Status Updates From It's So Easy: And Other Lies

At long last, I felt ready for this. Those dark hours and days and weeks and years fell by the wayside there in Hawaii as Susan and I discussed our next move. We would be a team, come hell or high water, and it was going to kick some serious ass.
Confidence is knowing you can do something even before you try it.

(in response to being called the F word at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show with Axl)

If someone thinks you’re gay or is dumb enough to think that calling you gay is an insult, who cares?

(in response to being called the F word at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show with Axl)

If someone thinks you’re gay or is dumb enough to think that calling you gay is an insult, who cares?

I was terrified at the prospect of playing sober.
Of course, a few years earlier I had witnessed how Iggy could still flip a switch in the studio or onstage even after he got sober—he blew me away with his ability to reach that special place with no substances at all.

Axl was definitely behind the idea, but I never set up any kind of meeting. Somehow it was already too late. This was right around the time the movie Interview with the Vampire came out, featuring a cover of the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” credited to Guns N’ Roses. Guitar work by Paul Huge, Axl’s childhood friend, had been added to the track and Slash was more furious now than ever.

The space between the covers of these books became my place of solitude. Reading continues to represent a meditative haven for me to this day. At the end of every day, whether on tour or at home with my family, I always take time alone at night to read.

“Izzy, Axl, Slash—and Duff,” she said. “What kind of names are those?”
“Well, there is a guy named Steven."

During those first rehearsals, the five of us started working up a new song together based on some lyrics I had brought with me in a notebook from Seattle. The song became “Paradise City,” and it started to gel in those few days before our Troubadour show and the trip up to Seattle.

Slash was inclined to try it out because Guns seemed more where he wanted to go musically than Black Sheep. His interest in that job was primarily mercenary: it was a place to be plucked from to fill a gap in an established band—the way Ozzy plucked Randy Rhoads from Quiet Riot. But rather than wait around in Black Sheep [...], Slash liked the idea of joining a band with the intention of making its own mark.

Axl met me outside the rehearsal space to talk about my reservations.
“You have to be part of this,” he said. “Give it another chance.”

One thing I soon learned about Axl: if he saw something in a person, he would do everything possible to ensure that person remained part of his vision.

( ... )
I laughed and said of course, no problem. The whole thing sounded like a low-rent art project or something—I mean, who made cartoons for adults? Little did I know that the show would become The Simpsons and that within a few years I would start to see Duff beer glasses and gear everywhere we toured.

When Guns N’ Roses began to break into the public consciousness, I was known as a big drinker. In 1988, MTV aired a concert in which Axl introduced me—as usual—as Duff “the King of Beers” McKagan. Soon after this, a production company working on a new animated series called me to ask if they could use the name “Duff” for a brand of beer in the show.
( ... )

Love it

What I love about this book is his editor let him speak in his own voice.