by Duff McKagan
The bad stuff I learned from my folks stemmed from the things you know are crappy deals when you witness them as a kid as well as incidents that reveal themselves as wrong when you become an adult. I saw infidelity when I was seven years old and knew it wasn’t cool. I also got to witness the fallout of those infidelities and the hurt they caused. Those eyewitness experiences colored my life in a positive way. As a young boy, I decided that I wouldn’t let infidelity be a part of my life when I started a family. It still isn’t.
My parents divorced when I was in second grade. Because I hadn’t developed any real coping abilities, I didn’t speak to my father for five years. As I grew older, I was able to come to grips with their divorce, and my father once again became a part of my life. But I grew up mostly under the tutorship of my mom and older siblings.
I loved both my parents and appreciated everything they did for me. Like me, as young parents, they didn’t know what they were doing—how could anyone until they’re doing it for themselves? We hold our parents to such lofty ideals, and in the end they are just people faced with the fact that they are suddenly raising kids. When I became a parent myself, I let go of any and all residual blame.
I’ve taken what I learned from my mom, and also what I discovered about my dad, and morphed all of those experiences into a parenting style of my own. I’ve learned that there are no “normal” circumstances in which to parent, but the important thing is to parent. Period. Whether you’re a single parent, a busy parent, or a dad who provides for his family by traveling the globe.
The father of girls will do absolutely anything for the welfare or benefit of his daughters. There is a lesson in that. If you give your daughter too much and make things too easy, she will not grow. This is an early struggle that has yet to subside for this father. You cannot kick the ass of everyone your daughter has a struggle with (even though that is your first instinct). You cannot buy her ice cream every time she wants it (even though being at the ice cream shop with your daughter is one of the happiest moments in life for the both of you). You cannot talk about periods or feminine hygiene products or anything that even comes close to this (even though you are just trying to understand why your daughter is suddenly IRATE at you).
Girls are so much different from boys. Watching your own girls grow up and go through all their unique stages gives us fathers a much bigger insight into the female gender. Hell, it’s given me the knowledge and insight to understand my wife and sisters and female friends better. It takes patience. We men are just built differently. I’m sure if a mother of boys is reading this right now, she’d say the same thing from the opposite viewpoint. A guy like me has to sit patiently and observe before I act, and guys just really aren’t born with patience and observational skills. At least I wasn’t.
When my girls were born, I was able to clear away the busyness in my life and attain a strong bond with both of them. We did everything together. And, like all parents do with their kids, we invented our own little games. One of our favorites was tickle time. I’d be the Green Hornet, and Mae was Kato. She’d pounce on me at any time—usually unannounced. We’d wrestle and tumble, and she’d always win. This was always our time, and we’d belly laugh and have some of the most fun of our lives.
It used to be that the girls couldn’t wait to hang out with me and cuddle up next to me to watch TV. But something happens between a father and daughter when she gets close to eleven years of age. That something is that they suddenly realize that you are a boy! Gross. And just like that, the cuddling and tickle times and bedtime stories are out the window. It’s a very hard time for us dads. Kinda brutal, actually. It sucks to suddenly get cast into the category of yuck right along with all of the snot-faced eleven-year-olds.
When Grace was this age, Susan and I thought we had done something wrong. We had no experience with the preteen change. Our baby became a totally different person. She didn’t want to walk with us to school anymore, when this used to be such a special time for our family. Oh, my gosh, Mom and Dad, you have to be kidding me! There is no way I am going to hold your hand walking across the street! SO embarrassing!!! She wouldn’t talk to us and would go straight to her room after school. We thought something was seriously wrong and were about to call for some kind of outside professional help, when another mom said to us: “Oh, right. Grace is about to get her first period.” This mother of an older girl wised us up real quick. “It’ll be a couple years until she comes back to you guys. Especially you, Dad. But she will come back.” A couple of years?
A good friend of mine had gone through all of these changes with his oldest daughter some years before we did. His daughter was in her late teens when we went through it, and I found myself calling him and his wife often to get insight on just who my daughters were. Really. It is so totally gnarly for a father to suddenly “lose” his little girls, who transform into Tasmanian Devil–like blurs of emotion and anger in the shape of what was once your tickle partner.
I started to tour again just after I got out of Seattle U. Grace and Mae were seven and four years old the first time I brought them on tour with Velvet Revolver. Along with singer Scott Weiland and our wives, we decided to get a shared family tour bus in Europe, and away we went. I knew the girls had never seen me on a stage, and I was curious about how this experience would play out in their kid minds. After watching a couple shows from the side of the stage, Grace came up to me on the bus one night and said, “Dad, you guys swear too much onstage.” Hmmm. She was right. One of the many upsides of taking the kids on the road is that they keep you in check.
When the girls got older and it was harder to get them out of school, we turned to Skype. Among other things, Skype made it easy for me to help the girls with their homework. I had just retaken all of my math in college, and that became my go-to subject to help the girls with. They used to get super psyched when they saw my face on the computer and would always answer my Skype request for a video chat. But for teenagers, I’ve learned that it’s a bit nerdy to Skype with your parents. It’s made parenting from afar a bit trickier—but no less manageable.
