DUFF MCKAGAN: 'Life Can Throw Curveballs At Us When We Are Least Prepared'

Former GUNS N' ROSES and current VELVET REVOLVER bassist Duff McKagan has penned the latest installment of his column, which appears on Reverb at SeattleWeekly.com. An excerpt follows below.

"Life can throw curveballs at us when we are least prepared. So many odd circumstances have befallen me over the years that I've come to almost expect the unexpected these days.

"Two weeks ago, I flew off to London for a week's worth of non-music-related business. Mere hours after landing at Heathrow I found myself onstage with a friend that I have been to hell and back with, and lived to tell the tale. Axl [Rose, GUNS N' ROSES singer] and I just happened to be in hotel rooms next to each other. Unexpected? Oh, fuck yes.

"Sometimes, though, it takes a serendipitous moment like this to put some important things into perspective. I for one was glad we were sort of thrown into meeting. I hope he was, too, for the sake of the pounds of flesh that we shed in the struggle and fray.

"Mostly we laughed, and that was indeed great.

"That same night, I found myself onstage playing 'Patience' in front of 14,000 people at the O2 Arena. To put it lightly, this is not what I had expected when I boarded my flight the night before for my business trip. Crazy shit."

Read McKagan's entire column at SeattleWeekly.com.

McKagan told Seattle radio station KISW last Thursday (October 21) that playing in London two weeks ago with the current version of the band he left in the mid-Nineties was "great." McKagan came onstage during the group's October 14 gig at London's O2 Arena to play on "You Could Be Mine", "Patience", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and "Nice Boys", sticking around to take a bow with singer Axl Rose and the rest of the group at the end of the show. The gig marked the first time McKagan had performed with GUNS N' ROSES in 17 years.

He told the radio station that he checked into his London hotel and was there for business unrelated to music when he learned that Rose was staying in the same hotel. McKagan said, "I had no idea Axl and GUNS N' ROSES were in London . . . I'm in these meetings and my phone starts ringing later on in the day in my hotel room; it was kind of managers and tour managers. The word (was) out I (was) in the hotel. And it came down to the simple fact... Axl and I just sort of met up, we saw each other and we hugged. I went down to the gig with him."

McKagan said he was watching the show when "somebody comes over with a bass," adding, "It was fun. I had a great time. It was a little bit heavy. When people saw it... It wasn't heavy for me so much. I was kind of more concerned about the band that he's put together . . . It's a great band and I didn't wanna do anything to lessen what they were doing."

McKagan also revealed that he and Rose hung out the next day, saying, "We had a nice dinner the day after the show, and that was it."

As for whether this could be the first step toward an eventual reunion of the original GUNS lineup, McKagan said, "I have nothing to say about it. It's not . . . I don't know. It's not anything that I worked or planned for."

The Pulse of Radio asked McKagan a while back why he thinks the music of the original GUNS N' ROSES lineup was so important when it came out. "We were just five like-minded guys, who met at the right time, who had pretty much the same idea on how we wanted to portray our music and what we thought a band should be," he siad. "I suppose, to put a term on it, we were disenfranchised youth. And those songs, eventually, spoke to, I guess, a whole legion of other disenfranchised youth, and it just caught fire."

Rumors of a GUNS N' ROSES reunion with the classic lineup have been swirling for years. Rose told Billboard.com in 2009 that he doesn't ever expect to play again with guitarist Slash, saying, "One of the two of us will die before a reunion."

Rose and original GN'R rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin played a few shows in 2006.

McKagan teamed with JANE'S ADDICTION earlier this year, but split with the group in September. Now he's back playing with Slash in VELVET REVOLVER.

McKagan talking to KISW about his London appearance with GUNS N' ROSES (audio):