Guns N’ Roses Covers The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” with Duff McKagan on Lead Vocals

The rock band Guns N’ Roses have started to continue their current tour. The band’s last performance was in March 2020, according to Stereogum, before the band took a break from touring for obvious reasons, the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday they played their first gig at the Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, PA.

During the performance, Guns N’ Roses’ own punk-rocker Duff McKagan took over vocals to cover the classic Stooges song “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” You can watch the full cover performance below.

This is the first time the band played the cover live on stage, and as Stereogum points out, there is not a lot of comment and introductions leading up to the performance. While this might be the first time the band played the song live, Guns N’ Roses aren’t new to playing covers, including a Stooges’ cover. The ’90s hair metal band released a covers album in 1993 called The Spaghetti Incident? which featured a cover of The Stooges song “Raw Power.”

McKagan definitely doesn’t have the iconic voice of Iggy Pop, but the cover is a decent reimagining of the punk classic. Guitar-god Slash is doing his magic on the guitar, and altogether the cover is pretty close to the original but still features some Guns N’ Roses elements. Slash joined rapper Post Malone, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and Jane’s Addiction‘s bassist Chris Chaney earlier this year, and together covered “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath and Alice In Chains’ “Rooster.”

Of course, Guns N’ Roses are not the first to successfully cover The Stooges’ songs. In 1987 Sonic Youth covered the same song, “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” but the live performance just recently resurfaced and fans could watch it for the first time. Supergroup Wylde Ratttz covered their song “Fun House” in honor of the 50th anniversary of the album with the same name. Fun House is still one of the most influential punk albums to this day, being featured on the famous Rolling Stone list “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” The  Stooges’ live performance of the same album, called Live At Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970, was released in 2020 for the first time ever.