Velvet Revolver, Kerrang! January 2005
8.45PM. GLASGOW SECC. First comes Slash, closely followed by Dave Kushner, Duff McKagan and then Matt Sorum. Bringing up the rear is Scott Weiland, hollow cheeks and deadly determined eyes. Around them are a few crew members, pointing the way with torches, guiding their charges from the dressing room to the stage.
There’s no chat between Velvet Revolver now, no fleeting exchanged glances, no little smiles – this is serious, this is focussed, this is what they do.
The lights go down, the crowd roars and the intro tape starts. The band stands in the wings, feet tapping, fingers twitching. There’s almost a collective intake of breath, a deep gasp that’s their rallying moment. Then they stride out – McKagan, Slash, Kushner and Sorum. Weiland waits a second longer looking alien, like nothing on earth – a Weimar General, preacher and rabble-rouser. On the inside he’s thinking about sex. “Fucking and fighting,” in his own words.
The bass notes of ‘Sucker Train Blues’ cut through the darkness, the lights go up, the drums kick in and they hit it. The crowd go ballistic, the clanging emptiness of the arena filled with howls and guitars, screaming and polemics. This is the show everyone in Glasgow wanted to see tonight. Getting the band to the gig was a different story.
Velvet Revolver were due to soundcheck at 4pm. At 4.30pm their tour-bus pulled up not at the venue but at their hotel – an opulent, traditional place that clocks in at £200 a night, the price for understated luxury and privacy. The soundcheck was scrapped. Matt Sorum wasn’t even in the country at the time.
Because this is Velvet Revolver and nothing works the way it’s planned, everyone is on flexi-time and there’s absolutely no predicting what anyone might do next – despite the ruthless organisation of the crew and tour manager. This, then, is what it’s like to be on the inside of the biggest tour in the UK.
THE FIRST thing Velvet Revolver do when they arrive at the hotel is disappear into their rooms. Last night they were in Dublin and they’ve spent the whole day today travelling. Slash, for one, hates going anywhere by plane, hates having to deal with airports and hates the whole mechanism of having to uproot himself from hotel to bus, from bus to airport and airport to plane. “It’s just fucking arduous,” he drawls. “Airports are taxing.” He doesn’t have long to get over it. Within an hour he and Weiland are in another hotel room, doing another interview for the local press. An hour later they emerge, looking a little shell-shocked, a little worn down by the process.
Weiland comes out first, in a new duffle coat he picked up in London last time he was there and a hat pulled low down his forehead. He’s introduced to me and he freezes, his face blank but hostile, his mind apparently racing. He takes a step back and sizes me up with a look that says, “Who the fuck are you? What the fuck do you want? Can I trust you? How are you going to fuck me over?” Then, in a split second, the face relaxes into a smile – he’s a different person, he shakes hands more firmly than you’d expect and he introduces himself.
Then he’s off down the stairs as Slash wanders over. Suddenly Weiland pauses.
“Are you the guy coming on the bus with us?”
“Yes… if that’s OK.”
Two beats… three beats…
“Well…OK.”
Slash nearly rips your hand off, so strong is his handshake. “I’m Slash,” he says, as if you didn’t know. “How’s it going? Man, it’s been hard work getting here. Matt’s still in Dublin. He got a little loaded last night.” This all comes out in a Californian drawl, laid back and so calm it’s almost stationary. It’s an easy confidence he has, one that’s used to meeting strangers in strange towns, one that puts you at ease. You also sense that this is what he lives for, the new faces, the things to do, the people to see and the attention coming his way – perhaps because it hasn’t been like this for a while. Weiland, on the other hand, could do without it, as his prompt disappearance proves.
WHAT HAPPENS next defines every single member of the band. With two hours to go until show time, they all do something entirely characteristic – Duff McKagan (organised, regimented and militarily routine) goes to the venue to start warming up. Slash (laid back, calm on the outside, a ball of nervous energy on the inside) has a few drinks in the hotel bar, somewhere he can usually be found around 7pm on every show-night of every tour. Then he gets on the tour bus to drive to the venue – the bus that’s almost like a womb to him, a place where he feels entirely at home.
Dave Kushner (quiet, shy, withdrawn) joins him on the bus, listening to Muse on his computer, trying to download early tracks from iTunes. He stays apart from the band, not because he’s the ‘new guy’, not because he wasn’t ever in as big a band as the others but because that’s just how he is – happy in his own world. “I like to do my own thing,” he says. “I’m pretty reclusive.”
