He has been the bassist of hard rock band Guns N' Roses for twelve years, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

[1] Toward the end of his first tenure with Guns N' Roses, McKagan released the solo album Believe in Me (1993) and formed the short-lived supergroup Neurotic Outsiders.

[2] He has also collaborated in several short-lived projects with fellow Seattle-native musicians Mike McCready (primarily of Pearl Jam) and Barrett Martin (formerly of Screaming Trees), including Walking Papers and Levee Walkers.

[9] In his autobiography It's So Easy (And Other Lies), McKagan wrote that he fashioned himself after punk bassists such as Barry Adamson of Magazine and Paul Simonon of the Clash,[10] and also Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead.

He first performed with the band in December 1980, and appeared on their 1981 debut single "It's Your Birthday", which was issued on guitarist Kurt Bloch's label No Threes Records.

Around this time he also played lead guitar in the punk band The Living, which opened shows for Hüsker Dü and D.O.A., which developed a devoted following.

[23][24] McKagan's Road Crew bandmates Slash and Steven Adler joined the band two months later, after Guns and Gardner quit respectively.

[citation needed] On April 4, 1993 while touring with Guns N' Roses, McKagan was hit in the head with a beer bottle filled with urine thrown by a fan.

[29] McKagan had recently become a father and wrote about his decision to leave in his autobiography, stating "Guns had been paying rent on studios for three years now—from 1994 to 1997—and still did not have a single song.

"[29] Following his departure from Guns N' Roses in 1997, McKagan moved back to Seattle, where he met with many of his old friends, including Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard, who convinced him to reunite 10 Minute Warning.

In 2000, McKagan reformed Loaded, remaining as the lead vocalist but switching from bass to rhythm guitar, and adding drummer Geoff Reading of Green Apple Quick Step, guitarist Mike Squires of Harvey Danger, and bassist Jeff Rouse of Alien Crime Syndicate.

Former Wasted Youth and Electric Love Hogs guitarist Dave Kushner and former Burning Witch bassist George Stuart Dahlquist were brought in to replace them.

In 2002, McKagan founded the supergroup Velvet Revolver with his former Guns N' Roses bandmates Slash and Matt Sorum, and Loaded guitarist Dave Kushner.

In 2006, McKagan temporarily joined Alice in Chains as a rhythm guitarist,[37] performing with the band for the first time at VH1's Decades Rock Live concert honoring Heart,[38] and later during their reunion tour.

[39] McKagan subsequently reunited Loaded, with Mike Squires and Jeff Rouse returning to the group, and the same year, they released the EP Wasted Heart.

"[45] He worked on several songs with Jane's Addiction and played four shows with the band—two in Los Angeles,[44][46] and two in Europe, including one at Rock in Rio in Madrid.

[47] On September 6, six months after McKagan joined the band, Jane's Addiction announced that they had parted ways due to the fact that "musically [they] were all headed in different directions.

Loaded twice served as opening act for Guns N' Roses in December of that year, with McKagan again briefly joining his old band on stage.

[59] In April 2022 various famous artists, like Slash, Billie Joe Armstrong, Henry Rollins, and McKagan himself, publicly bemoaned the breakup of a mysterious legendary Seattle band called Max Creeps.

[60] In the following weeks, it turned out to be a guerilla marketing campaign for a new project, involving McKagan and Fastbacks singer Kurt Bloch, but so far this hasn't been officially confirmed.

Also in 2010, McKagan appeared on Slash's eponymous debut solo album; he played on the track "Watch This" with Dave Grohl on drums.

[65] In 2020, McKagan played bass and cowrote five songs on Ozzy Osbourne's album Ordinary Man, along with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith.

To promote the album, McKagan will be part of Pop's backing band named The Losers which consists of Chad Smith, Josh Klinghoffer and Andrew Watt.

[69] McKagan has two minor acting credits; in 1988, he appeared with his Guns N' Roses bandmates in the Dirty Harry film The Dead Pool, and in 1997, he played a rocker vampire in an episode of the television series Sliders.

[71] McKagan released a three-song EP with the same title to accompany the book, featuring Izzy Stradlin, Jerry Cantrell, Roy Mayorga and Taz Bentley.

[79] Following an appearance with the Hollywood Vampires at the 2016 Grammy Awards ceremony in tribute to Lemmy Kilmister, McKagan was considered a member of the supergroup, although his time in the band was short-lived as he returned to Guns N' Roses two months later.

"[80] On May 10, 1994, at the age of 30, McKagan became gravely ill due to acute alcohol-induced pancreatitis, which caused his pancreas to swell to the size of a football and leak digestive enzymes into his body.

[82] Simpsons writer Mike Reiss similarly dismissed the claim in his memoir Springfield Confidential, stating that he'd "never heard of [McKagan]".

[83] A high school drop-out, McKagan enrolled in a basic finance course at Santa Monica Community College in 1994; he explained that going over the financial records from his Guns N' Roses days had made him want to understand the process more, stating, "I couldn't make sense of it.

When Velvet Revolver took off in his final year as an undergraduate student, McKagan took a hiatus from business school to go on tour; he is still one quarter short of graduating.