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"I have this worry that if I get too good technically I’ll lose something in my feel." |
DUFF MCKAGAN AND VELVET REVOLVER
The Scene: Late afternoon. A hit-making recording studio based in North Hollywood, CA. Intense energy buzzing about the building. A guitar player known as Slash sits inside the green room drinking coffee. Bassist Duff McKagan emerges from room “A” looking balanced and full of positive energy. He has just completed tracking with Velvet Revolver, a powerhouse band made up of former members of Guns and Roses and Stone Temple Pilots. An explosive combination of talent and history. A group of men not without their demons.
FPE: Tell us what you’ve been up to since Guns and Roses.
Duff: "I had been going to school in Seattle, living there with my wife and two kids. I’m studying finance. In fact, I’m almost done and I’ll complete my major soon. I want to graduate from Seattle University so I’m taking distance courses right now. My senior project is going to be a paper on the process of the VR record deal and the intricacies of the budgets – financing is all it is. I can go so deep into it. I love school but I had to still play music. My band Loaded would go out during spring break or summers. We would play Japan or Europe. It was cool. It was kinda exactly what I wanted to do; I definitely wanted to go to school. I just moved back to Los Angeles for Velvet Revolver."
How was playing in Japan?
Duff: "It was great. Literally I would go during spring break and play in front of six thousand people. One day in school and the next day performing in Tokyo. Then we would go to Osaka and play to four or five thousand people. Then I would come back and go to school and sit behind a desk. I remember one time I had to go do press before a Loaded tour and record. It was in the middle of a fucking quarter so I told my publicist I could only do it on the weekend. So I flew, I think I missed one class, I flew out on a Friday, played a show with a Japanese friend of mine there, did press for 48 hours, did homework on the plane ride out and the plane ride back, left my car at the airport, drove straight back to school and I had a test. I was so fucking out of it."
Did you play bass in Loaded?
Duff: "No I played rhythm guitar and sang. I wasn’t trying to make any sort of huge statement with Loaded. It was just a great, fun rock ‘n roll band to go play in. I played bass at one point in Loaded but then I found that it’s the hardest… like Sting or someone like that who plays bass and sings I have a lot of admiration for ‘cause it’s really, really tough to do."
 More difficult than playing guitar and singing?
Duff: "Absolutely. Rhythm guitar is so easy for me. Bass a lot of times you are playing counter to what you’re singing, you know?"
You have to turn off one side of your brain.
Duff: "Yeah. Actually I was doing it for a while. Once you practice it enough then it starts to become natural but if you step away from it for a while and try to get it back it’s like, fuck, fuck this. And I found this good bass player in Seattle. Cool guy. He made it real easy."
How did Velvet Revolver come about?
Duff: "Slash, Matt and I played at a benefit in Los Angeles for our friend Randy Castillo. We played about six songs. Josh from Buckcherry got up and sang with us, so did Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. It felt good to play with those guys again. We had kinda forgotten about the chemistry we have together. The day after the Randy Castillo gig we said we should probably look into this further. So Slash and Matt and I got together. I had met (VR guitarist) Dave Kushner though Loaded we went on tour with his band in Japan. They were huge in Japan. Huge."
How would you describe the chemistry you have with Slash and Matt?
Duff: "It’s intangible. It goes all the way back to when Guns and Roses formed – there was different first lineup, a different guitar player and a drummer for a couple of months and it wasn’t great. As soon as Slash and Steven Adler (former G&R drummer) joined it clicked. In the first five minutes you could tell. There was like fucking electricity in the air. After Adler, we went through a lot of drummers looking for Matt. We just weren’t finding that guy with the connection. We finally saw Matt playing with the Cult, it was like 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."
You’re studying finance. Do you see a correlation between math and music?
Duff: "Yes. Math to me is really easy. I didn’t graduate high school so in college I’ve been taking algebra, business calculus. Lots of math." And it’s easy for you?
