The Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan is currently promoting his latest solo album “Lighthouse” but revealed in an interview with AXS TV (Transcribed by Blabbermouth) which are his favorite songs from Guns N’ Roses to play live.
The musician explained how that changed over the decades and also said that he loves to perform the new tracks released by them. McKagan co-founded the band in 1985 and left in 1997, returning again with Slash in 2016. Since then they had practically tour all over the world every year and released some reworked songs from the “Chinese Democracy” era.
Duff McKagan reveals which are his favorite songs to play live
“My favorite song (to play in 1987 was) ‘Rocket Queen’, just because we found this groove and we found all these cool connector parts that put that song together. Axl wrote a really cool lyric for it, and it became this soaring kind of song. ‘Appetite (For Destruction)’ was this little record we made that was gonna be for us and our friends and some rocker people that (were into us)… We were just going in and recording the songs that we wrote for ourselves and that some people in clubs really dug.”
“So ‘Rocket Queen’ seemed this kind of next step, sort of next-level song, to me. So then you flash forward to 2016… I’ve always loved playing ‘November Rain’, ’cause it’s just such a moment. Axl gets to sit down and you see all the lighters come out and Slash’s solo is such a larger-than-life thing. (Now) I do like playing the few new songs we have — ‘Hard Skool’ and ‘Absurd’ and ‘The General’ and ‘Perhaps,'” Duff McKagan said.
The band has no scheduled tour dates for 2024 yet. Their current line-up has Axl Rose (Vocals, piano), Duff McKagan (Bass), Slash (Guitar), Dizzy Reed (Keyboards), Richard Fortus (Guitar), Frank Ferrer (Drums) and Melissa Reese (Synthesizers, keyboards).