First off: You must have a great partner, and, in my case, I have a great wife. The most important decision any man or woman will ever make is picking the person they will spend their life with. I made a couple not-thought-out decisions on marriage in my old drinking days, but I instinctively knew I shouldn’t have kids yet. It wasn’t until I was sober and met Susan that I was sure I wanted to have kids. I knew she and I would be together to raise them. This, I am quite sure, has made a huge difference on being a parent for me, and for my daughters. Again, who you have kids with will always be the very most important decision you ever make. They should really teach that stuff at school.
Susan does everything she can to minimize the separation pains when I am gone. For instance, the girls may not want to Skype anymore, but when Susan picks one of our daughters up from school, they will both call me on the car speakerphone. Susan figured out that by having them both call it forces the too-cool teenager to actually speak on the phone.
But I still miss Skyping with my girls. When those old habits go away, parents feel that separation. Your kids want to be independent, and you just want your kids back. It’s a slippery slope that we parents have to adjust to. In a lot of ways, it is another step deeper into becoming a full-fledged grown-up. My wife and I have had to grow up a lot over the last few years and adapt to the changing role we play in our daughters’ lives. (BTW, who says that us parents really are grown-ups anyway? In a lot of ways, I still want to be a kid and have tantrums and have shit go my way all of the time.)
Just as I was at my wit’s end when both girls were fully into this preteen and teenage miasma and angst, things started to change.
With Grace, it happened almost overnight. She literally came out of her bedroom one day with three songs she had written. She had been so removed from me that I had no idea she was even into writing or performing music. I’d assumed she was in her room
writing manifestos on how to get away with the perfect plot to alienate her parents forever. She came out of her room one day and said, “Hey, Dad! Can I play you some music?” And just like that, I was back in the game.
In her time away, Grace had morphed into a thoughtful and interesting young person. As parents, we understood that our kids would be watching our every action, even in those times when we assumed they were putting every last inch of effort into ignoring us. Susan and I had just kept on as we went through these periods with the girls, even though this tension would do its darnedest to pit us against each other at times. We’d treat each other with love and respect, and Grace suddenly came out of her room that day, with those same qualities. It was really quite stunning.
Mae was still quite “away” at this point (Grace was late fifteen, and Mae had just turned thirteen). But now Grace and I had a common thing in this newfound interest she gained in music. In her time away, Grace had stopped listening to Bieber, Swift, and Katy Perry and supplanted it all with Bowie, Iggy, Lou Reed, Grimes, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. For the most part, she was listening to the exact music that I listened to at that age, and I could now hang in her room again and talk music and pick out songs on her growing, cool-as-fuck iTunes library. We even started going to the record store together.
Ben and Jeff from Walking Papers agreed to record Grace’s music in Jeff’s basement studio. Jeff, having two girls just two years respectively younger than mine, marveled at the new Grace. Seeing Grace come out of her teenage hideout gave Jeff sparkling hope for his future relationship with his own daughters. The songs she wrote were really good, and the finished product from Jeff’s basement pushed Grace to the next step of wanting to start a band. This, of course, was okay with me.
At the time, I was getting ready to present a keynote address in New York at the burgeoning CBGBs Music and Film Festival. The brand CBGBs alone garners a ton of respect and attention, and one day leading up to my departure, I received an e-mail from the owner of the festival stating that he’d heard that my daughter had a band, and . . . would they like to play the festival? They thought it’d be cool to introduce a new generation of talent, and her being my daughter (and I had actually played CBGBs) added a cool back story. Great for press and all.
The conversation with Grace went something like this:
Me: “Hey, Grace! You want to play your first gig in New York for the CBGBs Festival? You know, CBGBs, where Blondie and Iggy and The Ramones played?”
Grace: “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!! OHHHHH MMMMMMYYYYYYY GAAAAAAAAWD!”
That was a yes.
Mae started to pay attention to the changes her sister was going through. Susan and I tried not to give too much weight to what Grace was doing. We didn’t want the extra attention on her older sibling to push Mae further into her teenage hole. But Grace was engaging us all the time now, and it was tough to hide our excitement and happiness. Then, sort of naturally and out of the blue, Mae started suggesting that she do her sister’s makeup for an upcoming photo shoot before we left for NYC. It turns out that Mae had been in her room for the last two years studying hundreds of different YouTube makeup teachers. Homegirl now suddenly had some serious skills!
Music? I can help out with and be something of a mentor. Makeup? Uh, not so much. But this is where we dads improvise and do our damnedest to take part in whatever it is our kids do. Susan was much more key to drawing Mae out of her hole with this new interest in makeup, but I tried. For Christmas, I went to a beauty supply store by myself and asked the people there if they could help me find some sort of makeup kit for my thirteen-year-old who was totally into this stuff. I was so excited when I wrapped up her presents. Of course, I had no idea what it all was. But, still, this was going to be a total home run for old Pops.
