through for us. They offered money to help us absorb the cost of touring; they ponied up for the cost of making the record; they even agreed to pay for a bunch of marketing and promo. They got us a publicist and a radio person, and all in all just did a pretty superb job at trying to get our record out. All they asked was that we tour our asses off. No problem: it’s what we do.
The band and crew finally showed up at 2 p.m., and I tried very hard not to be pissed off at them for being late. Being mad at your tour manager, band, and crew is not a great way to start a run.
A splitter van is simply that: a van split in half. The back compartment is enclosed and houses all of the gear, and the front section has two rows of seats in the middle (usually with a table), and then the front two seats for the driver and another passenger. Cozy.
As I got into the van and sat down, I noticed that the seat back was too straight up and down. As our tour manager, Jay, drove, I reached for the seat-back lever to recline a bit, but there was no lever. A hot wave of frustration washed over my rising fever as I realized that I was going to spend the next two weeks straight upward, unable to sleep.