DUFF MCKAGAN Remembers Seeing PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN The Night Actor Died

While he doesn't mention him by name, GUNS N' ROSES member Duff McKagan writes of seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman the night he died of a drug overdose. In his latest book "How To Be A Man (And Other Illusions)", excerpted in this week's Village Voice, McKagan recalls he and friend Jerry Cantrell (of ALICE IN CHAINS),now both sober, wondering if they should intervene, because Hoffman looked like he might have been trying to score.

"Should we offer our friendship and a safe place?" they wondered. The duo, from Seattle and in the city for the Super Bowl, saw Hoffman a few times over the course of the weekend, as they were staying in a friend's apartment near his in the West Village.

Duff recalls: "The place we were staying at in the West Village was on a tiny street with very little car traffic. The din of the big city seemed miles away. On Saturday, we had plans to go to Times Square to see Super Bowl Lane. We were going to go see the FOO FIGHTERS later that night and maybe get some Super Bowl T-shirts for friends and family back home. Exiting the apartment, we ran smack-dab into a very famous actor. Being as this was an almost private street, we simply nodded to him and kept on our way, not wanting to intrude on his private life. Ed commented that the actor had been clean for something like 23 years, but he'd heard that he'd recently started using again. Should we turn around and offer to take the guy for a coffee? As I said, keeping sober is a group effort. We trudged on through the cold, discussing the matter.

"Later that afternoon when we came back, we saw the actor in the street again and could tell that he was waiting to score. Should we offer our friendship and a safe place? This is sometimes the dilemma for sober guys — as we all know, you can't force a guy to get sober. He has to come around to it himself. We went back into the apartment.

"After the show, we were visibly giddy about the game, which was only a few hours away. We took a cab back down to the apartment and got dropped off in front of the place at about 1:30 a.m. We ran smack-dab into the actor again. On the street. Waiting. Again. Shit, man. We thought that maybe he was on a last run before getting clean. Surely if we saw him again in the morning, we'd have to say something.

"Bro, c'mon. We've been there. Come on out of the cold. We understand. We've been there. Really. We've been there.

"The next morning — Sunday, February 2, 2014, the morning of the Super Bowl — I heard a ruckus outside our front door. I went out to take a look. There was an ambulance and police, and a whole crowd of press people and fans. The actor had OD'd and died sometime after we saw him at 1:30 a.m. the night before. (Out of respect for his children and our joint association with a 'fraternity,' I don't feel comfortable calling him out by name.)"

The full excerpt can be found at VillageVoice.com.