On Christmas morning, I could barely contain my excitement for her to open her gifts. She seemed totally psyched about the stuff I got her, and she actually gave me a hug. I knew later that this was a big step in her growing out of her teenager-ness. The items that I got her were apparently all wrong. But she didn’t act disappointed in that moment and, rather, gave her dad a hug for just the thought of me trying. The thought of that kind of stuff from my girls buckles my knees.
The day after Christmas, Mae asked if we could have tickle time—for the first time in almost three long years.
A few days later, I experienced one of the best nights of my life. Grace’s band, the Pink Slips, was asked to open for my band on New Year’s Eve in Seattle. Here I was at home, where I started my whole music experience, and my daughter’s band—now including Alice in Chains’ drummer Sean Kinney’s nephew, Keenan, on drums—was starting its career. A lot of our family came, as did my old pal Sean and a bunch of his family. It was New Year’s Eve, and I was with people I loved.
Not long after, Mae (now fourteen years old and 5’9”!) came into the kitchen. I was there, busy doing something or other and caught her out of the corner of my eye. I kind of freaked out, because literally I thought it was Susan, and so I said “Hi, Babe!” my usual greeting to my wife. “Hi, Dad!” My wife is a statuesque beauty, with an easy smile and built-in charm. Now my little girl, our baby and “little peach,” is also a statuesque beauty. Oh, boy. Hey, at least I got tickle time back in the fold! I’ll worry about boys soon enough. Until then, I’ll just enjoy having Mae back from her teenage hideout.
Grace had her senior homecoming this year. Boys and dating have taken a backseat to her music, and so we haven’t really had to deal with boy drama since she was about fifteen. Grace wanted to go to her homecoming this year, realizing she should at least try to experience some of these early life milestones. Her guitar player, Charlie, is a senior at the same school, and they agreed to go together as a date. He is a really great dude, and they are easy friends and grown-up enough to think this would be a fun move for the both of them. Grace was playing it cool, sort of acting like this whole thing was no big deal.
I’ve noticed that girls at her high school dress a bit too Kardashian-like at these types of events: showing too much skin and wearing heels that are way too high. A few days before homecoming, I noticed that she was putting together an outfit and that she had scheduled a hair appointment. On homecoming night, her friends met at our house for pictures. Charlie showed up looking cool as hell in a smart, European-cut black suit. A few minutes later, Grace came out of her room. Her light blue dress was so classy, showing only arms. She chose very small and gorgeous heels, and her blue eyes shone as bright as her smile. She is a young woman now, and Charlie and I kind of gasped at the same time. Stunning. My girls are not girls anymore.
But they will always be my little girls, until the end.
Two months after Christmas, I was back in Europe with the Walking Papers, opening for Aerosmith for three weeks. It was a great opportunity for us. But it presented something of a quandary for my family. When I started to tour again post-GN’R, my girls were in preschool and elementary school, and I promised that I wouldn’t be away from them for more than two weeks. I wanted them to always know I was coming back and to know I miss them. I try to make it seem like I’m not gone at all. Flying back across the country for a single day off is not uncommon, and I get all the school e-mails and am in direct contact with the teachers and other parents.
I didn’t want to break our two-week rule, so I used airline miles to fly Susan and the girls out to meet me for the last week. The girls would be out of school, and Susan could even come out a couple days prior so that she and I could have a little fancy time.
The girls were well equipped to fly by themselves to London from Seattle. They have flown more than most adults and know the ins and outs of international air travel and customs. But, of course, and to their great dismay, we got them an unaccompanied minor escort (offered by all airlines). When we picked them up at Heathrow, Grace was totally embarrassed that she had to have a flight attendant with them all the way through customs, baggage claim, and finally to meet us. “She called me �
�Sweetie,’ Dad. Sweetie! I’m sixteen, you know!”
I’ve missed you, too, honey.
But on the drive into London, Grace got very excited about a local discovery. Blondie was going to be playing in town the next night, and she wanted the two of us to go. Blondie has been one of my favorites since I was Grace’s age.
Yes, babe. We can indeed go see Blondie.
It’s always comforting to see my girls make the right choices. It makes me feel like our parenting has rocked pretty well so far.
It’s been such an absolute blessing and honor to be the father of two girls. There was no way I could’ve imagined at, say, the age of twenty that this would eventually be my fate. There would have been no way to prepare myself for this, even if I had somehow known beforehand (I think most guys somehow just assume that when they have a kid, it will be a boy. I’ve talked about this topic with a lot of my friends over the years, and it’s nearly unanimous. Weird, right?).
Being the father of girls only instantly enlists you in a unique club. We fellow travelers give each other deep-respect nods when we bump into each other along the path of life. We know that we have been put here to be a man-guide for these special ladies, and it is the best thing ever, because of how much we get to learn about ourselves as men through our girls.
19
CHAPTER
DATE LIKE YOU MEAN IT
WHEN MY GIRLS STARTED FETCHING THE ATTENTION of the opposite sex, I had to lay down a few ground rules, as all parents do. Things must stay classy.
But it’s not just teenagers and singles who should keep the dating aboveboard. Adults—and especially married men like me . . . especially me—need to be reminded of the basics every once in a while.
