High and Tight: Will There Be Another 300-Game Winner?

Justin Verlander and C.C. SabathiaLeon Halip/Getty Images; Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Ever since 1888, when James Francis "Pud" Galvin became the first major leaguer to win 300 games, reaching 300 wins has been an iconic goal for starting pitchers – a numerical Mt. Everest that bestows immortality upon all those who manage to scale it.

The majesty of the 300-win plateau has been chipped away in recent years by the sabermetricians who rightly question the validity of "W"s as the ultimate measure of a pitcher's worth, and by the killjoys who point out that certain pitchers – like Don Sutton and Phil Niekro, who notched their 300th career victories in their 21st and 22nd major league seasons, respectively – owe their membership in the 300-win club more to longevity than excellence. But while the perceived importance of wins-per-season has obviously declined (as exemplified by Felix Hernandez winning the A.L. Cy Young Award in 2010 with a 13-12 record), and there have been plenty of legitimately great pitchers (like Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Pedro Martinez) who never came close to winning 300 ballgames, there's no denying that a pitcher still has to be pretty damn excellent and pretty damn resilient in order to get the ball enough times over the course of their career to rack up 300 victories.

Or, put it this way: There are currently 24 pitchers in the 300-win club, and 20 of those 24 are quite deservedly enshrined in the Hall of Fame; the other four – Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson – aren't eligible for election yet. Clemens' admission to Cooperstown may take longer than he'd prefer, thanks to him probably being a juicer and definitely being a douchebag, but all four of those guys will most likely ride the magic "300" into the Hall in the not-too-distant future.

They may well be the last to do so. Among pitchers who have been active this season, only Jamie Moyer (269) and Andy Pettite (243) have passed the 200-win plateau, and Moyer's currently looking for another team to take a chance on his 49 year-old arm, while the odds of Pettitte accruing 57 more victories (even while pitching for the Yankees) are somewhat slim, considering that only 11 pitchers in MLB history have won 54 or more games after hitting the big 4-0, as Pettitte did in June.

C.C. Sabathia, a workhorse who just turned 32 and currently has 188 career victories to his credit, probably has the best shot at 300, though his recent elbow troubles could bode ill for his future. Mark Buerhle, a remarkably efficient pitcher who has 171 wins at age 33, stands a decent chance as well, though maybe not if he stays with the Marlins. Roy Halladay has 195, but he turned 35 in May. As dominant as Justin Verlander has been in recent seasons, he's 29 and (as of this writing) still needs 181 wins to reach 300 – which means he'd need to win roughly 16.5 games a year over the next eleven seasons to hit the mark by his 40th birthday. And that won't be easy, especially if he keeps getting anemic run support and the Tigers bullpen keeps blowing the leads he leaves them with.

That's not to say that Verlander – or anyone else – won't be able to do it. But in this age of pitch limits and increased bullpen specialization, starting pitchers have far less opportunity to "get the W" than they once did, even if their teams have solid bats and reliable relievers. So this week, we're asking our esteemed panel of rock & roll seamheads: Will we ever see another 300-game winner?

Name: Pete Yorn
Position: Vocals, Guitar

I do believe others will make the 300 mark. Only four players have joined the 300 club since 1990: Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Randy Johnson . . . so the odds are against it. Add injuries and a five-man rotation to the picture and it seems to be an even more difficult achievement. That said, Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay (although this year doesn't help as much) and my boy C.C. Sabathia (he probably has the best shot) could get there. The Yanks will compete every year, and that benefits C.C. – who, by the way, is pitching Friday, I hear.

Name: Alice Cooper
Position: Vocals

The only other 300-game winners we might see would be Justin Verlander and maybe Roy Halladay. That's because they both seem to be healthy and on top of their game all of the time.

Name: Steve Wynn
Band: The Baseball Project
Position: Vocals, Guitar

I think that C.C. Sabathia might be the last one, not the least because he has incredible stamina and pitches for a team that scores a lot of runs. But beyond him? I just don't see it happening again.

Name: Tom Morello
Band: The Nightwatchman, Street Sweeper Social Club, Rage Against the Machine
Position: Guitar, Vocals

I think it's very unlikely that we'll see another 300-game winner as long as managers and the front offices remain chicken to leave their best guys on the mound.

