Episode 1021 - Duff McKagan
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck sticks?
Marc:That one seems hostile.
Marc:Fuck stick.
Marc:That's never said in a positive way.
Marc:What's up, fuck stick?
Marc:So I don't use it as much, but it is... It's got a good rhythm to it.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Is everybody okay?
Marc:I'm a little...
Marc:I'm a little jacked.
Marc:I'm a little jacked right now for, well, for good reason.
Marc:For good reason, I'm jacked because, you know, I'm going to tease it a little bit.
Marc:First, let me say that I just burped.
Marc:You can cut that out.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:Don't leave it in.
Marc:Let's keep it.
Marc:Let's keep it loose.
Marc:It wasn't a loud burp.
Marc:Let's keep it loose.
Marc:Duff McKagan is on the show from Guns N' Roses, the bass player, and he's the real fucking deal.
Marc:rock star, rock and roll life, all of it.
Marc:But very lucid.
Marc:Lucid, smart, thoughtful, great guy.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because we project.
Marc:So he's here, and it was a real treat.
Marc:And that's something I don't say.
Marc:But why am I jacked?
Marc:Why am I jacked?
Marc:Well, I'll tell you why.
Marc:Because less than an hour ago, in this very room in my house,
Marc:In my house, people.
Marc:David Letterman was here.
Marc:David Letterman, the man who I looked up to for more than half my life.
Marc:And then once I became a comic, all I wanted to do was be on his show.
Marc:And it happened, but it took a long time.
Marc:But he was here.
Marc:He came to my house.
Marc:And you don't know what a mindfuck that is.
Marc:I don't want to go into it all because by the time he got here, I was okay.
Marc:But it did take me two days.
Marc:to get okay.
Marc:Like, you know, a lot of self-talk.
Marc:He's just a guy.
Marc:He's just a guy.
Marc:He's just a guy that you looked up to that, you know, you hung all your hope on being on his show.
Marc:Just a guy.
Marc:But he was here and I'm going to share that conversation with you a week from today.
Marc:OK, I guess I should tell you then we're teasing weeks out, which I don't usually do.
Marc:Monday, Timothy Oliphant is here for the what is it?
Marc:Memorial Day.
Marc:He was here.
Marc:We talked about stuff.
Marc:I watched a lot of the Justified shows and I enjoyed them.
Marc:It was like watching McLeod with my parents when I was a child.
Marc:Dennis Weaver.
Marc:Do you remember that show?
Marc:It had that vibe, right?
Marc:Seventies kind of, you know, episodic television thing.
Marc:And Walton Goggins.
Marc:Walton Goggins was on.
Marc:That guy's a fucking wizard.
Marc:We've got to get Goggins in here.
Marc:How would you like to have a friend named Walter Goggins?
Marc:What's up, Goggins?
Marc:Goggins.
Marc:Goggins.
Marc:What's up?
Marc:Dude, Goggins is here.
Marc:So maybe I'll become friends with Walton Goggins someday and he'll do my show and I can refer to him as Goggins.
Marc:Dude.
Marc:Goggins.
Marc:Tonight I am in Madison, Wisconsin through Saturday.
Marc:Those shows are all sold out.
Marc:But hopefully I'll be there.
Marc:I'm traveling as you listen to this.
Marc:I should be on a plane in the air.
Marc:If it's not in the air, it'll be on the ground.
Marc:And that would be preferable if it hasn't taken off or it's just landed.
Marc:Any other time a plane's on the ground is not great.
Marc:you know what i'm saying so what is happening okay a couple of things uh i decided to to get back into twitter a bit kind of dip my toe into the hate waters into the chaos of of infantile emotional uh outbursts by our president primarily but by most people really i just thought you know i was being honest
Marc:I was at home on Sunday.
Marc:I was waiting to watch, I think, Barry or John Oliver.
Marc:And I turned the TV on and Game of Thrones was on.
Marc:So I said, I have not watched Game of Thrones.
Marc:This is the first episode I'm tuning into.
Marc:I feel a little lost.
Marc:Could somebody tell me what's happening?
Marc:Something to that extent.
Marc:Now, is that funny?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Is it snarky?
Marc:Kind of.
Marc:Is it condescending?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You know, it's just it was I was being honest, but you would think I would have said there was no God to people who all they think about is God.
Marc:And I do think that there is a similarity in certain fans' minds about the importance of these fantasy movies.
Marc:Again, not being condescending.
Marc:Feel free to be a fantasy nerd.
Marc:Feel free to invest eight years of your life into a fucking movie.
Marc:Bloodbath of armor and bullshit and castles and dragons.
Marc:Again, did that come off as condescending?
Marc:I know a lot of people liked it, but I imagine after about a year in, most of those people felt like they had to.
Marc:They were they were.
Marc:It was almost like sort of like just just try our church.
Marc:You know, I mean, you know, it's different than your church, but I think you'll like our church.
Marc:You know, there's a lot of exciting things that happen at our church and it's every Sunday.
Marc:And, you know, at night, which is nice and and you can get lost and find solace from the real chaos with some ancient, fantastic dragon bullshit chaos.
Marc:You just sort of refocus your emotions and sense of competition and relief and hope into Dragon Show.
Marc:But it was surprising, the response.
Marc:It was if I insulted someone's entire way of life is the way that fantasy nerds react.
Marc:A lot of like, oh, so edgy.
Marc:I wasn't trying to be edgy or even be cool.
Marc:Like, why do you assume?
Marc:Aren't you the cool guys now if you're watching Game of Thrones?
Marc:Isn't that the majority opinion?
Marc:Watch Game of Thrones.
Marc:So why am I all this?
Marc:Why are you bullying me?
Marc:The guy who is apparently out of the loop.
Marc:The guy who doesn't know well enough to watch it.
Marc:Maybe I'll watch it someday.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But it didn't happen.
Marc:And it's one of those things that if you miss the first year or two, you're not going to go back until you have a broken leg, until you're bedridden or you have the measles because dumb people don't vaccinate their children.
Marc:And then you're like, hey, I'm covered with spots that are itchy and I'm probably going to be bedridden for a while.
Marc:I can't go outside.
Marc:Maybe I'll watch that Game of Thrones thing.
Marc:That should take my mind off this disease that no one should have.
Marc:But because of stupid people, we have it again.
Marc:But I don't want to think about that because that'll make me angry.
Marc:Oh, look, a dragon, a dragon.
Marc:All I'm saying is like one of the reasons that I don't engage in Twitter anymore is because I'm a grown ass man for the most part.
Marc:I do have emotional components that are quite infantile, but they are not infantile or expressed in the fantasy realm.
Marc:So the point is any conversation you can have on Twitter that that unfolds into some sort of argument over bullshit is completely fucking adolescent.
Marc:It seems like the entire dialogue on the platform, if you if it's engaged or you've upset some people is going to be adolescent.
Marc:And I don't I don't want to I don't need to communicate on on that level.
Marc:After I tweeted, I never watched Game of Thrones, just tuning into the episode on now.
Marc:I'm a little lost.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:because of the response I was getting from, you know, seemingly adolescent people who took offense to that.
Marc:I wrote, love when all the hate nerd babies bile cry when their sad heart holes get poked.
Marc:Poetically sound, but apparently that I think that's the one that really caused some trouble in the nerd verse.
Yeah.
Marc:And I'm not going to apologize because it's like, it's nice.
Marc:It's almost like a Bob Dylan lyric from a lost Bob Dylan song.
Marc:I'm not toot my own horn, but loving all the hate nerd babies bio cry when their sad heart holes get poked.
Marc:Holy fuck.
Marc:I'm going to write a song.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:So a couple emails.
Marc:This one in the garage.
Marc:This is a nice email.
Marc:Mark, I wanted to write to tell you how great a record in the garage is.
Marc:I have been spinning it on the reg, and I love it.
Marc:I love the color of it.
Marc:The price point was ace as well.
Marc:$17 at Newberry Comics in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Marc:I'll fess up and acknowledge that I bought it just for Margot Price and Jay Mascus, but I'm absolutely in love with the Karen Kilgareth song.
Marc:It makes me laugh my ass off and feel slightly sad at the same time.
Marc:I'd never heard of her.
Marc:What a great voice.
Marc:And man, what lyrics.
Marc:The song that has the heaviest effect on me is Elephant by Jason Isbell.
Marc:That fucker slays me.
Marc:Every time I fire up a joint, I recall the line, quote, we burn these joints as effigies, unquote.
Marc:It sticks with you.
Marc:It really is a mind blower of a performance.
Marc:It really triggers a profound sadness.
Marc:I've never liked Melissa Etheridge, but what a great song and performance.
Marc:It changed my opinion of her.
Marc:It's really cool to get to hear you play with Dave Alvin.
Marc:I love the casualness of it.
Marc:I love the record and just wanted to share that with you.
Marc:You need to advertise this a little more on your show because it really is a treasure.
Marc:You should make this the first volume in the series and release one each record store day.
Marc:Keep up the good work.
Marc:Sincerely, Reeb.
Marc:Thank you, man.
Marc:I'm glad that you liked it that much.
Marc:I like it that much as well.
Marc:OK, don't hold your breath.
Marc:How am I not going to open that?
Marc:But it was literal.
Marc:Hiya, Mark.
Marc:Just listen to you and Lisa Kudrow.
Marc:So regarding holding your breath, a clown teacher I've worked with, John Turner, said, quote, emotions released on the exhale, unquote.
Marc:We can't cry or laugh when we're holding our breath.
Marc:Have you not heard me laugh when I hold my breath?
Marc:That's how I exhale sometimes.
Marc:Breathing is vulnerable.
Marc:Maybe holding our breath is trying to exert some control.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Especially when we're anxious.
Yeah.
Marc:Here's the funny thing.
Marc:When we hold our breath on stage, then the audience holds their breath too.
Yeah.
Marc:Noted.
Marc:They probably won't be aware of it, but even if they are, they won't know why.
Marc:It's because of me.
Marc:So if we breathe, they breathe.
Marc:Everyone relaxes.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Then come laughs.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Hey, didn't you talk about that in this episode too?
Marc:It all comes back to breathing.
Marc:Farts, Alan.
Marc:I think you're right, Alan.
Marc:I'm a breath holder, and it's because I don't want to feel.
Marc:And if I'm holding my breath, not only am I not feeling, but I think I'm invisible.
Marc:All right, so Duff is here.
Marc:I neglected to mention at the beginning that he's got a record out, and I listened to it.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's earnest.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's called Tenderness.
Marc:It comes out next Friday, May 31st.
Marc:You can get it wherever you get music.
Marc:This is me talking to...
Marc:Fucking rock and roll.
Marc:This is a rock and roll dude.
Marc:For fucking real.
Guest:Duff McKagan and me.
Marc:You don't want to wear the cans?
Guest:No, is that all right?
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:Just, yeah, if you get up on that mic.
Guest:I hate the sound of my voice.
Marc:You do?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Come on.
Guest:I do.
Guest:Well, how the fuck do you record a record?
Guest:What?
Guest:Singing and all that?
Guest:I don't really have cans on.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Huh.
Guest:I'll sing, I'll get a key, and I'll sing.
Marc:Oh, and that's it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you listen to playback or no?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You just tell Shooter, like, all right, you decide, I'm out of here.
