DUFF McKAGAN
Duff McKagan (born Michael Andrew McKagan; February 5, 1964) is an American bass guitarist, singer, songwriter and author. He is best known for his twelve-year tenure with the hard rock band Guns N’ Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. McKagan rejoined the band in 2016, following their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Following his departure from Guns N’ Roses in 1997, McKagan formed the still-active hard rock band Loaded, in which he performs lead vocals and rhythm guitar. Between 2002 and 2008, he played bass in the supergroup Velvet Revolver with his former Guns N’ Roses bandmates Slash and Matt Sorum. (More from Wikipedia)
Mandy Brix of Amanda Jones shows up in a lot of Internet searches because in 1988, she married bass guitarist Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses. She is now happily married to a recording industry executive named Steven Toland; Jeff Drake says that Mandy is “[j]ust being a very glamorous housewife . . . with a couple of kids.”
(December 2015)
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Writing for Allmusic, Mark Deming notes: “Brick by Brick refined Iggy [Pop]’s gifts without watering them down, adding a polish that focused his talents rather than blurring them. Working with a mixture of L.A. session heavyweights (Waddy Wachtel, David Lindley) and rock stars paying their respects (Slash and Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses, Kate Pierson from the B-52’s), Brick by Brick leans to tough, guitar-based hard rock, leavened with a few more pop-oriented tunes that still speak of a hard-nosed lyrical approach. But the triumph here is Iggy’s; he’s rarely sung better on record, finding a middle ground between precision and abandon that honors both and surrenders to neither, and as a lyricist he reached a new level of maturity that proved he could expand his boundaries without losing touch with his roots. . . . Smart, tough, and impressive on all counts, Brick by Brick was Iggy Pop’s strongest work since Lust for Life, and marked a new high point in his career as a songwriter.”
(March 2017)
