Duff MacKagan

June 19 2011 (Hellfest - Clisson)

It’s because of a late arrival that I finally had the honor to interview Duff “Rose” MacKagan just one hour before his performance at this year’s HELLFEST. I must admit that I was utterly nervous and impressed just to the thought of sharing some time with this guy who was a part of the original line-up of GUNS N ROSES. We spent the time allowed talking about LOADED third album called “The Taking”, following the excellent “Sick”. But even if 20 minutes is the norm for an interview, I would have needed much time for all the questions you’d want to ask to this kind a person, a real Metal icon.Merci à Isabelle Louis et à Roger.

Fab: Hello Duff! How are you doing?
Duff Mc Kagan: I’m Good!

Fab: Happy to be here? Did you heard about the HELLFEST before?
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, good to be here. I’ve heard about it before but never played it. Driving into Clisson is beautiful…

Fab: The medieval stuff?
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, it’s really cool. All of this stuff is great. Isn’t this stuff Roman? These walls, etc…?

Fab: I don’t know, yeah, maybe, but it seems medieval to me (NDC French stuff, Italian inspiration).
Duff Mc Kagan: I got a night out… Like the first night off, cos’ we had ten (gigs) in a row, so we got a night off last night in Paris. My wife came out and… Today’s Father’s Day, and I have two daughters, so, she brought me up my daughter’s cards and stuff. We had a very kinda grown-up evening in Paris last night, no kids, just my wife and I… Very romantic, got a little dirty… you know, yeah. We’re grown-ups without kids so that’s cool (laughter).

Fab: As “The Taking” is darker than “Sick”, can we say that it is a kinda concept album on hatred?
Duff Mc Kagan: Not hatred (thinking), I wouldn’t say that, because it’s too static of an emotion… It’s heartbreak and anger, and then, sort of a…when it gets to like “Indian summer”, sort of looking to the past and like remembering some good times from before. And then, at the end, sort of coming to grasp the whole thing, with yourself and, like “We Win”, so it is sort of this weird emotional concept rollercoaster record.

Fab: Even if “We win” sounds like a sports song, as you played it live for a NFL Game at Seattle…
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, we did (big smile on his face).

Fab: … it is in fact a song about surviving tension within relationships tour experience…
Duff Mc Kagan: Well, you can…the good thing is, I left “We Win” lyrically, Isaac (Carpenter – Drums) and I wrote the lyrics for that…well, I think the whole band did, but my idea was to leave it sort of open, so that the listeners could insert their own thing. Like to me, it’s like, being a punk rock guy, it seems like every band I’ve been in, every situation, I have always been the underdog. GUNS N ROSES was an underdog band, you know, punk rock band back when punk rock was not cool, you got beat up and you get, you know, all that kind of stuff. It’s just about overcoming. Overcoming all those people and the situations that keep you down. That’s a victorious song.

Fab: There’s a “Stoner” side in “Executioner’s Song”(already released in the “Wasted years” E.P. in 2008), is it a direction you’ll follow more in the future?
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, I think so (about the “Stoner” side of “Executioner’s Song”). Well, obviously, we recorded “Wasted Years” with a different producer (ndlr: Martin Feveyear) , and that E.P. was just so limited that, when we were making this new record (“The Taking”) with Terry Date, we decided to release it in a bigger form. And Terry is the perfect…the way he might stuff up… It’s just louder and meaner, you know? So we recorded it, and it sounded like it should be on this record, and I think that’s kinda more like our area. The more we tour, the more we’re together, when you play live, there’s a lot of aggression, testosterone, caffeine… Now, I just don’t really drink or anything, so it’s just pure aggression, which is a really cool drug actually. And be able to write songs while keeping this aggression as a part of us. I feel really blessed.

Fab: I love the song “Indian Summer”, which is my favorite of the album, could share some anecdotes from this song? What’s behind it?
Duff Mc Kagan: I think it’s really about thinking back to that first love, that first heartbreak that probably all of us had when we were about seventeen or eighteen years old. It’s still that first love. I think that all of us have this little piece in our heart still, even if you don’t like to admit it. And this song kinda expose my own side of that thing, but it’s an universal song.

Fab: I personally love the album “Sick”. Do you think that it is an underestimated album?
Duff Mc Kagan: It just didn’t get put out everywhere. I was really disappointed with the distribution, it was awful. But we just went out on tour, we said “fuck it”, it’s kinda like “We Win”, like, “we did a record with you guys (ndlr: Century Media), and you didn’t put it out anywhere where we played!”. I found out they hardly put it out anywhere. How is it supposed to function as a business? I didn’t understand it, especially coming out from VELVET REVOLVER, with RCA, which is a good record label. So, when we signed to Eagle Rock, they knew about “Sick”, and we owned the masters for this album, so they said “we will release it” (ndlr: a new edition + dvd).

