Nick Snelling asks davekushner of velvet revolver what's it like to be in a supergroup with half the guys from guns'n'roses.

Velvet Revolver

It looks dangerous, you have to admit. Take the veteran remnants of two of the greatest rock bands of the last fifteen years, the seminal and aggressive hard blooze of Guns'n'Roses and the post-grunge brilliance of Stone Temple Pilots, and something interesting is bound to happen. Either that, or it'll self-destruct. Add to the recipe, a decade long pressure-cooker of frustrated musical talent, a frontman with a penchant for rampant drug-abuse, consecutive arrests, the ever-mounting cynicism of press, and the rumours of a new 'supergroup' can look like it would never happen. Nevertheless, ever since the aforementioned bands imploded, the fans have been wanting something more. Now, it looks like they may just be getting it. Slash is back. However, it is new rhythm guitarist, Dave Kushner (ex-Infectious Grooves) that rounds out the five-piece, and it is with him we get the whole story on what exactly fans should expect.

"Simple. We all wanted to make a great record, an album that we wanted to hear, that had something we were missing hearing on the radio today. There's elements of both those bands and those records in this, so no, I don't think anyone will be disappointed. But to expect the same thing from a band, that really, is a totally different band now, well - it is what it is. At the end of the day -  regardless of peoples and fans expectations, you do what you do, and you have to be okay every night with what you're doing onstage. We've got to be happy playing certain songs off this album for the next ten years."

Kushner is adamant that despite the hype, this is no overnight 'supergroup' -

Velvet Revolver are aiming for longevity. "Oh yeah. It's no 'let's put it together and make some money' kinda thing. Duff, Slash, Matt and I were looking for a singer for almost a year before we found Scott (Weiland - Stone Temple Pilots). Obviously if the plan was to get some big name, knock out a big record, and make money -then we wouldn't have spent a year writing songs."

Perhaps part of the reason it's taken Velvet Revolver so long to get an album out is that vocalist Scott Weiland has been in and out of court ordered rehabilitation after being arrested numerous times for drug possession. Is Kushner and the rest of the band were ever worried, especially with Weiland's history of drug abuse and falling-off-the-wagon, that the intense frontman is going to fuck-up all over again, right at a time they need him the most?  - "Scott is what he is. His past is no secret to anyone. I've known Scott for fifteen years, y'know? Everyone in the band knows that he has done those things, but it was just obvious - he was the guy. Someone once said to me, if you want a safe job, go pound nails for a living. This is not a safe job. There's not a lot of job security, but you do it because you get to hear a guy like that sing on your stuff."

Indeed, apparently there was an instantaneous feeling that Weiland was 'the guy' after the very first rehearsal "We got that feeling from the moment when he first walked in the room. We had tried to get him in the beginning while he was still in STP, and then we tried again later - and then we just knew. We had about fifteen other guys come in, and then he came in, and we felt it. So we gave him a song, and then he came back with Set Me Free, and it sounded exactly how it ended up on The Hulk soundtrack."

And what of the rumours of various other nefarious frontmen vying for the role? Rumours had it even Sebastian Bach, of nineties hard-rock band Skid Row, in between his Broadway role in Jesus Christ Superstar, gave it a go.  "Ummm, we weren't called Velvet Revolver at that point - but we did work with him. A little bit. And it, ummm, just didn't feel right. I mean the guy's awesome - he's a great singer, and he's a great guy, but regardless of what the music sounded like - it still sounded like the singer from Skid Row. It's very specific sounding."

So the consensus was Bach couldn't take what you were doing and give it a more modern sound? "I don't even know if we were that calculating about it. We just thought - let's keep looking. He was disappointed, because he had history with all the guys - so would anyone be if they tried out for a band with Slash, and Duff, and Matt. If you were a singer, tried out, and didn't get in - I bet you'd be bummed too."

Even with so many heavyweight names in the band, as the 'least famous' member, Kusnher is quick to assure he never gets side-lined in the songwriting process. "Nah, we definitely wrote them all together. Half of them we wrote in the ten months prior to getting Scott. Actually, we wrote about fifty songs before Scott even came into the picture. Then we let him listen to a bunch of those songs, to see what ones inspired him, and he put vocals on some of them until we had six or seven. Then as a band we wrote another six or seven. We all contributed from that point, suggesting things to each other - so in that sense it's a full collaboration. On the record, though, all the lead stuff is Slash. When we play live there's a few sections where we trade off solo's, but on the record - it's all Slash - and I'm cool with that. Hey - it's Slash! - I've been a fan of his since junior high, and I could listen to him play solos all day long."

At no stage, however, does actually playing in a band with three members of Guns'n'Roses ever surprise Kushner. "Ummm, no. Ha! Look I'm not jaded to the point where I'm not appreciative of the point where I'm at with those guys, but I grew up with Slash, and I played in band with Duff right before this one started, and like I said, I've know Scott for fifteen years, so all these guys are known to me.  Its not so out there, because I'd see them around town all the time. But I think there was point when Izzy (Stradlin - original rhythm Guns'n'Roses guitarist) came down to jam with us, and he had a bunch of his songs laying around, and all five of us were in a room jamming together, and then was a point there - where I was like 'wow! - this is everyone except for Axl'. But that was the only time."

The debut Velvet Revolver album is called Contraband, and in the wake of huge sales and critical acclaim in the States , the band are moving at full steam, despite their naysayers. "We're pretty focused on the album cycle at the moment, with all the press, and the artwork - I mean we got so much going on with interviews and photo-shoots and everything being thrown at us - especially because now people can see that we are really a band. A lot of people thought that the record would never be made, and then it would never come out, and then we'd never play a show, let alone a whole tour. And here we are - doing all of that."

The band chose to work with acclaimed uber-producer Josh Abraham, yet there was a conscious decision amongst the band members, to not go with an over-produced sound.

"Anything that is overproduced is always going to sound dated at some some point further down the line. The more organic you can get a record to sound, the less dated it's gonna sound twenty years from now. Technology always marks a time in a recording - like the snare drum sound from the eighties and early nineties - and we really wanted to get away from that, and Josh was part of really helping us do what we specifically wanted to do. The record basically sounds like we do in rehearsal. There's overdubs here and there, but not a lot. There's me on the left, Slash on the right, and Duff and the lead breaks and extra guitar stuff down the middle. Live, both Slash and Duff do the backing vocals, and they sound fucking awesome - so it's all there."

Kushner leaves fans with the promise that they will eventually see Velvet Revolver in Australia. "Oh yeah - it's already planned. This is just the beginning of it. We're on this promotional tour here in the States until the end of June, then we start in Europe at the end of August, we plan to just keep on going as long as it takes."