“He was living in his mom’s basement because he’s like 18. And he starts playing guitar… and then he brings out his snake”: Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan on the moment he met Slash (and his plus one)

Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan has recalled the life-changing moment when he met his future bandmate Slash, just a few weeks after he decamped to Los Angeles. In typical Slash fashion, the over-the-top encounter left a lasting impression on McKagan.

“Moving down there, I met Slash and [drummer Steven Adler], like almost immediately, within a couple of weeks, through a newspaper ad,” he discloses in a career-spanning interview with Stereogum.  

“When I first met him, like the night I met him, was at Canter’s, a deli in LA. He was living in his mom’s basement because he’s like 18. And he starts playing guitar – and then he brings out his snake. And I’ve never been around a snake.”

Elsewhere in the interview, McKagan remembers how playing with Slash on Iggy Pop's Brick By Brick was a career-defining, pinch-me moment. 

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“I got a phone call at my house. I just got my first phone and house. You pick up the phone back then. ‘Hello? Hey, is this Duff?’ ‘Yeah, it’s Duff.’ ‘It’s Iggy.’ I thought it was one of my friends fucking with me,” he says. 

“‘I want you to come play on my record, man. Would you be into that?’ And I’m like, ‘Who is this?’ And they won’t say who it was. I hung up the phone and the phone rang again. It was him. ‘Hey, man. No, really, it’s Iggy.’”

He continues, “We got these demos from Iggy on a cassette, me and Slash. We learned the songs and went in and played with Don Was. Kenny Aronoff played drums. Consummate professional. 

“Slash and I were good players at that time. But doing the thing with Iggy, we played a show with him, after the record was released, down in downtown LA. At that point in my life, I was like, ‘Man, I’ve done it, I made it. I fucking made it.’”