Scott Weiland (fiery, bi-polar, creative, loner) goes to his room to get his head ready for the performance; he hates to be at the venue for too long before the show: “It’s too much stress for me,” he says. Instead he’s ensconced in his room, “Not thinking anything about what’s going to happen. When the whole preparation starts…I guess it’s like a religious thing. It’s like a ceremony. The rock ‘n’ roll experience is like a religious ceremony.”
Matt Sorum (partier, partier, partier), however, is on a twin-propeller plane being bounced and buffeted around somewhere over the Irish Sea with his much younger, blonde, beautiful ‘girlfriend’. During his night out in Dublin last night, he was told by an Irish cabbie there were flights to Glasgow every hour. They aren’t and he missed the only plane he could have got. So he hires one at $4,000. “$1000 for every hour of lie-in I had,” he laughs later. He’s relaxed and casual – a hulking, blonde surfer who giggles a lot and tries not to get bogged down, tries not to, as he puts it, “get caught up in the drama”.
KUSHNER AND Slash are met at the SECC by one of the crew – a man who exudes efficiency and strength and is, apparently, the New York arm-wrestling champion. Slash greets him like a long lost brother (most of the crew have been working with the band-members since their Guns N’ Roses days). They’re walked through the maze of corridors and empty dressing rooms backstage and there’s a moment where no-one looks sure of the way. “Where are we going?” says someone. “Hello Cleveland,” says someone else.
Backstage it’s the usual mound of flight cases, of fanatical organisation and roadies scurrying from one corner to the other, fine-tuning the details as support band The Datsuns blast away on stage. Inside the dressing room it’s quiet though, much quieter than you’d expect. McKagan is warming up, listening to Motown records and playing along with their hammering, funky bass lines. Slash is nervous, as always.
“Every night I’m nervous, every fucking night,” he says. “I get edgy as soon as I get to the venue. I’ve always been like that. I’m neurotic about it. It’s really bad, it’s really unhealthy. I wish I could be one of those people that just walks up there and does his thing, walks off and it’s the same every night.”
The dressing room is dry – there’s no alcohol and no drugs, except a little stash of wine and Jack Daniels in Slash’s corner. It’s serious too, there’s a little joking around but it’s quiet. Slash pulls out a guitar from the flight cases in front of him and starts playing to himself. He pours a glass of wine and chain smokes cigarettes. He has another glass of wine, then a coffee, and then more wine. “Poor man’s speed-ball,” he says. Kushner is listening to music: “Normally Muse, Slipknot or Slayer – something heavy to get the blood pumping.”
When Weiland arrives, he puts on his make-up and gets into his outfit. This is a different Weiland from earlier, one who clearly has nothing else on his mind but going out and putting on a show no-one will forget. So what drives him to do it…is it the attention?
“No, I don't thrive on attention,” he says. Every word he speaks is considered, sentences emerge slowly, carefully and loaded with meaning, littered with ums and ers and minute long pauses. “What I am onstage is something completely different to what I am as a human being and songwriter. When I’m performing I’m the same person as I am when I fuck. I don’t fuck all the time. It’s only a percentage of my life. I wish it was more than 1% but it’s not.”
So what’s going on in your head when you’re onstage? The same thing as when you’re fucking?
“Pretty close. Fucking and fighting. It’s the same kind of thing.”
What’s happening in the dressing room… foreplay?
“Kind of. It’s kind of what it would be like for a woman getting all prettied up and putting lingerie on. Or getting dressed for a street fight. Or a fighter getting ready to go in the ring. I have to be someone totally different onstage.”
SORUM EVENTUALLY arrives – about half an hour before show time. Remarkably, no-one in the band seems too worried about his lack of appearance. He’s clearly revelling in being the last one to the party, laughing and joking about his turbulent flight which was, according to him, “An hour and ten minutes of thinking about death. We had two pilots who were both telling each other how to fly the thing. We were like, ‘Huh?’”
He’s obviously enjoying the concern, the thought of a tour manager worrying about him. For him, the attention is very much one of the reasons he’s doing this.
“Sure, I love it,” he says. “We’re all a bunch of fucking hams. I’m smacking a gong onstage. You know that’s pretty silly. I love it!”