Guest:Well, I mean, sort of.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:No, we'll go.
Guest:He's really quick at comping vocals.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:He's like comping as I'm doing vocals.
Marc:What does that mean, comping?
Guest:Well, so I'll sing a pass through the song.
Guest:I'll do another pass.
Guest:Right.
Guest:and maybe a third pass right and he's already so he'll take up a line from the first verse he likes the first pass I did and then he'll take a second line I get it so he's cutting it up he's making notes as we're going that's smart yeah so by the time I walk in the room he's got it comped
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I think, you know, the the the record, the new record, I don't generally these aren't really plug generated interviews, but, you know, this is what you're out there talking about.
Marc:And I listen to it and it feels like, you know, you it feels like a record you had to make.
Marc:Like, you know, that things were kind of working up inside of you.
Marc:You're at an age now where you can process shit and write shit down and have some wisdom and some reflection.
Marc:There are things bothering you.
Marc:There are things that were painful in your life.
Marc:And this is the record, a grown up record.
Guest:The record, you know, I really did, Mark.
Guest:I've written two books.
Guest:I was a columnist for Seattle for five years.
Guest:I wrote columns for Playboy and ESPN, and I got used to articulating my thoughts on the written work.
Guest:I found a voice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so on this two and a half year tour that Guns did, it was amazing.
Guest:The last one.
Guest:This last tour we did, this huge tour we just did.
Guest:It was amazing that we were back together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was this sense of ease in my life because we had talked things out.
Marc:You had.
Marc:All of you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was really important more than anything else.
Marc:Who was on the guitar?
Marc:Was Gilby on it?
Marc:Who was on the guitar?
Marc:It was Slash.
Guest:No, Slash and Axl.
Guest:So the three of us are the ones who ended the thing.
Guest:Izzy had left back in 91.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Stephen.
Guest:Before.
Guest:Yeah, before that.
Guest:And so the last year and a half, two years of the Illusions tour in the 90s, it was just the three of us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we ended it like that and we got back together like that.
Guest:And my point to that is there was a lot of kind of dirty water under the bridge between the end and the beginning.
Guest:And we addressed those things as like grown up motherfuckers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it worked.
Guest:And it worked.
Guest:And so also the point of that is, you know, I was at this sort of intellectual or psychic ease.
Guest:And coinciding with this ease and our band's back together.
Guest:We're playing...
Guest:really amazingly huge shows everywhere you go.
Marc:You're like playing country.
Marc:It's like the entire country comes.
Guest:In Estonia, it was kind of that.
Guest:There was kind of shows that was actually that.
Guest:But I am...
Guest:I'm an astute guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've traveled since I was in punk rock bands, you know, 15 years old.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I left high school because I was touring.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You wanted to be in the rock life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went to like alternative school where you didn't have to show up.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And Kim from the Fastback, she was 18 and she was my high school counselors because she was 18.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She would sign off on work I did while we were.
Marc:So they didn't even know you dropped out for a year.
Guest:No, I went to this alternative school, which is called Nova.
Guest:It was like the hippies that started it.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:My point is I've traveled a lot, especially maybe since I got sober and...
Guest:kind of went through this whole martial arts thing that I did and still do and became self-aware and self-responsible.
Guest:And then started writing columns where I became a kind of observationalist.
Guest:You know, over time, I wasn't like checking people out.
Guest:I wasn't like coming to your house and checking you out and writing a column on it.
Guest:It wasn't like that.
Marc:But looking outside at the world and having some thoughts on it.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And inarguably.
Guest:The two and a half years that we were on this tour were some of the most interesting political times, not just in America, but around the world.
Marc:Sure, the enclosing authoritarianism.
Guest:That you and I have seen in our lifetime.
Marc:Yeah, we didn't think we would, but it seems to be happening.
Guest:Yeah, these are the things that we were raised in school...
Guest:to recognize as bad.
Marc:And shouldn't happen again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The problem is I read so much history.
Guest:And I'm an armchair historian.
Guest:I have been since I was 30.
Guest:I read... So in other words, you're freaked out.
Guest:A little.
Guest:But no, I'm not.
Guest:But you know the precedent.
Guest:I know the precedent for sure.
Guest:And there's many of them.
Guest:Even just in America, this has happened before.
Marc:But this is where you were compelled to write the songs.
Guest:So I wasn't compelled to write songs originally.
Guest:I was going to maybe write my third book and it was going to be observations on my travels and getting out and talking to people.
Guest:We play every third day because it's a huge stage and we're playing the stadiums and one stage goes to the next city and it takes two days to build this thing.
Guest:So we play every third day.
Guest:And how are you guys playing?
Guest:Good?
Guest:Oh, yeah, thanks.
Guest:We are kicking fucking asses.
Guest:We're playing really good, better than we've ever played.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, that is all good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got to tell you, that is all good.
Guest:We are all way better musicians, and we've all...
Marc:Most of the year sober?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I talked to Slash.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:We had a great conversation.
Guest:Oh, Slash is this... Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he's sober and he's... All he does is... It's funny, you know, as you go along in your life as a musician, I think we're lucky.
Guest:Maybe it's the time we came up.
Guest:I don't know, but we...
Guest:We're so invested in our instruments and becoming better, and I don't think that'll ever stop.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:What I learned maybe from punk rock, early days of punk rock was just be real and truthful, and if you're going to do something, do it 110%.
Marc:Even if it kills you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, I almost did.
Marc:I never knew he was such a... I always heard that he was such a monster on guitar, but even when I listened to the earlier Gunn stuff, the way they were mixed, they didn't put the leads way up front.
Marc:I kind of had to pick them out a little bit.
Marc:I could hear the riffs, but I never got a true sense of what he could really do until I was going to interview him, so I went to see his last band, the newest band.
Marc:What's it called?
Marc:Who's that guy he works with?
Marc:Miles Kennedy.
Marc:Yeah, I saw them at the Troubadour, I think, so this little tiny place, and it was the first time I'd seen Slash.
Marc:I never saw Guns live.
Marc:And that guy, I was just sort of like, what the fuck is happening?
Guest:Yeah, he'll do that to you.
Guest:I mean, he does that to me now.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, he really does.
Guest:I mean, I met him.
Guest:I moved down here in 84.
Guest:He had an ad in The Recycler, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:This guy named Slash.
Guest:I thought he was- I thought he was punk rock?
Guest:Punk rock dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it said Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and Fear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, Fear, I get.
Guest:You know, the punkers in 84 were looking.
Guest:We were going to invent the new thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What was it going to be?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I went and met him at Cantor's, him and Steven Adler.
Guest:And we went to his mom's basement.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he started playing acoustic guitar.
Guest:And he played-
Guest:At 19, like he does now.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I'd played with some really cool guitar players up to that point.
Guest:I'd been in a bunch of bands.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Never seen anything like this.
Marc:He just locks in, man.
Marc:He loses himself.
Guest:He loses himself to a point sometimes on stage where I have to tap him because his eyes are closed.
Guest:And I've had to do this for years.
Guest:I come over and tap him with my foot.
Guest:Time to get on with the song, man.
Guest:Oh, what?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But your point being that you were going to all these different places in the world and you had three days to get out in the world.
Guest:I have two days off.
Guest:And I'm a guy who's always liked to get out and see stuff.
Guest:And I'll go to museums.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:I'll go to...
Guest:Depends on where we're at on the planet.
Guest:I'll do a tour of Normandy with a guide.
Guest:Or I'll go to Auschwitz.
Guest:But I get out and when you get out, the thing is about that, you talk to people.
Guest:And I go to cafes.
Guest:In America, I go out and I'll do side trips in my bus.
Guest:I'll go to Little Bighorn.
Guest:I'll go to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.
Guest:I'll go to World War I Museum in Kansas City.
Guest:You know, we're not even playing Kansas City, but it's on the way from Denver to Little Rock.
Guest:Right, man, yeah.
Guest:Let's stop there.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:And you talk to people.
Guest:And you talk to people.
Guest:And what I...
Guest:What I saw was in this two and a half years, I would watch news in America, right?
Guest:And I would get on Twitter and I'd get freaked out.
Guest:Getting freaked out.
Guest:Every day.
Marc:Before you get out of bed, you can get freaked out.
Guest:You can get freaked out.
Guest:But I'd go out and I would talk to... Then I would go to places and I'm like, I'm not seeing this divide that they're talking about.
Guest:Because I'm in the South and I'm in the...
Guest:places and I'm in quote unquote red places or blue places.
Guest:I'm like, this place isn't red.
Guest:Number one, it's not red.
Guest:It's just a place where the humans live and coincide and work together and do stuff.
Marc:They don't become monsters until they get online.
Guest:Pretty much.
Guest:But then we would go to like South America, let's say.
Guest:The next leg would be we'd go from, you know, return to the States, go from Texas down to South America.
Guest:Brazil?
Guest:Yeah, Brazil, Argentina, we'd go everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Central America, Mexico.
Guest:But you don't have the three news stations because there's nothing.
Guest:You don't watch TV.
Guest:And I found myself really getting, I'd post something on Twitter like sound check, a picture, you know, and I wouldn't look.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I never look at comments as it is, but I would just stop looking at Twitter.
Guest:And I noticed like in one week, the quality of my life became so much better.
Guest:And I started writing about that.
Guest:I'm like, I wonder what that is, you know, how much input.
Guest:I was doing like a self-study of like...
Guest:Well, you know what on media to my brain?
Marc:And yeah, man, because like, you know, you are shattering your brain.
Marc:I mean, you're dumping more information in there than you need.
Marc:And you're having, you know, an over like too many human reactions to me.
Marc:You're going to have emotional reactions like a speedball.
Marc:You know, every bit, you know, you're just you're just kind of frying your fucking mind.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, I guess you find you're actually, you know, thinking and acting and feeling compulsive in at the same speed that you can get information.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, so you're not, you know, like just hanging out at a cafe.
Marc:You know, if you probably have some withdrawals sort of like, you know, there's probably a couple of days when you're not on Twitter going like, oh, God, I got a check or, you know.
Guest:Man, I didn't.
Guest:I didn't have a withdrawal, and I kind of started thinking, I'm a little long on the tooth to be checking Twitter.
Guest:I read too many books for this.
Guest:I'm not an intellectual or whatever, but it's funny how quick you will.
Guest:I had...
Guest:coffee with my buddy in seattle yeah during one of the breaks of the tour yeah and he's been through if you knew this guy he's my age yeah he's been through nothing's been handed to him yeah he was a he was a junkie and yeah and a fuck up and all this and and he got sober and he started this uh working building house yeah pounding nails and he built himself up to a point now where he owns the company yeah
Guest:But nothing was handed to him.
Guest:But we're having coffee.
Guest:If you knew this guy's past.
Guest:And we're in Seattle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we're having coffee.
Guest:And we're talking about some political stuff and labels.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, lefties.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Elites.
Guest:And he goes, Duff, you and I, we're the elites they're talking about.
Guest:I'm like, what do you mean?
Guest:He doesn't know my story.
Guest:He doesn't hand me anything.
Guest:He goes, no, no, it doesn't matter.
Guest:You make over 100 grand a year, 200 grand a year.
Guest:You live on the West Coast.
