Top 100 Duff McKagan Quotes December 20, 2020 by Krista Aniston Leave a Comment “By the time Guns n’ Roses spent 28 months from 1991 to 1993 touring the ‘Use Your Illusion’ albums, the tour staff sometimes approached 100 people. We were carrying not only backup girl singers, a horn section, and an extra keyboard player, but also chiropractors, masseuses, a singing coach, and a tattoo artist.”― Duff McKagan“I’m colour blind, a little hue-challenged.”― Duff McKagan“I went to Seattle U. Nice Jesuit school there.”― Duff McKagan“People in Seattle – and I’m speaking from experience – are indoors more. It used to just rain a ton, and as a result, you’d be inside listening to music all the time and playing. You’d all rehearse at each other’s houses and share ideas. There was no competition. When I got to L.A., I was really stunned by the competition.”― Duff McKagan“It’s a modern world we live in, with everything at our fingertips, and if it’s not at our fingertips, you can dot-com anything.”― Duff McKagan“I went to business school in my thirties.”― Duff McKagan“I have always been a huge sports fan, but more of the pedestrian and ‘homer’ sort.”― Duff McKagan“Words and titles can be used as dictums and guides for all of us. A certain word can suddenly snap us back to a good place. ‘Rocker’ works for me.”― Duff McKagan“I think you can tell stories and give perspectives and yet still keep stuff for yourself, too. I keep a lot of my life private, even in a public forum like writing.”― Duff McKagan“When you start a band, you have to find people that are good, have the same sort of mindset as you musically.”― Duff McKagan“I saw some really amazing stuff with Axl. We worked really well together. We were good friends. And I hope to perhaps have that friendship back one day, although it’s not something I wait around for.”― Duff McKagan“Whenever Boston comes on, I play air guitar.”― Duff McKagan“I don’t know if I have a favorite song.”― Duff McKagan“’Mr. Brownstone’ is always a fun song to play because it’s got that beat, and you see people bouncing.”― Duff McKagan“When you’re in a band, a marriage – whatever, it’s kind of the same deal – there’s a lot of things that you see, and people trust you with information about their lives. Call it a ‘bro code’ or whatever you wanna call it, but there are certain things you do not tell. At least, I don’t.”― Duff McKagan“It’s funny: when I started playing bass in 1984, you had guys like Paul Simonon fron the Clash, John Paul Jones, Lemmy, and Nikki Sixx was the head guy in Motley Crue, and you had all this post-punk stuff like Magazine and Killing Joke where the bass sort of lead the way. Not that I picked it to sort of be a main dude, but it intrigued me.”― Duff McKagan“If you don’t have a good rhythm section, your band is toast; you’re a bar band. Good rhythm section, you’ve got a chance to get out of the bar.”― Duff McKagan“You become friends with your kids’ friends’ parents. That’s just the way it’s gonna be. And sometimes you luck out, and it’s great.”― Duff McKagan“I can only write from a man’s viewpoint.”― Duff McKagan“When you’re in a band, it’s a close-knit thing. There’s a lot of emotional stuff.”― Duff McKagan“I didn’t have any work to do, and I had files of my personal and Guns N’ Roses financial statements for the previous eight years. I wanted to learn how to read these, but I didn’t trust anybody. I just got a lightbulb in my head and said, ‘I want to go to school.’ That began my journey, taking accountancy and business classes at Seattle.”― Duff McKagan“When the record company pays you an advance, it is just that – an advance. And it’s at worse rates than any bank would charge you to pay them back.”― Duff McKagan“In rock n’ roll, we don’t sell records at all like we used to. Yet the artist still has to pay to make records. So you’ve just got to get out on tour and be smarter about your merchandising.”― Duff McKagan“You know what’s a great song that will be stuck in your head if I say it? ‘Single Ladies,’ by Beyonce. Killer song.”― Duff McKagan“’The Joshua Tree’ was the soundtrack of my life when we were making ‘Appetite.’”― Duff McKagan“Axl’s favorite record in 1987 was ‘Faith,’ by George Michael.”― Duff McKagan“I started playing in punk-rock bands and touring when I was 15, so I missed high school.”― Duff McKagan“I’m not Cormac McCarthy, but I can get my point across in a thousand words.”― Duff McKagan“I’m really not about changing my image.”― Duff McKagan“I saw the Clash in ’79 at the Paramount in Seattle, and it changed my whole life.”― Duff McKagan“Playing with Iggy pulled me back in for a while and reminded me of what I love about music.”