Duff's columns in Seattle Weekly (Page 10 of 13)

Taking Iraq War Vets to the Summit
By Duff McKagan in Duff McKaganThursday, Jan. 21 2010 @ 8:51AM

In the past, I have written a few times about some of the adventures I have been able to experience because of my friend Tim Medvetz. For those of you who don't know him from the Discovery Channel series Everest Beyond the Limit that aired a couple of years ago, he was not only a team member of that Mt. Everest expedition, he also summited the mountain in 2007--an amazing feat for anyone, and for this man in some respects even more so.

I met Tim a few years ago through a mutual best friend, Richard Stark, and it immediately became evident that we shared the same sense of adventure and humor. Tim was fresh from summiting Everest, and I was full of questions for him that night (mixing humor and wanderlust from me may come in the form of "Everest, huh? Cool! Was it high?" Stupid for sure, but Tim dug my line of questions/humor . . . I think).

Later that summer, Tim and Richard rode their Harleys through Seattle and stayed with the family McKagan (our house is now dubbed "Northwest headquarters" because, well, with Richard and Tim, what is mine is theirs and likewise). This prolonged hangout gave Tim and me more time to work on our comedic duo routine, and it gave me time to learn a bit more about Tim.

You see, Tim and Richard were to be taking a ferry from Bellingham up to Alaska, where they would continue their bike trip across Canada and down to New York. It turns out that when this ferry gets to Alaska, one must drive through a slice of Canada to get back into Alaska again. Well, this is when I found out Tim used to be a member of a very famous outlaw bike gang . . . er, club. Canada doesn't allow those kind, apparently, and Tim and Richard found themselves face-down with guns drawn on them at that border, and eventually back on that same three-day ferryride, southbound, back to the Northwest headquarters.

His story since 2001 is pretty unbelievable.

In September 2001, Tim got hit by a car while riding his motorcycle down here in L.A. He suffered tremendous head, back, and leg injuries. He woke up in the hospital only to see a bunch of nurses and doctors gathered around the TV set in his room. As his vision started to clear, he became cognizant of the images of a Trade Center building in NYC falling to the ground. He faced that same despair we all felt, and on top of that, the doctors said they would have to amputate a foot, put a steel plate in his head, and put a steel-mesh cage around his lower spine.

After being threatened with grievous bodily harm, the doctors found a way to save Tim's foot, but only just. His ankle is fused permanently. Doctors told him that his physical activities would forever be limited to a couch, basically. Ah, but Tim was reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer while he was in that hospital bed, and vowed then and there to climb Mt. Everest.

After being discharged, Tim went to Brazil to study jiujitsu with the Grace family for two years, AND became a certified dive instructor and skydiver. I think he did some time in a Brazilian prison too . . . just for kicks.

After his stint in Brazil, he came back to NYC to run the door at the world famous Hogs and Heifers bar before departing to Nepal to learn the ropes of high-altitude climbing. He also spent six months in veritable silence in a monastery there. Silence is not Tim's strong suit. His time in Nepal was followed by a year in Thailand at a live-in kickboxing school. It was now time for him to somehow get up Everest.

Tim joined a team that was going to attempt Mt. Everest in 2006, and maybe this incredible story should be left to another stand-alone column. Suffice it to say nothing comes easy to Tim, and his journey through India to get to Katmandu was filled with scrapes and triumphs. When he did finally get on the team, it turned out that The Discovery Channel happened to be filming this expedition. Tim eventually garnered worldwide fandom as the most intense and nonconforming member of that team. In 2007, he finally realized his hospital-bed dream and summited Mt. Everest.

Over the course of the following year, 2008, Tim, Richard, and I got together more and more often as friends who shared an interest in things like the outdoors, sports, and music. But most important, we all seem to share a sense of family, brotherhood, and honor, things that seem at times to be missing too often in this hyper-fast information age.

