duff mckagan how to be a man and other illusions

The spiritual path offers not only self-preservation, but also discipline and creativity. said in a talk at the Red Bull Music Academy, musicians face three possible outcomes: they become drug addicts, they go crazy, or they become spiritual. Martial arts has evened out all those peaks and valleys.”įinding humility and perspective through martial arts echoes the experience of other musicians who took spiritual paths away from self-destruction. Mine was public, but we all have those successes and then we have moments that take us back down. ‘I’m playing stadiums, I’m really funny and good looking, you know.’ We all have successes in our lives. The ego that I gained from my band was huge.

I was really fortunate to be able to find martial arts.

“What I found writing the book is that obviously life is not a static thing,” he said. “The teamwork involved and what you have to let go ego-wise for the thing to function as a band, it’s like a ballet, an emotional ballet, egotistical ballet and songwriting ballet.” McKagan had been in several bands before Guns N’ Roses, and finding a band that worked well together and created music that people enjoyed seemed like success enough. “Success to me initially was just being in a band where everybody was on the same page and everybody was good and had the same drive,” he told me. More than twenty years after this low point, he has gained some wisdom about what constitutes success in life. For McKagan, the question has to do not just with whether a show has gone well, but how does someone build a successful life after being in one of the biggest bands of all time? At the age of thirty, McKagan was twice divorced, deep in addiction, and recovering from an acute case of pancreatitis. The bigger issue at stake-and a theme in McKagan’s two books-is what does success mean.

Duff mckagan how to be a man and other illusions