Then he changes but there’s no warming up or playing on a practice pad, “or any of that bullshit” for him. There are no nerves either, not until he’s walking to the stage and they roar for him.
Occasionally one of the band will slip out to the toilet, which means running a gauntlet between the stage and crowd who scream whenever they see one of them. McKagan gives them a small wave, Slash looks mortified and pulls an embarrassed grimace: “I’m only going to the fucking john,” he says.
There’s no group hug, no huddle in the dressing room before they stride out – “None of that shit,” says McKagan – they just have a quick glance to see if everyone’s ready and then they’re marching down the corridor.
Then they’re on and it’s powerful, even from the side of the stage. Weiland, in his own words, is a, “Preacher, politician, whore, soldier, everything.” He’s like nothing you’ve ever seen; certainly nothing like the small, thin, suspicious man he was earlier. He works the crowd, he despises them, he loves them and they can’t take their eyes from him as he whirls around the stage. “I’m really not one for shoegazing,” he says later.
They’re constantly glancing at each other onstage, giving the little looks that keep them all in with each other, little looks you can’t notice from out front. Once McKagan stands on the drum riser and gives Sorum the most fleeting of grins, a look that says, “This is alright isn’t it?” Sorum flashes one back just as quickly – a split second of communication borne from years of history.
They come off before the first encore and drape themselves in towels, all of them except Sorum and Kushner are topless, all of them glisten in sweat. Weiland wraps a huge great-coat round himself and disappears. McKagan paces about, getting his breath back before nipping to the toilet. Sorum does the same. Slash and Kushner just sit there on a crate, not saying a word, not smiling, not even looking at each other, just rebuilding the energy. All around the venue people are screaming for more, shouting through the curtains at them. But here it’s quiet, there’s no celebration, no ceremony – just recharging.
Then, with no obvious signal, Slash gets up and the others follow him back onstage. Another few songs and they come offstage again. This time they stand together chatting, knowing they’re on the home stretch now, only one more encore to go. McKagan opens a non-alcoholic beer, Slash is towelled down by one of the crew and they’re back out again. Three more songs and they done, whisked from the stage to the dressing room by a cordon of the venue’s security guards.
IT’S A good gig but not one the best. Slash is uncomfortable throughout – telling his monitor man to give him more guitar. “Nothing sounded loud to me. People at the front were saying, ‘That’s fucking loud’. But I couldn’t hear it. Everyone was saying, ‘Good gig, good gig.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ It wasn’t a disaster; I just couldn’t get in the groove.”
He stays in the venue, annoyed with himself, before finally getting back to the hotel early in the morning. He watches Sky News alone in his room, trying to will himself downstairs towards the bar but knowing he’s fighting a losing battle. He takes his boots off and sleeps fitfully, still fucked up by jetlag.
McKagan is already asleep in his own room when Slash gets back – the bassist now works like clockwork. Up at 8am and in the gym an hour later, early to soundcheck, early to the venue and straight back afterwards. He chats to his kids and wife on a video linked to the internet and is in bed by 11pm – “Scott will tell you I’m the most boring man on tour”. His partying days are well behind him; he’s not tempted to return to his old ways in the slightest, ways that mean he has forgotten entire tours and has to be reminded which band opened for him on certain legs. “If I have another drink I’ll die,” he says bluntly. “It’s not really tempting.” He is, however, prone to panic attacks, to moments of extreme terror – he freezes, he gets the sweats and his heart rate goes through the roof. “I have a low serotonin level and I can get freaked out in enclosed spaces, in lifts, in tight dressing rooms. I retreat into myself and I just can’t function.” When it happens, he turns to his safe people – Slash is one – and they talk him down.
“It happened before the first proper Velvet Revolver gig,” he says. “It was a cross between a gig and press conference and I got an attack. Slash can just tell when it happens, he turned to me and said, ‘You’re having one now aren’t you?’ Then he sorted me out.”
Kushner goes to bed early too, Weiland is nowhere to be seen but is probably in his hotel room eating – something he likes to do after gigs if his wife isn’t with him. If she is, as he says, he likes to, “Have sex with my wife.”
Sorum, after arriving back at the hotel in a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, gets settled in at the hotel bar, his girlfriend on his arm, and stays there until five in the morning. The next morning, he sleeps until noon, blowing out the band’s soundcheck in Newcastle later in the day, much to McKagan’s annoyance.