Eventually, Tim invited me on a training hike or two. It was on these hikes, and the times that Tim would come to visit my family, that I began to understand the true character that this man has somehow contained under that flesh. Tim got me up my very first winter summit last year, and without him being there, it would have been only a fraction of the fun. Honestly, I probably would not have made it to the top of that mountain without his humor-filled chiding and hard-won expertise.

I found out on these hikes another thing about Tim: He has another much grander and more selfless dream. After seeing a TV special on U.S. soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tim was inspired to get up and at least try to help. Remember, Tim was told that he would be an invalid himself. He knew what these kids were facing emotionally when they finally got back home to their mom's couch in Minnesota or wherever, limbless and aimless and suffering myriad emotional difficulties.

Tim has now started a foundation where he himself will attempt all the world's seven highest summits WITH a wounded veteran along for the climb. We are talking about single and double-leg amputees--young men who want to overcome for themselves and carry the message home to their fallen brethren. A message of hope and inspiration, if nothing else.

Over this last year, I have ridden along with Tim on the ups and downs and highs and lows of trying and finally succeeding in getting his "Heroes Project" up and running. Last week he came over to the house with a hand-shot DVD of his first two "Seven Summit" attempts with wounded U.S. veterans of the Iraq War. I was stunned by what I saw. I am proud of my friend.

Tim is a man who, through his own battles with injuries that could have set him back forever on a couch in a fit of despair and depression, really knows what these wounded warriors are up against. He does this not for glory for himself, but indeed, as I have gotten to really know Tim, for the betterment of mankind as a whole.

See for yourself at theheroesproject.org.

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KING CHARLES the little doggie

All Apologies
By Duff McKagan in Duff McKaganThursday, Feb. 11 2010 @ 9:07AM

I was in a recording studio the other day and had some time to kill. If I am not reading a book or writing, I will often scavenge around for a newspaper or magazine. On this day, I came across Cobain, a tribute put out by Rolling Stone some months after Kurt's death in 1994.

I can't really pinpoint the reasons, but suddenly there in that dingy studio, I was enthralled and emotional. I read this book from beginning to end, and while of course I remember this time well, I don't think the scope of the sadness came to me until this moment. A profound sadness that stirred up a lot of emotion that maybe I haven't dealt with yet. I don't know, to be honest.

I was on the same plane as Kurt on that flight up from Los Angeles a couple of days before his death. We were both fucked-up. We talked, but not in depth. I was in my hell, and he in his, and this we both seemed to understand.

When we arrived in Seattle and went to baggage claim, the thought crossed my mind to invite him over to my house then and there. I had a real sense that he was lonely and alone that night. I felt the same way. There was a mad rush of people there in public. I was in a big rock band, and he was in a big rock band. We were standing next to each other. Lots of people stopped to gawk. I lost my train of thought for a minute, and Kurt said good-bye and left to his waiting town car. His new house was right down the street from my new house. I received a call from my manager two days later that Kurt had died.

I suppose I was numb to this sort of thing at this point in my life. I had lost two of my best friends to drug overdoses. People in my own band had overdosed multiple times. My life and addiction were spinning out of control, and my body was failing in so many different ways. It is possible that I was incapable of feeling sadness, incapable of picking up the phone and calling Krist or Dave. In truth, I had such low self-esteem at that point, that I am sure I felt my call would have no impact on these fine men.

I had been really excited back in 1991 or so, when bands from my hometown of Seattle started to rise up and get recognized for magnificent music. I was proud because I knew the scene there was truly unique and self-supporting and open to new and different ideas.

A few years later, at the MTV Awards where my band and Nirvana both performed, I blew my lid when I perceived a slander toward my band from the Nirvana camp. In my drunken haze and drug-induced mania, I heard what I wanted to hear, and I went after Krist Novoselic backstage. I had no control of myself then. And Krist, I am sorry for that day.

Krist, my colleague and friend, I am so sorry for your loss, too. I am sorry I could not be your friend back then. We had so, so many things in common. We have so many things in common today.