Guest:You live in LA and Seattle.
Guest:You're one of the elites.
Guest:I am.
Guest:He goes, I'm one of the elites.
Guest:I own a company.
Guest:I live in Seattle.
Guest:It's just how quickly label people are redneck or a lefty or extreme right.
Marc:Some woman wrote a book about that.
Guest:Is that right?
Marc:Just recently, I saw her interviewed on Bill Marshall, the boxing in through labeling, you know, what, you know, how it degrades, you know, the nature of the person and in a culture or, you know, once you start naming people, it immediately puts them in a box and denies other, you know, identification.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, in the dialogue.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And in truth, we're just, so I'm traveling during this, all this stuff's going on.
Guest:I'm getting this information, my friend in Seattle, the elites.
Guest:And I'm like, I realized like, okay, man, we're just throwing labels around.
Guest:I don't remember lefty being there like three years ago.
Marc:It was around.
Marc:It was around, but now it's- It replaced commie in the late 60s.
Guest:Yeah, my oldest, I have the youngest of eight kids.
Guest:I have seven older.
Marc:You grew up with eight kids.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was hippies.
Guest:My older brothers and sisters were hippies.
Guest:Two of my brothers were in Vietnam War.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I grew up, my mom took me on a march, brought me out of kindergarten.
Guest:She was a Catholic woman.
Guest:The Catholic women went on a march when Martin Luther King
Guest:got shot so i don't know why i got a black arm band on i i'm asking my mom what and you're like six five yeah and and my mom said well they shot this man he was he was a peaceful man and so why they shouldn't well just because and and i and i never got a better answer like well they just shot a guy because they killed him and my brothers are in vietnam and i said what you know why are they in vietnam well
Guest:Two old men from these countries didn't agree, so they sent their young men to go fight over their disagreement.
Guest:I've never found a better answer than that, my kindergarten answer to war.
Guest:My brothers, are they gonna be okay?
Guest:Did they come back?
Guest:They both came back, yeah.
Guest:And how were they?
Guest:My brother Mark, who just passed, he never talked about it from the time.
Guest:He was a little withdrawn, for sure.
Marc:You remember him before and after?
Guest:I don't remember him before.
Guest:But he was very withdrawn.
Guest:Never would talk about it.
Guest:I read a lot.
Guest:I went through this whole Vietnam phase of reading the things they carried and all these amazing Vietnam books.
Yeah.
Guest:and I would try to talk to him, and all those movies were coming up, Platoon and all that stuff, and I tried to talk to Mark, and he said the one movie, one thing he said to me, he goes, the movie Hamburger Hill, that's what it was like.
Guest:Senseless, taking hill number, whatever that was, 62, and a lot of guys would get killed, and then you get the objective, and you just move on.
Guest:Wouldn't keep the objective, just move on.
Guest:So that was the most information I got from him about his experience.
Guest:What about the other one?
Guest:John was fine.
Guest:My oldest brother, he flew kind of, I guess, spy missions.
Guest:They would fly over and take photos.
Guest:He was fine.
Marc:So your other brother was in the shit.
Marc:My other brother was in the shit.
Marc:And one was in the air.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But growing up with all those experiences, and I remember the commies, and I remember lefties back then.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Just all this stuff, and pinkos.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's weird, because you grew up in it.
Marc:You and I are exactly the same age.
Marc:I'm 55.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And I remember very early on, I didn't have brothers.
Marc:Were you the youngest?
Marc:Yeah, I'm the youngest.
Marc:Really, of eight?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how many boys, how many girls?
Guest:My parents are... I grew up with depression era values.
Guest:My parents grew up in... And Catholic values, clearly.
Guest:My mom went south of the Catholic church when it was the Vatican II came in.
Guest:It got really conservative.
Guest:And I just remember us going to Catholic church where the nuns didn't wear habits and...
Marc:So more liberal Catholic thinking.
Guest:She went that way and then she, yeah, she kind of left the Catholic church.
Guest:So my older siblings grew up more in the Catholic indoctrination and Catholic schools.
Guest:And she shifted in the 60s?
Guest:I went to public schools.
Marc:Oh, yeah, you got lucky.
Marc:My next oldest brother and I went to public schools.
Marc:Yeah, you got the street education.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But how many girls, how many boys?
Marc:Three sisters, five boys.
Marc:That's insane.
Marc:But I remember, I didn't have proximity like you did, which must have been helpful in a lot of ways.
Marc:But I remember when I was very young and the Vietnam War was going on and I saw the hippies, I instantly wanted to be that.
Marc:They'd show them on TV and shit with the clothes they were wearing and I was like, those are them.
Marc:That's what I want to be.
Marc:Look at them smoking and hanging out, growing their hair long.
Marc:I remember it having a profound effect on me.
Marc:And I wanted nothing more than to be that kind of, I wanted that rock and roll kind of hippie thing.
Guest:Yeah, I had an older brother, Bruce, still do, who played in a band then.
Marc:In the 60s?
Guest:In the 60s, and the Sonics were a big thing in Seattle.
Marc:Yeah, I have a reissue of one of their records.
Marc:I think Jack White reissued some Sonics record.
Guest:I mean, it's classic garage.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Marc:Rock.
Marc:So they were around?
Guest:They were, we had the Sonics record.
Guest:It was Day Glow Orange.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was, being a little kid, that's the record you want to put on.
Guest:It's Day Glow Orange.
Guest:Yeah, it's cool looking.
Guest:And they had a song called The Witch.
Guest:You know, I thought it was about a real witch, like on a broom.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:but uh did you make your isn't your new record coming out in day glow something or is it gold or there's no take oh there's a yellow and red vinyl okay yeah yeah right could have went with day glow just a little nostalgia yeah maybe i guess so you had that music in the house when you were very young like you had all this influence you had brothers with record collections and you had you know like a
Marc:you know, long hair and weed and stuff, and you saw all that shit.
Guest:There was weed, a lot of weed, yeah.
Guest:I smoked my first weed when, it's funny, because I have girls who are 18 and 21 now, and raising them up too.
Guest:I smoked weed in the fourth grade, and I'm looking at my girls in the fourth grade, and I'm like, that's really, really young.
Guest:18 and 21, so they never knew you fucked up?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Wow, good for you.
Guest:But there's plenty of YouTube, you know, I have.
Guest:They can find it.
Marc:They can do a search on Duff Fucked Up and they can see it.
Guest:Probably.
Guest:Yeah, I've never done that because I don't want to.
Guest:But they know my story because I've told them my story.
Guest:And I've told them, look guys, you have like half of my genes in you.
Guest:And we got to be careful.
Marc:You got it genetically, you think?
Marc:He goes back, you're old man, and where's the alcoholism?
Guest:It's kind of everywhere.
Guest:My family, my mom's brother's family, he, yeah.
Guest:He got sober.
Guest:He was a doctor, my mom's brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was the one that they put all the family resources into.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We got one.
Marc:Yeah, let's go.
Marc:We're going to deliver this one all the way through.
Guest:It's either going to be a priest or a doctor, and let's go.
Guest:And...
Marc:so there was yeah he got sober sure so you knew sober alcoholics you knew that there was people in your family that no longer drank because it was bad for them those are the ones you hid from yeah you want to hear it you want to hear it oh no you don't want to be judged but um do you do you just do it with uh your own system or you do the thing
Guest:I got sober.
Marc:Because I'm coming up on 20, and I do the thing.
Guest:You do the thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I like the thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I have a lot of friends, and I like going to those fellowship groupings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Secret meetings.
Guest:Secret society.
Guest:It's a secret society.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We have a handshake.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:All of that.
Marc:Handshake.
Marc:We got things that we do together.
Marc:We wear hats.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Where's that one?
Marc:Are you going, hey, hey.
Marc:I want to go to the hat meeting.
Guest:But I got sober in a really, for me it was profound.
Guest:It had to be because my body took a left turn at 30 and my pancreas burst.
Marc:Let's work up to that.
Marc:Let's go back to the Sonics record and your brothers from Vietnam and the records in the house.
Marc:Because we were downstairs talking about records and you said you had a relationship with a record player.
Guest:I had a relationship.
Guest:Well, man, we had a reel-to-reel.
Guest:It was a while before we got the Technics or Techniques turntable.
Guest:Yeah, like a TIAC reel-to-reel.
Guest:We had a reel-to-reel.
Guest:My brother brought back from Vietnam receiver and speakers just when FM radio started.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we had reel-to-reel, so we had James Gang, Slide in the Family Stone.
Marc:On reel-to-reel.
Guest:Reel-to-reel.
Guest:I knew how to do all that stuff.
Marc:Had the little leader on it, and if you needed to make a new one, you could tape it on there.
Marc:James Gang, man.
Marc:Joe Walsh.
Guest:Really cool tapes.
Guest:And then we got... And then there was FM radio in Seattle.
Guest:They would just play... I think they would just play records.
Marc:The whole side, yeah.
Guest:And so there was a lot of... There was stuff I didn't like because I'm a little kid, right?
Guest:So your tastes go to more Sly and the Family Stone.
Guest:Like, wow, there's a lot going on.
Guest:All these voices.
Guest:Or Sgt.
Guest:Pepper's because of the cover.
Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of the record.
Guest:Great cover.
Guest:But Bob Dylan or Iron Butterfly, Dylan as a little kid was just this guy talking over and over again.
Guest:I was like, I can't do that.
Marc:But you had a lot in the house, and you had a lot going on, and you had siblings who were actually engaged.
Marc:in what was happening in the world and a mother who was engaged in what was happening in the world and you saw it from an early age.
Marc:So it's like it makes sense that you're kind of compelled now or in the last decade or two, whenever, to sort of go out into the world and educate yourself and see what's up.
Marc:Because there is a sentiment on this record of wanting social change, observing how we're losing our grasp of what's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think, you know, not to sound like, I'll just say it.
Guest:The America that I know, and I'll just talk about America because I'm American, right?
Guest:I could talk about other countries, but it's way more observational.
Guest:But I've traveled to these countries a lot in the last 30 years.
Guest:something years.
Guest:I get over, you know, Germany before the wall went down, I've been there, you know, when the wall was going down, after I went down.
Guest:Touring.
Guest:Touring.
Guest:I could tell you a lot about what I observed there, but I'm not German.
Guest:Right.
Guest:As an American, we grew up with eight kids.
Guest:My dad was a fireman.
Guest:You do the math how much money we had, right?
Guest:He's a fireman, huh?
Guest:So we had to feed these kids, right?
Marc:Wow, everyone's wearing each other's clothes.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And big bags of Cheerios.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You don't know any better.
Guest:Who cares?
Marc:You're eating breakfast.
Guest:You're eating breakfast, man.
Guest:It's Cheerios every day.
Guest:But you just assume that's what everybody else has too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Until some guy, you go to your friend's house for breakfast.
Guest:You're like, what's this?
Guest:Well, it was like in middle school.
Guest:Man, I could tell you so many interesting things.
Guest:As an adult, I can look back and go, that was so interesting.
Guest:I started public school the year that started integration and busing in Seattle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My family is mixed.
Guest:My oldest sister, Carol, married a black man in 1962.
Guest:It was not, you know, that was... Heavy.