“There tend to be arguments in this band,” says McKagan. “They come from nowhere too – they can just escalate like you wouldn’t believe. We’re all type-A people, we’re confident in what we’re doing and what we want to do, so it happens.”
Sorum agrees: “I don’t think me missing flights goes over the whole time. I try to be professional but I’ve had a few rough and tumbles here and there. They don’t mind me being human once in a while. Duff and I are like brothers though, we beat each other up, we’ve chased each other round hotel rooms. I can get pretty uppity at times and I’m usually the one that starts it – I have a temper. Duff’s very even-keeled, he’s never really been a prick.”
Have you?
“Yeah, I’ve been a prick. An occasional prick.”
INSIDE THE Velvet Revolver tour bus the day after the Glasgow gig, it’s like watching a different band. This is home to them, this is their space and, within reason, they do exactly as they please here. There’s something gratifyingly human and even mundane about it. It’s a chance to see how they operate as people rather than rock stars.
It’s a nice bus, but not overly luxurious – not something that would be beyond the means of lesser bands. It’s wood panelled and equipped with leather seats – all very comfortable but not hugely elaborate. The kitchen is loaded with breakfast cereals – not the whiskey and drugs of old. Virtually every one of them plumps for a bowl of Country Crunch, then Slash tries to nap in one of the bunks. McKagan watches Ali G on the TV in the back, pacing up and down every now and again and, with an appalling Ali G accent, repeating the word, “Poonani” out loud to anyone that might listen.
Sorum gets into a bunk with his girlfriend while Kushner chats for a while, then moves back down the bus.
Weiland is pacing about in baggy trousers and a shirt, and couldn’t be more of a contrast from his onstage persona. He looks tired. We’re supposed to be doing an interview now but he’s not in the right mood, instead he just sits and chats about his family, about how thrilled he is to have them back, how he misses them and how he’d like to take them on the road the whole time with him. “It’s complicated though and not always the best thing for the kids,” he says. “Kids need stability and a routine, they need to know when they’re going to eat, where they’re going to bed – that’s not always something that’s easy to provide on tour.”
The love and tenderness with which he speaks of his children and wife is surprising only if you think Scott Weiland is just the person you see on stage. He’s palpably not.
“I get treated for a bi-polar disorder,” he says later, after the Newcastle show. “But it’s the only way I can operate. For years I tried to negotiate my way through life by not taking medication. So, for years I self-medicated.”
He’s engaging to talk to. Honest but guarded, aware he’s talking to a journalist – and journalists haven’t always treated him fairly. Sometimes the wall goes up and what comes out is a great quote but doesn’t get you very near to the man. When he gets going though, he’s fascinating…like this:
“A great gig is like great sex. It’s a reaffirmation of one’s self as a creative entity, a reaffirmation of yourself as a human being. It’s another reason to live. It’s a way of exercising fantasies that I have that I can’t exercise in my own life. In a lot of ways I’m quite a shy person. I’ve lived my life under a microscope – for better and for worse – and I really appreciate the times when I have a little privacy. I like to put on a coat and cap and try to be one of the crowd.”
Would you prefer to be never recognised or always recognised?
[There’s a pause that lasts for nearly a minute] “I guess…” [Ten seconds] “…Well, I guess I’m a contradiction like every rock star. Never recognised when it suits me but always recognised for the music I’ve created, for the legacy I hope I’m part of.”
Do you have a lot of self-confidence?
“It’s like a pendulum. It constantly goes back and forth. It’s not a constantly shifting thing as it used to be. I have a much better grasp on who I am than I used to…”
So, who are you?
[Thirty seconds] “…um…that’s an interesting question…” [Thirty more seconds] “…I think I’m a guy that was born with a lot of gifts and a lot of talents, with almost equal parts insecurities. Those insecurities were a gift in a sense because they were there to balance out and test the natural talents like creativity that I had. If I didn’t have those self doubts I never would have pushed myself as far as I did. There have been a lot of dark spots and, I think, a lot of brilliance and bright spots too. A lot of the dark spots, a lot of the light spots and the beautiful colours between have combined to make me who I am.”
Would you be willing to exchange the peaks and troughs for a flat line through the middle?
[Quick as a flash] “Never, never, never. No.”
