'Grandpa John was a survivor': Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses on his links to West Cork
Duff McKagan's grandfather emigrated from Co Cork in the early part of the 20th century, taking the well-worn route to Montana. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows )
Duff McKagan found fame as the bassist in Guns N’ Roses, one of the most successful – and controversial – rock bands of the 1980s and ‘90s. Their first album, Appetite for Destruction, was released in 1987 and became the best-selling debut of all time, shifting over 30 million copies and spawning a succession of chart-topping singles, such as ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Paradise City’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
Outside of Guns N’ Roses, Duff has released three widely acclaimed solo albums; and .
The title track on Lighthouse, released in November 2023, begins:“I have sailed across the ocean/ Hit by wind and stone...” McKagan admits these lines may well have been inspired by the journey his maternal grandfather, John Valentine Harrington (Causkey), made across the Atlantic from Ireland in 1904.
“I’m the last born of eight,” he says, “so my time with Grandpa John was limited. But I do remember him. And I have this whole story in my head, of how it must have been like for him, coming to America. It’s part of our family lore.”
John Harrington was born in Foildarrig, Castletownbere, Co Cork in 1890. His parents Denis and Julia ran a bar and store in the Square, on the site now occupied by Allied Irish Banks. He was the fifth of six children, after Alice, Jane, Frances and Mary. His younger sister Bertha was born in 1891. Julia died young, and Denis Harrington married a second time, to Mary Ann O’Neill of Clash, Eyeries. It seems they had no children. Denis died, aged 52, in 1899.
The death of John Harrington’s parents may have contributed to his decision to emigrate to America, aged 14, around 1904. It is possible that he spent time in Butte, Montana, where a number of his uncles worked as captains in the copper mines. He was drafted into the army when America entered the Great War, and his registration card, dated June 5, 1917, lists him as an unemployed miner.
In July 1918, Harrington was sent back across the Atlantic, to fight in France. “He got promoted a bunch on the field,” says McKagan. “We have some paperwork that shows he was made a lieutenant. As you know, millions died in the war. But Grandpa John was a survivor.”
Harrington returned from France in April 1919, and was discharged from the Army on May 1. Thereafter, he had a variety of occupations. “It was that time when the Irish in America did all the manual labour,” says McKagan. “So he worked in a coal mine, in timber and on the railroad... all the usual cheap jobs.”
Harrington married Elizabeth Van Snyders in 1922, and they settled in Seattle. The eldest of their three children was McKagan’s mother, Marie.
McKagan remembers that his grandfather suffered from emphysema towards the end of his life. “He had this glass pipe, like an emphysema breather. I think he’d been mustard gassed in the war. In his last bunch of years in Seattle, he worked in a chocolate factory. So he’d bring all us grandchildren chocolate. I guess that was a big thing for him, and it was probably a nice way for him to go out.”
In McKagan’s autobiography, , published in 2011, he recounts how Marie Harrington married Elmer Lucius McKagan, a fireman. They had eight children; Duff McKagan, born on February 5, 1964, was the youngest. He was, McKagan explains, named Michael Andrew on his birth cert, but as there were several other Michaels on his street, he was nicknamed Duff by an elderly Irish neighbour. The name is probably a derivation of dubh, the Irish for black, and was an ironic reference to his shock of blond hair.
Following his parents’ divorce in his early teens, McKagan ran wild in Seattle, experimenting with drugs and engaging in petty crime. But he was canny enough to avoid dabbling in heroin, which would later claim the lives of many of his closest friends. He also had a healthy work ethic, training as a pastry chef while he honed his skills as a musician; soon he was playing guitar, bass and drums in a succession of local bands such as the Vains, the Fastbacks and Ten Minute Warning.
“Once I found music, I had a way out,” he says. “There was no stopping me. The big thing was when I moved to LA.”
McKagan arrived in Los Angeles aged twenty. He worked as a chef for a few months before finding work as a driver. Initially, he slept in his car, before renting a one-roomed, vermin-infested flat off Hollywood Boulevard.
Answering an ad for a bassist in a local music magazine, he met with the guitarist Slash and drummer Steven Adler. They played together for a time as Road Crew before disbanding, having failed to find a suitable singer. Duff then joined the early Guns N’ Roses, which featured Axl Rose on vocals, Izzy Stradlin and Tracii Guns on guitars, and Rob Gardner on drums. Guns and Gardner soon quit the band, and Duff suggested replacing them with Slash and Adler, completing the classic Guns N’ Roses line-up.
When Guns N’ Roses signed to Geffen for an advance of $250,000, much was expected of them, but their album Appetite for Destruction did not really take off for a year. In that time, they lived on modest wages and gigged incessantly. But then, as sales crept into the millions, and their album reached No 1 on the Billboard charts, they found themselves coping with a level of success beyond their wildest dreams.
Fame brought its own problems. As the royalties poured in, most of the band developed serious addiction issues, and McKagan was no exception. He drank ten bottles of wine or a half gallon of vodka a day, and soon became a regular cocaine user. “Yeah, I had my troubles,” he says, “and that concerned everybody.”
At the end of March 1994, after 26 months on the road with Guns N’ Roses, McKagan was catching a flight to Seattle when he met Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain at Los Angeles Airport. They sat together on the plane, and talked throughout the flight. At Seattle Airport, they parted, and days later, Cobain was found dead at his Lake Washington Boulevard home. McKagan is believed to have been one of the last to see him alive.
McKagan might well have met a similar end had not his pancreas burst a few months later. It proved to be a turning point in his life. After weeks of hospital treatment, he embarked on a gruelling exercise routine to take his mind off alcohol and drugs. He cycled for hours daily, and began studying kickboxing and mixed martial arts. A year after his pancreatitis scare, doctors were amazed by the improvement in his health, the only permanent damage being the hole in his septum resulting from years of cocaine use.
“I was lucky,” he says. “When I finally came out of my addictions, I was thirty. I had time to go back and take care of my mom. I knew I should be taking care of her, and not have her worrying about her youngest son dying. She was an amazing woman, and I’m so glad we got to do that.
“I had a good relationship with my dad near his end too. So it all worked out, you know.”
McKagan first visited Ireland when Guns N’ Roses performed at Slane on their Use Your Illusion World Tour in May 1992. The band were in incendiary form; Henry Mountcharles always describes the concert as the most extraordinary he has hosted at his Co Meath estate.
Word was out that McKagan had Irish roots, and scores of relatives turned up to meet him. The day before the concert, he was whisked away to a party on a beach in Co Cork. McKagan still keeps in touch with some of the relatives he met on that occasion, and he has since acquired an Irish passport. “I don’t use it for taxes, or hiding money, or anything like that,” he says. “It’s just a nice thing to have.”
These days, McKagan lives in Seattle with his wife of 25 years, Susan Holmes. They have two daughters; Grace, a musician, and Mae, a fashion designer. He has spent much of the past few years touring with Guns N’ Roses, and the autumn tour for his solo Lighthouse album will include a date at the Academy, Dublin on September 30.
It’s a long way, he agrees, from his first job as a pastry chef. Does he sometimes pinch himself in disbelief?
“Absolutely,” he laughs. “Yeah. I mean, absolutely!”
- This exclusive interview with Duff McKagan is adapted from Marc O’Sullivan Vallig’s forthcoming book,, which will be launched by Beara Tourism in August
