Duff McKagan may be a member of one of rock 'n' roll's most controversial bands, but the Guns N' Roses bassist is disputing the idea that several of the group's '80s hits were sexist.
In an interview with Yahoo about his new solo album Tenderness, McKagan claims that several of the group's more notorious songs were misunderstood, including the "tongue-in-cheek" tracks It's So Easy and Used to Love Her (whose next line is "But I had to kill her").
McKagan also explains that One in a Million, the most controversial song in the Guns N' Roses discography for its eyebrow-raising slurs about blacks, immigrants and homosexuals, wasn't a display of the band's own views. Instead, he explains, it was narrated by a bigoted character.
"We were supposed to play David Geffen's big AIDS benefit in New York a couple months (after One in a Million was released)," he said. "We got pulled off of that. I remember getting on a plane flying back to Seattle, and an African-American flight attendant came up and sat down next to me and said, 'Do you really hate black people?' I'm like, 'Oh, (expletive).' "
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"Part of my family is African-American," he continued. "(Guns N' Roses guitarist) Slash is half (black). So, people didn't put that together. Hopefully now, later, people can examine that song. And I think it's brilliant and super-brave of (Guns N' Roses frontman) Axl (Rose) to step out and do that."
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The band recently omitted One in a Million from a recent 2018 box set that featured the rest of the songs of the EP the track appeared upon, 1988's G N' R Lies. The EP's original artwork famously featured an apology for the One in a Million lyrics, which read, "This song is very simple and extremely generic or generalised, my apologies to those who may take offence." (It's unclear exactly who's doing the apologising.)
"We collectively decided that it just didn't have any place in that box set," Slash told Rolling Stone about the band's move to cut One in a Million from the compilation. "It didn't take long. There wasn't a big roundtable thing over it."
USA Today