How to Be a Man

by Duff McKagan

  Flea gave me a big hug later that afternoon, and so did Chad Smith. You can always count on the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Green Day guys came to my book reading the night before at the House of Blues. Billie Joe and I devised a plan for him to sing whatever was needed . . . if needed.

  We really didn’t know if we were going to play at all, and it wasn’t cemented until we actually rehearsed at 2 a.m. the day of the show. We rehearsed with Steven Adler. Slash and I hadn’t played those songs with him in something like twenty-two years. Would it work? Would we be able to get our mojo back with only fourteen hours before playing in front of an audience of 7,000, not to mention being filmed for an HBO special!?

  We snagged Gilby Clarke and Myles Kennedy to come join us, and both guys killed it.

  Watching the HBO special, I was struck by what an honor it was to have been included in such an epic class of bands and artists. GN’R had opened for the Chili Peppers a few times in LA in the early days. They were king shit on the hill back then. And the Beasties were the hard-core East Coast counterpart to what we were oozing over on the West Coast. I do seem to remember us both being in the same club sometime in 1986, and the rumor of us brawling against each other was rampant throughout the room that night. Ah, testosterone!

  The Faces, by the way, are just in a whole and separate class from the rest of us young(ish) bucks. They are grand. They are class. They are . . . the Faces!

  So, there we all were, bands that made a difference somewhere. I couldn’t have been more proud of the guys I took the stage with that night. Those men composed themselves in light of so much unneeded drama. We had no resentment and showed up to pay homage to the fans who did their part for us.

  Watching the HBO special made me sad—for the very first time, perhaps—that the original GN’R didn’t somehow stay together. It would have been a miracle if we did. Had I known then what I know now, I would have done my part to try to rid that band of the caustic resentments and outside inputs that finally wore us down to a nub of what we once were.

  But at the end of the day, I am so very satisfied about the outcome of that night in Cleveland. It was about the music that GN’R wrote way back when. And the fact that a few of us showed up to reciprocate our appreciation was certainly enough for that particular occasion.

  Opening up for Axl’s band and the Rock Hall induction wasn’t enough to kick-start our friendship again. But as I considered his offer to join his band in South America, I thought: I’m 50, it’s time for peace.

  When I agreed to do the shows, I put my blinders on, blocking from view all of the outside opinions that came cascading my way. I only hoped that Axl and I would find a way to simply shake hands, honor the music we made, and, hopefully, flush away some of the past bad residue. This was an excellent opportunity for all of that, and I knew that I would have at least tried, no matter how it turned out. Trying for something is better that not trying.

  My next step: trying to remember the songs!

  26

  CHAPTER

  LET GO OF RESENTMENTS, VOL. II

  AFTER I AGREED TO PLAY THE SHOWS, I QUICKLY realized that I hadn’t played many of these songs in a long, long time. Axl and I started to communicate, and our initial discourse—via text, naturally—reminded me of the levity that made up about 75 percent of our old relationship: knock-knock jokes. They’re my specialty, really. But I was impressed to discover that Axl had amassed quite a catalogue of his own during our time apart.

  I had to reach deep into my knock-knock war chest to keep up. But then our conversation turned to the songs, the real shit that mattered. It was a bit strange at first, the two of us texting about which GN’R songs we were gonna do. He and I hadn’t had a conversation about a set list in like twenty years. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t even texting!

  “Estranged”? Oh, yeah . . . I love that song. “My Michelle”? Right. In F, I think. Killer! Just killer. “Think About You”? Shit! Old school! Yes! “November Rain”? Epic. The song list went on, through “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child” and, yeah, just about everything. These were the songs that we sweated and bled for back in that magical time, when everything happened so quickly.

  I realized there in my basement room, going through these songs again, just how fucking good we were. I’m not trying to blow smoke or be cute here, I just simply forgot how heavy that music is. It was a bit emotional. With those songs cranking through my ghetto blaster and my bass in my lap, I was transported back to a time when the fellowship and songwriting of that band was in its prime.