I am sorry that I didn't have the faculties to just come up and talk to you at the MTV Awards in 1992. I was mad and insane then. My scope of dealing with any sort of conflict had narrowed down to barroom brawling. Kim "Fastback" Warnick, my mentor, called me the day after my embarrassment and scolded me for it. I felt so low. I simply did not know how to call you and apologize then. My dream of being in a band that everyone in the world believed in had come to life. The complications that came with that dream were also making themselves present. You were dealing with the same things I was. We could have had a lot to talk about together.

I am glad that you have overcome that mad season in your life. It takes a strong man to have that sort of devastation not permanently handicap you. Your band should have been one of those that kept setting new benchmarks for what a rock band is. Your career and vision was cut short. We musicians just don't talk about this kind of stuff, thinking maybe it's a little too touchy-feely. We are expected to just get over it. Why, don't we have piles of money to make ourselves feel better with? If only people knew.

I am not trying to embarrass you, Krist. Maybe I am only trying just now to come to grips and exorcise some of my own hidden monsters. I am glad that we are now friends and I hope that this part of the story will last a lifetime.

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Reply from Krist:
Krist Novoselic: Kurt Cobain, Alexander McQueen, and Making Sense of It All
By Krist Novoselic in Duff McKagan, Krist NovoselicFriday, Feb. 12 2010 @ 8:31AM

Krist Novoselic
Kurt Cobain, on tour in Europe in 1989. Krist Novoselic is a regular contributor to Reverb. His column on music and politics runs every Tuesday.
Dear Duff,

No worries on the MTV music awards. There were all kinds of shenanigans going on. And I've been drunk and irresponsible myself too many times. That self-destructiveness can lurk in the shadows - lubricated by one substance or another.

I read your column and it brought up a lot of feelings for me and if we do look back, let's not forget the positive. I remember the time later in the 1990's when we crossed paths again at the Showbox. I said it was good to see you, and it was.

Moments after I read your column about Kurt, I read the news about Alexander McQueen and his shocking suicide. On top of that, there was another news report that the authorities found out who stole the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the Auschwitz death camp. I stepped out to get some air and all this came together.

Kurt Cobain and Alexander McQueen were talented and successful individuals. They owned the world. But they obviously didn't see any value in what they had. There was something inside where things seemed futile.

Now imagine the life of those who suffered in the death camps? They were imprisoned starved, tortured, humiliated, raped - their loved ones died in front of their eyes! Yet people struggled to live. In fact, after the camps were liberated, many survivors went on to have productive lives and some are still living!

You can't be rational about suicide. It's hard to reconcile. When someone is murdered, you can get angry at the killer. This happens with suicide, but you're mad at both the victim and the perpetrator! It's the ultimate act of self-destruction.

Alexander McQueen was an excellent artist and craftsman who left us so much. His work promises to have a lasting influence on fashion in the 21st Century. In a way he lives.

They're putting the sign back on Auschwitz that we may never forget the suffering inflicted by an evil ideology - we also remember the triumph of so many individuals who pushed on in the face of the horrible atrocities of the camps. Again, when somebody take their own life, it's hard to make sense of things. It's a cruel paradox - that notorious sign that reads, "Work Sets You Free".

 
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How a Recovering Addict Deals with Girl Scout Cookie Season
By Duff McKagan, Thursday, Feb. 25 2010 @ 8:47

Most of you must know at this point that I have two daughters, 9 and 12. My 9-year-old has been a Brownie and a Girl Scout for the past three years. It's a really sweet endeavor that gives her some life tools that as a father I wouldn't even know how to begin to approach. It is ALL good.

Ah, but once a year, it becomes time for the Girl Scout Cookie campaign, and my darling little girl has become a crack sales-person, especially when it comes to me and all my guy friends who come over for Sunday football. Little girls just have a way of making grown men melt and do whatever the pigtailed princess wants. My daughter does very well in her fundraising campaign as a result.

