Guns N' Roses was a band made up of people with various musical influences. Whereas Axl was into Elton John and Nazareth, Izzy the Rolling Stones, Slash and Steven more metal stuff, Duff McKagan's background was mainly punk influenced. In his hometown of Seattle he played in a lot of different bands, before joining GN'R in 1985. The punk influences were very prominent when he released his first solo album, 1993's "Believe In Me". It was mainly written during the difficult period after the last tour supporting "Appetite For Destruction". Duff's say on the "process": "I bought this nice, big house and got furniture and all that, and moved it all in and the doors shut and I was like: "Wow, what am I gonna do now?" It was the first time off I'd had in years and years and years. I started to go down to clubs in Hollywood, just to meet people. And all of a sudden, you know, these people that wouldn't give me the time of the day before, were like: "Wow, this guy…". You know, they were coming up to me, and girls and all that. And I just thought to myself: "Wow, I must be holding myself better, I must have more self-confidence or something". I'm really not naive, but I really was when it came to that. And after about two or three months of this, after kind of getting stomped on a bit, I went: "To hell with this!"¹
   So Duff went back to his house and started writing and recording songs. It would take a couple of years before they saw the light of day, though. This was mainly because of the problematic recordings of "Use Your Illusion" and the following tour. While touring, Duff still found time to work on the songs: "Things got hectic, I would go into a recording studio, wherever we were at, and kind of just turn off the lights and light candles and roll tape."²
   Eventually it was released by Geffen Records in September 1993. Although Duff played a lot of instruments and sang on the album, a lot of guests were featured. The most well-known were all from GN'R (except Axl), Lenny Kravitz, Snake and Sebastian Bach from Skid Row and Jeff Beck. Duff put together a band consisting of his friends and went on a tour to Europe and Japan.
   After playing with Neurotic Outsiders, leaving Guns N' Roses and a brief stint with Ten Minute Warning it was time for a second solo album, "Beautiful Disease". At least that's what everyone, including Duff himself, thought...
   "Last December, the album was recorded, mixed and mastered. I met the Geffen staff and everybody was really enthusiastic. I started the promotion and tons of magazines reviewed the record. Then Seagram came, bought Polygram and fired everybody at Geffen in less than a month. So I had another reunion and I just wanted to know if the album was going to be released or not. The only answer I got was that it was impossible to answer me! I was out of my mind: I had a band, we had started the promo, the tour, everything was ready and the only thing they could tell me was: maybe. Finally, the album was supposed to come out on the 9th of February and that very day I discovered it wouldn't. /../ One week later, I still hadn't recovered, especially when I thought about all this fucked-up work. I had worked every day, except on Sundays, during one year.³
   After this Duff has mainly been playing with his touring band Loaded, and my page about them is where you should go if you want to know what Duff's been up to after the cancelled release of "Beautiful Disease".

"Believe In Me"
"Beautiful Disease"