Having collected three lifetime achievement awards in the past 12 months – courtesy of the Brits, MTV and Q magazine – and played to the largest audiences of their career here in 2003 (200,000 tickets sold), Duran Duran are, by some yardsticks, more of a happening proposition now than they were in their heyday.America’s A-list pop celebs have been giving them strong support. They seemed hopelessly out of time, marooned in the brash-flash era of the early 1980s.Four years on, they look set to reclaim their place as the most enduringly successful pop act Britain has produced over the past 25 years The signs are plain to see and hard to argue with. They suffered a slump in the public’s affections – in 1982, the newlywed Princess Diana said they were her favourite band; 20 years later they couldn’t even get a record contract – but “Durandemonium” is on its way back. In a pop world full of ageing Peter Pans with expensive habits to service, ex-wives to maintain and children to educate, attempted comebacks are common, perhaps necessary. None of that applies to the remarkable resurgence of Duran Duran. It’s a more talented band that we have now, much more talented than Guns ever was.

There were Guns nights where it was magic, but we were fucked up half the time No, 99 per cent of the time As players we weren’t really maximising our potential. So, as far as aggression and talent are concerned, this is a much better band. I don’t know if another band will ever achieve the kind of world domination Guns N’ Roses managed. But if they do, it’s going to be us.”The album ‘Contraband’ is out now on BMG The single ‘Falling to Pieces’ is out on 11 October. Nobody can top Guns N’ Roses.”That was an anomaly, it was a freakish thing that happened and the whole world caught on.

In the end, it was no contest.”There were, of course, the naysayers who predicted that lightning couldn’t strike twice, and that this collection of ex-junkies were too old and damaged to begin all over again. Certainly, few could have predicted that Velvet Revolver would have sold 250,000 copies of their album Contraband in its first week in the States, overtaking the combined sales of the recently released Guns N’ Roses and Stone Temple Pilots greatest-hits compilations. The band have now sold two million worldwide, and their forthcoming single “Fall to Pieces” is predicted to top the UK charts despite little radio play.”Since the day this thing started, we’ve heard a lot of people saying it wouldn’t work. A lot of drinking ensued because of the way he behaved, especially during tours.”McKagan, who once subsisted on two litres of vodka a day, looks back at his years with Rose and company with a mix of pride and regret. But they’re falling by the wayside pretty quickly,” McKagan says “We didn’t have these huge ambitions It wasn’t about trying to top what we did before. “It was an amazing experience and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but, let me tell you, the drugs is a sad goddam story.

Your main focus besides the gig is calling some sleazeball in the next city, to make sure he scores for you.”And you have to keep that up or you’re gonna get sick That’s the position I was in for the last few years of Guns Just panicking to get enough dope to get me through I went into some fucked-up places. “I couldn’t make sense of them, so I thought it might be a good idea to go back to school and learn how it all worked.”Then Microsoft offered McKagan a job Was he tempted? “Sure I was,” he replies. “You always want what you don’t have, and I thought that would be very interesting. But then I got another opportunity, to be in a killer band with a bunch of old friends. In 1998, he and his wife moved to Seattle, where – to everyone’s surprise, not least his own – he took a degree in finance.”After I finished rehab, I needed to find ways to fill my time, so I started going through the financial statements of Guns from the previous four years,” McKagan says. McKagan made two solo albums: the first was released on Geffen, but the second was shelved in a record-company merger.