Name: Handsome Dick Manitoba
Band: Manitoba
Position: Vocals

Yes. There are some amazing pitchers out there that, even in this day and age – especially in this day and age of specialty relievers – can go five, six or seven innings for a W. Longevity and staying off the DL obviously is the key for 300 wins, but it is a tall task: you'd need to average 17 wins for 18 years in order to hit 306. Whew!

Name: Ken Casey
Band: Dropkick Murphys
Position: Bass guitar, Vocals

Not a chance. Pitchers get too many no-decisions now, due to micro-managing and pitch counts.

Name: Joshua Epstein
Band: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
Position: Vocals, Keyboards

Probably at some point. I could see Verlander winning 300 before it's all said and done. He's a machine.

Name: Vinnie Paul
Band: Hellyeah, Pantera
Position: Drums

No!!!! I think global warming has helped make this a thing of the past! Nothing wears a pitcher out more than heat, and we just had the hottest July in American history.

Name: George Thorogood
Band: George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Position: Vocals, Guitar

Anything is possible.

Name: Steve Earle
Position: Vocals, Guitar

No.

Name: Ben Gibbard
Band: Death Cab for Cutie
Position: Vocals, Guitar

Who cares?  Pitchers' wins are a virtually meaningless stat. Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of advanced metrics knows wins say nothing about the skill or efficiency of a pitcher. Why should it matter if someone gets 300 of them? 

Name: Scott McCaughey
Band: The Baseball Project, The Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows
Position: Guitar, Vocals

Yes. In the future there will be bionic arms – the obvious next step from steroids. (See Rick Moody's prescient novel The Four Fingers Of Death.) I mean, really, in this day of great advancements in medicine, why should pitchers' arms be less likely to be durable than they were a hundred years ago?

Dan Epstein's book, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s, is now available in paperback.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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High and Tight: Will There Be Another 300-Game Winner?

Justin Verlander and C.C. SabathiaLeon Halip/Getty Images; Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Ever since 1888, when James Francis "Pud" Galvin became the first major leaguer to win 300 games, reaching 300 wins has been an iconic goal for starting pitchers – a numerical Mt. Everest that bestows immortality upon all those who manage to scale it.

The majesty of the 300-win plateau has been chipped away in recent years by the sabermetricians who rightly question the validity of "W"s as the ultimate measure of a pitcher's worth, and by the killjoys who point out that certain pitchers – like Don Sutton and Phil Niekro, who notched their 300th career victories in their 21st and 22nd major league seasons, respectively – owe their membership in the 300-win club more to longevity than excellence. But while the perceived importance of wins-per-season has obviously declined (as exemplified by Felix Hernandez winning the A.L. Cy Young Award in 2010 with a 13-12 record), and there have been plenty of legitimately great pitchers (like Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Pedro Martinez) who never came close to winning 300 ballgames, there's no denying that a pitcher still has to be pretty damn excellent and pretty damn resilient in order to get the ball enough times over the course of their career to rack up 300 victories.

Or, put it this way: There are currently 24 pitchers in the 300-win club, and 20 of those 24 are quite deservedly enshrined in the Hall of Fame; the other four – Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson – aren't eligible for election yet. Clemens' admission to Cooperstown may take longer than he'd prefer, thanks to him probably being a juicer and definitely being a douchebag, but all four of those guys will most likely ride the magic "300" into the Hall in the not-too-distant future.

They may well be the last to do so. Among pitchers who have been active this season, only Jamie Moyer (269) and Andy Pettite (243) have passed the 200-win plateau, and Moyer's currently looking for another team to take a chance on his 49 year-old arm, while the odds of Pettitte accruing 57 more victories (even while pitching for the Yankees) are somewhat slim, considering that only 11 pitchers in MLB history have won 54 or more games after hitting the big 4-0, as Pettitte did in June.

C.C. Sabathia, a workhorse who just turned 32 and currently has 188 career victories to his credit, probably has the best shot at 300, though his recent elbow troubles could bode ill for his future. Mark Buerhle, a remarkably efficient pitcher who has 171 wins at age 33, stands a decent chance as well, though maybe not if he stays with the Marlins. Roy Halladay has 195, but he turned 35 in May. As dominant as Justin Verlander has been in recent seasons, he's 29 and (as of this writing) still needs 181 wins to reach 300 – which means he'd need to win roughly 16.5 games a year over the next eleven seasons to hit the mark by his 40th birthday. And that won't be easy, especially if he keeps getting anemic run support and the Tigers bullpen keeps blowing the leads he leaves them with.

