Duff McKagan Quotes

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

When I started to write a tune, I just wrote the nearest at hand, which was what was happening in my own life.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record.

Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.

When you're writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That's the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.

After Mad Season, I started writing my own music for Pearl Jam and brought it in. 'Given To Fly' came out of that, and so did 'Faithful' - those were on 'Yield,' which came after Mad Season.

The melody will tell me what the song should be about, the tone of the song. That's when the intellect comes in. Because I have a list of possible titles and concepts, and I expand on that.

When After Forever stopped, I didn't want to first find a band, then see if I could write with them, figure that whole thing out, then record an album. Instead, I worked with people I knew would be good songwriters out of an idea how I thought it would sound like.

All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.

Any time you write a song, you kind of know what you want from it. You know what you're getting from it.

We just try to write about things that are close to our hearts. We don't sit around trying to write another 'Free Bird' or 'Sweet Home Alabama.'

When I did 'Hand Cannot Erase,' I didn't have a specific singer in mind.

You're always thinking about making new music.

I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!

I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.

I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

Sometimes when you're writing a song and that song comes into your head, it definitely comes from somewhere, like a real experience.

I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy.

I have a really hard time writing my own lyrics for this record, because one, I had to write so many and also I was kind of perplexed by the idea of how I was going to sing and play... because at that time, we hadn't really thought about asking someone else.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.