  My bass-playing chops are, in most ways, much better and more refined than they were in 1987. I’ve played a lot over the past two decades, so how could it not be a little better, right? But I had to regress a bit and get back into the animalistic musical headspace that GN’R requires. I’m not saying a bass player doesn’t need good chops to play these songs, but it’s more of a full frontal attack, not necessarily a musical style that can be learned. I’ve seen bands cover our songs from time to time, but they always seem to be missing that guttural attack that the five of us original guys had in spades. I dropped my guitar strap a notch and started to let it fly.

  “Rocket Queen”? Okay. I’m in!

  This wasn’t the absolute first time that Axl and I had communicated in all of that time. I had seen and even played with his band back in 2010, and I really listened to the live versions of their new songs from Chinese Democracy when I saw them play those shows with Loaded. It was totally weird to see “your” singer do his thing with a whole new set of musicians, but my gut reaction then was to pull for him. I realized then that all of my work on past resentments had actually paid off when it came to Axl. It was a great personal moment.

  The word “resentment” itself is just a general term. If something happens in your life that you weren’t onboard with or had no control over, have you ever asked yourself what your part in it might have been? Especially once that past event builds up in your head and becomes black and shitty?

  I found some things in my past that I was blaming others for that I could have handled better. I think we have all looked at the bad things that have happened and, through the rear-view mirror of life, decided that it was all someone else’s fault. Of course, when you look back with a bit more thoroughness, you realize that you, too, are in that rear-view mirror and that maybe, just maybe, you had something to do with the things you were pissed off or uneasy about. Resentments start to dwindle and fade, and oftentimes you can see the humor in your folly that is life.

  I learned to deal with the me in my life through my Sensei Benny Urquidez and the brutal self-honesty that is Ukidokan martial arts. Without all of that, I’m not sure just where the hell I’d be now. But that is another story.

  Over the last bunch of years, I’ve become pretty friendly with the guys in Axl’s band. Guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and I jammed together a few times, and he and drummer Frank Ferrer had come to my house in LA for a dinner party a few years earlier. Ron’s wife, Jen, hit it off with Susan pretty well. It would be great to see Dizzy Reed again, and I had just spent the previous summer touring along with Richard Fortus and Dizzy’s other band, the Dead Daisies. Richard Fortus is the father of two girls, like me, and we’ve spent hours discussing the ups and downs of raising young daughters. Guitarist DJ Ashba and I had hung out a couple times, and he plays in a band with one of my best buddies, Nikki Sixx. In short: if you’ve played music for as long as I have, the world gets pretty small and you get to know your contemporaries.

  Even saying all of that, I still felt a bit weird about playing these old songs with a whole new set of people. The intentions were all good, and bassist Tommy Stinson (who I’d be, uh, replacing) was super thankful that I was able to do it. But, still, there is so much history there. How was this going to go down?

  Simply put: it went just fine. All the guys in the band, Axl, and the crew bent over backward to make this thing go as smoothly as possible for me. We had b
and-only rehearsals eight hours a day for five days and got things cruising without any hiccups.

  But I hadn’t yet played a whole real show with Axl, and now in South America, where we had set attendance records in the ’90s, how was this all going to go in front of an ultra-passionate crowd?

  I flew down to Buenos Aires with Susan. The band had already played a handful of shows with Tommy on the tour before he went back to his Replacements commitment. I was announced just a couple days before my first gig with them in Buenos Aires, and the floodgates of speculation and murmurs of a full reunion started to percolate. I kept my head down and just practiced the set in my hotel room. I have a cool little headphone amp that plugs into my bass that I bring out in times like these. There is a direct in for an iPod or whatever so that I can play along to tunes, if necessary, and an out for headphones.

