Duff McKagan.

I'M CLAIMING THE MOST EPIC BAND of my lifetime was Guns 'N' Roses. I think most of us can agree on that. But who is the most epic member of GNR? Axl? No way! The dude was epic in '87 but then he went schitzo and ruined the whole program ... and have you seen GNR lately? Just terrible--Buckethead? God no! But Duff and Slash are still out there shredding; they formed up a new band called Velvet Revolver. Recently, I had a chance to see them; I was wary at first of Scott Weiland being the singer, but he won me over. And seeing Duff and Slash on stage made me lose my shit. When they played "It's So Easy," "Used to Love Her," and "Mr Brownstone," it was as close as I'd ever come to seeing GNR again. As for the most epic member of GNR, I'm claiming Duff... Here is my fan-out interview with the most epic dude ever born.--Patrick O'Dell

I got a Guns 'N' Roses tattoo. Did the publicist tell you about that?

No.

It's on my arm; it's kind of an ultra fan-out. I was always like, "I'm going to get a GNR tattoo," so I got the Appetite cross.

Yeah!

But I moved Axl off to the side and I put you in the middle. My friend Ryan got your skull on his arm.

No way! I've done Thrasher interviews throughout the years, like since fucking Guns 'N' Roses started, since '87. I was the guy that always did the Thrasher interviews. And even for my other band, Neurotic Outsiders, I did a Thrasher interview.

Remember saying: "Drum-wise I play a conductor-like position."

What?

It was in the Use Your Illusion videos...never mind.

You mean as far as the whole band? I was the bass player.

I know. That's what we were always wondering about!

... I know what you're talking about. It might have been taken out of context. Like for that band I was always the guy that was like, "OK, that fits there, that fits there." Like we all came in with riffs, nobody came in with a whole song. Ever. So we had a rift and another rift, like a true band. Velvet Revolver is the same thing, nobody is coming in with a whole song. So I was always the guy who would be the bridge keeper, "let's not let it get out of hand here." Slash would always want to do a solo for another four minutes. I'd be like, "No, no."

Are drinking and drugs responsible for Guns 'N' Roses dissolving?

No, it was Axl. Drinking and drugs were a result of the times; we were that band, we lived on the streets of Hollywood. We drank a lot and did whatever drugs we could find. Then when Appetite finally kicked and we started to get money we could afford drugs, and it was gnarly And drug dealers delivered to our house and we found a whole new world. When you recorded the album did you think it would be big?

I was from punk rock. I played in 30 punk rock bands before Guns--and I was only 19 or 20. When we recorded the record I was 21. I moved down to LA from Seattle and I was in every punk rock band up there, and toured opening for Black Flag and the Dead Kennedy's back in the day. You know, I thought if we sold 50,000 copies--the Circle Jerks, that's what they sold on their big record back then. If we sold 50,000 records that'd be amazing. And that's what we all thought, because we were not what was going on at the time. We weren't a glare band, and we weren't Milli Vanilli. We weren't Paula Abdul; we weren't New Kids on the Block. We were a real raw, fucking kind of almost punk rock band, but not, because of Axl's high vocals. We were kind of a throwback to Zeppelin, but not, because we were modem for that time. There was another good band in town, luckily, that was off beat also, and that was Jane's Addiction, which was at the same time. At least a couple kooky records will come out at the same time and maybe it will start an LA revolution.

It always surprises me how raw that record is, the lyrics and everything, for being so popular.

The kids at the time were sick of the shit they were getting. A real kid, like a skater kid, they don't want to listen to Poison or Warrant...or Milli Vanilli or Michael Jackson, especially back then. Skaters were like they are now: they want to rock. They lived the real life. They'd fuck around and fuck chicks and get fucked up. They'd been through broken families or whatever, and skating is what they do. Skating is their thing, and that's living on the edge. Our record identified with a whole lost generation.

Do you have resentments towards how Guns 'N' Roses turned out?

