Maybe I had a Yamaha Precision as a backup, because that was a bass I could afford and I got it for, you know, nothing. When we started touring on Appetite, I just had the one bass. They were probably getting sick of me coming in there, but one day I came in and I bought it. you know, it’s kind of stupid, if you’re me, coming up in the punk rock scene. I was that guy going into the guitar store all the time and not buying anything because I couldn’t afford it.” At the beginning, I got my first bass at Guitar Center when we got our record advance the Special that I’d had my eye on. Have you endorsed Fender since the beginning of GNR? (Image credit: Marc Grimwade / Getty) Fender bender On a lot of the Chinese Democracy songs there’s a lot of detuning, so we brought the new bass in and I started using it a lot in our set.” I still use my Jazz Special on all the Appetite For Destruction songs and a lot of the Use Your Illusion stuff. Then, when Guns came back together I brought that bass into the arsenal, and we started chopping out what would become this new signature model. “Yes, we started talking about doing a cross between my Special and this bass that I was playing. It had a Hipshot Xtender, so I grabbed that bass for the Walking Papers tour, so I could just Hipshot between those drop-D songs and songs with standard tuning without switching basses.”Īnd this led to an actual production model? “Anyway, at the end of Velvet Revolver’s last tour in the UK, Reggie sent me out a modded Geddy Lee Jazz bass.
I’m a huge Prince fan, too, and I wanted to know how to play like that.
My playing was fine: I felt comfortable, and whenever I play live I play in anger and I dive in, but I wanted to dive deeper into playing with my fingers on my right hand a bit more, and seeing what that’s all about, so I listened to Booker T & The MGs and Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn and James Jamerson and Larry Graham. What elements of bass playing did you work on with Reggie? We started talking about doing a cross between my Special and this bass with a Hipshot Xtender At the time I was taking lessons with Reggie Hamilton.” One thing led to another and we went out to do a tour. I brought my Fender Special, which is my first signature model - an amazing recording bass - and I was dropping the E string down to D. I came in and played, and there were a lot of songs in drop-D tuning. “When I started playing with Walking Papers in 2012, they had recorded part of their first record in Seattle with Jeff Angell, who is a Seattle treasure and deserves international attention. I have daughters, and I want them to look at me like, ‘What did you do when these things happened?’ and I’m trying to say something about that.” Those became the songs, which became the record. I wrote little vignettes, without judgment, just from my observations, which I think comes from being a columnist with the Seattle Weekly and my martial arts and my sobriety and being at ease and playing with my old band. I go and check them out, and I talk to people while I’m doing that. I’ve been travelling for 30 years, and I like to visit places that I read about. I’ve informed myself about what’s gone on on this planet. I’ve read a lot of history since I got sober in 1994. “It’s a realistic record, although I tried to put some optimism in there too.
I wouldn’t be alive, for sure, if I hadn’t stopped drinking.” You have 25 years sober in 2019 - that’s a hell of an achievement. My organs are all good, thank you for asking.” “Completely healed! I’ve done other damage to my sinuses and stuff, but I try to overcome and fix and whatnot. Let’s see what’s happening in Duff’s world.ĭuff, apologies for kicking off with a sensitive question, but how’s your pancreas? The former, which goes by the title Tenderness, is a soulful collection of acoustic ballads, laced with plenty of tasteful bass playing the latter is a droolworthy Fender Deluxe Precision, a P and Jazz hybrid that we’re looking forward to getting our hands on. These frankly unnerving escapades seem worlds away from the 55-year-old dad, band-member and newspaper columnist who we meet today to discuss his new album and new bass. (Image credit: Marc Grimwade/WireImage/Getty)ĭuff McKagan's top 5 tips for bassists: "If you're going to be a bass player, learn how not to be the front guy"