Is Duff McKagan, bassist for Guns N’ Roses, the namesake for Homer Simpson’s favorite brand of beer? Well, it depends on who you ask: McKagan or the writers. McKagan had been telling the story for years that the writers of The Simpsons asked his permission to name a beer after him, despite multiple Simpsons writers refuting his claim. According to Loudwire, former showrunner Mike Reiss denied it in his Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons, saying:
“We needed a name for Homer’s favorite beer, and (writer) Jay Kogen came up with Duff. No, it was not named after Duff McKagan, bassist for Guns N’ Roses; we’d never heard of this guy. Have you?”
Granted, the book title suggests that some of Reiss’ stories in the book are “outright lies,” but this seems to be one of the stories he’s insisting is true.
But McKagan hasn’t changed his story in response to the denials of Simpsons writers. In a recent interview with Stereogum, McKagan doubled down on his claim, saying that he distinctly remembers being contacted to ask permission to use his name:
“Well, here’s the deal. 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, 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.”
It seems like a strange thing for the show’s writers to lie about, as it would probably be fairly difficult for McKagan to get any money out of it. So it’s hard to tell who’s right, but McKagan will probably continue to tell that story for years to come, no matter what anyone says to the contrary.