For me, I always end up buying around 10 boxes of each flavor, and these days I think there are nine different flavors. Let me back up a little bit and inform you about my strict diet program that started about a week after I got sober in 1994. A diet that helped clean out my system and that I have stayed on because, well, I've just GOT to hang on to my girlish figure, don't I?

In my drinking and drug-using days, health and nutrition were completely foreign topics to me, and I was lucky if I ate a hot dog or Fritos once every two or three days. My view from that deep, addicted hole did not allow for much thought on cholesterol levels or bad carbs vs. good carbs. Clean food and vitamins were for those who planned to live past age 30, and there was no way, I thought, that I would be in that category.

Yeah. But I got my wake-up call in 1994, and suddenly I realized that maybe I was going to be one of those few guys who were going to live (the list of those like me was becoming too rarefied at that juncture). I've written here before about bits and pieces of my recovery, but a huge part of it was my diet. After putting so many harmful things into my body for so long, I needed to purge my system and begin to learn the process of nutrition and fueling my blood, organs, and muscle tissue to help me regain my health and reverse some of the damage done. I was also about 50 pounds heavier that I am now, and the weight I was carrying was NOT muscle. All the sugar from the tons of alcohol had left me with a spare tire of fat and bloat. NOT sexy.

A friend of mine turned me on to a diet that was being used for people with cancer and other diseases, who were showing a marked improvement by adhering to it. It consisted of watery fruits in the morning, greens with fish for lunch (no snacking!), greens with fish or free-range chicken for early dinner (no late-night food!), and LOTS of exercise!

This taught me how to eat three meals a day, and it really started to make me feel better. I could actually feel the nutrients as they entered my blood system. With the exercise and no carbs, my weight just started to drop off, and I could see muscle tone returning. This was all a huge victory for me, and I started to feel GREAT all the time.

Flash forward a few years, and my wife and I have small kids at home. New foods start to pile up in our pantry. Potato chips. Cookies. Ice cream in the freezer, chocolate around Halloween and Christmas. When you quit alcohol, there is still a huge craving for all the sugar you've just cut out, and for me it's a constant battle. Plenty of times I have downed a whole family-sized Hershey's chocolate bar with almonds in less than 10 minutes, much as I used to down a gallon of vodka. I always feel like absolute shit after these episodes, so I really make an effort to just not have chocolate or cookies in the house. If my wife or kids have the stuff, I literally ask them to hide it from me and not even let me know about it at all. Oh, but I just ordered 90 boxes of Thin Mints and chocolate macaroon cookies from my sweet little daughter, didn't I? They arrived two days ago. Fuuuuuuck!

That first night, I ate two whole boxes. I felt like that guy with melted chocolate all over his face and hands, crying uncontrollably, watching a sappy soap while listening to Celine Dion. Yesterday, I gave the cookies away, sheepishly, to some friends. The things a father will do. The things my head will do to me in the throes of chocolate mania.

P.S. My daughter got her Girl Scout badge to go along with my badge of shame that must have been outwardly visible to those friends I gave the cookies to.

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Duff McKagan
Happy Fishing, Slats, My Old Friend
By Duff McKagan, Friday, Mar. 19 2010 @ 3:09PM

Chris Harvey, AKA "Slats". Duff McKagan's column runs every Thursday on Reverb. He writes about what music is circulating through his space every Monday.
Slats and I did not have a boat. But he had a car.

On the southern border of the University of Washington campus lies its school of aquatic and fishery sciences and its salmon hatchery. Slats thought it a brilliant idea for us to hop the fence there with a bucket and simply scoop up salmon at will so we could clean 'em, freeze 'em, and eat salmon for weeks. Everything worked according to plan, and we had a bunch of flopping salmon in a big bucket when the floodlights went on and the night watchman came chasing after us.

