Duff McKagan – Q and A about his new album ‘Lighthouse’
Written by Dawn Osborne on October 4, 2023
Duff McKagan took the time to tell us about his new solo album ‘Lighthouse’ (featuring special guests such as Slash and Iggy) on a few days off in San Diego from the GNR tour on a live stream. The GNR tour is breaking records as to length of shows and length of the tour and, as he was also touring with Iggy Pop before that in April, he has been on the go since then. He said he no longer knew what day it was, but he was certainly on point when it comes to his new record and seemed in great physical and mental health, declaring that he feels about 26 years old.
The title track ‘Lighthouse’ is one of the love songs on the album for his wife Susan. She has always been there for him as a beacon of light, hope and goodness, his “lighthouse beyond the rocks” and had “saved him so many times”. Having the ease she creates for him at home provides him with the support he needs “to create stuff from thin air”.
He wrote the songs in a studio four minutes from his house which he got below market value as the “old guy” who was selling it wanted to sell it to a musician and not a developer. He loves the vibe: it is rumoured that the Beatles recorded backing vocals in the building, and it feels to him like something good happened there. It has great high ceilings for vocals, acoustic guitar and drums.
When the Pandemic hit he had to come home from the GNR tour in Mexico and, as the Pandemic extended for longer than anyone imagined, he wrote nearly sixty songs and recorded them.
He describes himself as a Punk Rock songwriter inspired by The Clash who he saw in Seattle before they were big and was profoundly influenced when they took the side of the crowd against heavy handed security. The band announced “We’re in this together” and to his mind lived up to this when Duff snuck backstage and they were cool with him, even signing his ticket. Since that time he was inspired to write simple songs with an emphasis on truth and honesty.
The truth and honesty extends to candid discussion of his mental health. Duff has suffered from panic attacks since he was 16. A young friend of a friend changed his life by telling him that millions of people also suffer from these. In his twenties he self medicated with drink and drugs as half a bottle of vodka would kill an attack for him if he drank it all down in one go. Now he deals with the panic attacks by writing songs on his acoustic guitar until the panic attack goes away. He also suffers from depression, which he can have even when things are going well, as it is due to chemistry in his brain. So he wants to help others by telling them that having mental health problems is not down to the fault of the individual. He loves the fact that people are talking much more about mental health issues now.
Duff loves history and visiting places where historical events have happened. The song ‘Longfeather’ is about the truth of what happened where Custer’s Last Stand took place. Duff visited the site and was impressed by how the truth was told honestly about why the Native Americans needed to defend themselves. “Custer was going to slaughter their families and they needed to fight back”. He had been helped also by his martial arts teacher who is a Blackfoot and inspired him to throw away his black book of drinking contacts and get honest with himself and who he was, sort out his life and call the people he loved, in summary to live his fullest life.
The artwork for the record was painted by the 26 year old boyfriend of his daughter. Duff likes it because he can appreciate the colours despite his colour blindness and it tells a story in sections across the album sleeve, just like his songs tell stories.
He will be touring the record, but so far he has only got as far as considering who he might like to ask to be involved as the touring band, and to decide he only wants to do about 12 key shows in Europe and 12 key shows in the USA. Touring so intensively with GNR he only has time to plan one day at a time for the moment.
When it comes to AI he “has just got my middle finger up, just gonna keep creating and not paying attention to it”. His advice for young musicians was to tell the truth in your songs as audiences will appreciate the authenticity and never read the comments on social media.
Dawn Osborne