That's not to say that Verlander – or anyone else – won't be able to do it. But in this age of pitch limits and increased bullpen specialization, starting pitchers have far less opportunity to "get the W" than they once did, even if their teams have solid bats and reliable relievers. So this week, we're asking our esteemed panel of rock & roll seamheads: Will we ever see another 300-game winner?

Name: Pete Yorn
Position: Vocals, Guitar

I do believe others will make the 300 mark. Only four players have joined the 300 club since 1990: Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Randy Johnson . . . so the odds are against it. Add injuries and a five-man rotation to the picture and it seems to be an even more difficult achievement. That said, Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay (although this year doesn't help as much) and my boy C.C. Sabathia (he probably has the best shot) could get there. The Yanks will compete every year, and that benefits C.C. – who, by the way, is pitching Friday, I hear.

Name: Alice Cooper
Position: Vocals

The only other 300-game winners we might see would be Justin Verlander and maybe Roy Halladay. That's because they both seem to be healthy and on top of their game all of the time.

Name: Steve Wynn
Band: The Baseball Project
Position: Vocals, Guitar

I think that C.C. Sabathia might be the last one, not the least because he has incredible stamina and pitches for a team that scores a lot of runs. But beyond him? I just don't see it happening again.

Name: Tom Morello
Band: The Nightwatchman, Street Sweeper Social Club, Rage Against the Machine
Position: Guitar, Vocals

I think it's very unlikely that we'll see another 300-game winner as long as managers and the front offices remain chicken to leave their best guys on the mound.

Name: Handsome Dick Manitoba
Band: Manitoba
Position: Vocals

Yes. There are some amazing pitchers out there that, even in this day and age – especially in this day and age of specialty relievers – can go five, six or seven innings for a W. Longevity and staying off the DL obviously is the key for 300 wins, but it is a tall task: you'd need to average 17 wins for 18 years in order to hit 306. Whew!

Name: Ken Casey
Band: Dropkick Murphys
Position: Bass guitar, Vocals

Not a chance. Pitchers get too many no-decisions now, due to micro-managing and pitch counts.

Name: Joshua Epstein
Band: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
Position: Vocals, Keyboards

Probably at some point. I could see Verlander winning 300 before it's all said and done. He's a machine.

Name: Vinnie Paul
Band: Hellyeah, Pantera
Position: Drums

No!!!! I think global warming has helped make this a thing of the past! Nothing wears a pitcher out more than heat, and we just had the hottest July in American history.

Name: George Thorogood
Band: George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Position: Vocals, Guitar

Anything is possible.

Name: Steve Earle
Position: Vocals, Guitar

No.

Name: Ben Gibbard
Band: Death Cab for Cutie
Position: Vocals, Guitar

Who cares?  Pitchers' wins are a virtually meaningless stat. Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of advanced metrics knows wins say nothing about the skill or efficiency of a pitcher. Why should it matter if someone gets 300 of them? 

Name: Scott McCaughey
Band: The Baseball Project, The Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows
Position: Guitar, Vocals

Yes. In the future there will be bionic arms – the obvious next step from steroids. (See Rick Moody's prescient novel The Four Fingers Of Death.) I mean, really, in this day of great advancements in medicine, why should pitchers' arms be less likely to be durable than they were a hundred years ago?

Dan Epstein's book, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s, is now available in paperback.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Amazon MP3 Download Center

Read more »

Watch Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney Perform 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'Twist and Shout'

Watch Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney Perform 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'Twist and Shout'London officials pull plug on historic performance as it goes past curfew $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); By

Last night's stunning Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concert at London's Hyde Park featured surprise guest appearances by John Fogerty, Tom Morello and Paul McCartney, who joined the group for the final two encores of "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist and Shout."  The show could have kept going, but they were past curfew by that point and the officials actually pulled the plug.

