Years in the
making, Velvet Revolver ready to make good
on hype
By Ben Wener The Orange County Register
Midway into the interview the trigger
gets pulled. It's a must, and Slash knows
it. He has to keep taking these shots until
the concept is completely dispelled, for
right now there's no avoiding it: His new
band, Velvet Revolver, like Audioslave
before it, is by rock-lexicon definition
a supergroup.
That said, after 20 minutes of listening
to him gab enthusiastically about how he
and his mates feel revitalized, and sensing
his response may be a sour one, I don't
even dance around a question to bring up
the topic. I just utter the term and wait
for reaction.
"God, why does everybody love to
use that word?" he said, only slightly
irritated. "Actually, someone said
something worse recently -- they used the
word 'merger.' That really killed it. That
was a short interview."
Why everyone uses such words should be
evident. As hard-rock devotees know, Velvet
Revolver consists of three former members
of Guns N' Roses -- Slash, bassist Duff
McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum -- plus
Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland
and Slash's high-school friend Dave Kushner,
a journeyman guitarist who served in outfits
such as Wasted Youth and Electric Love
Hogs.
The band's audacious debut, "Contraband," arrived
June 8. Already the album's first single,
the appropriately snaky "Slither," is
exploding on radio, heightening anticipation
for Velvet Revolver to a point well past
whatever interest Axl Rose's stillborn
GN'R effort "Chinese Democracy" has
enjoyed this decade.
It very well may become the rock story
of the year. Just don't call it Guns N'
Pilots or Stone Temple Roses.
"The whole thing about a supergroup," Slash
says, "it's just not a pretty sight.
It's a financially motivated, prefabricated,
stars-in-your eyes, stupid, short-lived
thing.
"That's not how this
band came together. We're all from high-profile
groups, yeah, but they were all organic,
creative, highly volatile bands that
were never part of the machinery. The
reason we got together with this wasn't
out of sheer desperation, and it was
nothing to do with money."
Fair enough. But for months -- years,
even, as rumblings about this band date
back to a 2002 charity show -- fans have
had a lengthy list of questions, most of
which are only beginning to be answered.
What's it going to sound
like? How will they be live? Slash adds
to it: "Is
it a GN'R record? Is it an STP record?
Are they gonna rest on their laurels? Are
they gonna cash in on their old glory?
That's what I've been hearing."
"Set Me Free," the band's teaser
on last year's "Hulk" soundtrack
(so fresh it wasn't credited to Velvet
Revolver, just the players' names), intensified
speculation. "Contraband," however,
puts it to rest. Yes, it's a bit like Guns,
especially in Sorum and McKagan's driving
grooves and Slash's grinding riffs and
high-pitched, "Sweet Child o' Mine"-like
licks, most noticeably in the ballad "Fall
to Pieces." And, yes, it's undeniably
like STP, simply because Weiland's sweet-then-snarling
vocals shape the melodies and demand a
certain hard-charging, bombast-free framework.
Yet, ultimately, Velvet
Revolver emerges as its own entity with
its own sound -- an "original snort," an
update on '80s Sunset Strip classicism
with shades of dirty Def Leppard in the
choruses, as David Fricke put it in his
four-star review in Rolling Stone.
It's an ideal collision
of the band's prime forces, something
last week's gig at the Wiltern Theatre
in Los Angeles illustrated with thunderous
presence. Never mind the considerable
fire these veterans can conjure, especially
for their past; they tore through STP
cuts like "Sex Type Thing" and "Crackerman" with
more power than the DeLeo brothers ever
summoned and offered flat-out ferocious
takes on GN'R staples "It's So Easy" and "Mr.
Brownstone" that, apart from reminding
of Slash/Duff/Sorum potency, proved what
a superior singer Weiland is compared with
Axl.
But that much should have been understood
going into it. What seals the deal is charisma,
a brand of it long-absent from mainstream
rock. Shirtless and sweaty after only four
songs, the quintet resurrected a flashy
yet lean-and-mean style that has been dormant
since the advent of grunge -- Weiland twirling
effeminately, a combination of Freddie
Mercury and Perry Farrell, while Slash
and McKagan and Kushner strut and prowl.
"There's just nothing like this today," Slash
justifiably boasts. "We've had a lot
of years, from about '95 or '96 on, where
nothing's been coming out -- nothing inspiring,
anyway. There was some really great stuff
in the early '90s -- obviously the whole
trip with Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in
Chains, STP, Nine Inch Nails, Faith No
More. But it was all so short-lived, and
everybody disappeared."
And as Weiland admonished
rowdier pit attendees, "We ain't
no nu-metal band."
That gap in hard-rock history has only
added to the band's restlessness these
past few years, born first out of cobbling
this together and wanting it to develop
naturally, then from finishing the record
but having to wait for the right time to
issue it.
"This couldn't have been one of those
things where we all came together at a
party in 1996 and then expected it to last
very long," Slash says. "It couldn't
have happened even a year earlier. It took
a lot of scrapes and bruises and stitches
to get to this point."
Those injuries are too
numerous to detail, but some are obvious.
There have been well- publicized battles
over the Guns N' Roses name and legacy.
Slash's Snakepit, his post GN'R outfit,
became a label debacle, undone by corporate
mergers, "really
bad management and bad attorneys, not to
mention that I was going against the face
of (the sound) I was really known for.
That was the start of my wake-up call."
And, of course, there
are Weiland's drug problems and arrests,
which seem pointless to rehash. Says
Slash, "the whole
Scott situation is not that different from
the rest of ours. The big difference is
that he got busted. As irretrievable as
he might have been, we've all been there
-- but nobody ever got caught.
"That's both a blessing
and a hindrance, because it's such a
public thing. That's what he's got on
his back, but that's something that Duff
and I have a lot of experience with,
dealing with negative media."
It certainly wasn't the sort of hurdle
that could keep the rest of Velvet Revolver
from working with him. For them, Weiland
was the only possible choice for frontman
(Sebastian Bach was next in line, while
Buckcherry's Josh Todd aided the group
during its formation). So strong was their
desire to join forces -- especially after
an open call that drew 300 singers proved
fruitless -- that they were willing to
wait for him to resolve legal troubles
and STP matters to make it happen.
"This has been such an exercise in
patience," Slash says of the experience. "In
the old days, we'd just party ourselves
into the ground until we had to go back
to work. That's all we knew how to do.
That's how we'd kill time. Now, it's like
... I'm no angel, but we've been trying
to learn from our past."
And hopefully achieve some permanence
for this venture.
"After everything
we've gone through -- we've all been
part of things that worked but then fell
apart -- the last thing we want is to
have it happen a second time ... especially
for the stupid reasons that most rock
'n' roll bands succumb to.
"I hope we've learned
how to keep a good thing together. No
one has any intention of going through
hell again."
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