Guest:It was illegal in some states, in a lot of states, because my oldest two nephews and niece are mixed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're about my age.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:anyhow so there was a kid on our block he was a caucasian kid but he had white blotches on his skin it was a pigment thing so i thought there was just like and then there was a filipino family lived across the street sure so there was you know people that that and there was there was polka dotted kids yeah and there was you know mixed kids that was one of the that was one of the races you thought the polka dotted kids you know it was just white with white
Guest:We all played together, right?
Guest:And so, you know, it's definitely a learned behavior to be, you know, have something against somebody with a different color.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because we just played together.
Marc:Yeah, there's an innocent questioning.
Marc:Like, you know, what's that?
Marc:How come you're different?
Marc:But not like, you know, fuck you, you're different.
Guest:No, it would last maybe about 30 seconds and then you'd move on because you got to pick teams for, you know.
Guest:You got to run around.
Guest:Yeah, throwing dirt clods at each other, right?
Guest:So an interesting way to grow up.
Guest:I don't think Seattle really, there wasn't a, that I knew of a racist.
Guest:There was the Central District, the CD we called it.
Guest:Where'd you grow up?
Guest:And the Central District was where, you know, it was African-American.
Marc:Yeah, my ex-wife, my first ex-wife grew up in Seattle and her dad is married to an African-American woman and she kind of grew up.
Marc:In the city?
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:I'm not sure which part, but she wrote a book about it, about growing up with a dad who was basically a white guy who was encultured black.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:He was that trip.
Marc:It's called I'm Down.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, if you read the Quincy Jones book, Cube, where he's talking about Seattle and the jazz scene, and Ray Charles moved there when he was 15.
Guest:There was quite a black jazz scene in the 40s, and it was pretty open, I think.
Marc:It seemed like it was a pretty fertile music scene of all kinds, right?
Marc:It proves to be... There's something about the air up there and the dope that...
Guest:I saw the dope come into that town.
Guest:The black dope, right?
Guest:The tar?
Guest:I saw it come in in 81 and 82, when it really first came in, and it decimated my whole scene.
Guest:That's why I moved to LA.
Guest:I mean, that was like the final.
Marc:When did you start, you know,
Marc:So you saw the creation of what became the grunge scene.
Marc:But as a kid, you knew the Sonics were there.
Marc:But all throughout your childhood, there was rock music happening in Seattle.
Marc:So when did you become part of the scene that was evolving?
Guest:Okay, because I'm from a family of eight kids, you got nothing of your own.
Guest:So you might have like, this baseball bat is mine.
Guest:And it's mine, it's not ours, it's mine.
Guest:And I saw punk rock flyers on the telephone poles, the mentors and the lewd and DOA.
Guest:And I just started kind of, my older brother showed me three chords on the guitar.
Guest:I started playing bass, there was a drum kit next door at the neighbors, I would play that.
Guest:It was made to keep time.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:Fifth grade.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sixth grade.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I'm keeping time and I'm playing, you play these three chords and don't, don't fuck up, you know, and play today's your birthday on the, okay.
Guest:That's the, what I realized later, that's the major blues scale.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I didn't have to learn much more than that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Three chords, a pentatonic scale and keep time.
Marc:And there's the notes in there.
Guest:I didn't learn much more than that until I started taking bass lessons in my forties.
Okay.
Guest:didn't need to you know it's all ear and and so anyhow i see these punk rock posters and i'm like that's something that could be my own and i was so intrigued by it and i saw there was a kid uh with a pink mohawk that would walk through a neighborhood and finally i talked to him and he's like hey i'm starting a band man you want to play in my band yeah and uh
Guest:and i was 13. yeah and my buddy andy my best friend like he him and i he played drums and i played bass if that's what it took i got a gibson ebo to this guy i had a paper route i bought it for 125 bucks i'm sure it was hot yeah uh but it was 125 bucks i could save up for my paper route got that bass put a you know eventually i put a black flag stick i don't know what happened to this bass by the way
Guest:Anybody out there listening, seize this bass.
Guest:I lost it in like 85 in LA.
Guest:Somebody found it.
Guest:You'll buy it back?
Guest:I'll buy it back.
Guest:I'll do you a solid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No questions asked.
Guest:Gibson EBO.
Guest:Anyhow, we started this band called The Veins.
Guest:And all I knew what to do was like you write a song.
Yeah.
Guest:Whatever that meant.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I wasn't good enough to write a song like The Witch.
Guest:I mean, that's like a real song.
Marc:Sonics tunes.
Guest:So we would just... It's a Sonics song or a Beatles song.
Guest:So you would just write... I got turned on to The Pistols.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got turned on to The Sweet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got turned on... DOA was like our kiss.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And The Avengers and...
Guest:the Clash and I got turned on a 999 and UK subs and all of the stuff came flying in and the Slade and then somebody said, well, you know, this came from the Stooges, you know, and I'm like, all of a sudden the Stooges, oh my God, I'm going crazy because all of this great music is dropping into my lap.
Guest:I'm dropping and we're writing songs.
Guest:We don't know how to write songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we just, the thing is we got a gig in a week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we got to write the songs and you just go out and play them.
Guest:And I remember Andy and I, we were little thieves, man.
Guest:And we stole all these milk cartons, plastic ones out of the back of them.
Guest:grocery store the crates the crates yeah and then we stole some lumber and we built a stage but suddenly like we had our own stage like we could play anywhere you know what i mean um yeah and so you would rent these uh we had it in like two pieces this dumb stage yeah and uh we'd rent like union halls right you'd have to put on a front punk show
Guest:Yeah, it was like you'd have to call a dance.
Guest:You'd have to hire an off-duty cop for like 30 bucks, I think.
Guest:It was a dollar to get in.
Guest:So you just had to make enough money to pay for the place and the cop.
Guest:And sometimes you charge $2.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you're selling tickets?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:People are coming.
Marc:You're playing for somebody.
Guest:Somebody's doing it.
Guest:And we just put on shows.
Guest:And little clubs would pop up and close down.
Guest:But never knew how to really write a song.
Guest:Just riffs and an idea of like...
Guest:It's all middle school stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I wrote this song called The Fake.
Guest:It was the first song I ever wrote.
Guest:It's on a single.
Guest:You can find it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:The main single from 1979.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My voice hadn't changed yet.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:And I'm singing the song.
Guest:And it's actually...
Guest:Part of it's like you'll recognize the jungle riff in there, the verse riff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's... This fake song.
Guest:My voice hadn't changed.
Guest:It was about this girl in middle school who was just being a fake man.
Guest:Yeah, a fake.
Guest:But, you know, you go back to...
Marc:It's just fake.
Marc:Yeah, good one.
Marc:Yeah, thank you.
Marc:You got a single?
Marc:Do you have any of those records?
Guest:I don't, no.
Guest:And I guess, I think those singles are like $1,000 if you find an original one.
Marc:Someone give Duff his record.
Guest:And then kind of matriculating through the punk rock scene and realizing, wow, you go see a lot of other bands.
Guest:You go see every band that came through town.
Marc:So like a community.
Guest:Yeah, there was about 100 of us.
Marc:Right, and then people would come into town, and you'd have to find out from somebody, because the punk scene was all about people hearing things.
Marc:Record store.
Guest:Oh, our record store, no.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But Scott McCoy, who went on to play in the Young Fresh Fellows, and R.E.M.
Guest:was our record store guy.
Guest:And he worked at the counter, and he knew all the stuff, and you could look at magazines, NME, and New York.
Guest:What was that?
Guest:New York Rocker, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Punk Magazine came out.
Guest:Yeah, Punk, yeah.
Guest:And I think the first zine may have been Maximum Rock and Roll.
Guest:There was Flipside and Slash.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we were open to everything.
Guest:ACDC at first was like a punk rock band.
Guest:No doubt.
Guest:It was accepted first in punk rock.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And they went and opened for, they played the Coliseum in Seattle, which is now the Key Arena.
Guest:They opened, it was ACDC, Cheap Trick, and Kiss.
Guest:i saw acdc with journey there you go yeah yeah and i was there to see journey okay and you were probably like what is this these this punk rock band i was like what is this going it was with bond and it was crazy yeah um and we were just so open and got to see so many great shows um
Guest:Dem Kennedys.
Guest:And soon enough, I was in bands that were getting more serious.
Guest:And hardcore was kind of coming in.
Guest:I was in this band.
Guest:It was a hardcore band called The Farts.
Guest:And I played drums.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Super fast.
Guest:And the singer of that band was- The Farts?
Guest:The Farts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was way more politically astute.
Guest:We were so young, I don't know how, like happy apathy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was all political.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Reagan was coming in.
Guest:All this stuff was going on.
Guest:And he was writing about it.
Guest:And he turned me on to Tank.
Guest:And he turned me on, it must have been 1980, to Motorhead.
Guest:Ace of Spades had just come out like, oh, this encompasses everything.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is everything.
Guest:Then we went down that road.
Marc:Metal and punk and rock.
Guest:Yeah, Tank.
Guest:There was a band, Tank.
Guest:But this guy also turned me on to Blue Cheer.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And your world's just exploding.
Guest:Your mind's exploding with all this great music.
Guest:And these bands that we'd come and see play, even The Clash, I saw them pre-London Calling at the Paramount.
Guest:And again, there's those 100 of us there.
Guest:And this one, before it was even slam dancing, it was pogoing still.
Guest:Sure, sure, yeah.
Guest:And the security there at the Paramount, they were used to more straight shows, I guess, or whatever, and plays and stuff.
Guest:And they see these kids jumping up and down and a big yellow-coated guy in the front punched a guy.
Guest:Of course, I knew the guy he punched because I knew every punker in town.
Guest:Broke his nose.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:During the class show because he thought we were fighting, I guess.
Yeah.
Guest:And Strummer stopped the show, man.
Guest:And Paul Simonon came out with an ax from the side, like a firefighting ax.
Guest:He had to chop down the wooden barrier.
Guest:And Strummer said, there's no difference between us and you.
Guest:We're in this thing together.
Guest:And, you know, he dressed down this security.
Guest:Like, we're in this, we're human beings, you know?
Guest:This guy's just dancing.
Guest:And he broke his nose and, you know, and stopped the show.
Guest:And I realized, like, man, these guys are so exotic.
Guest:It's the clash.
Guest:They're singing about London's burning.
Guest:I have no idea what that means, you know?
Guest:But he stopped the show to say that we're all in this together, that there's no difference between them and us.
Guest:And that's stuck with you.
Guest:To this day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I play shows, you know,
Guest:I've met so many fans.
Guest:Going back to me going out and meeting people and talking to people, I've met so many fans and I've been, over the years, and now,
Guest:When you assume you're the most interesting person in the room, I always find myself to be so, so wrong and so full of my fucking self.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because there's people that are coming to our shows that have so many stories and there might be...
Guest:Somebody's wife might have just died of cancer, and they bring in their little girl.
Guest:Because Sweet Child of Mine was this song that they had in common with their mom.
Guest:That happened?
Guest:They came to seven shows in a row, and they're crying when we play that song.
Guest:What's going on there?
Guest:And I met them on the street in New Orleans.
Guest:I was out with my wife, and it was this guy and his little girl.
Guest:I got daughters, man.
Guest:I'm like, I see you guys at the shows.
Guest:And then we were walking.
