Duran Duran bassist John Taylor recalls Sex Pistols and Guns N’ Roses supergroup
Duran Duran bassist John Taylor has reminisced about his 1990s supergroup featuring members of the Sex Pistols and Guns N’ Roses. Neurotic Outsiders was a punk rock supergroup that featured Taylor, plus Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols, along with Duff McKagen and Matt Sorum from Guns N’ Roses. Billy Idol and his longtime guitarist Steve Stevens were also briefly members of the band.
“That was a blast,” Taylor told 99X Atlanta. “I’d just gotten sober and I wasn’t sure that I really was going to be able to do music, you know? And I got in with a rough crowd – one of them was in the Sex Pistols and two of them were in Guns N’ Roses!”
Neurotic Outsiders released one self-titled album in 1996. The band formed while Guns N’ Roses entered a period of inactivity. The group held regular Monday night gigs at The Viper Room in Los Angeles.
“I always tell kids, ‘When you’re starting out, try to get a residency,’” Taylor added. “When you’re playing the same stage, like every Monday for a month, every Friday for two months, you really get to work it in. You do a gig and then you’ve got seven days to reboot, [and] it keeps you moving forward. So I loved the idea of going back. … And yes, we had these guests coming on and we were playing Pistols songs and Duran songs, and Iggy [Pop] sang with us, and Billy [Idol], and it was just fantastic. That was like the universe. For me, that was God in my life.”
“At that moment in my life, I needed it to be simple,” Taylor concluded. “In Duran … we set the bar high for ourselves. With the Neurotics it was just, like, Steve would be like, ‘I’ve got this song – follow me!’ You just had to hold on for dear life!”
McKagen and Soren would go on to form another supergroup, Velvet Revolver, with fellow former Guns N’ Roses member Slash and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland. Taylor would leave Duran Duran in 1997 and rejoined the group in 2001.
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