  Susan wanted us to go sightseeing, but with GN’R being so beloved in these regions and people now knowing I was here, simple sightseeing became more interesting. She and I went to dinner one night with a few guys from the crew. The hotel we were staying at had a long walkway out, and there was security out front keeping a few hundred fans from banging on doors. But when Susan and I came out, the kids just went berserk. Okay. Done this drill before. With my sweet wife standing there in her hot-ass dinner dress, there was just no way I could take pictures with everyone. I never want to be rude or come off as some kind of a prick, but, hell, man, I was on a date!

  Susan and I are full-time, all-of-the-time parents. We don’t have some full-time nanny, and hence, when we get to do these little side trips, fancy times like these should be looked at as uninterruptable. I love to wine and dine her, and she likes to get dressed up here and there. Sorry, fans in front of the hotel. I’ll get back to you all tomorrow. It was date time with this hot babe!

  By the time we got to the restaurant, we were met full-on by the paparazzi. Really? Alright, so it was a rather popular place. They probably aren’t here for us, right? Pop pop pop pop. Wrong. We walked into the restaurant fully blinded by the flashes from their cameras. A week earlier back home, I was cleaning up dog poo and trying to talk to my doctor’s office about getting the blood-test results from my checkup for my pneumonia over the phone: “No. My name is Duff, not Doug. D-U-F-F McKagan, with an A-N at the end. No, not Jeff. Duff. Dusty? No, no, no. Duff! D-U-F-F!”

  We had a really pleasant and fun dinner with our friends, and the Argentinian beef we ate was out of this world. So good, in fact, that I actually ate meat, not my usual deal.

  The newspapers came out the next morning, and there we were. And by “we,” I mean to say “they,” as in Susan’s breasts. Sure, our faces were sort of in the photo, too, but only for contrast. It was one of those pictures you see of the celebrities walking somewhere in a hurry with their heads down, because there are a hundred flashes going off in the dark. The headline read “Bras Optional!” Susan was wearing a simple little black dress (the chicks these days call them “LBDs”). In a city where the tango is king, and cleavage and high heels are the standard dress, we were left scratching our heads at the headline. I guess boobs sell papers, even in a place where boobs are already everywhere. Sue’s boobs were a great hit in Buenos Aires apparently, and, personally, I agree. Susan’s boobs are top shelf, and they should be celebrated. Again, I digress.

  We had set up a little practice space in downtown Buenos Aires for us to go through the set one last time before gig day. I, for one, was going to have my shit tight before the rather large moment. The guys in the band had been doing this set for quite some time, and I didn’t want to be the one to fuck anything up when showtime came.

  Through all of this, though, I still hadn’t seen Axl. Richard Fortus and I had become workout partners at the hotel gym. He and his girl, Kat, took Susan and me to a seriously nice dinner show with tango dancing on one of the nights leading up to the concert (at that tango show, I fantasized about secretly taking tango lessons, and then one night taking Susan out and sweeping her off her feet! But I digress . . . again.) Otherwise, it was just me in my room playing my bass: headphones on, iPhone cranked.

  On gig day, I rode down to the venue with a few of the guys. I was as prepared as I could be for the music side of this thing. I was mentally ready, too. Using every bit of my martial arts training to calm myself and have a solid center, I felt prepared for the emotional part of playing songs that I had a part in writing years before and had been there for when we took these songs, as a band, to the rest of the world, city by city, inch by inch, giving my pound of flesh. My blood is in these songs, and, fucking hell, I almost didn’t survive to see it all.

  One of my nephews from Seattle had e-mailed me a couple days before the gig. Years before, he had done a high-school exchange program in Argentina and had remained close friends with a couple of the guys he went to school with. They had offered to fly him to Buenos Aires for the gig if he could get them into the show. It would be a sort of rock-and-roll high school reunion. But my nephew, J.T., wouldn’t be landing until half an hour before the show started. That would give him a scant thirty minutes to navigate customs and get his ass through the heavy Buenos Aires traffic and to the show. I set up parking in the back of the venue for them and full carte blanche to the side of the stage. J.T.’s adventure to get to the show was a nice diversion for me. It gave me something else to think about. And it felt good to know that I’d have another family member there for me when I hit the stage.

