Duff Mckagan opened up about working with Iggy Pop during an interview with Spin. According to Rock Celebrities, he even shared his favourite three influential singers for him, but Axl Rose isn’t on the list. It’s worth noting that Duff has enjoyed working with some big names, and when asked about recording and touring with Iggy Pop, Duff had this to say:
“(Producer) Andrew (Watt), (Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer) Chad Smith, and I have a little group together. We did these two Ozzy (Osbourne) records, and we did it for Iggy, too. To do something like that with Iggy, who, for me, is one of my most influential people, along with Lemmy (Kilmister) and Prince… So, when he asked if we could be his band for these shows, we were all into it. To do those shows and rehearse with Iggy was like rehearsing with James Brown, I imagine. Do you know how many bands he has run in his career? Probably 150, I’m guessing. We wanted to be the best band Iggy ever had. I think there were moments where we achieved that at those gigs.”
Duff has worked with Jerry Cantrell, Mark Lanegan, Manic Street Preachers, Ozzy Osbourne and many more. He appreciated Iggy Pop since ‘The Stooges’ days and said, “It’s hard for me to have a regular relationship with him, cos he’s been Iggy Pop to me since I discovered The Stooges when I was twelve or thirteen years old. I’ve been lucky enough to play on two of his records. He’s such a hard worker; he’s kind of like James Brown in how he runs a band. The last time, it was me, Chad Smith, Jamie from The Kills. And he called Chad ‘drummer’. Like: ‘Drummer – can you hit that on the up beat?’ And this is Chad Smith!”
Duff McKagan released his latest solo album ‘Lighthouse.’ in October and when he had to talk about it, he said, “It’s an arc of a story to me, which begins with the song Lighthouse. In the past six or seven years, lyric writing for me has become like a deeper craft. I read such great authors and I have for years, and I’m finally starting to be able to apply that to my lyric writing, and that means I carve at my words the whole time to try to get the clearest meaning in the least amount of words.”
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