Duff: "It just makes sense. It’s just a fucking puzzle; it’s like doing a crossword puzzle. There is totally a correlation with music. Absolutely."
So what is the connection with music?
Duff: "None of us read music, we never have, so you have to remember sequences and stuff, how many verses, where are the choruses, is your verse gonna lead to a pre-chorus?, how many times?, whatever. Not that we have an equation for a hit song. We don’t. There are songs we’ve done that mathematically don’t make any sense. Look at Welcome to the Jungle for example. Equation wise, if you listen to that song now its like, ‘what the fuck were they doing? But it makes sense. I don’t know how many formulas I have in my heard, how many songs I remember how to play, a lot, too many. But with music you’ve got to put feeling into the math."
Are you looking forward to getting on the road with Velvet Revolver?
Duff: "Yeah, we have been offered some great tours; I can’t say what they are yet. Touring and 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 really a real band. It’s not politically correct. It is going to be questionable what is going to happen every night. We’ve only done one show. Scott is a very ration and sane guy, he is passionate but mild mannered in every day life. But when the guy gets on stage he is fucking great. Before we got together as a band, I had seen Stone Temple Pilots and I wondered how Scott was going to work with us. Stone Temple Pilots are a fucking great live band but the other guys don’t move. Scott was the mover. In Velvet Revolver everybody moves. There is a lot of energy. Scott, Dave and I, we all do martial arts together so there is a whole other intensity level that we know we each have. That brings a lot to this band."
Do you practice martial arts together?
Duff: "Yeah. "
Are all three of you at on the same skill level?
Duff: "Pretty much, yeah. I’ve done it for a longer time. I can see the bigger picture and I can add what I’ve learned. We are practicing a form of Kung Fu basically, an Indonesian martial art. When Scott first joined the band we all went up to Washington to study together. Scott needed to get away from LA, to get away from the trappings.
How does that create a connection between the three of you onstage?
Well if you have ever played sports like football with somebody and you know that one guy you can count on on the team to knock the shit out of somebody else? All three of us are that guy. So you can count on that guy on stage. Going on stage to me is in a way almost like going to war. It’s combat. Martial arts are pretty violent. It’s intense and the workout is intense."
It sounds like the upcoming VR touring experience will be entirely different from the G& R days.
Duff: "Absolutely. I don’t remember the Gun’s tours. Literally there are stamps on my passport and I’m like, whoa I went there? I’ve toured a lot since the Guns and Roses days, since I’ve been sober, with the Neurotic Outsiders and Loaded. Touring when you know what is going on is a lot more fun. It’s a lot easier than trying to cop drugs in every city you are going to. I think this is a good time for this band in music in general."
What do you think about the current state of music?
Duff: "I wish I could say that there are a lot of new bands that I absolutely love. But the bands that 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. The Refused I love. Queens of the Stone Age are a perfect example of a great, dangerous rock band, especially if you see them in a small place. You don’t know, one of those guys might jump off stage and kick your ass. I love that! I miss that about a band. .And they are great players. When I see the Queens I am so glad I play rock and roll. I grew up in the punk rock days. There was danger, it was like “what’s gonna happen next?"
There is a quite a buzz forming about Velvet Revolver. What are your expectations?
Duff: "We know how high the bar is raised. We wouldn’t have done this unless we were confident. Once Scott came in and sang the first song with us it was like, ‘ok now we can go ahead and do this’. Now we can tell people we are doing this, before we would just say, ‘Oh we’re just playing together, just jamming’. We were really hesitant to say anything officially."
Why do you think the band is happening now?
Duff: "We never really committed to playing with each other because we knew that we weren’t in the right headspace. I wanted to go to school; I almost died from alcohol consumption. I had to get my shit together. It took me a year. I had to spend a year alone. Slash was still doing shit and all over the place but we still always stayed connected after the Guns thing kinda fizzled out as far as we were concerned. For us to start a band quickly without the right guys would have been the wrong move. And we just knew that. So after the Randy Castillo benefit we said, ‘Ok maybe now is the time. Let’s just write some songs and we’ll find a singer somehow’. "
How do you write songs?