NEWCASTLE’S GIG is an improvement on Glasgow, the routine before the show is the same though. The arena is better, the band crisper and Slash seems to have fallen into his groove this time. Backstage the crew operate with the same military efficiency. When it’s over, most of Velvet Revolver head into their bus, ready for the drive to Manchester. Weiland has press to do though, he wants a shower and meal first and goes back to a nearby hotel in which he has a room. He stays in there for hours, enjoying a few moments of privacy – apart from the phone interview he does – and keeping his head down, in his own way being one of the crowd. The band wait for him outside, his tour manager pacing up and down, trying to keep somewhere near the schedule.
It’s moments like these, moments Weiland believes vital for his head, that almost certainly infuriate his bandmates as they wait outside in the bus. Whether it actually does or not, is impossible to tell because they present a united front when asked. Not one of them has anything other than glowing praise for Weiland, a man they – and plenty of others – believe to be the best frontman in the world. Because they are all there to support each other, a circle of trust that, through years of experience in other bands, can withstand a hell of a lot. Three of the members of Velvet Revolver used to be in one of the grittiest, most rock ‘n’ roll street gangs that ever existed. They may well have just got themselves another one.
© Tom Bryant 2010
There’s no chat between Velvet Revolver now, no fleeting exchanged glances, no little smiles – this is serious, this is focussed, this is what they do.
The lights go down, the crowd roars and the intro tape starts. The band stands in the wings, feet tapping, fingers twitching. There’s almost a collective intake of breath, a deep gasp that’s their rallying moment. Then they stride out – McKagan, Slash, Kushner and Sorum. Weiland waits a second longer looking alien, like nothing on earth – a Weimar General, preacher and rabble-rouser. On the inside he’s thinking about sex. “Fucking and fighting,” in his own words.
The bass notes of ‘Sucker Train Blues’ cut through the darkness, the lights go up, the drums kick in and they hit it. The crowd go ballistic, the clanging emptiness of the arena filled with howls and guitars, screaming and polemics. This is the show everyone in Glasgow wanted to see tonight. Getting the band to the gig was a different story.
Velvet Revolver were due to soundcheck at 4pm. At 4.30pm their tour-bus pulled up not at the venue but at their hotel – an opulent, traditional place that clocks in at £200 a night, the price for understated luxury and privacy. The soundcheck was scrapped. Matt Sorum wasn’t even in the country at the time.
Because this is Velvet Revolver and nothing works the way it’s planned, everyone is on flexi-time and there’s absolutely no predicting what anyone might do next – despite the ruthless organisation of the crew and tour manager. This, then, is what it’s like to be on the inside of the biggest tour in the UK.
THE FIRST thing Velvet Revolver do when they arrive at the hotel is disappear into their rooms. Last night they were in Dublin and they’ve spent the whole day today travelling. Slash, for one, hates going anywhere by plane, hates having to deal with airports and hates the whole mechanism of having to uproot himself from hotel to bus, from bus to airport and airport to plane. “It’s just fucking arduous,” he drawls. “Airports are taxing.” He doesn’t have long to get over it. Within an hour he and Weiland are in another hotel room, doing another interview for the local press. An hour later they emerge, looking a little shell-shocked, a little worn down by the process.
Weiland comes out first, in a new duffle coat he picked up in London last time he was there and a hat pulled low down his forehead. He’s introduced to me and he freezes, his face blank but hostile, his mind apparently racing. He takes a step back and sizes me up with a look that says, “Who the fuck are you? What the fuck do you want? Can I trust you? How are you going to fuck me over?” Then, in a split second, the face relaxes into a smile – he’s a different person, he shakes hands more firmly than you’d expect and he introduces himself.
Then he’s off down the stairs as Slash wanders over. Suddenly Weiland pauses.
“Are you the guy coming on the bus with us?”
“Yes… if that’s OK.”
Two beats… three beats…
“Well…OK.”
Slash nearly rips your hand off, so strong is his handshake. “I’m Slash,” he says, as if you didn’t know. “How’s it going? Man, it’s been hard work getting here. Matt’s still in Dublin. He got a little loaded last night.” This all comes out in a Californian drawl, laid back and so calm it’s almost stationary. It’s an easy confidence he has, one that’s used to meeting strangers in strange towns, one that puts you at ease. You also sense that this is what he lives for, the new faces, the things to do, the people to see and the attention coming his way – perhaps because it hasn’t been like this for a while. Weiland, on the other hand, could do without it, as his prompt disappearance proves.
