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Hey, we made it to TMZ! Ten days ago, Stereogum published a We’ve Got A File On You interview with Duff McKagan. In our chat, the Guns N’ Roses bassist reiterated a claim from his autobiography: that he was the inspiration for Duff Beer on The Simpsons. Here’s how he explained it to our Michael Tedder:
Well, here’s the deal. So I was Duff, the King of Beers. But this is 1988, 1989 and our management, I remember they called me and said some arthouse-like cartoon wants to use your name as the beer, like a college arthouse cartoon. There weren’t any adult cartoons at this point.
I didn’t know about branding or anything like that, but that show took off. And then they started selling merch and stuff. I never went after him, but I’m like, “Hey, motherfuckers,” you know?
So I think it’s very probably business savvy of them to say that’s not true. But if you just do your own math behind it, look at when they started off with the King of Beers, and I had my King of Beers belt I wore all the time.
TMZ brought McKagan’s claim to Simpsons writer/producer Jay Kogen, who denies that Duff Beer had anything to do with Duff McKagan. Kogen says the Simpsons team didn’t know any Guns N’ Roses members’ names besides Axl Rose when they named Duff (whither Slash!) and they selected the name as a joke about lazy people who pound beers all day. “We named it Duff because it’s a synonym for butt, tushy, booty, and so on,” Kogen said. “Duff is a beer for people who sat on their fat ass all day.” He added, “It’s very weird this Duff McKagan guy wants to claim credit for Duff Beer … He had zero to do with it.”
Yeah… Jay Kogen would say that. Below, enjoy a Duff ad from an old Simpsons episode.