(Credits: Far Out / Press / The World Is Flat LLC)

Rock and roll has always been home to some of the biggest superstars in music. While many artists have been able to work away in the studio attempting to get the best take of a track, there are just as many people who favour the massive applause every time they get up on stage and sing one of their classics. As far as Duff McKagan is concerned, it’s all about writing the next great song.

Throughout his time in Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, and 10 Minute Warning, McKagan has always been focused on writing something closer to the bone than your average rock and roll number. The song library may have grown a little bigger over the years with a slew of hits, but Lighthouse is the sound of him playing old-school rock and roll with the same fire as the punk rocker who moved out of Seattle way back when.

Fresh off his previous record working with Shooter Jennings’ backing band on Tenderness, Lighthouse is the sound of McKagan without any of the bells and whistles. While there had been hints of what he could be like as a solo artist all the way back on the deep cuts from Use Your Illusion like ‘So Fine’, the album is an amalgamation of everything that made him the frizzy frondeur that we know today.

Compared to the specific genres he’s dabbled in like hard rock, Americana, and hardcore punk, Lighthouse is the first time where it seems to be a little bit of everything. The punk side is definitely not at the forefront, but that doesn’t mean the songs have suffered. This is just McKagan playing the kind of tunes that make it feel like you’re listening to him live in the studio pouring his heart out.

Recorded in Seattle during the height of the pandemic, McKagan is finally taking his solo record on the road with an all-star cast of musicians, telling Far Out, “On Lighthouse, since it was Covid, I made a lot of myself, I used the drummer from Shooter [Jennings’s] band, he flew to Seattle… I have like the Seattle version of the Wrecking Crew, just all killer fucking players.”

Then again, McKagan isn’t looking to grandstand or anything. Despite being the group’s mouthpiece, he still relishes that gang mentality that makes bands work in the first place, saying, “For this kind of mode, I’m really not trying to be a bandleader. I mean, I’m in a band, [and] I guess the final word is mine, but it never gets pushed to that point, really. I just like being in a band.”

Despite his other major outfit being one of the last great transplants from Los Angeles, McKagan believes he’s still indebted to Seattle. He had been there ever since 10 Minute Warning started, and when grunge came in to tear everything down, he responded to it like an older brother of the scene, saying, “I was so proud. When Nirvana and Pearl and Alice in Chains hit it big, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my city, motherfucker’. There’s something in Seattle when I record here. Maybe it’s the wetness. A lot of people are indoors all the time, and they play just to play. And they all have cool styles.”

That extended to him eventually using Jerry Cantrell on the song ‘I Just Don’t Know’, which makes for the kind of chocolate and peanut butter combination no one knew they wanted. There’s still that gutter punk energy to everything, but the minute that Cantrell’s voice comes in, it’s like another spirit enters the room.

When tracking the song, McKagan recalled that the whole thing was almost too perfect. “He’s like my trusted bro, and I can send him songs that won’t go anywhere else,” he explained. “I didn’t really write the solo part going, ‘Oh, this is for Jerry.’ But when he said, ‘You want me to put a solo there?’ I was like, ‘This is the perfect chord structure for you. It’s amazing. Some things just happen for a reason.”

One can spend one’s entire life playing in Seattle, but it all depends on how it works off an audience, and McKagan still has that hunger to blow people away every time he plays. Outside of just the punk rock bands of his youth, he admitted that one of his biggest inspirations as a performer recently came from seeing Billy Joel.

When watching one of the reigning musical kings of New York sing, McKagan remembered being fixated on what Joel’s backing group could do, recalling, “The backing vocals and all the little things that they do are so inspiring. I just watched the band and how they sang. I came back to Guns N’ Roses rehearsal the next day and said, ‘We’re gonna step this up a little bit.’”

Although there are cases where you can hear a dash of Velvet Revolver here and a trace of GNR there, don’t mistake this for just another side project. This is the kind of record that comes from a man who knows the shape of his heart and is looking to paint a picture using a guitar and a microphone as his canvas.

And from the sounds of it, this next tour might be the first chapter in something a lot bigger. When working on what would become Lighthouse, McKagan discussed having an idea to release a concept record based on some of the songs that he had been working on.

While it’s unclear if/when we’re going to see it come to light, what he describes sounds like a punk rock opera in the making about a junkie walking away from his demons, saying, “I wrote a song called ‘I Found My Guy’ about [my] drug guy. And then I wrote a song called ‘Don’t Say Goodbye’. It’s a love letter and a fuck you letter [for] when you’re quitting drugs. I have other songs in between it to kind of tell the story of the darkness and the joy getting out of it.”

That grand scale might go against some people’s definitions of punk, but McKagan isn’t looking to please everyone with his music. The last thing he wants to do is write something he thinks someone else will want, admitting, “I’ve never thought about writing a song and what somebody else can think of this song. You can’t do that as a songwriter. You write the song to where you’re satisfied with what you’re trying to get across.”

Still, that hasn’t stopped him from getting a few high-profile fans along the way. You can try to become a great songwriter by woodshedding, but it probably doesn’t hurt when someone like Bob Dylan says he loves your writing.

Just a few months ago, Dylan said that he loved what McKagan was doing on songs like ‘Chip Away’, and McKagan has been on a high ever since. “That’s incomprehensible to me,“ he said. “You know, he’s the master at this. I still haven’t really taken that one in. He’s the guy, and Bob, if you ever want to write a song together, I’m right here for you.”

Despite getting kudos from one of the greatest songwriters of the past century, McKagan has never let that kind of praise go to his head. As much as artists might like to celebrate themselves, true songwriters always know that they are only as good as their last song, and McKagan relishes the idea of getting into a room with a guitar and walking away with something he can be proud of.

While some might point to the big looming shadow of his other band half the time, this isn’t meant to try to outdo the big gun-shaped monster that McKagan was a part of for years. The songs might be written by one of those hard rock transplants, but they’re not always meant to rip your head off from one track to the next. And, really, where else can you expect to find a song that feels like Johnny Thunders by way of Bruce Springsteen, that we find with: ‘I Saw God on 10th St’?

No matter where this next journey across the UK takes him, McKagan is still looking for that next great song—for McKagan, touring the world, recalling the rigours and riches of his own experience, and embracing life on the road are all part of the potent mixture that pushes his pen across the paper.

You can check out his forthcoming live dates here.