Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan revealed that he has written 70 new songs in a new EW interview when asked about the new Guns N’ Roses album. He said he used 11 of those songs for his new solo album Tenderness. Could that leave 59 songs up for Guns N’ Roses consideration?
His bandmates have given him nothing but positive feedback on his solo flight says McKagan. “They’re behind me for sure. Slash got me this really nice acoustic guitar for the tour. Axl’s been supportive. They know what I’m doing.”
As for new GNR music, for which there is always an appetite, McKagan says it’s in the pipeline. “There’s a lot of songs bouncing around, I’ll tell you that. These 11 songs that are on this record were in a group of, I’m not even s—ing you, like 70 that I wrote. Axl has some really kick ass s–t that he had coming into it. We’ve never been at a loss for material. So the next step on that, as far as just everything Guns N’ Roses goes, I’ll just say we’re in a really f—ing positive place. It’ll come when it comes.”
In a recent interview with Q104.3’s Jim Kerr, McKagan was asked about Axl Rose now showing up on time for Guns N’ Roses shows.
“I can’t speak for him. I’ll just tell you what I know about… what I’ve observed that’s really made me work so much harder. His work ethic is… he’s an animal. He’s in the gym. He starts an hour and a half before the show, vocal warm-ups. We do a three-and-a-half-hour-long show. He broke his foot at the beginning of the [Guns N’ Roses reunion] tour. He had to do that show [at the Troubadour in April 2016] — he didn’t say, ‘Let’s stop.’ He said, ‘Let’s continue. I’ll do it sitting down.’
Just singing sitting down — I don’t know if either of you are singers, but singing sitting down is super hard. He does an hour-and-a-half vocal warm-ups; he sings these shows; he does an hour-and-half warm-down. I’m already in bed reading my book, man — like, I’m done — and he’s still warming down. I can hear him sometimes. And that makes me work harder. I get up; I go to the gym; I start playing my bass extra early; I’m doing vocal warm-ups. That guy’s really chest-out, head-up… he’s the real deal.
Him and Slash both, just this tour, showed me how… we’re hard workers. And it reminded me of how hard we worked back in the day. We’d have two-day rehearsals, and we would… People, I think, probably thought we were a bunch of eff-ups. But people don’t know… You do the work when people aren’t looking. And that was that band that did that, for sure, and we still do.”
