“Heroin had decimated my friends”: The surprising album that made Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan realise he had to leave Seattle in the ’80s

“Heroin had decimated my friends”: The surprising album that made Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan realise he had to leave Seattle in the ’80s

Seattle in the 1980s was as vibrant as it was troubled. The city’s burgeoning punk and grunge scenes thrived with raw creativity, but this energy was often overshadowed by the dark grip of heroin, which claimed the lives and futures of many talented musicians – including friends of a young Duff McKagan.
Growing up in Seattle during this turbulent time, McKagan witnessed the chaos firsthand. Speaking with Classic Rock Italy, the Guns N’ Roses bassist shares how he found solace in Prince’s 1982 album 1999, and the profound impact the record had on his life and music career.

READ MORE: “Eddie was still a great player, but I just didn’t care anymore”: Why Kerry King stopped going to Van Halen shows

“I was eighteen, still living in Seattle and heroin had decimated my friends,” shares McKagan, recalling how the album helped him navigate a particularly dark period of his life.
“[The song] Something In The Water (Does Not Compute) was an escape for me, that record made me realise I had to leave Seattle. Two years later I did. I later wrote a song called Seattlehead. I think it was after I ‘came home.’”
“I felt better, I was in my place, a safe, lovely, good place,” McKagan continues. “It was published on [the album] Dark Days by Loaded, but it was written much earlier, in the early nineties, and it was about my move from Seattle to Los Angeles, in 1984, when the City of Angels ‘let me in and then slammed the door’”.

During the conversation, McKagan also reveals his interest in contributing his music to movies, saying, “Actually, I’ve recorded a lot of songs that would be good in a film.”
“I once sent a song to Ron Howard, because I had read a book he based the film Hillbilly Elegy on: it was a song about West Virginia, about drugs… but I never got a reply.”

The post “Heroin had decimated my friends”: The surprising album that made Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan realise he had to leave Seattle in the ’80s appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

read more

Source: www.guitar-bass.net