WHAT HAPPENS next defines every single member of the band. With two hours to go until show time, they all do something entirely characteristic – Duff McKagan (organised, regimented and militarily routine) goes to the venue to start warming up. Slash (laid back, calm on the outside, a ball of nervous energy on the inside) has a few drinks in the hotel bar, somewhere he can usually be found around 7pm on every show-night of every tour. Then he gets on the tour bus to drive to the venue – the bus that’s almost like a womb to him, a place where he feels entirely at home.
Dave Kushner (quiet, shy, withdrawn) joins him on the bus, listening to Muse on his computer, trying to download early tracks from iTunes. He stays apart from the band, not because he’s the ‘new guy’, not because he wasn’t ever in as big a band as the others but because that’s just how he is – happy in his own world. “I like to do my own thing,” he says. “I’m pretty reclusive.”
Scott Weiland (fiery, bi-polar, creative, loner) goes to his room to get his head ready for the performance; he hates to be at the venue for too long before the show: “It’s too much stress for me,” he says. Instead he’s ensconced in his room, “Not thinking anything about what’s going to happen. When the whole preparation starts…I guess it’s like a religious thing. It’s like a ceremony. The rock ‘n’ roll experience is like a religious ceremony.”
Matt Sorum (partier, partier, partier), however, is on a twin-propeller plane being bounced and buffeted around somewhere over the Irish Sea with his much younger, blonde, beautiful ‘girlfriend’. During his night out in Dublin last night, he was told by an Irish cabbie there were flights to Glasgow every hour. They aren’t and he missed the only plane he could have got. So he hires one at $4,000. “$1000 for every hour of lie-in I had,” he laughs later. He’s relaxed and casual – a hulking, blonde surfer who giggles a lot and tries not to get bogged down, tries not to, as he puts it, “get caught up in the drama”.
KUSHNER AND Slash are met at the SECC by one of the crew – a man who exudes efficiency and strength and is, apparently, the New York arm-wrestling champion. Slash greets him like a long lost brother (most of the crew have been working with the band-members since their Guns N’ Roses days). They’re walked through the maze of corridors and empty dressing rooms backstage and there’s a moment where no-one looks sure of the way. “Where are we going?” says someone. “Hello Cleveland,” says someone else.
Backstage it’s the usual mound of flight cases, of fanatical organisation and roadies scurrying from one corner to the other, fine-tuning the details as support band The Datsuns blast away on stage. Inside the dressing room it’s quiet though, much quieter than you’d expect. McKagan is warming up, listening to Motown records and playing along with their hammering, funky bass lines. Slash is nervous, as always.
“Every night I’m nervous, every fucking night,” he says. “I get edgy as soon as I get to the venue. I’ve always been like that. I’m neurotic about it. It’s really bad, it’s really unhealthy. I wish I could be one of those people that just walks up there and does his thing, walks off and it’s the same every night.”
The dressing room is dry – there’s no alcohol and no drugs, except a little stash of wine and Jack Daniels in Slash’s corner. It’s serious too, there’s a little joking around but it’s quiet. Slash pulls out a guitar from the flight cases in front of him and starts playing to himself. He pours a glass of wine and chain smokes cigarettes. He has another glass of wine, then a coffee, and then more wine. “Poor man’s speed-ball,” he says. Kushner is listening to music: “Normally Muse, Slipknot or Slayer – something heavy to get the blood pumping.”
When Weiland arrives, he puts on his make-up and gets into his outfit. This is a different Weiland from earlier, one who clearly has nothing else on his mind but going out and putting on a show no-one will forget. So what drives him to do it…is it the attention?
“No, I don't thrive on attention,” he says. Every word he speaks is considered, sentences emerge slowly, carefully and loaded with meaning, littered with ums and ers and minute long pauses. “What I am onstage is something completely different to what I am as a human being and songwriter. When I’m performing I’m the same person as I am when I fuck. I don’t fuck all the time. It’s only a percentage of my life. I wish it was more than 1% but it’s not.”
So what’s going on in your head when you’re onstage? The same thing as when you’re fucking?
“Pretty close. Fucking and fighting. It’s the same kind of thing.”
What’s happening in the dressing room… foreplay?
“Kind of. It’s kind of what it would be like for a woman getting all prettied up and putting lingerie on. Or getting dressed for a street fight. Or a fighter getting ready to go in the ring. I have to be someone totally different onstage.”
