In a recent chat with Kyle Meredith about his upcoming album, ‘Lighthouse,’ Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan talked about a compliment he received from Bob Dylan last year. Asked by the interviewer whether Dylan’s reaction to his music created a pressure on him, the bassist explained:
“Yeah, well… I mean, when that thing happened, that was crazy to me. I mean, I started getting texts from people like you, Kyle. Like writer friends I know on the East Coast and in London. Like early in the morning, I was getting, ‘Hey, did you see the article in the Wall Street Journal?’ I’m like, ‘What?’ They’re sending links to it, and like, ‘Jesus Christ! I didn’t know. That’s amazing.’ The pressure… I mean, I was well into this record. So, I wrote a lot of lyrics before that came.”
Mentioning how his songwriting changed after the singer’s words, he added:
“No, I would imagine for me getting that kind of props from somebody like Bob f**king Dylan just makes me maybe sharpen my pencil a little more. I’ve been careful, especially since ‘Tenderness.’ I kind of turned a corner in my lyric writing, being super careful, super, you know, ‘Hey, that’s not good enough. You got a better word there.’ And it comes down to words. You’re trying to explain a big subject in one line. You gotta turn the song in one line.”
In context, Dylan commented on McKagan’s music while talking about discovering new music in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Slate. He mentioned ‘Chip Away’ from the ‘Tenderness’ album and said:
“[That song] has profound meaning for me. It’s a graphic song. Chip away, chip away, like Michelangelo, breaking up solid marble stone to discover the form of King David inside. He didn’t build him from the ground up; he chipped away the stone until he discovered the king. It’s like my own songwriting: I overwrite something, then I chip away lines and phrases until I get to the real thing. Shooter Jennings produced that record. It’s a great song.”
Later, the bassist reacted to the interview on X by writing:
“Thank you for this, Jeff Slate!”
Duff McKagan’s new 11-track solo album is currently set for release on October 20. You can listen to its title track, which came out in June, here.