Guest:They said, we don't want to bother you guys.
Guest:We're just, no, you're not bothering us.
Guest:We're just walking into New Orleans.
Guest:And they were so sweet.
Guest:And I gave the little girl a pic.
Guest:And she started crying.
Guest:I had a good hard pic in my pocket.
Guest:And the dad, he started telling me the story of the mom that she passed away.
Guest:And then Sweet Child of Mine was a song.
Guest:And I'm like, that's why you guys are.
Guest:He brings her up front to these huge shows.
Guest:And so many stories like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That these aren't just punters coming to our show.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And it goes back to Joe Strummer.
Guest:Like, I was an interesting person at that Clash show.
Guest:I had a story.
Guest:We all had stories.
Guest:And the Clash had the stories.
Guest:But together, we're stronger together.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And also, you've been around now in this band in one form or another, whether it was on record and even when you weren't in the band, to where there's multi-generations.
Guest:Yeah, there is multi, like three.
Marc:Yeah, so you got parents and grandparents
Marc:turning grandkids on and parents turning kids on to this music, which is pretty timeless.
Guest:You know, we say we're 55 years old because we are.
Guest:But we're really not like, I still see my, because there's the Stones and there's like Sabbath and Aerosmith, a couple.
Guest:I mean, these are the bands I was listening to.
Guest:They're in their 70s, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you see the fans of the Stones coming.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And those are like the grandparents, I guess.
Marc:Sure, I mean, when I went to the Stone show, I was like, I'm not the oldest guy here, man.
Marc:I mean, some of these cats have been with them since the beginning, so they're the same age.
Marc:They're in the late 60s, 70s.
Guest:Yeah, and the people, the parents, I guess, are like my age.
Guest:Some of the people my age are grandparents.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:So you'll see a whole collection of people together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You recognize that's a family.
Marc:And it's like I think initially, like, you know, if you go back to your younger self, you would think that would deny the the menace of the music.
Marc:But, you know, as you get older and you realize that this is part of the American songbook in a way, and it's a global phenomenon and that it stays, you know, music stays around forever.
Marc:You know, you're not up there going like, you know, fuck you, old people.
Marc:You know, now it's sort of like, you know, we play this music because we love it, we made it, and it's for everybody, and it's sort of sweet to see several generations of people.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, if they're into It's So Easy as a song or Coma, which is about, you know, a guy looking for a way to suicide, you know, like, cool.
Yeah.
Guest:You want your kid to hear that good.
Guest:And they're rocking out Tacoma.
Guest:What a brutal song.
Marc:So when you were coming up, you were in Seattle when Alice in Chains and Nirvana and Soundgarden, or had you already left?
Guest:I left in 84.
Marc:So that was before?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I knew Chris Cornell, Kim Thale.
Guest:They hadn't started Soundgarden yet.
Marc:But you guys were hanging around.
Marc:They were part of the punk scene, some of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you saw the dope come in.
Guest:Ben Shepard from Soundgarden.
Guest:Those guys were all part of the early punk scene.
Marc:And you saw the dope come in?
Guest:I saw the dope come in to Seattle.
Guest:It was 1981, late 1981.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there were some people, some of the older people, like, doing, they're shooting heroin in their arms, you know, like, okay.
Marc:Now, had you been aware of that with your brother's generation?
Marc:I mean, did, you know, because, like, a lot of those guys came back, you know, kind of fucked up.
Guest:Yeah, my brother didn't come back fucked up on drugs.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:Yeah, so I didn't see heroin in Seattle.
Guest:until it came into my scene.
Guest:And it came in and it seemed like there was just this huge influx of heroin suddenly.
Marc:There was, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a new market, a new kind of dope.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was that black dope, right?
Marc:The tar?
Guest:It was tar.
Marc:Yeah, so that was a whole new thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's suddenly everybody in my scene, the scene had gotten bigger by 82.
Guest:There was people, there was the, you know, there was the suburbian kids coming in and, you know, they thought slam dancing was fighting and, you know, I could comment on just that.
Marc:The shift from the pogo to the slam dance.
Guest:so the slam dance too then you like some kids coming from like all of a sudden like white power shit and like whoa whoa whoa you guys got this all wrong yeah yeah this isn't about they come in from idaho or whatever eastern washington yeah yeah it came in and really decimated um i had a job i had a band that was doing really well we got signed to jello's uh label alternative tentacles oh yeah
Guest:The Farts had morphed into this band called 10 Minute Warning.
Guest:We went on tour with Black Flag, we went on tour with Dead Kennedys.
Guest:We were the first band to slow things down, and we were playing these long, slowed down, psychedelic, crazy songs.
Guest:And we got signed to Jell-O's thing.
Guest:We could have been like, we're going to be the thing.
Guest:This band was serious, but then heroin came into the band.
Guest:Just decimated this band we just got.
Guest:Oh man, our band, not our band.
Guest:And my roommate I lived with, he got strung out.
Guest:Who was my, these are all my friends that are my best friends.
Marc:And you just see him turn into those zombies.
Guest:Yeah, and it happened to my girlfriend.
Guest:And just seemingly everyone around me.
Guest:And by this time I'm 19.
Marc:And you didn't get involved with it then?
Guest:No.
Guest:Dude, I did so many drugs by the time I was 16.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then I went straight edge for a year and a half.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I'd done Quaaludes, Valium, cocaine.
Guest:Acid?
Guest:Acid, yes.
Guest:Man, we could walk home from school and pick mushrooms.
Guest:By seventh grade, I knew how to discern a liberty cap from anything else.
Okay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, very young.
Guest:Pot, I'd given up.
Guest:That was for hippies by the time I'm like ninth grade.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And got into some harder drugs.
Guest:Didn't get into heroin because it hadn't hit by the time of ninth grade, I don't think.
Guest:But...
Guest:At the same time, I was getting very serious about music.
Guest:By my 10th grade, this is what I'm gonna do.
Guest:I'm gonna stop doing crime.
Guest:I'm gonna stop stealing cars.
Guest:I'm gonna stop doing drugs.
Guest:Did you get busted for that shit?
Guest:My friend got busted for Grand Theft Auto.
Guest:My best friend.
Guest:High Speed Chase.
Guest:And that's when I was like, okay.
Guest:That's done.
Guest:We're done.
Guest:You weren't in the car that night.
Guest:I was not.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Lucky.
Guest:I had gotten arrested in the eighth grade for throwing rocks at a cop car and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:But that was about as drastic as it went.
Marc:So all this dope comes in.
Marc:You see people dying.
Guest:People died.
Marc:And that's when you decided to leave?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:There was a drug house.
Guest:All my friends, their house turned into a drug house where you go get a score.
Guest:And a Mexican gang came in, tied them all up, had machine guns, masks.
Guest:One of the girls got sexually molested.
Guest:They pistol whipped a guy.
Guest:It was getting very, very serious.
Guest:Where's the dope?
Guest:Where's the money?
Guest:Beating the fuck out of the guy.
Guest:This kind of dark stuff started happening all over the place.
Marc:In the mid 80s.
Guest:It's 83, and I'm playing music.
Guest:My band signed the Jellos label.
Guest:My band's falling apart.
Guest:My friend comes to me, who's a junkie, and he says, man, if you don't get out now, you're our hope.
Marc:You're our hope.
Marc:He knew he was lost.
Guest:Yeah, and he's still alive, that guy, but he still is lost.
Guest:But I can't thank him enough for pulling me aside and going, you got something.
Marc:Yeah, it happened to me that one time the drug dealer told me, I gotta get out of town.
Marc:And I was like, okay, if you're telling me that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So in 84, so I had a job.
Guest:I worked at this bakery.
Guest:Being a baker is hard work, but I knew how to, I worked there a year and a half.
Guest:By the end of that, I was an actual pastry chef.
Guest:I started as a dishwasher and ended as a pastry chef.
Marc:So you can cook a cake?
Guest:I could cook, I could bake anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As a pastry chef, yeah, like everything from sourdough bread.
Guest:Do you still do it?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:My wife, I mean, once in a while I'll make like, but it's been so long, like I'll fuck it up.
Guest:I'll try to make this lattice topped, you know, raspberry torte with, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it looks awful.
Guest:You're a little out of shape with the- Yeah, I'm out of, that's a thing where repetition.
Marc:You're out of pie shape.
Guest:I'm out of pie shape, yeah.
Guest:But my wife, of course, like, this is the best thing I've ever seen.
Guest:You're the best baker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I'm not.
Guest:Not anymore.
Guest:That was like 40 years ago.
Guest:But thank you, honey.
Marc:So you got that skill when you go to Los Angeles?
Guest:So I have a resume.
Guest:I had $360.
Guest:By the time I'm 19, I toured in punk rock tours and done this stuff.
Guest:A lot of West Coast stuff.
Guest:So I have $360.
Guest:I sell my drum kit, which is a piece of shit.
Guest:I sell it for like $100.
Guest:I had what I'd saved up, which was $200.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:$15, and I had my $300 car, and I put a guitar amp, bass amp, I had a bass and a guitar, and I headed south.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And little I know the guitar that I got in Seattle that I traded for,
Guest:It was stolen from L.A.
Guest:five years prior from a guitar store in the valley.
Guest:Get out of here.
Guest:So I come down.
Guest:I finally get a job right away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I have a resume.
Guest:I think Northridge is L.A.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you've been driving 24 hours, you see all those lights.
Guest:Okay, I'm in here in L.A.
Guest:Forgetting where the Café de Grande is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hollywood's further.
Guest:But I was just done.
Guest:I'm done driving.
Guest:I need a good job now.
Guest:So I got a job at Black Angus in Northridge.
Guest:I had a resume.
Guest:They were hiring right away for a cook.
Guest:Boom, there I was.
Guest:I was working, and after that night of work, I asked an older guy, like a chef there, and I said, where's Hollywood?
Guest:He's like, Hollywood's 25 miles away, man.
Guest:I'm like, oh, crap.
Guest:Yeah, I'm close, though.
Guest:So I didn't have enough money to get an apartment.
Guest:I stayed in my car for the first couple weeks, washed at work, got my first paycheck, got an apartment on Ivar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this is right when the Olympics had left LA.
Guest:There was the Summer Olympics in 84.
Guest:So I guess they had cleaned up Hollywood for the Olympics.
Guest:And then when it was over, cops just left.
Guest:So it was the Wild West, man.
Guest:And if I was escaping heroin in Seattle,
Guest:Boy, did I move into the center of it in Hollywood.
Guest:But at least by this point, I always thought, okay, well, it's just everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm here.
Guest:Moved to LA.
Guest:I had to pawn my guitar.
Guest:It was the most expensive thing I had.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just between paycheck and rent, there was this little lapse and I would have to pawn the guitar for $39 or whatever it was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And now I can make rent and then I get my paycheck, go get my...
Guest:guitar out of Pond.
Guest:I did it like five times, and after the fifth time, these cops came to my shitty little apartment.
Guest:I lived with thousands of cockroaches.
Marc:Because they run the numbers from the Pond shop.
Marc:Yeah, you have to give your ID.
Guest:And they said, do you have this guitar?
Guest:They were plainclothes cops, showed me their badges.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, I have that guitar you're talking about.
Guest:We gotta take it.
