The record company's children decided not to release the album

Duff McKagan (Guns N' Roses bassist and soloist) admits he was “fucking pissed off” when his record label forced him to abandon his 1999 solo album.

The LP, titled “Beautiful Disease”, would have been McKagan's second solo work. The entire body of work had been recorded and was ready to hit the shops, but a huge record company merger put an end to these plans.

“I remember going to whoever it was: Universal, Interscope, whoever bought Geffen, the big, evil “Omni Group” bought them all,” McKagan recalled in a recent conversation with Stereogum. “Every time there were all these famous musicians in the waiting room, I think, to see whether their record was going to be released or not.”

One encounter in particular left the Guns N' Roses bassist furious.

“I remember talking to a record executive,” McKagan explains. “I went to his office after the Christmas holidays. My album was supposed to come out. They were waiting for it in the shops. I had done all the press tours. The artistic work was finished, the album was printed. He told me: 'Well, you know, I and my children we analyzed a lot of music to decide…'”.

“Oh, your kids?!?” McKagan responded, double-checking that he had heard correctly. “Yes, I have a nine-year-old and a fourteen-year-old,” the manager responded. “And they help you decide which records to release?” McKagan asked in dismay.

“I was so fucking pissed at this guy,” the bassist continued, recounting the moment. “I told him: 'Are you kidding me?'. Yes, my record won't come out because you went to Aspen and decided: not my record!!! And so it was.”

McKagan eventually gained ownership of the album's master tapes, more than two decades after the material was released. One of the songs, “Hope“, with the Feat of slash on guitar, it was included in his LP “Lighthouse” of 2023 and plans to continue revealing more unreleased songs.

“I plan to slowly release the unreleased songs this way, because they sound just as current now, they fit well with the newer material,” the bassist noted. “So, yeah, little by little. There's stuff with Kurt Bloch (by The Fastbacks and The Young Fresh Fellows). I got some cool stuff. There is Abe Laboriel Jr. (the drummer) from Paul McCartney's band, there are a lot of friends.”