Fab: Filmmaker Jamie Burton Chamberlain made a movie based on the album. Could you tell us more about its genesis, how it went, and when is it gonna be released?
Duff Mc Kagan: Almost done, he’s actually out here, wandering around (laughter). They’re actually making a show about our tour manager… I worked with him since 1998, so he has been working with everybody. And they’re making a show about him and his crew. So Jamie’s actually on that show. And the movie, I hope, will be out within the next twelve weeks or so. We’ll see.

Fab: Can’t wait.
Duff Mc Kagan: It’s a comedy, it’s not that serious.

Fab: Is there also gonna be some excerpts from live shows?
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, there will be, but, the film’s a lot about making the record, at this one hundred-years old theater in Seattle. We shot a bunch of… “The Taking” is the soundtrack of the movie. It’s beautifully shot, and funny as fuck (laughter). There’s many funny parts. Hopefully it will all works. We have a pretty good sense of humor.

Fab: Is LOADED be active on a more regular basis? As you released two albums in three years after a 8 years hiatus.
Duff Mc Kagan: It’s a real band, you know. VELVET REVOLVER was something, if it wouldn’t have happened, I’m sure LOADED would have just been putting out records and building our thing. VELVET REVOLVER was something that happened, and it seems that it had, like for me or Slash, to fulfill our… We didn’t mean it to happen, it just happened. So, we followed that path, and that’s a lot about what music is, following the right paths, just following the right paths in front of you. So the path now is LOADED, all the time, you know? There’s no VELVET REVOLVER really…

Fab: So, this is a standby for VELVET REVOLVER?
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, I mean, it’s kinda like, if something is supposed to happen, for that band, it’ll happen, but none of us is actively looking for this…but that’s ok. Now, I’m having the time of my life.

Fab: Do you prefer playing in small clubs, like in Glasgow (Bonus Dvd of the “Sick” edition)? Or in front of larger audience, like you were used to with GUNS N ROSES?
Duff Mc Kagan: Well, that’s what I like about festival season, we played in a little old cinema the other night, and we played you know, Download, we played the main stage, in front of 45000 people. So, we have both, it’s kinda hard to, you know, to adapt. And here today, we’re playing 45 minutes, so it’s like, “ok, which songs…”. It’s a real challenge, it’s a mathematical challenge. We have to figure it out, but we have our sets: 45 minutes-set, 50 minutes-set, one hour, etc… And when headlining, it’s as long as we want to play.

Fab: What’s your favorite song to play live?
Duff Mc Kagan: It always changes, you know. I really like to play “Wrecking ball” live, because it’s a real change in the set. We won’t play it tonight, in the 45 minutes-set. “Indian Summer” is a great song to play live, people like that song, even on the first listening, it’s a very accessible song. “We win” gets very good reaction. I love all of these songs. And I’m happy because I’ve never had so much access to France (ndlr: 4 shows with LOADED) with my other bands. With VELVET REVOLVER, we only played one show, in a small club…

Fab: At the Bataclan…
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, I think you’re right…

Fab: I know you’re gonna release your bio. I read “The Dirt”, “Heroin Diaries”, an unofficial one of Axl Rose… (Duff reacts with a smiling “Yeah” at the mention of this one) .It seems that it was really wild but magical in some way, creatively speaking, in the 80’s and beginning of the 90’s in Hollywood. Which advice can you give to the young musicians? Do you believe in fate? Because GNR wasn’t supposed to exist at first, it was not meant to be.
Duff Mc Kagan: Yeah, I do (about fate). Yeah, yeah, I know (about the beginning of GNR). Our band was especially creative, I think. We bound together and really learned to write songs together. Of course, we were only writing these songs for ourselves, we had nothing else. And because we were playing all the time, we could test out new songs live, into the set-list. Like some where we changed the arrangements, like that part… People don’t fuckin’ respond to that part of that song where we changed…
I think my book’s more… it’s not really, I don’t know if you can compare it to “The Dirt”, it’s not really a Rock’n’Roll… and I did write it myself. So, it’s really a personal, deeper journey through, especially into addiction. How can a guy like me, from this fourteen years-old kid to been twenty-nine, how does that happened? Just by writing, because I write for different papers, it’s a lot of self-discovering, and being bit honest with yourself. I’m supposed to be talking about other people, [but] nobody else asked me to write a book and put them into book, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to talk shit about, I don’t talk shit about people anyhow. But it was very interesting, kinda hard process going through writing a book, sure.

Fab: How do you manage all the things you do? You’re a musician with several bands, you write chronicles for the Seattle Weekly, Playboy, ESPN…
Duff Mc Kagan: I just wrote my column on the bus ride from Paris to here, today. I got a lot in my head, it keeps me ok. Just writing a column keeps me even keel, I always have a deadline. So I finish my ESPN column and send it off from here. There’s always something I have to do, and for me, that’s helping. Not that I need to be busy all the time, I like to rest, but I don’t rest that much.