Guest:They recognized I was too young to have stolen it five years earlier in LA.
Guest:They saw my IDs from Washington State.
Guest:They said, well, we have to take that guitar.
Guest:They're looking at my apartment, I've got nothing.
Guest:I've got a bass though.
Guest:And they take it and they say, we'll try to talk to the guitar store owner and see if you can buy it.
Guest:But he called me to his credit.
Guest:He called me and he said, I can sell you.
Guest:Sorry, man.
Guest:But it was stolen from me.
Guest:I can sell you for 500 bucks.
Guest:I'm like, I don't have 500.
Guest:I don't have anything close.
Guest:I'm just making rent into my phone bill.
Guest:i didn't have car insurance um by this time i'm working at a phone sales place yeah you know bronson and hollywood yeah um and doing like driving stuff around that i didn't know but it was okay because uh it was a bunch of hungarian guys yeah and mikey my name's they said they called me mikey yeah mikey doesn't ask questions yeah i'm like okay it must be something some bad in the back i don't know what it is
Marc:Something Bad in the Back.
Marc:That's the name of the next record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I think it was like, you know, back then it was fake Jordache jeans and fake- Knockoffs.
Guest:Knockoffs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think that's what I was driving around.
Guest:I'd like to think.
Guest:Were you playing at all?
Guest:So I, yeah, man.
Guest:I mean, I came, that's what I came to do.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I didn't come- So you got no guitar now.
Marc:Now you got just a bass.
Guest:I got a bass.
Marc:So I meet Slash two weeks in.
Marc:From the ad.
Marc:From the ad.
Marc:What were the three bands?
Marc:Aerosmith, Fear.
Marc:Alice Cooper and Fear.
Marc:And that's weird because that was exactly what you were working towards, right?
Guest:It's great.
Guest:It's perfect.
Guest:His name is Slash, man.
Guest:And so, yeah, he and Steven have a band called Road Crew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's no singer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But at least there was a chance for me to play with Slash and Steven.
Guest:And Slash was this...
Guest:You know, I recognize him as like... Something.
Marc:This kid is like... This guy is like from... The golden child.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What is the deal?
Guest:His mom was really nice to me.
Guest:Knew like I was down there by myself.
Guest:And she would call and check up on me.
Guest:And like, you know, you can always come over if you're hungry or something.
Guest:Very sweet.
Guest:I felt like I had like a home.
Guest:And Stephen Adler was his sweetest guy.
Guest:Izzy moved across the street from me sometime in there in that first couple months.
Marc:Just by coincidence, Stradwin did, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:I see this Johnny Thunders looking guy at the phone booth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Doing what I know is a drug deal for sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And anyhow, I talked to him afterwards.
Guest:He's like, man, we kind of recognize each other as kind of like- Kindred spirits.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:84, you got to realize 84.
Guest:So disciples of punk rock and-
Guest:And Johnny Thunders and Steve Jones' guitar playing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Let's be honest.
Guest:That's what it is.
Guest:And so Izzy said, me and my friend are starting this band.
Guest:You play bass.
Guest:And it was Guns N' Roses.
Guest:It was Axl.
Guest:His friend was Axl.
Guest:Slash had taken me to see L.A.
Guest:Guns when Axl was in L.A.
Guest:Guns.
Guest:Right?
Guest:84.
Marc:That must have been something.
Guest:But I see this guy get up.
Guest:And I'd seen...
Guest:Rollins, when he first got in Black Flag, my first gig was opening for Black Flag with Ron Reyes as a singer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right, before Rollins.
Guest:And then Des Kadena came through as a singer.
Guest:And then Des went to guitar.
Guest:And Rollins, this guy who I'd read, he'd written a couple of things in Maximum Rock and Roll.
Guest:I knew he was from DC, from SOA.
Guest:He was this really kind of hardcore dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like he was writing columns.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This guy was serious and he's going to be in Black Flag.
Guest:That's a thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's ready for it.
Guest:And so my band, 10 Minute Warning, we did like four shows or five shows with Black Flag with Henry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His first time in.
Guest:And he was so intense, man.
Guest:And like even a sound check.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like him just getting ready, I would stay 50 feet away from him.
Guest:He looked like a time bomb.
Marc:And he's like 20, right?
Marc:How old was he?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, maybe he was 20, but he was like hardcore, man.
Guest:And the way he approached a show, man, it was everything.
Marc:Very focused and charisma.
Guest:Everything.
Marc:And he felt that when he saw Axl for the first time?
Guest:So when I see this guy come out, and the way he's singing, I'd never heard anybody sing like that.
Guest:I just met Slash, who's this guitar player from Mars, and I see this singer, and he's really serious, man.
Guest:And something pissed him off, and he breaks a fucking glass on stage, says he's going to kick somebody's fucking ass, and he's not joking.
Guest:It's like, he's not joking.
Guest:You back away from the stage like Henry.
Guest:There's some guys, most of them, 99.5% is like, shut up.
Guest:But there was a few dudes.
Guest:He was one of them in Rollins and Axl.
Guest:I reckon I'm like, he's in that mold, man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So we go out.
Guest:Izzy takes me out to rehearsal, and there's Axl.
Guest:He's testing out the microphone, and two voices are coming out of his mouth at once, like a low register and a high register.
Guest:And he's just doing a scream, checking out the PA, testing the PA.
Guest:and I was like whoa you know and the band originally was two other guys Rob Gardner on drums and Tracy Gunn's on guitar there were some they had songs and it was like okay we played wasn't
Guest:Axel and Izzy were amazing, and Tracy was amazing, and Rob, I don't mean to put them down, but there was something missing, and I've been in enough bands at that point to know there's just something intangible missing.
Guest:So Izzy and I booked this punk rock tour for that band to do, and would start in Seattle, come down to Portland, I'll play all the punk rock places.
Guest:And two of the guys, Rob and Tracy, said, well, where are we going to stay?
Guest:Like, what do you mean we're going to go on tour?
Guest:Like, where are we going to?
Guest:And the punk rock tours, you just stay at whoever offers you the place to stay.
Guest:There'll be somebody.
Guest:Or the club owners say, you guys can sleep here.
Guest:Or you figure it out.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:We got these gigs.
Guest:That's what matters.
Guest:And two of the guys dropped out, and we still wanted to do the tour.
Guest:So...
Guest:And it was just incestuous.
Guest:Axl had played with Slash and I believe Steven and Izzy had played with Steven and whatever happened.
Guest:And I played with Slash and Steven.
Guest:Well, let's get those two guys to see if they'll do the tour.
Guest:And they were like, yes, we'll do the tour.
Guest:But the moment that the five of us were in a room at Nicky Beats rehearsal room in Silver Lake, we knew Nicky.
Guest:And we went and the first three chords we played together was like, oh, there's this thing.
Guest:It's there.
Guest:It's all there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And we went and did this tour.
Guest:We had to hitchhike.
Guest:Our car broke down, our friend's car, in Bakersfield.
Guest:As you know, Seattle's quite a waste from Bakersfield.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the five of us hitchhiked all the way to Seattle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's 1,000 miles.
Yeah.
Marc:Doing gigs along the way or that's where you started?
Guest:No, our gear was left in Bakersfield.
Guest:So we called the band that we're playing with in Seattle.
Guest:Can we use your gear if we make it to Seattle?
Guest:Yeah, you can use our gear.
Guest:But you guys are going to hitchhike from Bakersfield?
Guest:Yes, we're going to make it.
Guest:And that odyssey, which it was, dude.
Guest:It wasn't one ride.
Guest:That odyssey of us getting up there.
Guest:It's five dudes.
Guest:Starving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No money.
Guest:We had $37, which we had to give to a trucker to give us a ride up to Medford.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we did have one ride, but we were all in the cubby or the whatever.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:The bed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With our guitars, and the guy's all high on crank.
Guest:His eyes are all black.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We get to Medford, that's like halfway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we got rides somewhere five miles in the back of somebody's pickup.
Guest:And then these two girls, these two women, they were probably 34.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they were like women.
Guest:yeah they came and picked us up they had a they had a pickup truck that had a cover in the back yeah and they pulled over look at us on the road like we all like who would pick us up and they said look we were hippies so maybe they're older than 34 yeah and we used to hitchhike here and nobody picked us up because the way we looked so we actually passed you guys yeah and they had a discussion yeah they got off the next and they came back around and they picked us up and they said are you guys hungry
Guest:we said yeah we're really hungry so they got us a six pack of beer and some sandwiches yeah and they gave us a ride to portland yeah like we can take you to portland and and i at that where we got sandwiches and beer i called my friend in seattle collect i'm like we're getting a ride to portland can you come get us yeah and that's 180 miles south of seattle he came down and got us
Guest:and got us to seattle we made the show and we went through that like we we just knew if we can go through this together and we were we were awful that first gig yeah um but we did it we made the thing three people were there now in seattle you know hundreds of people say they were that first show
Guest:There was three people there, and I knew all three of them.
Guest:So that's the myth that there were hundreds of people there.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I was at that show.
Guest:No, you weren't at that show.
Marc:And that started.
Marc:That was the history, right?
Guest:That's what got us started.
Guest:And then we had a show back at the Troubadour on a Monday night.
Guest:That was supposed to end this tour.
Guest:We weren't able to do the Portland show, Eugene show, Sacramento.
Guest:We didn't have a car.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And our gear was still in Bakersfield, so...
Guest:We just got a ride.
Guest:My friends said, I got to go to LA.
Guest:I'll give you guys a ride.
Marc:But you guys bonded and you knew that you guys could do it.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And you got to know each other and all the insanity and everything else.
Marc:All of that.
Marc:And you're all like 20 what?
Marc:One or two?
Marc:20.
Marc:20.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you go back and you just lean into it.
Guest:We leaned into it hard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We got a little place to rehearse and live.
Guest:Had no bathroom.
Guest:It was behind where Guitar Center is on Sunset.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was an alley and these little storage rooms.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we took one of those, and yeah, that's perfect.
Guest:We leaned into it.
Marc:And then it becomes history.
Marc:Appetite comes out in, what, 87?
Marc:And Adler craps out.
Guest:Not right away, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a lot of drugs.
Guest:I mean, I was telling you, I saw this documentary last night about a guy, this famous kind of Hollywood guy.
Guest:It reminded me of... This is pre-AIDS...
Guest:Kind of.
Marc:Right?
Marc:It was around.
Guest:Okay, so I worked.
Marc:81, it's sort of.
Guest:The bakery I worked at in Seattle, it was all gay men.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I remember when it first came in, the bathtub thing and all of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:So that was 84, 83, 84.
Guest:And the guys I worked with, when you work in a restaurant, you're very close with the people you work with.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And they would tell me all the gory details of everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, okay, that's a lot of information.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But this thing started coming around.
Guest:Grids at first.
Guest:I don't know if you remember that.
Guest:It was gay-related immune.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:It was called grids at first.
Guest:I remember this like back of my hand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Gay-related immune deficiency syndrome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was just thought of really as like a gay, something was happening somehow.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you're saying that when you guys were starting out, it wasn't, you know, you were just going at it.
Guest:Everything was shared openly.
Guest:Everything and everyone.
Marc:So you got lucky.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I got lucky.
Guest:And there was just a lot of drugs, and we all fell victim to it for sure.
