Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan talks Bob Dylan and making yacht rock
As Duff McKagan put the finishing touches on his 2023 solo album “Lighthouse,” he was happy with its sound, a kind of laidback punk rock that featured acoustic guitars and keyboards more than the hard rock of his day job playing bass in Guns N’ Roses.
But then his wife Susan got into yacht rock, McKagan says on a recent video call, and he started to worry.
“Do you know what yacht rock is?” McKagan says of the ’70s soft rock with vibes most mellow. “I have no idea what yacht rock is. But I hear it. I think, ‘(Shoot), this is the same instrumentation as what I do almost.’”
So he asked Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash for a second opinion.
“I’m talking to Slash, I say, ‘I think I do yacht rock!’” McKagan says. “He goes, ‘It’s not yacht rock!’ I’m like, ‘But it’s the same instruments, kind of, so maybe.’”
“Lighthouse,” and “Tenderness,” the 2019 solo album that preceded it, most definitely aren’t part of the yacht rock world of Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.
But it is different than the punk rock of the ’70s McKagan loved as a teen in Seattle, where he still lives, and the hard rock scene on the Sunset Strip where he found fame with Slash, singer Axl Rose and the rest of Guns N’ Rose in the mid-’80s.
“It’s my punk, you know,” says McKagan, who has described his solo work as “simple punk songs, laid bare without me screaming.” “If I’m trying to do anything, I want to do something completely different. Everybody knows I can do the big rock stuff, and I love doing that.
“I’m closer to Lemmy and Iggy than Killing Joke,” he says of such punk influences as Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister and Iggy Pop and the Stooges. “This is another side, like, OK, let’s explore this and see.
“And I’m having a wonderful time doing it.”
A solo tour behind the “Lighthouse” album was delayed until now due to Guns N’ Roses’ touring commitments. McKagan finally reaches Los Angeles on Wednesday, Nov. 13, when he plays the El Rey Theatre.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, McKagan talked about making his new non-yacht-rock music, playing with Iggy Pop in 2023, stealing from Sex Pistol Steve Jones, and what it felt like when Bob Dylan singled out one of McKagan’s solo songs for high praise.
Q: So after the pandemic, after Guns N’ Roses made up its canceled tour, you finally got a chance to finish ‘Lighthouse’?
A: We start putting the songs together for ‘Lighthouse,’ I have like 60. Like, how do we make the first record out of this? What is it? I knew ‘Lighthouse,’ the song, would be the first song of the record. And I knew ‘Just Don’t Know,’ the song with [Alice In Chains’ Jerry] Cantrell would be the last. That’s a great bookend. So what’s the idea between? I think of it like a novel.
I did some shows with Iggy and played on his record. And then Iggy goes, ‘Ah, man, I’ll do something on your record. Man, I really like the lyrics to ‘Lighthouse.’ So he gave us the spoken word thing [on ‘Lighthouse – Reprise’] It was like you have the voice of God in your studio. I mean, really, it’s like, ‘Whoa!’ Everything was really cool about making this record.
Q: The album came out Oct. 20, 2023, but you weren’t able to really enjoy it right away.
A: We were supposed to be done touring, Guns was. But we extended our tour. By the time Oct. 20 came, Guns, we were in Boise. I’m in my hotel room and my wife sends me a little cake, you know, ‘Happy Record Release Day.’ And, well, it’s out – what happens now?
These days I try for a real work-home balance. So I got home, it was our 25th anniversary. We went to Hawaii, just rested my feet in the sand. We play long shows in Guns, and we go out for like two years, you know.
So we finally put this [tour] together for Europe and for America, and there we are, 11 months after the record comes out, in Dublin four or five weeks ago. I’d done a ‘Tenderness’ tour of Europe and the UK [in 2019]. It’s either they’re not going to show up this time, or maybe more people will show up. And luckily for me it was more people showed up.
Q: You play a lot of acoustic guitar on ‘Lighthouse’ – tell me how that came to be your sound there.
A: I was really good friends with Mark Lanegan [the late singer of Screaming Trees], and I’m good friends with Greg Dulli [of Afghan Whigs]. And I watched them, like, ‘Oh man, one day – I can never sing like Mark Lanegan, of course – but God, I want to do that type of music at some point in my life.