Duff: "Well, it’s really a band process. Nobody ever brings in a complete song. There might be a riff that Slash will have and he’ll just start playing it. He won’t be like, “Hey I got this riff” he just plays it. Maybe we’ll play the exact same thing or maybe we’ll fucking turn it up side down. Or Matt will start a drum beat or I’ll bring in a bass thing. It’s a band process."
How would you describe the band’s sound?
Duff: "Matt’s always saying, ‘we gotta keep it modern.’ So he is always listening to records and coming up with drum beats that are great and it is easy just to find the groove and then all of a sudden there’s the song. Then Scott will come in and sing a melody. He is a master melody writer. He can write a melody over a turd. And Dave adds a whole element; he’s got all these effects. He is a classic rhythm guitar player. To play with Slash you can’t play like Slash, you have to play in a whole different place. Izzy played completely different. When Slash was hitting down, Izzy was hitting up. And it worked. Dave came in and knew what to do. He is like the secret weapon. Whether it is modern or not, it’s our own thing. It’s us."
Compared to G& R, is your bass playing different with VR?
Duff: "I think with Scott singing, because his melodies are so complex, I can’t get in the way so I am playing simpler. Not that I’ve ever overplayed in the first place but maybe runs that I would have done before I’ll hold back on. I play more back in the pocket with Matt now. The songs that we’ve written aren’t extremely difficult but the most important part about them is that they all have this pocket that is pretty deep. Deepest pocket I’ve ever played in. To me bass is a very important element of a band. If done right it can be awe inspiring. I’m not going to dazzle you with really fast runs. It’s important for me to be where I am at in the pocket; if I’m not then it’s all going to fall apart."
What do you feel are the most important elements for a bass player to contribute to a group?
Duff: "The songs, pocket, and the feel. The groove - it’s all about the groove, man."
Has your gear set up changed for VR?
Duff: "Before we started recording I was playing a Musicman bass instead of my Fenders to get more of a growl.
I had a growl before but there are so many bands now that drop down to A, or B, or C or whatever but
I just want to growl in 440. We have songs in drop D, we do use different tunings but we are pretty classic as far as tunings go. Over time your ear changes, so if I were to play my old bass sound now, it just wouldn’t sound fresh to me and I came into this knowing that. So I tried this Musicman and it was great live but it doesn’t record very well. So now I am back to playing my Fender basses but I’ve added a Marshall head to my rig to get more growl and edge. The combination of the Galien Krueger bottom and the Marshall growl is perfect for me. I’ve always used GK. I still own and use the rigs from the Guns and Roses days. They’ve never broken down on me."
Do you use any effects?
Duff: "I do use distortion boxes as well. I use an MXR M80. I also use the distortion built into the GK head. I used a Z-Vex Woolly Mammoth on the tune Set Me Free (from the Hulk movie soundtrack). Those are great pedals. I’ll probably end up using some delays and stuff but not a lot. Mostly what I play is straight ahead sound. I’m not going to get too trippy."
Will you use this same rig in your live set-up
Duff: "Yes."
Do you stay up to date on music technology?
We recorded this record to tape. We used Pro Tools as well. Matt and Scott are great at it. I try not to get caught up in Pro Tools too much. I’d rather play a song all the way though from start to end than sit there and edit parts together. We tracked this record as a live band and on the majority 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.
Do you have a daily practice routine?
Duff: "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. I’ll strum an acoustic guitar at home instead. I like being a little rough around the edges in my playing. I’m not technically the best bass player in the world by far, but I grew up with a musical family so I know how to feel. I think that is so much more important than anything else. I have this worry that if I get too good technically I’ll lose something in my feel."
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