"The cops got nothing more important to do?" Steve Van Zandt wrote in a series of enraged Tweets after the show. "How about they go catch some criminals instead of fucking with 80,000 people having a good time? English cops may be the only individuals left on earth that wouldn't want to hear one more from Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney! We break curfews in every country but only English cops needs to 'punish us' by not letting us leave until the entire crowd goes."

With a clear head in the morning, Van Zandt walked back some of his anger. "There's no grudges to be held," he wrote.  "Just feel bad for our great fans. Hard Rock is cool. Live Nation is cool. It's some City Council stupid rule. Very proud of our association with Hard Rock Calling and Hard Rock in general and what they're doing for Rock music."

You can watch a (somewhat shakey) video of the final two encores here. Now, a question for you Beatle fanatics out there. "Twist and Shout" was sung by John Lennon, and McCartney avoids most of those songs in his concerts. When was the last time he performed "Twist and Shout?" Was it actually in 1965? 

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Watch Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney Perform 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'Twist and Shout'

Watch Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney Perform 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'Twist and Shout'London officials pull plug on historic performance as it goes past curfew $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); By

Last night's stunning Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concert at London's Hyde Park featured surprise guest appearances by John Fogerty, Tom Morello and Paul McCartney, who joined the group for the final two encores of "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist and Shout."  The show could have kept going, but they were past curfew by that point and the officials actually pulled the plug.

"The cops got nothing more important to do?" Steve Van Zandt wrote in a series of enraged Tweets after the show. "How about they go catch some criminals instead of fucking with 80,000 people having a good time? English cops may be the only individuals left on earth that wouldn't want to hear one more from Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney! We break curfews in every country but only English cops needs to 'punish us' by not letting us leave until the entire crowd goes."

With a clear head in the morning, Van Zandt walked back some of his anger. "There's no grudges to be held," he wrote.  "Just feel bad for our great fans. Hard Rock is cool. Live Nation is cool. It's some City Council stupid rule. Very proud of our association with Hard Rock Calling and Hard Rock in general and what they're doing for Rock music."

You can watch a (somewhat shakey) video of the final two encores here. Now, a question for you Beatle fanatics out there. "Twist and Shout" was sung by John Lennon, and McCartney avoids most of those songs in his concerts. When was the last time he performed "Twist and Shout?" Was it actually in 1965? 

Amazon Music and MP3 Center

Read more »

Guns N' Roses Bassist Duff McKagan on the Hall Of Fame: 'I'll Be There With Bells On.'

Duff McKagan performs during the first day of Download Festival at Donnington Park in Donnington, United Kingdom.

There's a lot that Duff McKagan is unsure about at the moment. He doesn't know what's going to happen when Guns N' Roses get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month. He doesn't know when (or if) Velvet Revolver will reform, and he certainly doesn't know who will front the band if that does happen. "I find in my career that I never know what's going to happen in two months," says McKagan.  "I don't know what I'm going to be doing in July, or even June. Anything could happen. I'm cool with anything."

In December Duff shared a stage with ex-bandmate Axl Rose at two gigs in Seattle and Vancouver, and then a month later Velvet Revolver reunited at a Los Angles benefit concert. We recently chatted with McKagan about all of this, as well as the paperback release of his autobiography It's So Easy: and Other Lies, which hits shelves on March 20th. 

What compelled you to write this book?
A few years ago Seattle Weekly offered me a weekly column. I was kind of terrified. Around week three I suddenly realized that I could articulate my thoughts in the written word much better than I ever could talking. I could organize what I was really getting at. A few months after that I was offered a financial column for Playboy. Suddenly I had two weekly columns and two deadlines, so I was writing a ton. I started writing other things that weren't right for my columns. I wrote a letter of gratitude to my older seven siblings. I got to my oldest brother John, and I thanked him for being our patriarch and bringing mom to the hospital. And it stopped me, that sentence right there. Our mom had Parkinson's and it took me into this whole other thing, and I started writing about that. I was dealing with things, wondering what my part was in my life. 

What I found is that we're speeding along through life and in the rearview mirror on the left you see all the bad shit, which is all that other motherfuckers fault. All the good stuff, in the other rearview mirror, is all the good stuff – which you had everything to do with. I'm being simplistic, but you know what I mean. I started delving into all that. How did I get here? What's the real story? I'm a dad and I better get all my shit straight. The writing really helped me with that. I wrote twice as many words than are in the book. Some of it you wouldn't want to read. But a story started to come to the surface when I was writing and I really liked the whole idea of it.

