Post by Gilby Admirer on Sept 15, 2002 1:52:00 GMT -5
McKagan remained in Seattle and, in a move reminiscent of John Major's famous decision to run away from the circus and join the Tory party, he became a finance major at college. But his classmates felt when a former member of GN'R walked through the door and plonked books down on the nearest emty desk remains unrecorded, but McKagan had found a 'raison d'etre' again.
"Back when the band started, we all came from humble backgrounds. We got our first cheques for forty grand and it was like, whoah!" he says. "We'd been living on a hundred bucks a week. None of us had seen anything close to that before. Then the next cheque came, and then the really big cheques came, and they just kept coming. We didn't know what anything was, what anything was for.
"It was only later that I started tying it all together. I started wanting to know: 'Okay, the interest rates have just gone up half a percent, what does that mean for a mortgage? How does that affect my bonds?'
"I'd like to write a book for musicians about that," he says, warming to his theme. "Explain what a royality rate is, what a yield is, so that they know and don't get ripped off so much. It's not that it's not cool to know that stuff, you just don't understand it, so you cover up and pretend that you do. You can't let on. It's terrifying. You start out and you hand everything over to managers and accountants, and you hope that there's something left at the end."
Belatedly, he was dealing with the disorientating effects of overwhelming success.
He was married, had young daughters, and came to appreciate the beauty of the simple things in life. And only after he'd done so did the real desire to make music of his own return. He dallied briefly with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, before regathering himself.
"I was doing my finance major, and I was playing with some guys in my spare time. I had a bunch of songs and I was laying them down in this little studio, called Jupiter Studios, in Seattle. It's run by this guy called Martin Feveyear, who's from Sussex. He kept telling me it was going to work. He helped me find my voice. He encouraged me and pushed me, and it worked without me really trying.
"I started working with Geoff Redding. I played guitar and he played drums, and I laid bass over the top. It was a real simple process. I had two kids, I was going to school, and I just put things around that. The next thing I knew, the record was done. That was the killer. It was an organic thing. I had fifteen or sixteen songs. We went out and played in Japan. It rocked. It was cool."
One of the first songs he wrote was 'Seattlehead', the aggressive tune that opens 'Dark Days'.
"That's about what LA came to represent, rather than what it is," he explains. "I still have an appartment in LA, I still love to come here. It's a great place to visit. Those sentiments come from that. It also made me realize that I can't just stop and go to school. I need to have some form of expression, and I always will do. It's definitely a step forwards. I didn't have to make a record. Shit, I didn't have to do anything..."
"Back when the band started, we all came from humble backgrounds. We got our first cheques for forty grand and it was like, whoah!" he says. "We'd been living on a hundred bucks a week. None of us had seen anything close to that before. Then the next cheque came, and then the really big cheques came, and they just kept coming. We didn't know what anything was, what anything was for.
"It was only later that I started tying it all together. I started wanting to know: 'Okay, the interest rates have just gone up half a percent, what does that mean for a mortgage? How does that affect my bonds?'
"I'd like to write a book for musicians about that," he says, warming to his theme. "Explain what a royality rate is, what a yield is, so that they know and don't get ripped off so much. It's not that it's not cool to know that stuff, you just don't understand it, so you cover up and pretend that you do. You can't let on. It's terrifying. You start out and you hand everything over to managers and accountants, and you hope that there's something left at the end."
Belatedly, he was dealing with the disorientating effects of overwhelming success.
He was married, had young daughters, and came to appreciate the beauty of the simple things in life. And only after he'd done so did the real desire to make music of his own return. He dallied briefly with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, before regathering himself.
"I was doing my finance major, and I was playing with some guys in my spare time. I had a bunch of songs and I was laying them down in this little studio, called Jupiter Studios, in Seattle. It's run by this guy called Martin Feveyear, who's from Sussex. He kept telling me it was going to work. He helped me find my voice. He encouraged me and pushed me, and it worked without me really trying.
"I started working with Geoff Redding. I played guitar and he played drums, and I laid bass over the top. It was a real simple process. I had two kids, I was going to school, and I just put things around that. The next thing I knew, the record was done. That was the killer. It was an organic thing. I had fifteen or sixteen songs. We went out and played in Japan. It rocked. It was cool."
One of the first songs he wrote was 'Seattlehead', the aggressive tune that opens 'Dark Days'.
"That's about what LA came to represent, rather than what it is," he explains. "I still have an appartment in LA, I still love to come here. It's a great place to visit. Those sentiments come from that. It also made me realize that I can't just stop and go to school. I need to have some form of expression, and I always will do. It's definitely a step forwards. I didn't have to make a record. Shit, I didn't have to do anything..."