― Duff McKagan“One of the first 45s I ever bought was the Stooges’ ‘I Got a Right.’ Probably one of my favorite singles, ever.”― Duff McKagan“I find in my career that I never know what’s going to happen in two months.”― Duff McKagan“I don’t have resentments towards anyone I played with or to the guy who bullied me in the sixth grade. I’ve worked through it.”― Duff McKagan“Is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that important to me? No. Is it something I’ve aspired towards? No.”― Duff McKagan“When you’re a musician, you are around your peers a lot, like Slipknot and Alice In Chains… you name the band. We’re all just kind of friends.”― Duff McKagan“Any musician in any band – for a really good band – you know your part in the band.”― Duff McKagan“I didn’t start off as a bass player, and Guns was the first band I really, like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be a bass player. This is what I’m gonna do.’ And I really dove into it head first.”― Duff McKagan“I don’t know where I’m rated. I don’t pay attention to that. I’m really so just all into my craft. It’s not a contest. I try to play the best.”― Duff McKagan“I have panic attacks here and there, like in the weirdest places ever, and I’ve learned to deal with them.”― Duff McKagan“I’ve had a panic disorder since I was sixteen, and they always said that’s a subset of depression. And I’m like, ‘I don’t have depression.’”― Duff McKagan“I learned, by the time I was twenty, I’m not gonna die from a panic attack; you feel like you’re going to.”― Duff McKagan“One of my first memories is marching with my mom. I was in kindergarten with with the Catholic ladies when Martin Luther King Jr. got shot. We wore the black armbands and marched downtown.”― Duff McKagan“Turn off the TV, turn off the Internet, just go out, and I bet you your life will get better really quick.”― Duff McKagan“Our family is mixed. My oldest sister married a black man in 1962, which was way out there then.”― Duff McKagan“You never know what’s around the corner.”― Duff McKagan“I’ve never been one to just play safe music and think that’s all there is to it.”― Duff McKagan“I didn’t graduate high school.”― Duff McKagan“Not to name names, but a lot of pop female artists you see, they don’t write their own songs. Lot of top male artists and boy band artists, they don’t write their own songs. They’re just a product. They sell, they sell, they sell. They don’t care about musical integrity, any of that kind of stuff.”― Duff McKagan“’Chip Away’ is somewhat of a rail against cable news and divisive agendas… all for the almighty dollar.”― Duff McKagan“I just don’t like reality TV.”― Duff McKagan“When I sing with Loaded, I can’t move at all. I’m playing guitar, and I’m singing.”― Duff McKagan“I had a column for the ‘Seattle Weekly’ for five years, and there was one column that was called ‘How To Be A Man,’ and it was kind of tongue in cheek; it was really tongue in cheek. And I got a book deal from that column.”― Duff McKagan“I’m a book nerd, and I’ve seen authors that I love, I’ve gone and seen them speak or read from a book.”― Duff McKagan“Personally, I had made a good amount of dough for a 30-year-old guy, but I didn’t know a thing about money. I’m not a dumb guy, but I couldn’t figure them out.”― Duff McKagan“When I started going to business school, I started getting calls from my peers asking for my help. I thought, ‘Well, there are a lot of people like me who make a bunch of money and just get so scared of it and don’t know what to do with it.’ I just didn’t want to be 60 years old and broke.”― Duff McKagan“Writing’s another expression of art, really, that I’m just kind of discovering as I go.”― Duff McKagan“I have a wife and two kids.”― Duff McKagan“I’ve been very fortunate. But rich? People make huge assumptions about the guys in Gn’R.”― Duff McKagan“When you know you have a good song, when you’re onstage, even if it’s just a weird, basic energy, you know your song is good.”― Duff McKagan“I never had a personal beef with Axl, truth be told.”― Duff McKagan“Sometimes, when you get into a record, it’s like writing a book, and you get so far inside the story you can’t tell anymore if it’s gonna be good to an outside listener.”― Duff McKagan“Everybody in Seattle thought I was the chosen one, musically wise. You know, if anyone was going to make it, it was going to be that guy.”― Duff McKagan“Three weeks into being in Hollywood, I was playing with Slash through an ad in the paper.”