In a new chat with Ultimate Classic Rock, Duff McKagan talked about why playing with Guns N’ Roses still makes him nervous.
“No, no. I think that with Guns shows, I’m still [nervous],” the bassist said when the host mentioned his continued nervousness about audience turnout. “The other thing that I think about that kind of dawned on me, about 10 years ago or so, was that I’ve talked to enough people and traveled enough and I observe culture. You realize in your life, everybody’s got some story.”
He continued, “Everybody’s got some deep thing — they might have saved somebody’s life the day before. Everybody’s got some fascinating part of their story. Everyone. So when you go out and play to people, realizing all of this, it’s like, all of these people that have stories, they came to our show. They took the time, bought the tickets, and did all of that stuff. But with Guns, I look out and it’s a lot of energy.”
“That’s a lot of stories and a lot of people. You just feel honored. I end up coming out on stage and first of all, it’s like, ‘Is anybody going to show up when I come out around my amps? Is there going to be people here? Wow, there’s people here. Amazing.’ Doing these smaller shows, it’s like that on steroids, because you can see everybody,” McKagan further explained.
The rocker added, “Some people are singing the songs and crying, like, I wonder what that means to them? It obviously relates to something in their life. So these are the things I’m thinking about. It becomes this huge honor and you realize that we all have our own stories. There’s no difference between us. I’m up on the stage and you’re out there in the audience, we’re all in this thing together. There’s nothing separating us here and now.”
McKagan started the latest leg of his ‘Lighthouse’ tour last week with shows in Boston and New York City. His next concert is in Los Angeles on November 13. He will also perform in Portland and Seattle on November 18 and 20.