Seattlehead

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"Seattlehead"
Song by Loaded
from the album Dark Days
ReleasedJuly 2001
RecordedDecember 2000–February 2001 at Jupiter Studios, Seattle, Washington
GenreHard rock, punk rock
Length3:48
LabelPimp
Songwriter(s)Duff McKagan
Producer(s)Martin Feveyear

"Seattlehead" (also typeset Seattle Head) is a song written by American musician Duff McKagan. It is best known as a song by his band Loaded, from their album Dark Days; it also featured on earlier releases by Neurotic Outsiders as well as McKagan's unreleased solo album Beautiful Disease.

Composition[edit]

The song was originally written in the early 1990s, with its subject matter being "what L.A. came to represent, rather than what it is".[1] It also references McKagan's move to Los Angeles from Seattle in 1984[2][3] with the lyrics: "Movin' to the city sight unseen/19 years of age I'm packing my bags/Hollywood was all the rage/I came to you in 1984/You showed me in, then you shut the door."

Releases[edit]

The first version of the song was released as the B-side of the 1996 single "Jerk" by the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, featuring McKagan, Guns N' Roses bandmate Matt Sorum, Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and Duran Duran bassist John Taylor.[4] It also featured on the Angelina EP released in Japan in 1997. This early version featured a shorter first verse than the later releases.

"Seattlehead" was later re-recorded for McKagan's second solo album Beautiful Disease, which was ultimately shelved after Geffen and Interscope Records merged.[5] McKagan was dropped from the roster of the "new combined" label.[3]

After the cancellation of the release of Beautiful Disease, McKagan decided to make a live release featuring new songs, which resulted in the release of Loaded's live album Episode 1999: Live including a live version of the song. McKagan began re-recording some of the songs from Beautiful Disease such as "Seattlehead" as well as new material at Jupiter Studios in Seattle for Loaded's debut studio album: Dark Days, released in the U.S. and Japan in July 2001 and in Europe in July 2002.

A 2001 music video by Eric Waggoner featuring clips of the band performing live in Japan was made available on Loaded's YouTube page in 2008.[6]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Classic Rock Duff McKagan Interview". Here Today... Gone To Hell. October 2002.
  2. ^ "Why Duff McKagan Left Seattle for Los Angeles". Seattle Weekly. December 23, 2009.
  3. ^ a b Slash; Anthony Bozza (2007). Slash. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-725775-1.
  4. ^ "Neurotic Outsiders - Jerk (CD, Maxi)". Discogs. Retrieved March 5, 2010.
  5. ^ Strauss, Neil (December 21, 1998). "A Major Merger Shakes Up the World of Rock". The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
  6. ^ "Seattlehead". Youtube. April 19, 2008. Archived from the original on December 15, 2021.