Hedgefinger: Duff McKagan: From Guns N' Roses bassist to money manager

Duff McKagan: From Guns N' Roses bassist to money manager

According to Fortune, in 1994, Duff McKagan's pancreas exploded.The old Guns N' Roses bass player says years of dose and alcohol abuse caused the rupture, which left him sidelined for months. As he recovered from the incident at house and sobered up, he constitute himself with hours of spare time and petty to do.

McKagan wandered into his basement one day and came across a file cabinet containing GnR's financials from the old six years. While thumbing through the reports, he realised he had no thought what they meant. Then, he panicked.

"I couldn't make sense of it. I didn't know how often we had made or lost on the tour," McKagan recalls. "As a 30 year-old millionaire, how do I take to someone that I don't love what the fuck I'm doing?"

Now, 17 years later, McKagan is starting his own wealth management firm for musicians. The company, called Meridian Rock, will be headed by McKagan and Andy Bottomsley, a British investor. Their end is to educate rockers about their finances instead of pandering or lying to them - no small effort in the music world, where businessmen, a.k.a. "suits," are frequently seen as the enemy.

McKagan, 47, says his epiphany in 1994 was a wakeup call. He enrolled in a basic finance course at Santa Monica Community College, which he says gave him a thirst for academia. McKagan moved to Seattle four days after and sign up for more classes at a local community college.

"It took me twice as farsighted as an 18- or 19-year old just out of high school to do the homework, but I got through it," he says. By the sentence he was accepted into in Seattle University's Albers School of Business, McKagan had become actively involved in managing his portfolio, which included everything from stocks and mutual funds to property.

A few months into his final class of business school, McKagan, who had left Guns N' Roses in the late 90's, formed a new rock supergroup, called Velvet Revolver. The band - which also included GnR's Slash and Scott Weiland, the singer from the Stone Temple Pilots - was a surprise hit. Velvet Revolver's album debuted at No. 1, and McKagan took a respite from business school to go on tour (he is even one semester short of graduating). When Velvet Revolver broke up a few days later, he played a short stint with the band Jane's Addiction, and then fronted his own outfit, Duff McKagan's Loaded.

It was about that time, McKagan says, that discussion started spreading that he knew something about managing money. He began getting regular calls from musician friends with questions about everything from whether to buy a home to where they should place their money

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/04/pf/duff_mckagan_meridian_rock.fortune/index.htm#TOP