Duff McKagan Quotes

1. When it comes to your values and personality, you are what you do in adverse situations.  










2. I was in Philadelphia once and me and my friend were walking down by the Liberty Bell and all that, and there was this girl who was a carriage driver, when all of a sudden we hear her screaming. She goes: "Hey, I'll give you guys a ride for free!" And on her back, well she was this big gigantic girl, and she had this Guns N' Roses tattoo. I was just like "Wheew!

3. Yes, confidence was knowing I could do anything. But, I realized, confidence must always be rooted in work. In sweat. In pain-good pain. And in honesty.





4. I'm down to Earth, a lover of music, making music and making love. I love to make people happy and I think I'm basically a good person...despite what you might read about me.

5. It's nobody's business but ours. We're just…We're a rock and roll band. We'll make the music. But if I f**k a cow, that's nobody's business, man. Nobody's business but mine, you know?

6. (on Axl Rose) No, he's a…he's a good guy. Everybody's got their own personality, but he's basically…he's down to earth.

7. The fame and money part of this whole thing are just bullsh*t to me. It's great to have money. It gives you the freedom to do what you want. But that's not what I got into this for. It's more of a serious integrity thing. We're a band. We're in it for the music.

8. We don't do drugs - but we do drink a lot. A lot of the drug rumors about us started because we have a song called "Cocaine Talking" on the album. But that song's not about us or our experiences with the drug. If you listen to the lyrics, it's about how all these nice young girls in L.A. can't do anything before they do their coke. The song's definitely not a pro-cocaine song. It's about how the sh*t really f**ks up your head.

9. What sticks in the back of my head most of the time when I do interviews is why would anybody want to know about me and what ticks inside my head. I don't understand that because it's just a rock'n'roll band. We're just playing.

10. Well, it's really weird having had such success. I go to shows and people come up to tell me how great we are, And I think to myself: "We haven't done anything yet!" Look, all this band has done so far is put out one LP and a half-assed mini album. I often wonder if we deserve what's happened to us.

11. That's always been the philosophy of the band, that we'd be around for a long time, not just a flash in the pan.








12. We show in public what others do behind closed doors. I can totally honestly say that I masturbated half-an-hour ago. I don't give a sh*t. Everyone does it but no one talks about it.

13. I have always been influenced by country artists along my musical journey. Lately, I have been fortunate enough to be working with some of the great Nashville writers. I look forward to participating as a guest judge in a musical genre that is so close to my heart.

14. Slash was a local punker, Steven a guy from the valley, I a tall punker with short, blue hair and marks everywhere, Axl a weird guy and Izzy the unconcerned type. In some way our roads crossed and Guns N'Roses became reality.


15. It takes a serious mother to be in this band! It could only be the five of us, nobody else. Ever.

16. I think we really proved ourselves, since before we started touring there was all this hype that we weren't gonna last, and we have lasted. All those people are eating crow now. We'll be around for a while.

17. When this band got together, everybody felt "This is the right place." You know how this goes. You're in a band and there's always a loose link in the end. Always. Every band I'd ever been in before, there'd always be one person, or two, that wasn't cutting it. This band, it was finally like "Okay, this is it." You could feel it at the first rehearsal. It just felt right.

18. My wife (Mandy Brixx)'s a musician, so she supports what I'm doing one hundred and fifty percent. I try not to bring my marriage into the band's business at all, because it's really my personal life, and there's no need for it to be public knowledge. But I'm real happy with it. It was weird the first coupla days with the guys, and I thought": "Oh, man." But it was just me being paranoid. I asked Slash: "What's wrong? You're lookin' at me funny," and he said: "What are you talkin' about?" They couldn't be happier for me.

19. It's a tiny little club where people can hang from the rafters. It's gonna be hot and sweaty and ferocious, but that's rock and roll.

20. The given rules didn't even enter our mind. We never even thought about them. Except, whenever we were faced with them, whenever we were f**ked with, whenever we couldn't get a gig. F**k, we hated those rules then.

21. That Seattle trip was the proving ground. If we could go through that sh*t, we could go through anything, and we've been through a lot of sh*t. At one point, we were living in a one room place in Hollywood, where we also rehearsed, and we had no money but we just survived together. If you had something to eat, you had to share it with everyone else.

22. We knew people were getting turned off with all the stories that came out about us in the press even before our first record came out. Hell, I don't blame 'em. But we were very confident about the record we were about to make.

23. In the whole scheme of things we're just a Rock 'n' Roll band. Nothing more, nothing less. We're sitting here smoking cigs and having a drink, then we go home, f**k our girlfriends and go to bed. Then we wake up, go back to the studio to do another song or two. f**k, man, we have been asked to comment on things and stuff that are totally out of our league and we are apparently supposed to know everything about everything, just because we've sold a few million albums. f**k, what do know about Nelson Mandela being free? I think it's great, I care about it a lot - but I'm here at Rumbo recording an album. The Berlin wall coming down and all, I think it's great, but it's not my f**king thing to comment.