I told Slats to just drop the bucket, but he was having none of it. He somehow scaled the fence with that damn thing. One of the funniest memories I will ever have is of him driving the car back to my apartment with his left hand and punching those flopping salmon in that bucket with his right. He had a running commentary with those fish all the way home, saying they almost got us into big trouble and now they would pay the ultimate price.

I have written before that I have borne witness too many times to the hopeful glint in a person's eye being whisked away by agents of vice. My time as a teenage musician in Seattle seemed to coincide exactly with an influx of wave upon wave of heroin to this port city.

The person who personifies this best to me is a young man, back in the '80s, with a hopeful glint and so much more. He was probably the funniest and most charming guy I'd ever met. Chris Harvey (aka Slats) died last Saturday of complications due to a broken hip. Unfortunately, drugs had claimed him long before, and held him. This is not meant to be a crude or heartless comment directed at a man who is no longer here to defend himself. I loved that guy like a brother once upon a time, back when the playing field of youth was even and green and soft and we were just opening our eyes to what was possible and available in life.

He was a guy who all the rest of us guys wanted to be like. He had the good looks and charm that all the girls fawned over. He never gloated or preened in his status as the coolest guy in the room, and that very thing made him seem even cooler.

I'm not sure how or when I initially met Slats, but it must have been some time in 1980, when we were both either in bands or trying to start one. After we met, though, we became fast and all-of-the-time friends. We started our first band, the Zipdads, together with Andy Freeze from the Vains and Scott Dittman from the Cheaters.

The Zipdads was really more a lifestyle than a musical statement. Sure, we played a bunch of shows here in Seattle and up in Vancouver, B.C., but it was the fun we had together that really set us apart and what other people and bands wanted to be a part of. Slats was always the instigator at the center of that fun.

His mom, too, was so supportive of her son, and would have us over for dinner at their place in Montlake. We would pick up his Gibson SG and Fender amp, and he would always speak highly of his mom even after we left the house. Most teenage boys would find SOMETHING to gripe on their parents about--but not Slats. I always admired that.

He always had the smoothest of smooth one-liners for girls wherever we went. I had no idea where he got his vast repertoire--maybe he just made that shit up on the spot--but girls fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Slats never was one of the most skilled guitar players, but he somehow crafted his own sound back in our day. When he formed the Silly Killers in 1982, his sound and sense of songwriting were really starting to take shape. Their 7" single, "Knife Manual," is a classic. I don't think it was too much longer before he started to dabble with heroin. He never found his musical form again, and that is sad.

I had seen him around at Loaded shows and elsewhere over the past 10 years, but always tried to avoid him because our paths had grown too far apart and I was frankly dubious and protective of my life, not being a good friend. To be honest, I don't know what we would then have had to talk about. But I could have tried. I should have tried.

I'm so sorry, Mrs. Harvey, from all of us, for the loss of your precious son.

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And, Yes, I Got a Book Deal
By Duff McKagan, Thursday, Mar. 25 2010 @ 9:07AM

I am not sure if any of you have heard the rumors about me getting a book deal. I just wanted to announce here first that it is in fact true. The reason for any announcement at all is twofold, actually:

1. Most important, I want to thank the readers of my column for really pushing me to write this book. Those constant suggestions and prodding really made me take a look at what I was saying, and indeed at how I was writing it. The Weekly staff have also been invaluable to me--certain editors here have made a big difference as far as what they expect from me. That too makes for a better product.

2. I want to also make clear that this book is not a GN'R "tell-all" or some other such "rock" book. There are a lot of those at this point. Sure, I will touch on all of that, as it is part of my story, but only just a part of it. Rather, it will be a story of an ordinary guy who met with extraordinary circumstances, and the circumnavigation through these situations. If you have been a reader of my column, then you get the general idea of my headspace. I WILL be writing this myself, thick or thin.

