Entertainment One UK release ‘It’s So Easy (And Other Lies)’ on DVD on 20th June 2016. Duff McKagan, renowned bassist and songwriter from Guns ‘N’ Roses & Velvet Revolver, stars in a documentary feature film based on his New York Times Best Selling Autobiography of the same name.
The film is a glimpse into the life of the musician who became a rock superstar and all the highs and lows that come with that mantle. Poignant and entertaining, he details both the fast and furious rockstar life he led and the addictions to drugs and alcohol that nearly killed him. Yet unlike other cursory tales of rock ‘n’ roll excess, the story of Michael ‘Duff’ McKagan has a different ending; he may have gone to the brink, but it is his sober reincarnation that shows the mark of this man.
Duff describes his meteoric rise to fame from being a young punk in Seattle to the mean streets of L.A. where he met the bandmates that together would write some of the world’s greatest rock songs. Describing meeting Slash for the first time, he says:
“ I assumed, because his name was Slash, he was probably a punk rock guy. I walked in, looked at the first booth on the left, and saw all this f**king hair! …he started playing guitar. I was like, "What is up with this guy?”
He founded the Grammy Award winning supergroup Velvet Revolver with G’N’R bandmates Slash and Matt Sorum and along the way he also became a best selling author with ‘It’s So Easy (And Other Lies)’ and later, ‘How To be A Man’, a book born out of the advice columns he had started to write for Seattle Weekly, ESPN and Playboy.com
With all the excitement surrounding the reforming of Guns ‘N’ Roses, ‘It’s So Easy (And Other Lies)’ is a timely reminder of the impact that Duff McKagan and Guns ‘n’ Roses has had on music worldwide. But the heart of this compelling story is that for all the mayhem, he not only survived, but thrived.
He traversed the edge and is the rare combination of both rock star and renaissance man. Like the intro baseline he wrote for the classic Guns ‘n’ Roses song ‘It’s So Easy’, Duff’s story is a swaggering rock ‘n’ roll-no-holds-barred tale that ultimately reminds us that it is the choices that we make that shapes our dreams into reality.