Marc:You got strung out?
Guest:Later.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Because I was still like- Just boozy?
Guest:I was boozy, just boozy.
Guest:And I wasn't even that fucked up, like through the appetite thing and all that.
Guest:I drank probably more than the-
Guest:Way more than the average human being drank.
Guest:But for us, that was like keeping it even keeled.
Guest:Axl kept it together pretty damn good.
Guest:We all experimented with stuff, but we did have three guys in the band that were fully strung out.
Marc:Fully strung out.
Marc:And it's hard to manage, huh?
Guest:it's you know okay we're gonna try to kick together they got some like some drug they heard about that you're supposed to make your kick one day yeah it's just like barf and stuff everywhere and you're trying like we got our band our things happening you know you guys are barfing and freaking out and calling the dealer like get over here now man
Guest:So it adds a bit of spice into that.
Marc:So you had to deal with that.
Marc:It's just a different car ride.
Marc:It's a different hitchhiking situation.
Marc:But it put a strain on the thing, right?
Guest:It...
Guest:By the time we'd opened for the Stones, so we'd done the whole Appetite tour, couldn't afford, like, I think everybody got their shit together for the Appetite tour, for the most part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, maybe copying the heroin once in a while, but not a full-on habit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Until we got back off of that tour.
Yeah.
Guest:And then we got a... We saw no money on that tour.
Guest:Our roadies made more money.
Guest:We'd have to borrow money from our roadies to eat.
Guest:But we got back and our record had started selling.
Guest:And they said, the money's in the pipeline.
Guest:What the fuck is a pipeline?
Guest:Knew nothing about money.
Guest:I told you about my family I grew up in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I got a check, man.
Guest:My first check I got was $80,000 from nothing.
Guest:And I was scared of the money.
Guest:I didn't know what money was.
Guest:Like, what am I supposed to do?
Guest:Like, I'd heard all these stories about the depression from my parents.
Guest:I don't want to spend it all because, you know, the depression.
Guest:But I didn't know what to do.
Guest:But
Guest:so drugs were you could afford it you could afford the drugs and by the time we played the the show with the stones yeah we played three shows with them at the coliseum i think it was 89 l.a coliseum l.a coliseum sorry yeah and it was a big deal to do they had asked us specifically and we were on the cover of like the weekly and stuff like guns roses the new rolling stones and all of this too much pressure yeah um
Guest:We didn't think we were the new Rolling Stones.
Guest:We were just Guns N' Roses, and we were doing our thing.
Guest:And Axl was fed up.
Guest:He was fed up, and he let the band know that the three guys that were dancing with Mr. Brownstone during this, that they either stop.
Guest:This is on stage.
Marc:I think I kind of remember it.
Guest:They either stop, or there's no more band.
Guest:I think I kind of remember that.
Guest:It was pretty genius.
Guest:It got press, right?
Guest:I'm sure it did.
Guest:I kind of remember that.
Guest:I was living in a little, like, my little corner of... Your little bass corner?
Guest:Well, no, not just like... Man, our band got...
Guest:big you know and there was no internet there was no like um there's no how-to manual yeah either yeah um i'm still like this punk rock guy you know i'm thinking that man fuck i got my punk rock values i don't want to be big be recognized but we're on the cover of rolling stone you go to ralph's to get vodka you know yeah everybody you're ralph's like you're on the cover of the rolling stone right by the cash register you're that guy yeah
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of a sudden, you know, your humor's way funnier than ever was recognized before.
Guest:Sure, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was the funniest guy around, and all the girls finally do realize how good-looking... I mean, I knew I got my... I'm squared away, you know, but all the girls finally... I must be coming into my own here, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, and about six months in, you realize, ah, it's because the band is big.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:About that point, I was going through a breakup.
Guest:I got married way too young to this girl that, you know, we were a great boyfriend and girlfriend.
Guest:I was in L.A.
Guest:I needed something.
Guest:I felt I needed some sort of anchor.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:Life was crazy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, okay, well, let's get married.
Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, I did that.
Marc:That'll help.
Marc:No.
Guest:Worst idea ever.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so we had to break up and it was, I didn't ever want to get married and divorced.
Guest:I saw my parents go through this thing when I was a young, second grade.
Guest:And I just, I'm like, I never will do that.
Guest:That's too brutal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, but here I was in the middle of it.
Guest:I was only like 21.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I found that cocaine, at that point, you could drink more.
Guest:And I was like trying to just bury my sorrow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And drinking and some value and things like that would dampen it down.
Guest:Man, if you do cocaine, you can do more of that other stuff.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Stay up all night and drink.
Guest:for three days yeah yeah you know four yeah and uh you crash out for a while you feel great you wake up and do it again here we go and so i got i got into that and that was a danger that was that was the beginning of the end for me uh what eventually became the end for me but um we went out to chicago to work on the illusions records and uh
Guest:A lot of cocaine, a lot of alcohol, a lot of, and that's okay, but we knew there was a line you didn't cross, like when you played, when you rehearsed, when you played shows.
Marc:For Axl or just in general?
Guest:No, for us, just as musicians.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Like, you can get fucked up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We're world class at it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But just don't let it fuck up recording or rehearsal or gig.
Guest:that's that's the line you can cross right do whatever you want just don't cross that line right you know yeah and that line started to get crossed yeah and it was it was steven at first and it's and izzy suddenly he got busted on a plane doing something yeah and uh they landed the plane in like phoenix and or he got arrested off of the plane and put in jail and he's left to jones in a jail in phoenix and
Guest:He got sober.
Guest:That was 91.
Guest:Now suddenly Izzy's a guy like, I'm so happy for him, but I'm staying away from him because if you got a sober guy in your midst, you don't wanna be like, oh shit.
Guest:You don't wanna hear, you gotta get sober.
Marc:You know, somehow or another, you've managed as grownups who have been through all this, the long ride.
Marc:You know, you come back together.
Marc:You're pros.
Marc:You know, people are excited to see you.
Marc:You've somehow managed a detente with, you know, Axel.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, you're out there doing big shows.
Guest:Yeah, flash forward to now.
Guest:I mean, so much happened.
Guest:I mean, I got sober.
Guest:Yeah, what happened?
Marc:How did that happen?
Guest:Well, I mean, we did the Illusions tour.
Guest:I'm drinking more and more.
Guest:There was one gig in Mexico City that I crossed the line.
Guest:I realized right in the middle of the show, I'm just staring at Matt.
Guest:By this time, Matt Sorum's kick drum.
Guest:Just trying to lock in, and I realized I was like...
Guest:doing everything I could do just to hold on to the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was too fucked up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that scared me.
Guest:We finished that tour.
Guest:I stopped the cocaine.
Guest:I stopped vodka.
Guest:I thought, stop drinking.
Guest:I'm drinking wine.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:But I was drinking like- Two gallons.
Guest:Oh, man, at least.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Wine, you got to drink a lot.
Guest:So I went out and did this tour of my own.
Guest:I had made this record during Illusions.
Guest:uh we had days off and i was writing i i kind of thought demos for the next guns record yeah uh but i played drums on them and i played bass and guitar and uh and sang on these songs and and our guy from geth and thomas utah came came into one of the sessions he's like what do you keep doing you keep going off and recording like i gotta do something yeah to keep myself busy you know or i'll i'll be out looking for the guy yeah to cop and and uh
Guest:So this record came out right as Illusions ended and I went out on tour.
Guest:I'm drinking the wine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not doing the cocaine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But how much wine I'm drinking, it has to be a lot because I started having this really bad
Guest:Heartburn.
Guest:I was in the shower one time and my nose kind of hurt and I'm like trying to blow something out of my nose and like my septum comes out and lands on the shower.
Guest:And my body's, my hair's falling out and my bottom, my feet are cracking, my hands are cracking.
Guest:Like when I get up to take a piss in the middle of night, you know, my feet just crack open and...
Guest:It's not going well for me.
Guest:And we do this European tour.
Guest:We go out.
Guest:We open for the Scorpions.
Guest:Your band.
Guest:My band.
Guest:My own band.
Guest:And we do all these shows of our own.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was fun to go out with the Scorpions because we were like, you know, it's like, wow, they're still doing like arenas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Sure.
Guest:And I got the punk rock super group is my band.
Guest:All the guys that I played with younger in the early 80s, they're now my band.
Guest:From all these great bands from San Francisco and Canada, they're all in my band.
Guest:And it's cool.
Guest:And I'm drinking wine, man.
Guest:Those guys in my band are like,
Guest:Yeah, dude, you ain't sober.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to get defensive.
Guest:I'm just drinking wine, man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And your septum is falling out.
Guest:My septum had been falling out, yeah.
Guest:I get back from leg.
Guest:We were supposed to go to... We did that leg, and then we did some American dates, and we did Japan.
Guest:I shouldn't have been touring, but we just toured for two and a half years with Guns N' Roses.
Guest:Two and a half years.
Guest:Now I'm out just doing it, and...
Guest:We do Japan.
Guest:We get back.
Guest:I just bought my house in Seattle.
Guest:I'm finally back home.
Guest:This is my dream to have a house back home.
Guest:That's me.
Guest:I made it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I bought this house that we should steal, this neighborhood we steal cars from.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:High end.
Guest:We didn't grow up in this neighborhood.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm in this house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm in the bed and my stomach really hurts.
Guest:And I...
Guest:It starts really hurting.
Guest:And I roll over, and then it's hurting down on my quad muscles, and I know something's really wrong.
Guest:And I try to roll over again to get to the phone to call 911.
Guest:Because I know something's wrong.
Guest:I can't get out of bed.
Guest:I can't even move.
Guest:I can't barely breathe.
Guest:I'm just...
Guest:Something's wrong.
Guest:And my friend, the guy, the Grand Theft Auto guy, right, who became a real estate agent between the Grand Theft Auto and now, he found the house for me.
Guest:And he's my best friend still to this day, since we're three years old to this day.
Guest:And he would just walk in my house, and he saw my car was in the garage, and my keys while we were downstairs.
Guest:And I hear him downstairs, like, hey, where are you?
Guest:And he, where are you, man?
Guest:He comes upstairs.
Guest:He sees me in bed, and my eyes are open, and he's like, oh, okay.
Guest:Fucking finally happened.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You broke yourself.
Guest:Yeah, and he picked me up, and it hurt so bad.
Guest:I didn't know it was going.
Guest:I was scared.
Guest:And anyhow, he took me into the emergency room, and...
Guest:I was on the ground in the emergency room.
Guest:Couldn't move, and they took me in, and they gave me morphine.
Guest:First, they tried a couple shots of codeine in my ass, nothing.
Guest:They put intravenous morphine.
Guest:They gave me an ultrasound, and they were like, oh.
Guest:My doctor, whose dad had birthed me on all eight kids, now his son was a doctor.
Guest:He was my doctor.
Guest:I saw his face go white when he's looking at the...
Guest:When he's looking at the ultrasound and I was in so much pain I wanted to die.
Guest:I wanted him to kill me.
Guest:The surgeon came in and he said, we're going to do this and this and the other thing.
Guest:And I said, just kill me.
Guest:I can't take any of the morphine.
Guest:I knew what morphine is supposed to do.
Guest:And it wasn't working.