Touchstone, a division of Simon and Schuster, will publish my book in Fall 2011. Stacy Creamer, Touchstone VP and Publisher, will be my editor. I am excited that Tim Mohr, my old editor at Playboy, will be joining me too on this challenging venture and chapter of my life. Tim has edited the likes of Hunter S. Thompson. I look forward to him throwing out thousands of my words and telling me that I am full of shit on a daily basis!

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Duff McKagan
A Dork Among Hipsters
By Duff McKagan, Thursday, Apr. 1 2010 @ 3:06PM

This week I am down in L.A. My wife and kids are away for the first part of spring break while I had to stay back and put in some work. But this is all OK. Sometimes it is cool to be a lone wolf and a solo-riding bad-ass. The "hunter/gatherer" in us men at times needs to range free and howl at the moon. In my case, this is true--as long as I am home by 11:30 so I can call my wife before she goes to bed. And yes, uh . . . well, my dogs get lonely when I am gone too long . . .

I am not a guy who goes out a whole lot these days. When I am out on tour, I am basically at a gig every night. The last thing I want to do for the first couple of months after getting home is go out to another gig or show. Does that make sense?

By chance, though, two of my good friends were playing shows down here this week AND another friend was having a big birthday sort of bash. That meant I was going to go out three whole nights in a row. I didn't have to get up at 7 a.m. with my daughters, so what the hell?! I was IN!

I love to see good live music, and do what I can to support local and new bands. There were and are those who did and still do the same for me in my career, and I will never forget that. Some of you even read this column on a regular basis.

Some of you may know of Ryan "Go Time" Moore, Loaded's all-of-the-time drum tech and shot-caller (check out Go Time TV on YouTube to get a better sense of the genius that is Go Time). Ryan is a Portland dude, and has most recently been playing with the psychedelic, New Orleans-influenced MarchFourth Marching Band. They are on tour right now and played this past Sunday at a club, so I headed down. Sometimes when you go to see a friend's band, it can get a little uncomfortable if it maybe sucks or is otherwise not to your particular taste. I was, however (thankfully), completely blown away by this show. If anyone has a chance, definitely go see them in Seattle April 9 at Honk Fest West in Georgetown.

The following night, Monday, I went to see former Loudermilk and current Loaded drummer Isaac Carpenter's new band Sea Spin at the Silver Lake Lounge. For those of you who don't know, the Silver Lake section of L.A. is home to only the hippest and coolest of the cool. It seems that there is a conscious effort in that part of town to perhaps even shun a "rock" guy like myself. No worries--I had Go Time in tow, and we polished the tops of our shoes to get a better view of our eventual focus for later that night (get it? shoe-gaze?). Again, I was really quite pleasantly surprised. Sea Spin reminds me of early My Bloody Valentine with a somewhat current twist. Really good! As I left that night, I really felt like a cool and relevant hipster with his finger on the pulse of all that was Silver Lake. I even got a "dude nod" from some of the guys hanging out on the sidewalk as I walked out. I am fucking cool!!

Tuesday night I was invited to a friend's birthday party at the ultra-chic Les Deux in Hollywood. I was too afraid of blowing my cover to ask for the address, though. You're just sort of supposed to know where this place is. If you don't? Then don't even bother. But there I was, the guy calling 411 and asking for an address. I had to try about four different spellings before I got it right.

As I walked up to the doorman, my phone rang. It was my wife asking if I'd fed the dogs and if I was wearing a coat and if I was taking my vitamins and drinking enough water. She loves me. I had to, however, tell her that I had to get off the phone because I didn't want to look like THAT guy--you know the one, the douchebag on his phone going to the door of the cool club. I told her I loved her--in a hushed tone, of course. Yes, you ARE my monkey! Yes, dear, the girls ARE our monkey babies. Yes, babe, the dogs are our monkey grandchildren. "Yes, OK . . . I love you too!" It was time to go be a bad-ass in the mean streets of Hollywood. A master of all he surveys. A man among men. Actually, a dork among the hipsters. But that is indeed OK. My dogs are none the wiser.

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