I think after 9/11, here in America, I saw something extraordinary. I saw neighbors looking after neighbors. I don't think anybody asked who anybody voted for. It was people taking care of other people.
— Duff McKagan
My grandfather John came from Cork. I have six degrees of separation in Ireland.
Attending Seattle Central was an awesome experience - it taught me a lot about discipline in a great way.
There is definitely an art to the dance that is being in a band.
Left to my own devices, I tend to go darker and weirder, and it's fun.
Lemmy Kilmeister is most certainly a rocker.
Back when I was single and Guns were on the 'Illusions' tour, chicks were, like, left and right. They were falling over themselves. And I saw the sadness in that. The first six months of that, it's like, 'Killer! Chicks are hot. They're into me.' And then you realize they're not really into you. They're into the guy they saw on the JumboTron.
I kind of feel bad that I don't know the names of the people in Girls Aloud!
I'm colour blind, a little hue-challenged.
Rock n' roll is a volatile thing; at least, it's supposed to be.
We wrote the songs we wrote - we took from our own experiences, melded it together, and wrote what became 'Appetite For Destruction.'
Keep a meter on your fear. Fear can cripple you.
Never in my life have I thought, 'Man, I gotta get a Grammy.'
Everybody in Seattle thought I was the chosen one, musically wise. You know, if anyone was going to make it, it was going to be that guy.
I never had a personal beef with Axl, truth be told.
I have a wife and two kids.
Personally, I had made a good amount of dough for a 30-year-old guy, but I didn't know a thing about money. I'm not a dumb guy, but I couldn't figure them out.
That connectivity with the audience that I get to enjoy, that's my church. It's not one of ego or anything like, 'I'm on the stage and the lights.' It's just this connectivity, and it's always been that way for me.
I have mutual funds. I have a lot of individual stocks. I'm across the board, really well diversified.
Read books and keep informed. The conversation can get old if you don't have some good new topics to bring to the table.
The thing is that business and success, and how hard it is, doesn't look any different whether you're playing a gig at eleven o'clock at night or you're going to work at nine in the morning at a law firm.
Being from a big band is great because you can do other bands.
Words and titles can be used as dictums and guides for all of us. A certain word can suddenly snap us back to a good place. 'Rocker' works for me.
You turn road-gay on the road. After about 10 days, the fellas in your band start looking really good.
I've never seen 'The Simpsons.'
Axl did sometimes have volatile actions, but I knew that guy as a whole - all the good stuff, too.
You can't mass produce somebody's heart and soul. It's a very delicate thing.
Music was going to be my thing. Was I going to make a living at it? That was kind of a joke. It was just my passion, and if I was broke doing my passion, so be it.
I read Slash's book because we were on the road together with Velvet Revolver when that came out.
I have a teenage daughter and a 10-year-old daughter. Things are pink and fluffy at my house, with two little dogs. It's pretty funny to be me now. And I'm in on the joke that is my life.
Sometimes, when you get into a record, it's like writing a book, and you get so far inside the story you can't tell anymore if it's gonna be good to an outside listener.
When you know you have a good song, when you're onstage, even if it's just a weird, basic energy, you know your song is good.
Writing's another expression of art, really, that I'm just kind of discovering as I go.
I'm a book nerd, and I've seen authors that I love, I've gone and seen them speak or read from a book.
I got to the point of insanity, but I also got out, but during the insane times, I felt invincible, and I felt creative and wonderful, too, but I was also hiding something.
I made money in my 20s, became sober in my 30s, looked around, and didn't know who I could trust for money advice.
Being in a band is the best place I can think of to be as up-front as possible. If you let something stew, it'll grow into a mountain of nonsensical black mud in no time.
Going to talk to my little girl's teacher is a far cry from what people probably think I spend my time doing.
Being a rocker, to me, is equal to living as much of the truth as possible.
I do love the term 'rocker.' The word itself imbues a ton of imagery and romance. But I don't think a rocker needs to have AC/DC and Metallica and the Black Keys rumbling through their car speakers speeding headlong into the night.
'The Taking' is the closest thing to a 'concept' record that I have ever been involved with. Pain, loss, triumph, and redemption. Life. Bring it.
I don't shop.
It's volatile with GNR. Every night, it's anarchy on stage. Who knows what's gonna happen? That's rock n' roll, man.
My twenties were tumultuous at best... I think.
I came up in the punk rock scene of Seattle.
Guns N' Roses is a weighty subject, but in the same breath, I don't take it that seriously.
Three weeks into being in Hollywood, I was playing with Slash through an ad in the paper.
It's a modern world we live in, with everything at our fingertips, and if it's not at our fingertips, you can dot-com anything.
I've been very fortunate. But rich? People make huge assumptions about the guys in Gn'R.
When I started going to business school, I started getting calls from my peers asking for my help. I thought, 'Well, there are a lot of people like me who make a bunch of money and just get so scared of it and don't know what to do with it.' I just didn't want to be 60 years old and broke.