Marc:What was wrong with you?
Guest:My pancreas had burst.
Guest:So it's swollen up and it burst.
Guest:So that's all the stuff that you digest your food.
Guest:Now once it's outside onto your intestines and like quad muscles, it just drips down.
Guest:What the doctors told me was they usually will open somebody up just to let the steam out to alleviate some of the pain before they die.
Guest:You know, I'm like, this is really real.
Guest:You know, this is real.
Guest:And I wanted to die.
Guest:It hurt so bad.
Guest:But they had to put me on Librium, too, because I started having shakes from withdrawals of alcohol, which you can also die from.
Guest:I'm getting all this great news, you know, wonderful news.
Marc:Welcome home.
Guest:So I have morphine in my left arm with the, I'm plunging a button, you know, I got the plunger button where you can just boom, boom.
Guest:And I got the Librium in the right arm.
Guest:And my mom, who by this time had Parkinson's, she comes in, gets wheeled into the hospital to see me and she's crying.
Guest:And I was in so much pain and so kind of... I saw myself from above the bed.
Guest:Literally, I did.
Guest:I saw that.
Guest:And I saw my mom there crying in a wheelchair.
Guest:I'm the youngest.
Guest:And I'm like, if I can get through... The order of things is wrong here.
Guest:I should be taking care of her.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I failed her.
Guest:Her youngest son, I'm in here in the ICU, you know, hanging on.
Guest:They're going to have to take out.
Guest:I'm going to be on dialysis at best, you know.
Guest:But miraculously, through that night, they were going to do surgery the next day.
Guest:They didn't because my pancreas started coming down.
Guest:It was the size of a football and it started coming back down to its normal side.
Guest:So they held off for a couple of days.
Guest:And my doctor said, man, you've been given a second chance after like two and a half days.
Guest:So remember this.
Guest:You've been given a second chance.
Guest:Don't.
Guest:Don't fuck it up.
Guest:And I'm like, okay.
Guest:And I got the Librium, and I got the morphine buttons, and I'm not going to.
Guest:Okay, I haven't drank for two and a half days, man.
Guest:And then it was three and a half days, and then it was six days, and they took the buttons away from me, and that sucked.
Guest:And then I was in there for another seven days, and they weaned me.
Guest:Ophthalmorphine and the pain, I still couldn't eat.
Guest:I was eating ice chips.
Guest:By the time I got out of the hospital, I was done.
Guest:That was what I needed.
Guest:I needed that.
Guest:I had been trying to stop.
Guest:I just thought, I'll never be able to stop.
Guest:I'm gonna die young.
Guest:And seeing my mom,
Guest:like that crying really had an effect on me.
Guest:So how I got sober was that and I got on my mountain bike when I got home, they gave me a Librium and I said, take as directed.
Guest:It was a weaning off thing of Librium.
Guest:Librium's like a value, but it's for alcohol, to come off alcohol.
Guest:So you know what I did?
Guest:I followed medication as directed.
Guest:All these new things.
Guest:I smelt fresh cut grass.
Guest:It reminded me of having paper route.
Guest:I smelled like newspaper print.
Guest:These first things, when you get sober, all these things come back to you before you started getting fucked up.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And I just rode my mountain bike like I didn't know what else to do.
Guest:I was like I was on acid.
Guest:Everything was so real.
Guest:And I had to come back down to L.A.
Guest:We were going to do some guns like start up third record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I come down to L.A.
Guest:I got a mountain.
Guest:I get a mountain bike.
Marc:Was I spaghetti incident?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it was after that.
Guest:So it was after that.
Guest:So we were going to get something started.
Guest:But I had gotten sober and somebody introduced me to, I was going down, now I'm going to Gold's Gym in North Hollywood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm riding my mountain bike.
Guest:I'm going to this gym.
Guest:I don't know what I'm doing.
Guest:I'm just trying to stay.
Guest:Anything I can do to stay sober.
Guest:And there was a kickboxer in the Gold's gym.
Guest:And he was like hitting bags.
Guest:And I said something to him.
Guest:He said, do you want to?
Guest:If you want to, I can introduce you to my sensei.
Guest:And it was two doors down.
Guest:I went through the back door.
Guest:And I met Benny the Jadarkitas.
Guest:I went through the door.
Guest:And this guy comes up to me.
Guest:His eyes just pierced through me and saw all the way down.
Guest:And it was a real fighter's gym at that time, 94.
Guest:And he saw that I was just kind of come through some stuff.
Guest:And he said, look, man, if you want to work in this gym, you have to, I don't want to hear you talk.
Guest:You have to show me you belong here.
Guest:So it was just, I did whatever he said, and I did two days, and I stayed in there for that next two years.
Guest:I was doing two days, I was reading history at home.
Guest:I was living like a monk.
Guest:I had like a, I didn't know how to talk to a girl or anything like that.
Guest:I got a big L on my forehead.
Guest:But I would just, in that two years, Steve Jones came to me, he said, you wanna play in this band with me and John Taylor, Matt, like Shannon Hoon had just died.
Guest:We did a benefit show for his wife and child.
Guest:And I said, Steve, before that, I said, I don't think I can play again.
Guest:I think me getting sober, that's the end of my music career.
Guest:I don't see myself being able to do it.
Guest:And Steve had gotten sober two years prior.
Guest:He goes, it's okay, man.
Guest:And it's Steve Jones, my hero.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:The guy that, you know.
Marc:He's the character.
Guest:He's my everything.
Guest:Steve Jones asked me to play with him.
Guest:He says, you're going to, and what he said to me, he said, you're going to be fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're going to be fine.
Guest:Trust me.
Guest:And we went and started rehearsing.
Guest:And we played that first show.
Guest:I was so scared before the show.
Guest:And the show, then I realized it was easier to play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And people said, after the show, you've never played that good.
Guest:I'm like, really?
Guest:My palms are sweaty, everything.
Guest:I look so much different than I did at the end of my getting fucked up days, which was only two years prior.
Marc:Yeah, as soon as you get off the shit, you start rebuilding.
Guest:Yeah, people thought I'd gotten a facelift and all this stuff.
Guest:I'm like, no, I'm just sober.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, so that began this really long, cool journey.
Guest:As you know, it gets much better.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And it really does.
Guest:And YukitaCon Martial Arts is a, what I didn't know until I went to a program meetings thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is the 12 steps, the thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:is not invented by a couple of guys in the 30s.
Guest:These are universal truths.
Guest:They've gone back in martial arts for 4,000 years.
Guest:I went to the things, the secret meetings we have with the pointy hats and stuff, secret handshake.
Guest:I'm like, oh, this is Yukitakan.
Guest:I'm going through the steps, and this is my martial art.
Guest:Kind of astounding.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:That's a great story, dude.
Marc:It's just sort of astounding where you're at.
Marc:You got two grown kids.
Marc:You've been sober a long time.
Marc:You weathered the storm.
Marc:You and the fellas are back together again.
Marc:And, you know, you know, it's nowhere near as crazy and the money's as big as ever.
Marc:And you found time to sort of like put this album together now come in full circle.
Marc:So, you know, where we started this in terms of the inspiration for the record was you being out in the world and talking to other people.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Talking to other people and kind of realizing, I think I'm going to write a book about this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I don't see this divide.
Guest:I see the news and I read the thing and the divide and this and that and Twitter and I'm just not seeing it.
Guest:Our band goes out and plays these huge shows and music is so universal.
Guest:We've played all over the world for 159 shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:to like five million people right and you see a mix of people we played in in muslim countries where you know women with their whole heads covered are just rocking the out yeah and you realize like it's about about the music and and you know to us it might seem culturally weird but i've traveled enough to the to other countries that i don't think it's i don't go there but i go there without judgment you know it's like they're just rocking the out right i'm down with that you know
Guest:We played Israel and South America and Asia, totally different cultures.
Guest:But music is so universal.
Guest:So maybe if I'm in any bubble, it's in one of unity.
Guest:There's music that's doing this really great thing in a pretty strange time right now.
Guest:This country itself has a very interesting history.
Guest:And if you look at this, you can concentrate on current if you want to.
Guest:I don't pay it that much attention, man, because I know this too shall pass.
Guest:That's the way this country rolls.
Guest:And I choose to see an America as the one that we unite no matter what.
Guest:And I think that's going to happen.
Guest:People are going to get sick of being serious about crap.
Guest:It happened when disco came in.
Guest:People were just so sick of the Watergate and the Vietnam War and all of a sudden people just lost their minds in punk rock and disco and all this shit and cocaine.
Guest:People just went crazy.
Guest:That's just our recent history.
Marc:I hope it happens that way and not in the way where people start picking up arms and organizing militias and cleansing the rest of their state.
Guest:Yeah, I just, I think humanity is, I haven't seen one, like even, I have a cabin in a place that's, my neighbors have been in a quote unquote red part of a state.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Super red.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They don't know the cities.
Guest:They're scared to come to the cities.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My neighbors and stuff, and I talk to them, I joke to them about it.
Guest:My family's gone to use my cabin to get a call.
Guest:It's early on.
Guest:There's some, somebody's using your cabin, like broke in.
Guest:I'm like, what do you mean?
Guest:well, they're black.
Guest:I'm like, that's my family, man.
Guest:They never see, you know what I mean?
Guest:This is like 20 years ago, but we've come up together over there in that country where we water ski together.
Guest:We go up in the mountains.
Guest:You're friends with your neighbors.
Guest:We have barbecues.
Guest:We're super good friends.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:We just don't talk about politics.
Marc:So this record you see as a unifying record?
Guest:I hope it to be.
Guest:I really hope it to be.
Guest:I started writing these little vignettes that were going to be beginnings of chapters.
Guest:And just of my observations, it's not as bad as you think.
Guest:And if you go back in history and you see this happened here and this happened there and
Guest:And this will pass, man.
Guest:It's how we handle it now.
Guest:And I do have these daughters and I want my daughters to know their father.
Guest:You know, what did you do when?
Guest:Right?
Guest:What did you do when that happened?
Guest:And I see the, you know, we see a lot of fucked up shit going on with the school shootings.
Marc:And you wrote that song called Parkland.
Marc:I mean, it's very specific.
Guest:It's pretty specific.
Guest:It's kind of made without commentary.
Guest:It's more of a funeral dirge.
Marc:Yeah, and I think you picked the right producer.
Marc:It's got kind of that roots feel.
Marc:Shooter's like when he sets his mind to doing something that sounds American in a way.
Marc:It's very accessible.
Marc:I think it was great, and I wish you luck with it.
Guest:Oh, thanks, Mark.
Marc:It's great talking to you.
Guest:Yeah, you too.
Guest:I'm glad I finally got to go on the show.
Marc:It was really good, Duff.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Guest:Okay, cool.
Marc:So that was Duff.
Marc:What a nice guy, right?
Marc:It was all coming back to him, it seemed, when I was sitting there talking to him.
Marc:His third album, Tenderness, comes out next Friday, May 31st.
Marc:Get it wherever you get your music.
Marc:All right, I'm going to play some guitar.
Marc:I'm going to play three chords in a way slightly different than I've played them previous.
Marc:Enjoy.
Marc:Echo.
¶¶
Guest:guitar solo
Guest:.
.
.
.
Marc:Boomer lives.