DUFF MCKAGAN, formerly of GUNS N' ROSES, currently in VELVET REVOLVER and LOADED has issued his latest Seattle Weekly blog. An excerpt reads as follows:

"A couple of months back, I wrote that I was going to test little bits and pieces of a potential book I may write. If I do enough of these tests, who knows? I may just have the start of a larger work. To make things coherent and in context, I will present things here in a broader sense. Think of it as an outline. Here goes another installment.

The memories I have of the mid-to-late-'80s Hollywood rock scene do not necessarily include bands that may pop into one's mind. My band, Guns N' Roses, and the close network of friends that we kept, were a ragtag bunch of outcasts that remained rather insulated and kept to ourselves during this period. We had little in common with the popular L.A. bands then. Though parts of this story may seem a bit dark, this period of my life was one of the funnest and most profound. It also contained many strong elements of a young man's rite of passage, including a loss of innocence in many respects and facing mortality as a result of losing close friends to overdoses. Maybe not the usual rites of passage, but at the time these life hurdles seemed normal.

I packed my bags and cut my ties with my hometown of Seattle in September 1984. The idea of driving to New York in my beat-up 1971 Ford Maverick became moot as soon as I realized that, on a budget of $360, the East Coast was just too far away. I decided Los Angeles was a safer place for me than the heroin-infested punk scene of the Pacific Northwest. I was badly mistaken.

There was really no discernible rock scene there in the fall of '84--only the palpable hangover of a once-thriving punk movement, mixed with "cow-punk" and really bad heavy metal (METALLICA had just moved back to S.F.). I met Slash and Steven Adler shortly after my move, through a 'musicians wanted' ad I saw in a newspaper. Izzy Stradlin moved into an apartment across the street from me. (We lived on one of the most drug-infested lanes in Hollywood, visited nightly by dealers, hookers, and cops. Stories of this street alone would make a GREAT book.) Axl, a childhood friend of Izzy's, soon moved in around the corner in our cheap-rent neighborhood. We formed our band shortly thereafter, a happy bunch of malcontents!

My new musical comrades and I shared an uncanny similarity in the 'fuck-everyone-except-us' approach to writing, playing, and living our music. We sought to do this thing on our own terms and in our own way. This was simply a way of life. At that point in life, you've just got nothing to lose... a relatable point to anyone reading, I am sure."

To read the rest of Duff's blog, click here.