Are there parts of your past that you can't remember, or are just sort of blurry?
Yeah. There's a ton of it. So I didn't write about the stuff that I didn't remember. I kind of experimented with that by trying to remember stuff by writing about it, and I couldn't. I didn't want to guess or grab some dates I found on the Internet and try and write about. That would have felt disingenuous. I wrote about the stuff that I remembered, and I tried to take a reader into the insanity of addiction. Thoughts and days start melting together and you don't know where the fuck you are. I don't know if I succeeded in that, but I tried. 

Do you think that drug addicts would benefit from reading the book because they'd see that there is a way out?
That wasn't my mission statement. But since the book came out, I've noticed there's a lot of that kind of thing. "Well shit, if Duff can do it! Look how bad he was. He has kids and seems to be sane-ish." It's true, man. If I can do it, anyone can do it. I gradually became the worst of the worst.

Memory is always a weird thing. I'm sure if I talked to you and Slash about the same event I'd get a wildly different story. Did you ever deal with that when writing the book?
Yeah. I put a thing at the beginning of the book. I said, "To people that were there, you might remember it differently." That's just human nature, I think. Slash and I were in the seats right next to each other on a lot of that ride. We remember things completely differently sometimes. At times he won't remember a whole thing I remember, or vice versa. That's a whole other discussion why we retain certain things…especially when you're fucked up.

During the writing process did you ever say to yourself, "Oh, I can't write this. I'll piss off Axl or Slash…"
I was careful about that. It's not necessarily their story, so why throw somebody underneath the bus? They didn't ask me to write a story about them, or my ex-wife didn't ask me to write this. My point was to really take responsibility for my shortcomings. I tried to not bring somebody else into it. I kept reading through my passages and trying to make sure there wasn't any passive aggressive tone. At the end of the day, it doesn't read very well.

It's sort of interesting that in the past few months you've played gigs with Axl Rose and Scott Weiland.
Yeah. I'm kind of feeling like a grown-up. I don't have resentments towards anyone I played with, or to the guy who bullied me in the sixth grade. I've worked through it. But the thing I played with Scott was something bigger than all of us. That's a no-brainer. The Axl stuff…man, we shared a lot of great moments together. We grew up together in those formative times, being young men under some pretty extraordinary circumstances. Really only the five guys in the original band know what that was like…even my wife, I can't explain it to her. I couldn't write about it in that book. I'm not that good of a writer. 

Was it strange being asked to open up for Guns N' Roses a few months back?
I didn't really look at it like anything except it was a chance to play some gigs with my old buddy. One was in my hometown Seattle, and the other in Vancouver. It was a feel-good deal. It wasn't like Judas Priest calling [my band] Loaded to open some gigs for them. It felt totally different than that.

You're going to Cleveland next month for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Do you know what's going to happen?
I don't. I know I'm going to go. I can't, at all, speak for anybody else. And won't. I'll be there with bells on. Is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that important to me? No. Is it something I've aspired towards? No. It's not sports. You get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, that's bad ass. But that's a competitive sport. You have stats. Look, we were a good band – but there were a lot of good bands. A lot of people liked our band, eventually. And that's kick ass. 

What I found out when we got nominated is that there's just a shit ton of fans around the world who are really psyched. In that case, it's more about them and the people that believed in us and bought our records and came and saw us. Imagine that? All those people believing in our band – a thing we created out of thin air. That part of it is an honor. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an institution? I really don't know much about it.

Do you hope the band is going to reunite and play?
I think it would be killer. Do I hope to? That's a tricky question. It would be awesome. You have those day dreams like, "We'll go up and play 'Nightrain' and 'Brownstone' and throw down the microphone and drop off! That'll be killer!' But I doubt that'll happen.

Why?
There's been no communication about anyone playing. There was probably a day in the mid-1990s where I would have tried to gather the troops, but I'm just not that guy anymore. It's too frustrating to change anyone else…I'm not even sure I'd want to change how anyone else sees a situation. But I'm going.

I've heard that Axl is going. Do you think that Izzy will go?
I don't know. You'd have to ask him. It would be great if Izzy went, but I don't really know. I don't know if he's into that whole kind of thing with cameras and all that stuff. 

