![](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/7\/77\/Duff_McKagan_2012.JPG\/220px-Duff_McKagan_2012.JPG\")
As a hungry young musician, Duff McKagan learned early on how to make a graceful entrance or exit, maybe more often than most. Even before his dozen years as bassist for the L.A. hard-rock act Guns \u2018N Roses and his later collaborations with Velvet Revolver, his days as a Seattle punk meant one transition after another. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was 31 bands or something ridiculous by the time I was 19,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n
Now the tall, blond McKagan finds himself in another new band: the Walking Papers, which also includes Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin, plus singer Jeff Angell and keyboardist Benjamin Anderson, both of the Missionary Position. Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready also plays on the band\u2019s album, \u201cWalking Papers,\u201d out Tuesday.<\/p>\n
McKagan describes the sound of the band as \u201cdirty blues,\u201d both bruising and contemporary, while more willing to indulge in restraint and empty spaces than typical offerings from GNR or Velvet Revolver. But in a three-decade career that has bounced from Seattle to Los Angeles and back and that has included time in the Fastbacks, Jane\u2019s Addiction and the Neurotic Outsiders, McKagan insists the sound is no departure, but part of a larger repertoire of interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019d had my druthers, I would of course love to be in the same band this whole time,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I like moving around, but it\u2019s just my lot in life. There\u2019s plenty of things that I\u2019ve passed up doing — but the thing that has always driven me since I started playing punk rock is that it\u2019s got to mean something, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The band began as a casual jam session and recording between Barrett and Angell; McKagan and Anderson were recruited as things progressed into real songs. The first track the bassist played on was \u201cRed Envelope,\u201d which grinds with a noisy swing.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo Tickets\u201d is louder and funkier. McKagan uses the word \u201cslanky\u201d for its bluesy, lurid flow, which he credits at least in part to Martin, a longtime friend and occasional jam partner.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarrett is an actual college professor — music theory,\u201d McKagan says of the drummer, a faculty member at Antioch University in Seattle. \u201cHe has studied percussion with a tribe in Senegal . . . You know he knows a lot that you haven\u2019t even thought about when it comes to music.\u201d<\/p>\n
The debut album was recorded in week-long bursts of energy and inspiration in a couple of Seattle studios. McKagan was born in the city and still splits his time between there and Los Angeles, where GNR and Velvet Revolver both came together in ways noticeably different from his hometown.<\/p>\n
Although L.A. bands can sometimes seem to be clawing their way to the top, he calls Seattle \u201cvery communal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a difference,\u201d McKagan says. \u201cL.A. is a massive city, a city I love, but you\u2019re kind of on your own when you\u2019re in a band. When I first moved to L.A., if you were a band, you were on your own little island. Oftentimes, it’s even competitive — especially back in the early club days: People fliering over other people\u2019s fliers, taking fuses out of the back of amp heads and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While focused on Walking Papers, McKagan says his other ongoing bands are on hiatus. Only recently, the band he leads as singer and guitarist, Loaded, completed a recording and touring cycle and expects a return to action at some future date.<\/p>\n
Velvet Revolver, the band he started with his longtime GNR comrade Slash, is also ongoing but on indefinite hiatus since the exit of singer Scott Weiland, he says. \u201cThe chemistry between Slash and I is a thing,\u201d McKagan says. \u201cWe go in with our ears pinned back, and we\u2019re ready for war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joining the Walking Papers also put him back in the bass position, after focusing on guitar in Loaded. And he still works at it, studying the instrument and its possibilities with more seriousness now than he ever did before. In preparation for the Walking Papers, he reexamined the work of Led Zeppelin\u2019s John Paul Jones.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
For the last five years, he\u2019s been listening to certain records just to play along to the basslines. In 2009, he even began jamming and taking lessons from other bassists, including Scott Shriner of Weezer, who McKagan calls \u201ca hell of a bass player.\u201d
A seven-week Walking Papers U.S. tour begins Aug. 8 in Scranton, Pa., and lands at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine on Sept. 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying bass with Barrett is challenging and killer,\u201d McKagan says. \u201cIt\u2019s really great to be 49 and to be really inspired on my instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: The Los Angeles Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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