The Pop Corporation

In British English, the word ‘duff’ is pretty common parlance. In dictionary jargon, it’s something like ‘adjective INFORMAL: BRITISH 1. of very poor quality’ – you know the score. Outside of Britain, the word may or may not be used – we’ve not checked, but we’re going to assume that at least in the States, it’s not a thing anyone really says.

Why? Well, if you’ve been watching the Simpsons, you probably thought Duff beer was probably called that because it was a notoriously shoddy product, right? Like, in Grand Theft Auto they have Pißwasser beer, we just assumed it was either a common enough word to use, and clearly poking fun America’s propensity for a weak, functional, kinda crappy lager.

However, there might be more to it than that, and yep, it has a musical relevance in the shape of Guns ‘N’ Roses member Duff McKagan. He reckons the beer is named after him, not the commonly used word in Britain. McKagan made this claim initially in his autobiography called ‘Its So Easy And Other Lies’, saying that a “production company working on a new animated series” contacted him in ’89-ish, asking if they could use his name for a brand of beer, thanks to him being quite the drinker at that time.

He figured it was some low-budget thing and shrugged ‘aye, whatever’, probably before burping and sliding his thin little legs into some leather trousers and ignoring the screaming voices coming from Axl Rose’s bedroom. Now, Simpson writers have said this isn’t true, but let’s go with it.

In a new interview with Stereogum, McKagan was asked about it all again, this time adding that he was once the self-proclaimed ‘King of Beers’, and even wore a little belt that bore the Budweiser logo on it. He said: “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 [creator Matt Groening], 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.”

Should someone own up to all this? McKagan sez: “They should. I’m not going to ask them for money.”

Aye, right. Never trust a GnR member and ‘money’.