Duff McKagan From Guns N’ Roses Just Won’t Let His Beef With ‘The Simpsons’ Go

After more than 30 years on TV, The Simpsons seems to have maintained good relationships with several prominent rock stars, as evidenced by the time Homer opened for The Smashing Pumpkins, palled around with Mick Jagger and freaked out over George Harrison’s brownie. Even Green Day apparently didn’t mind being killed off via toxic sludge in The Simpsons Movie.

But one rocker isn’t too happy with The Simpsons, and probably isn’t going to back down anytime soon. 

As we mentioned recently, Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan has repeatedly claimed that his notorious ‘80s boozing inspired the name of Springfield’s favorite beer. He brought up the issue again in an interview earlier this month, but stressed that he wasn’t interested in taking any legal action against The Simpsons — even though he could potentially win the rights to valuable IP like the Seven Duffs.

In response to this interview, Simpsons writer Jay Kogen told TMZ that he and the rest of the Simpsons staff didn’t even know the names of any Guns N’ Roses members other than Axl Rose at the time. Which must have come as a blow to the top hat-wearing guitarist whose name is literally just one cool-sounding word. Kogen also told the gossip site, “It's very weird this Duff McKagan guy wants to claim credit for Duff Beer. He had zero to do with it.”

Kogen explained that “we named it Duff because it’s a synonym for butt, tushy, booty and so on” because “Duff is a beer for people who sat on their fat ass all day.” It’s true, Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Duff as “buttocks” as in “get off your duff.” And the first appearance of Duff beer did underscore that the product’s target demographic was unemployed layabouts.

While many of us probably assumed that this would be the end of this particular debate, and we’d all just move on with our lives, TMZ seems weirdly fixated on the story and stopped McKagan on the street to ask him if he’d heard about Kogen’s response. McKagan stressed that he doesn’t care “at all” about this issue, but then he paused to double down on his assertion that the show got the name from him.

“I think it’s hilarious that they’re kinda going nuts on this thing,” McKagan said of the Simpsons writers, adding that he “never treated it as a big deal” despite writing about it in his autobiography and bringing it up in multiple interviews. Of the Simpsons denial, he said “How doth thou protest,” and suggested that “this has been going on for 35 years.” 

So he doesn’t care, but not quite enough to resist the urge to argue his case to TMZ?

Presumably, TMZ will now take this statement back to someone involved with The Simpsons, and then take their rebuttal back to McKagan. And since it’s TMZ, they’ll probably also corner Andy Dick in an airport parking garage to get his take on McKagan v. Simpsons. 

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