― Duff McKagan“I have a teenage daughter and a 10-year-old daughter. Things are pink and fluffy at my house, with two little dogs. It’s pretty funny to be me now. And I’m in on the joke that is my life.”― Duff McKagan“Never in my life have I thought, ‘Man, I gotta get a Grammy.’”― Duff McKagan“Guns N’ Roses is a weighty subject, but in the same breath, I don’t take it that seriously.”― Duff McKagan“I read Slash’s book because we were on the road together with Velvet Revolver when that came out.”― Duff McKagan“Keep a meter on your fear. Fear can cripple you.”― Duff McKagan“I came up in the punk rock scene of Seattle.”― Duff McKagan“Music was going to be my thing. Was I going to make a living at it? That was kind of a joke. It was just my passion, and if I was broke doing my passion, so be it.”― Duff McKagan“We wrote the songs we wrote – we took from our own experiences, melded it together, and wrote what became ‘Appetite For Destruction.’”― Duff McKagan“My twenties were tumultuous at best… I think.”― Duff McKagan“You can’t mass produce somebody’s heart and soul. It’s a very delicate thing.”― Duff McKagan“Rock n’ roll is a volatile thing; at least, it’s supposed to be.”― Duff McKagan“It’s volatile with GNR. Every night, it’s anarchy on stage. Who knows what’s gonna happen? That’s rock n’ roll, man.”― Duff McKagan“Axl did sometimes have volatile actions, but I knew that guy as a whole – all the good stuff, too.”― Duff McKagan“I don’t shop.”― Duff McKagan“I’ve never seen ‘The Simpsons.’”― Duff McKagan“I kind of feel bad that I don’t know the names of the people in Girls Aloud!”― Duff McKagan“’The Taking’ is the closest thing to a ‘concept’ record that I have ever been involved with. Pain, loss, triumph, and redemption. Life. Bring it.”― Duff McKagan“You turn road-gay on the road. After about 10 days, the fellas in your band start looking really good.”― Duff McKagan“Back when I was single and Guns were on the ‘Illusions’ tour, chicks were, like, left and right. They were falling over themselves. And I saw the sadness in that. The first six months of that, it’s like, ‘Killer! Chicks are hot. They’re into me.’ And then you realize they’re not really into you. They’re into the guy they saw on the JumboTron.”― Duff McKagan“I do love the term ‘rocker.’ The word itself imbues a ton of imagery and romance. But I don’t think a rocker needs to have AC/DC and Metallica and the Black Keys rumbling through their car speakers speeding headlong into the night.”― Duff McKagan“Lemmy Kilmeister is most certainly a rocker.”― Duff McKagan“Being a rocker, to me, is equal to living as much of the truth as possible.”― Duff McKagan“Being from a big band is great because you can do other bands.”― Duff McKagan“Left to my own devices, I tend to go darker and weirder, and it’s fun.”― Duff McKagan“Going to talk to my little girl’s teacher is a far cry from what people probably think I spend my time doing.”― Duff McKagan“The thing is that business and success, and how hard it is, doesn’t look any different whether you’re playing a gig at eleven o’clock at night or you’re going to work at nine in the morning at a law firm.”― Duff McKagan“There is definitely an art to the dance that is being in a band.”― Duff McKagan“Being in a band is the best place I can think of to be as up-front as possible. If you let something stew, it’ll grow into a mountain of nonsensical black mud in no time.”― Duff McKagan“Read books and keep informed. The conversation can get old if you don’t have some good new topics to bring to the table.”― Duff McKagan“Attending Seattle Central was an awesome experience – it taught me a lot about discipline in a great way.”― Duff McKagan“I made money in my 20s, became sober in my 30s, looked around, and didn’t know who I could trust for money advice.”― Duff McKagan“I have mutual funds. I have a lot of individual stocks. I’m across the board, really well diversified.”― Duff McKagan“My grandfather John came from Cork. I have six degrees of separation in Ireland.”― Duff McKagan“I got to the point of insanity, but I also got out, but during the insane times, I felt invincible, and I felt creative and wonderful, too, but I was also hiding something.”― Duff McKagan“That connectivity with the audience that I get to enjoy, that’s my church. It’s not one of ego or anything like, ‘I’m on the stage and the lights.’ It’s just this connectivity, and it’s always been that way for me.”― Duff McKagan“I think after 9/11, here in America, I saw something extraordinary. I saw neighbors looking after neighbors. I don’t think anybody asked who anybody voted for. It was people taking care of other people.”― Duff McKagan
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