How it ended, you mean? I'm not the kind of guy who will sit around and resent something for years. What happened happened. I look at it as a glass half full. We did a lot for five guys who stuck to this thing we wanted to do. We didn't change for anybody. We didn't sell our publishing. Somebody wanted to buy our publishing and we were like, "No, these are our songs. Fuck you." We wouldn't take stupid tours. We did it our way. We ended up playing stadiums, multiple nights, sold out. We went from nothing to quite a lot. I've been able to live off the publishing alone because the record still sells so many units a year. Plus the money I made then I live a comfortable life. I have no regrets.

We had die-hard fans. It was such a surreal thing for us to get so big; you'd have to be there. We couldn't leave hotel rooms in some places, we couldn't go out to have dinner in some cities. America was the most slack about that, the most cool about it. In New York or LA you could go someplace. Even Des Moines, Iowa people wouldn't freak out too much. In Japan or Europe you'd have police escorts and all that shit. Axl, in a way, believed his own hype and now it's his downfall. You gotta realize when you're that big you're still just a rock and roll band. Look at the Stones. They've been through it and they realize. If you talk to Keith he'll say, "We're just a rock and roll band. We're not going to change the world."

What I do regret is we let down a huge fan base that was there waiting for a next record, and Axl made us all--we all balled at one point or another. We couldn't deal with him. There wasn't any sort of rationality. It's just too bad. God, I don't want to come off bad mouthing him because the guy has a lot of great attributes. But how it worked before was the band would write all the music and rehearse it all, and kind of give it to Axl and he'd write lyrics to it. Or Izzy or I would already have lyrics, and he would just come in at the end. Later he wanted to be the ringleader and it didn't go anywhere. And I guess it still hasn't. Whatever, I have no resentment. I moved back to Seattle, had a couple kids; I married a skater chick.

I remember when I told Thrasher I wanted to interview Duff, they were like, "His wife was in here."

She's a full on skater/suffer chick from San Diego. She's hot. We had a couple kids; I went back to school in Seattle. I went to college, and I didn't graduate high school. So I went to this heavy Jesuit school. I had this band Loaded and we'd play shows on weekends just so I could play music. My focus was on school and getting my MBA in finance. I was really into it and then this thing happened, I got a call from Matt (Sorum). I kept in touch with Matt and Izzy and Slash, of course. Matt called, and said, "Randy Castillo died and we're going to play a benefit show because he died broke, to pay for his funeral and stuff. So me, you and Slash should play and Steven Tyler will sing." And I thought, "Wow, really?" So I came to LA, we rehearsed the day before, we had this set of songs and as soon as we played together we were like, "oh fuck," because we forgot about the chemistry we had. We did this show and it was insane; the minute they heard we were playing it sold out in five minutes. The crowd was out of their minds. The next day we decided, "the time is right to do something again." And then we found Scott. We wanted to play the rock but we wanted to be contemporary. We didn't want to be some throwback band. The minute we gave Scott a tiff, we gave him a song and he wrote the lyrics to it and he came in and he sang it. Stone Temple was done, and he redid it and was like, "why don't we make a band, man." That was that.

I went to RCA in LA to do this interview and they made me listen it.

That's cool. Things can get out on the Internet so fast, something we never dealt with Guns 'N' Roses. We'd pass out fucking copies of our fucking record to our friends. What, are they going to bootleg it? I doubt it.

I went with Erik Ellington, a pro skater into Guns 'N' Roses too. He tried to use "Reckless Life" for his part but couldn't get the rights.

It's hard to get the rights. We've had so many offers to put the music out, but it would cheapen the record to put it on everything we've had it offered on. So we just kind of held on to it; you know, we've had some big offers. One day we might pull a Led Zeppelin and sell it to a Cadillac commercial for seven million bucks or whatever they got paid.

I've seen photos of Izzy skating.

Izzy is a good skater. He's good at anything he does. We were on the road once and he had gotten his own bus, because he had gotten sober and we were all fucked up. He had his dog and his chick, and he had a trailer in the back with all his toys like skateboards and motorcross bikes and a Harley. And he went and entered into the Kentucky State trials, like a motorcycle trial, and won a Kentucky State Championship. Izzy is a good guy. My birthday was last week and he drove 11 hours from Baja to get to this party. He's just a straight-up good dude. And he's a skater. In one interview Axl talked about skating. I think he made shit up.

Probably, he's not a skater. He's later'd.