What's the deal with Velvet Revolver? Some fans are optimistic that Scott might come back because you guys played that one show.
No. We just did that thing for our friend who passed, for his wife and kids. I'd be surprised…you know what? I don't even want to try and guess anymore. Who knows what's gonna happen? I'm cool with anything, and if it feels right at the time, it'll be the thing to do and we'll talk about it then.

Do you think that Velvet Revolver has a future?
I hope so. We were a good songwriting band and it was a real thing onstage.

Are the rumors true that you talked to Corey Taylor from Slipknot at some point about joining the band?
Yeah. When you're a musician you are around your peers a lot, like Slipknot and Alice In Chains…you name the band. We're all just kind of friends. The Corey thing came up. If you're asking me, I think that Corey is the best singer of his age group, which is about eight years younger than me. He's the best pound-for-pound singer around and I'd like to explore that. And it still might happen one day. That guy is in, like, fifteen bands. But he's bad ass and the real deal and it comes from the right place with him. I have nothing but cool things to say about Corey. 

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Amazon Music and MP3 Center

Read more »

Guns N' Roses Bassist Duff McKagan on the Hall Of Fame: 'I'll Be There With Bells On.'

Duff McKagan performs during the first day of Download Festival at Donnington Park in Donnington, United Kingdom.

There's a lot that Duff McKagan is unsure about at the moment. He doesn't know what's going to happen when Guns N' Roses get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month. He doesn't know when (or if) Velvet Revolver will reform, and he certainly doesn't know who will front the band if that does happen. "I find in my career that I never know what's going to happen in two months," says McKagan.  "I don't know what I'm going to be doing in July, or even June. Anything could happen. I'm cool with anything."

In December Duff shared a stage with ex-bandmate Axl Rose at two gigs in Seattle and Vancouver, and then a month later Velvet Revolver reunited at a Los Angles benefit concert. We recently chatted with McKagan about all of this, as well as the paperback release of his autobiography It's So Easy: and Other Lies, which hits shelves on March 20th. 

What compelled you to write this book?
A few years ago Seattle Weekly offered me a weekly column. I was kind of terrified. Around week three I suddenly realized that I could articulate my thoughts in the written word much better than I ever could talking. I could organize what I was really getting at. A few months after that I was offered a financial column for Playboy. Suddenly I had two weekly columns and two deadlines, so I was writing a ton. I started writing other things that weren't right for my columns. I wrote a letter of gratitude to my older seven siblings. I got to my oldest brother John, and I thanked him for being our patriarch and bringing mom to the hospital. And it stopped me, that sentence right there. Our mom had Parkinson's and it took me into this whole other thing, and I started writing about that. I was dealing with things, wondering what my part was in my life. 

What I found is that we're speeding along through life and in the rearview mirror on the left you see all the bad shit, which is all that other motherfuckers fault. All the good stuff, in the other rearview mirror, is all the good stuff – which you had everything to do with. I'm being simplistic, but you know what I mean. I started delving into all that. How did I get here? What's the real story? I'm a dad and I better get all my shit straight. The writing really helped me with that. I wrote twice as many words than are in the book. Some of it you wouldn't want to read. But a story started to come to the surface when I was writing and I really liked the whole idea of it.

Are there parts of your past that you can't remember, or are just sort of blurry?
Yeah. There's a ton of it. So I didn't write about the stuff that I didn't remember. I kind of experimented with that by trying to remember stuff by writing about it, and I couldn't. I didn't want to guess or grab some dates I found on the Internet and try and write about. That would have felt disingenuous. I wrote about the stuff that I remembered, and I tried to take a reader into the insanity of addiction. Thoughts and days start melting together and you don't know where the fuck you are. I don't know if I succeeded in that, but I tried. 

Do you think that drug addicts would benefit from reading the book because they'd see that there is a way out?
That wasn't my mission statement. But since the book came out, I've noticed there's a lot of that kind of thing. "Well shit, if Duff can do it! Look how bad he was. He has kids and seems to be sane-ish." It's true, man. If I can do it, anyone can do it. I gradually became the worst of the worst.

