Duff McKagan might have turned this year, but at heart he’s still the same punk kid who set out from Seattle in 1984 with a dream of changing rock history. With Guns N’ Roses, it’s fair to say he did just that. Forty years later, Duff remains the ultimate rock’n’roll romantic – a constant presence on the rock and metal landscape thanks to his work with everyone from Velvet Revolver and Loaded to his solo project, whose latest album, Lighthouse, came out last year. He’s also found time to work with legends like Iggy Pop and Ozzy Osbourne on recent releases.
In fact, as Hammer chats to him over Zoom, he disappears off camera, only to return proudly brandishing a gold record he was presented for his contributions on Ozzy’s 2020 record, Ordinary Man. “I don’t have my own records up at home,” he admits. “But I’ll have an Ozzy Osbourne album any day!” But what pearls of wisdom does he have to share on a four-decade-plus career?
“Back when I was in my first punk bands [in the early 80s], I always thought there was a special sound to Seattle – even pre-grunge. We’d be in the garage with our friends playing and end up with kinda wet strings because it’s always so damp here! Nobody had a tuner, so you’d tune to whatever the other guys were playing and it created this really heavy sound. When the Seattle sound formed, around bands like Tad, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains… It was like, ‘That’s the sound of wet strings and guys who have to play in puffy jackets!’ Ha ha!”