24. I asked my honey if she'd run away with me and get married and she said: "No, I can't elope." Then I was talking to my pal Slash about it and he says: "Well, that's weird cause my honey do."








25. I was 15 years old too. If you're dumb enough to think that we're setting examples for you, well. Never let Fear and the Germs set examples for me. It was fun. You look at it with humor and stuff. But you don't die like Darby Crash did. You don't do heroin and 'ludes and whatever he did to die.

26. You want to know a true tact? I just found out that if you take a crab off yourself and somebody else who's got crabs and put them in a jar, the crabs will fight each other to death.




27. I know that if we play good, there's a possibility someone will give us more beers.

28. I'm immediately embarrassed when that image thing comes up. A lot of bands go: "Good, we got the bad boys title this week." But with us, it's like we're just a rock'n'roll band. A lot of things go along with that and we take full advantage of it at times. We were never doing all that stuff before we were in the band, though. We didn't try to create any kind of image. It was created for us. Decadence was laid on this band.


29. The average age of death is 29 because my doctor told me that. My liver dropped three inches. I have the liver of an 80-year-old.

30. When we see some f**king punk faggot from Beverly Hills walk into the Troubadour with spikes in his hair, we just want to smash his f**king face. We've been playing rock 'n' roll for too many years for people to call us posers.

31. Anyway all we wanted to f**king say is thank you so f**king much to all the f**king jurors for this f**king award.

32. Never miss an opportunity to keep your damn mouth shut.

33. Everybody's been through the wringer. You go through a lot of bands when you start playing at 15, and in the beginning you don't really know what you want to do. You just want to play. Eventually, you into each other and the chemistry is just right.

34. Reporters always ask about the bad boy image. They also ask why we think we're doing so good. Well, there is no bad boy image! It's just us - five guys doing what we've always wanted to do and pulling it off. And I think the reason we're successful is because we are real and the kids know it. Y'know a good song to me is one you can listen to and imagine yourself playing and singing. That's real.

35. I got a Kramer endorsement and they are sending me all kinds of sh*t. But I'm still using my Fender, the same bass I've always used. I have like 6 basses, but I just use that one.


36. I studied journalism in High School, so I'm not gonna talk sh*t about you. (talking to a journalist). There is however an important thing that many journalists have forgotten and that is the personal integrity. It's written about our private life, which is completely wrong. What has our private life with the music of Guns N' Roses to do?

37. Left my dogs in LA, at home but we talk on the phone.


38. Axl (Rose), lyrically, is brilliant in my eyes. Some sh*t that goes through his head is like, WHOA!

39. We never thought we'd be the kind of band it would be hip to like.

40. In LA it's real hard to find a wife.


41. We'll figure it out; we'll keep to our own songs. (The ballad) "Fall To Pieces" goes over quite well; it's not completely alien…But it's Black Sabbath, man. I mean, if it was just Black Sabbath and us, it would be totally compatible.

42. A lot of money would be like instant suicide. I'm scared of the responsibility of having a lot of money.

43. We are not the kind of guys to really change our ways.

44. I must say that Axl (Rose) has f**king balls.

45. All the custom that the chorist wear on stage I designed them.

46. In a lot of ways Axl's the most normal guy in the band.

47. The first record I bought myself since I had Led Zeppelin and stuff from my sister, was Kiss Alive. My first concert was Aerosmith.

48. We're not like God or anything.

49. We're doing what we want to and pulling it off.

50. We are not the Berlin Wall coming down. We are not Communism falling. We are not f**king civil war in Yugoslavia. We are not the Gulf war. We are just a f**king rock 'n' roll band.

51. Sex Pistols bass player, Sid Vicious, is my only influence, coz he was the coolest bass player ever.

52. I'd just like to say that I have a personal disgust for small dogs, like poodles. I have some serious physical problems with them. Everything about them means I must kill them. I must!

53. I am a musician, not a rockstar.

54. All the rumors are true - the name of the album fits, whether we like it or not.

55. My old man gave me some whiskey when I was real little. It was some Hawaiian whiskey, and it had this long name. He said "take a swig and pronounce the name". After about 4 swigs I couldn't pronounce the name because I was too drunk.

56. We are not the guardian angels of anybody. We only play authentic, nasty rock and roll.

57. We're never really rude to anyone unless they're rude first. Then, I guess, we can be more rude than an average person.





58. This is the kind of band that will probably always have something strange going on in it. People don't really understand us.


59. I consider myself pretty stable in the band. I try to make things work musically. I kind of consider myself the musical director of the band - trying to keep everything together.


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