Memory is always a weird thing. I'm sure if I talked to you and Slash about the same event I'd get a wildly different story. Did you ever deal with that when writing the book?
Yeah. I put a thing at the beginning of the book. I said, "To people that were there, you might remember it differently." That's just human nature, I think. Slash and I were in the seats right next to each other on a lot of that ride. We remember things completely differently sometimes. At times he won't remember a whole thing I remember, or vice versa. That's a whole other discussion why we retain certain things…especially when you're fucked up.

During the writing process did you ever say to yourself, "Oh, I can't write this. I'll piss off Axl or Slash…"
I was careful about that. It's not necessarily their story, so why throw somebody underneath the bus? They didn't ask me to write a story about them, or my ex-wife didn't ask me to write this. My point was to really take responsibility for my shortcomings. I tried to not bring somebody else into it. I kept reading through my passages and trying to make sure there wasn't any passive aggressive tone. At the end of the day, it doesn't read very well.

It's sort of interesting that in the past few months you've played gigs with Axl Rose and Scott Weiland.
Yeah. I'm kind of feeling like a grown-up. I don't have resentments towards anyone I played with, or to the guy who bullied me in the sixth grade. I've worked through it. But the thing I played with Scott was something bigger than all of us. That's a no-brainer. The Axl stuff…man, we shared a lot of great moments together. We grew up together in those formative times, being young men under some pretty extraordinary circumstances. Really only the five guys in the original band know what that was like…even my wife, I can't explain it to her. I couldn't write about it in that book. I'm not that good of a writer. 

Was it strange being asked to open up for Guns N' Roses a few months back?
I didn't really look at it like anything except it was a chance to play some gigs with my old buddy. One was in my hometown Seattle, and the other in Vancouver. It was a feel-good deal. It wasn't like Judas Priest calling [my band] Loaded to open some gigs for them. It felt totally different than that.

You're going to Cleveland next month for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Do you know what's going to happen?
I don't. I know I'm going to go. I can't, at all, speak for anybody else. And won't. I'll be there with bells on. Is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that important to me? No. Is it something I've aspired towards? No. It's not sports. You get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, that's bad ass. But that's a competitive sport. You have stats. Look, we were a good band – but there were a lot of good bands. A lot of people liked our band, eventually. And that's kick ass. 

What I found out when we got nominated is that there's just a shit ton of fans around the world who are really psyched. In that case, it's more about them and the people that believed in us and bought our records and came and saw us. Imagine that? All those people believing in our band – a thing we created out of thin air. That part of it is an honor. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an institution? I really don't know much about it.

Do you hope the band is going to reunite and play?
I think it would be killer. Do I hope to? That's a tricky question. It would be awesome. You have those day dreams like, "We'll go up and play 'Nightrain' and 'Brownstone' and throw down the microphone and drop off! That'll be killer!' But I doubt that'll happen.

Why?
There's been no communication about anyone playing. There was probably a day in the mid-1990s where I would have tried to gather the troops, but I'm just not that guy anymore. It's too frustrating to change anyone else…I'm not even sure I'd want to change how anyone else sees a situation. But I'm going.

I've heard that Axl is going. Do you think that Izzy will go?
I don't know. You'd have to ask him. It would be great if Izzy went, but I don't really know. I don't know if he's into that whole kind of thing with cameras and all that stuff. 

What's the deal with Velvet Revolver? Some fans are optimistic that Scott might come back because you guys played that one show.
No. We just did that thing for our friend who passed, for his wife and kids. I'd be surprised…you know what? I don't even want to try and guess anymore. Who knows what's gonna happen? I'm cool with anything, and if it feels right at the time, it'll be the thing to do and we'll talk about it then.

Do you think that Velvet Revolver has a future?
I hope so. We were a good songwriting band and it was a real thing onstage.

Are the rumors true that you talked to Corey Taylor from Slipknot at some point about joining the band?
Yeah. When you're a musician you are around your peers a lot, like Slipknot and Alice In Chains…you name the band. We're all just kind of friends. The Corey thing came up. If you're asking me, I think that Corey is the best singer of his age group, which is about eight years younger than me. He's the best pound-for-pound singer around and I'd like to explore that. And it still might happen one day. That guy is in, like, fifteen bands. But he's bad ass and the real deal and it comes from the right place with him. I have nothing but cool things to say about Corey. 

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