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Duff McKagan and Iggy Pop have done plenty of drugs together, but long before they met the Guns N' Roses bassist actually survived "a bad mushroom trip" thanks to the punk icon.
During a recent visit to the Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp & Guy Pratt podcast, McKagan recalled going to an Iggy show way too high on mushrooms when he was around 14 years old but managed to calm down thanks to the music.
“Iggy Pop got me through a bad mushroom trip,” McKagan divulged. “I went to an Iggy show way too high on mushrooms, thinking I was going to have to go to the hospital, freaking out.”
“I just watched Iggy the whole (time), just tripping way too much on psychedelics. But he brought me down,” he continued. “And I was already a big Iggy fan, but then I was like, he means more to me. He’s a waypoint for me in my life.”
McKagan ended up meeting Iggy in his early 20s and collaborated with him on the 1990 album Brick by Brick, along with his GNR bandmate Slash. Last year, Iggy recalled his own wild story involving McKagan. "I've known Duff since he was in his early twenties," he said at the time. "Both he and Slash worked on Brick By Brick. I used to go over to Duff’s house – at the time he was trying to decide between the Playboy model he was dating and the weather girl – and rehearse. One time Slash was three hours late because, he said, 'I’m sorry but my snake escaped into the wall'."
When they did get to work, McKagan and Slash introduced Iggy to their unconventional work method. "Before we set to work they said: 'We’ll have to have a discussion before we start,'” he remembered. "So they arrived with a gallon of vodka and a bowl of blow and, as a result of living through that, I got to know them pretty well."
McKagan and his idol more recently worked together on Iggy's 2023 album Every Loser, and McKagan's last solo album, Lighthouse.