  Then it was showtime. I had warmed up on the bass, drunk my energy drink, and stretched, and I started the walk to the stage where I met up with my singer. We nodded and smiled at each other and suddenly everything fell into place. We walked out onto that stage together, and the people lost their minds.

  I saw people crying. I assume it was because they never thought they’d ever see the two of us share a stage again. There were some moments that night when I could feel the intangible energy and spiritual presence that was the force of that original creation of Guns. That extra something popped in and out throughout that set, and it was simply amazing when it was happening. The chemistry of a band is something that just happens, and when that band formed back in 1985, we had found an exceptional chemistry with five guys coming from five completely different backgrounds.

  This is not to say that Axl hadn’t created a really good band himself. It was obvious to me that these guys were top players and have a cool swagger that is all their own. All of us came together so well that night. It was obvious that our rehearsing had paid off.

  But that connection between Axl and me, the ease and grace and blood and that common experience of the extraordinary sonic boom that was the original Guns N’ Roses, hadn’t gone anywhere. In fact, with all of the sober and clean years in my back pocket, it seemed even stronger.

  He and I rode back from the gig together that night with Susan and his manager. I think we were both relieved and happy to have gotten that first gig under our belts. I was tired from all of the brain work involved in mentally preparing for the shows. But we were into this thing now, and we had a day off before our next show in Asuncion, Paraguay.

  I got a lot of e-mails and texts from friends back home that night and the next day. People were so curious to know how the show went. Classic Rock magazine asked if I’d write an article for their great monthly about my experience. I thought it was too fresh at that point to be as observational as I would have liked for a written piece. But it seemed like everyone was totally aware of what was going on down there.

  Susan and I had one more day together. We got our picture taken with some street tango dancers, ate some local fare down in some discreet little marketplace, toured an old naval schooner, and then she was gone. It would just be me and the dudes for the rest of the tour.

  I kind of get off on the unknowns in life these days. I used to be a bit scared about going around those dark corners. For a long while—before I got comfortable with myself—I would stay with the pack for fear of being exposed t
o surprises in life that I might not be comfortable with. I noticed along the way that confident people were the ones always taking chances and leading by example. I wanted some of that confidence. For a while, I didn’t know how to find it.

  Sensei Benny says confidence is knowing you can do something even before you’ve ever tried it.

  Q: Okay, Benny, so can you climb Mt. Everest?

  A: Yes.

  Q: But you’ve never even been to that altitude. And what about the cold and the physical beat down?

  A: I will learn how to deal with the altitude. I will train. And I will learn how to climb. Yes, I can indeed climb Mt. Everest.

  And you know he could, if put to it.

  This is an edict of Ukidokan martial arts that I tell myself every day. Now, in practice, I knew for sure I could not only do this thing with Axl and those guys in the band but I would excel at it. I had already tried it, and now I was getting more confident at every oncoming footfall.

  Before our flight, there was a lobby call for 2 p.m. I waited in that lobby until about 2:30, and when no one showed up, I went to go see what the holdup was all about. Axl had been waiting for me in the car for thirty minutes. I absolutely hate being late. Shit! Sorry, dude. Apparently lobby call in their touring parlance means to meet in the vehicle at the appointed time. “Always waiting on Duff. . . . The story of my life,” Axl mused out loud. Tongue? Check. Cheek? Check. If there was any tension in the air remaining after that first gig, this funny and self-aware comment thoroughly removed what remained.

  (Side note: Guns N’ Roses became known as not being quite, uh, punctual . . . and, well, it was never this author who caused our gig times to be pushed back . . . from what I remember, anyway.)

  We had to fly into Paraguay through an awful rain and lightning storm. The small, powerful jet we were in could fly at very high elevations, so skirting above the storm I looked down at what seemed to be a hellish cauldron of nasty weather. But we weren’t in it, and finally we were past it, and the storm became a mere passing sight.