Duff McKagan is bummed that younger music fans aren't experiencing full albums anymore.
"People don't listen ... I don't wanna generalize, but I have two teenage kids," the former Guns N' Roses bassist told Dean Delray on his podcast recently, Blabbermouth notes. "They listen to a song by one [artist], a song by somebody else, a song [by somebody else]. And [I go], 'Don't you wanna listen to the rest of the record?' They look at me, like, 'What's up, antique? What are you talking about?'"
McKagan went on to say that the whole experience of record hunting is a lost past time (listen below). "I'm not saying one [way] is better or worse, but we just grew up in a different time when we got to enjoy that whole [experience of listening to albums from beginning to end]," he said. "I got a [turntable] back at home now. I got one, like, a year and a half ago. And it's the best.... Going out and buying records and putting a record on, it's so killer."
When McKagan was a full-time member of GN'R, there were no digital downloads where listeners could mix and match their favorite tracks by different artists. Fans had to either settle for a single or spend the extra money and get the full LP, like his former band's classic Appetite for Destruction, which ranked number four on Rolling Stone's "100 Best Debut Albums of All Time" list.
"But, yeah, if you made a record [back in those days], you would think about the order on each side, and how the first side would end, and how you would open up the second side of the record, and how you would end the whole record, and all of the body of work in between that," he said. "You know, does this whole thing tell a story?"
McKagan also plays for Loaded and Velvet Revolver. He recently joined Axl Rose and the current Gunners during their South American tour.
