Duff McKagan has seen it all, done it all and survived it all – by the slightest of margins. The stories of his escapades as the bassist of Guns N’ Roses, a band whose members practically had their humanity ground out of them by sheer fame and debauchery, are legend.
Fortunately, Duff was in control of his intake during the band’s glory years, resulting in the classic Appetite For Destruction and Use Your Illusion double albums, on which the bass playing is a thing of rock ’n’ roll beauty. “My drinking never got in the way of writing bass parts,” Duff told Bass Player. ‘I was writing music with other drunks at the time! So we were all on the same playing field.”