You can’t, as an honest musician, you can’t sit down and try to write a certain kind of song. At least I can’t go, ‘I’m going to write a pop song today. It’s going to be a pop smash.’ I can’t do it. So whatever song comes out.
It was around 2015 that I sat down with my acoustic guitar and it was like an a-ha moment. Where it sits on your chest, it’s kind of right where you sing from, and it’ll tell you want to sing. Like you start playing chords and you have a melody and maybe a phrase. It’s kind of right here, the reverberation on my chest is.
So that’s when I started writing songs that became ‘Tenderness’ and the ‘Lighthouse’ stuff. I wasn’t screaming and it was acoustic. I could envision my keys, and I could envision the kind of whole song and the backing vocals and all this stuff.
Q: The song ‘Hope’ has Slash on it, but I read it’s something you dug up from years ago.
A: During the shutdown thing, I got the masters back of this record I made for Geffen in 1996. Then Geffen got bought and my record got shelved, and they wouldn’t give me my record back. So it’s 25 years and I got them back during the time I’m recording ‘Lighthouse.’ It seemed to me that ‘Hope,’ the message, would fit really nice in the middle of this ‘Lighthouse’ story. The subject matter stands the test of time and the riff Slash played on that is just, it’s so him. He’s so genius.
Q: What did Slash think when you told him that song was going to be on your new record?
A: He didn’t remember it. You know, this is ’96 and that was a tumultuous time for him. He had come to my house. We were hanging out. I played him some songs and he was like, ‘Hey, man, you want me to play on that?’ It’s him and Abe Laboriel Jr. who plays (drums) with Paul McCartney. It’s like a cool band.
Q: I want to ask you more about Iggy, because I saw you and Chad Smith from the Chili Peppers play in his band at the Orpheum last year, which was fantastic.
A: Imagine being me. Imagine being me in the band, how cool was that?
Q: You’ve known him for a long time, and played on ‘Brick By Brick’ before playing on last year’s ‘Every Loser.’
A: It was just a dream come true. To be able to reconnect with him and help him with this record, and do what Chad and I do. We’ve done a few records together. We’ve been the band for Ozzy (Osbourne) on a couple of records. And this Iggy thing came up. (Producer-guitarist) Andrew Watts’ like, ‘I’m going to sign him to my label. Do you guys want to write some songs with him?’ I’m like, ‘Let’s go.’
So to be able to do that and do these Iggy shows, it was like, ‘Let’s be the best Stooges he’s ever had. Let’s at least try to be as good as the Stooges.’ My girls are both Iggy Pop fanatics but they’re kids, right? You and I would be around Iggy, you know, a little tongue-tied. They’re not. They’re like, ‘Hey, man, would you put on my coat? Can I take a picture of you with my coat on?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I would never do that. [laughs].
Q: You released a single of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ just before the tour, and are covering songs like the Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ and Johnny Thunders’ ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.’ How do you pick covers to do?
A: The subject matter of ‘Heroes,’ to me, it’s perfect. It’s the Berlin Wall. It’s Bowie watching, I guess, some guy from the studio who had to go back to England, and the girl was from East Germany, and they’re kissing for the last kiss. So history and romance, to me, together is perfect.
The Thunders’ song, you know, I learned to play guitar on Johnny Thunders and Steve Jones [of the Sex Pistols] songs. It was awkward when Steve Jones would ask me to play guitar in Neurotic Outsiders. Like, he’s going to see that every riff I have is his, this is going to be awkward. [laughs].
Q: So Bob Dylan said in an interview two years ago that your solo song ‘Chip Away’ ‘has profound meaning for me.’ Are you gonna leave tickets at the box office in L.A. for him?
A: Right? Yeah, I sent him a thank you. I think it was a Tuesday that the article came out. I’m on the West Coast so you’re going to get texts and emails from your friends in the UK, your friends on the East Coast a lot earlier. I don’t have the phone next to the bed. Come downstairs, get my coffee, and look at my phone, and it’s just blown up with Bob Dylan and this Wall Street Journal article, dude. Axl’s like, ‘Hey man, you see this article?’
I read the thing and it was such an unexpected, wonderful shout-out from a guy who doesn’t do interviews, or not very often. Again, you saw me playing at the Orpheum with Iggy. Imagine being me.