Da Capo PressAlong with his new book, How to Be a Man (and Other Illusions), Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver bassist Duff McKagan will be releasing a three-track companion EP of the same name. The EP's title track features contributions from McKagan's GNR band mate Izzy Stradlin, Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell and Stone Sour drummer Roy Mayorga. You can listen to "How to Be a Man" now at RollingStone.com.
McKagan wrote "How to Be a Man" as a "theme song" for the book. Both the EP and the book will be released on May 12.
"It's certainly not an instructional, how-to book," McKagan tells Rolling Stone. "It's an observational study and hopefully some humor in there."
In writing How to Be a Man, McKagan also rediscovered how much he likes his old GNR material.
"Ever since that original thing ended, I just kept going forward and didn't ever go back and listen," he says. "Things were going too fast: I went to school, we were having kids, I got sober, then Velvet Revolver started, and my kids were growing. I never sat in a room somewhere and listened to bodies of work I've done in the past."
When McKagan finally did sit down and re-listen to GNR, he was blown away.
"'My Michelle' plays through my speakers, and I'm hearing every little part -- the last time I played it was 20 years ago -- but all the little pieces of that song, I was like, 'Holy f**k! What a good band!'" he says.
How to Be a Man (and Other Illusions) will be McKagan's second book, following his 2011 memoir It's So Easy (and Other Lies).
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