Page 27 - Classic Rock (January 2020)

him with his little keyboard, and we recorded in this cheap studio
in Echo Park, no frills, nothing fancy.

And Shooter and his band backed you for your solo shows this year.
That was a different experience for me. With Guns we rehearse
hard for a tour – four weeks, six days a week, six to eight hours
a day. With Shooter’s guys we had one rehearsal for four hours
– and that was like two hours too much! I guess you could say my
songs are kind of simple.

Back in 2016, when you and Slash began rehearsing for the Not
In This Lifetime tour, you were playing those old songs again, from
Appetite For Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II,
and also some of the songs from Chinese Democracy, the Guns
album that Axl made without you guys. How did that feel?
For me it was very cool. With every record I’ve ever made, I never
listen to them after they’re done. So diving into Appetite and the
Illusions stuff, songs that I played as a young man, rediscovering it
all, it was really cool for me to go back and do that. With Chinese
Democracy, some of the stuff on that record is brilliant – really
brilliant. Axl asked Slash and I to do these certain things from that
record, and when we played them with Frank [Ferrer, drummer],
it was like: “Let’s make these songs the best we can make it.” It was
fun for Slash and I to tear those songs apart and play them with
aggression. We made them our own.

In 2014, two years before you officially rejoined Guns N’ Roses,
you played bass for the band on a South American tour, standing
in for Tommy Stinson, who was doing reunion shows with his old
band The Replacements. You told Classic Rock that you and Axl
got really close again on that tour.
Oh yeah. We had such a great time together. We played a show
in La Paz, Bolivia, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. I’d done
mountain climbing. I said: “Ax, man, the air is
thin up there.” Seriously, people pass out
when they come off the plane. They have oxygen
at the airport. And we gotta play a rock show
there, in a soccer stadium where they don’t have
games any more because no other team will go But the tour did not get off to the best of starts.
and play because it’s not fair. So I was taking Yeah, right? Axl broke his fucking foot in our
Diamox, mountain climber shit, and I gave some first show [at the Troubadour in LA]. But he
to Axl. We go through this journey together, and said right away that he wanted to continue
to watch him sing up there… man, it was an the tour. As a singer, you stand up, put your
amazing experience. shoulders back and chest out and you sing.
But he figured it out. Sitting down, contracted,
What has the Not In This Lifetime tour meant to I don’t know how he did it. And not just got
you on a personal level? though it, he did it well. And at the same time
It’s been one of the most enlightening times of my life. All the way we had other things going on…
through, there’s been a lot of levity. You know, when we finally
communicated, hey, it’s a lot easier when you talk! And I found Specifically, Axl taking on another job during breaks in GN’R’s
myself remembering how these guys taught me so much in my schedule – singing for AC/DC after Brian Johnson had to
early days. I learned a lot from these guys about just how to be. withdraw from their Rock Or Bust tour.
That came out of nowhere, as we all know. But Axl had to do it.
You’ve always remained tight with one ex-member of Guns, rhythm It would have been like if Prince had asked me to play because
guitarist Izzy Stradlin. You’ve played on each other’s records over he’d lost a guy. I’d have said: ‘You know I have to do this, right?’
the years. But Izzy declined to rejoin the band for the tour. It was more of that than anything else.
He and I have done a lot together in all the years in between.
But this tour, I just don’t think he ever wanted to do it. We tried What, for you, was the best thing about this tour?
to make it work, but it just didn’t. And in a situation like this The size of the crowds that came, everywhere we went, was
you’re really in it, man. You either get on it or you don’t, because really something. And the way we did it, having each other’s
the train’s moving forward. The good thing is, Slash really backs after all these things we’ve been through in the past, for
likes playing with Richard Fortus [GN’R guitarist since 2002], me that was the coolest thing.
A contempative
and Slash is somewhat picky about that kind of stuff. They get studio, and (inset) And as you told us earlier this year, there’s a new Guns N’
McKagan in the
on great as far as a two-guitar player relationship goes. To be
SCOTT DUDELSON/PRESS x2 honest, I haven’t taken a lot of time to go back on the Izzy thing whom he recorded Roses album coming. If and when that happens, could you die
with Shooter
Jennings, with
a happy man?
because we just move forward, and things are so good. And as
Well, everything I’m doing now, I’m thinking this is part of my
I’ve found out many times in my life, things are supposed to
his album
happen as they happen.
legacy. But I’m planning on being around for a while.
Tenderness.

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 27