SORUM EVENTUALLY arrives – about half an hour before show time. Remarkably, no-one in the band seems too worried about his lack of appearance. He’s clearly revelling in being the last one to the party, laughing and joking about his turbulent flight which was, according to him, “An hour and ten minutes of thinking about death. We had two pilots who were both telling each other how to fly the thing. We were like, ‘Huh?’”
He’s obviously enjoying the concern, the thought of a tour manager worrying about him. For him, the attention is very much one of the reasons he’s doing this.
“Sure, I love it,” he says. “We’re all a bunch of fucking hams. I’m smacking a gong onstage. You know that’s pretty silly. I love it!”
Then he changes but there’s no warming up or playing on a practice pad, “or any of that bullshit” for him. There are no nerves either, not until he’s walking to the stage and they roar for him.
Occasionally one of the band will slip out to the toilet, which means running a gauntlet between the stage and crowd who scream whenever they see one of them. McKagan gives them a small wave, Slash looks mortified and pulls an embarrassed grimace: “I’m only going to the fucking john,” he says.
There’s no group hug, no huddle in the dressing room before they stride out – “None of that shit,” says McKagan – they just have a quick glance to see if everyone’s ready and then they’re marching down the corridor.
Then they’re on and it’s powerful, even from the side of the stage. Weiland, in his own words, is a, “Preacher, politician, whore, soldier, everything.” He’s like nothing you’ve ever seen; certainly nothing like the small, thin, suspicious man he was earlier. He works the crowd, he despises them, he loves them and they can’t take their eyes from him as he whirls around the stage. “I’m really not one for shoegazing,” he says later.
They’re constantly glancing at each other onstage, giving the little looks that keep them all in with each other, little looks you can’t notice from out front. Once McKagan stands on the drum riser and gives Sorum the most fleeting of grins, a look that says, “This is alright isn’t it?” Sorum flashes one back just as quickly – a split second of communication borne from years of history.
They come off before the first encore and drape themselves in towels, all of them except Sorum and Kushner are topless, all of them glisten in sweat. Weiland wraps a huge great-coat round himself and disappears. McKagan paces about, getting his breath back before nipping to the toilet. Sorum does the same. Slash and Kushner just sit there on a crate, not saying a word, not smiling, not even looking at each other, just rebuilding the energy. All around the venue people are screaming for more, shouting through the curtains at them. But here it’s quiet, there’s no celebration, no ceremony – just recharging.
Then, with no obvious signal, Slash gets up and the others follow him back onstage. Another few songs and they come offstage again. This time they stand together chatting, knowing they’re on the home stretch now, only one more encore to go. McKagan opens a non-alcoholic beer, Slash is towelled down by one of the crew and they’re back out again. Three more songs and they done, whisked from the stage to the dressing room by a cordon of the venue’s security guards.
IT’S A good gig but not one the best. Slash is uncomfortable throughout – telling his monitor man to give him more guitar. “Nothing sounded loud to me. People at the front were saying, ‘That’s fucking loud’. But I couldn’t hear it. Everyone was saying, ‘Good gig, good gig.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ It wasn’t a disaster; I just couldn’t get in the groove.”
He stays in the venue, annoyed with himself, before finally getting back to the hotel early in the morning. He watches Sky News alone in his room, trying to will himself downstairs towards the bar but knowing he’s fighting a losing battle. He takes his boots off and sleeps fitfully, still fucked up by jetlag.
McKagan is already asleep in his own room when Slash gets back – the bassist now works like clockwork. Up at 8am and in the gym an hour later, early to soundcheck, early to the venue and straight back afterwards. He chats to his kids and wife on a video linked to the internet and is in bed by 11pm – “Scott will tell you I’m the most boring man on tour”. His partying days are well behind him; he’s not tempted to return to his old ways in the slightest, ways that mean he has forgotten entire tours and has to be reminded which band opened for him on certain legs. “If I have another drink I’ll die,” he says bluntly. “It’s not really tempting.” He is, however, prone to panic attacks, to moments of extreme terror – he freezes, he gets the sweats and his heart rate goes through the roof. “I have a low serotonin level and I can get freaked out in enclosed spaces, in lifts, in tight dressing rooms. I retreat into myself and I just can’t function.” When it happens, he turns to his safe people – Slash is one – and they talk him down.
“It happened before the first proper Velvet Revolver gig,” he says. “It was a cross between a gig and press conference and I got an attack. Slash can just tell when it happens, he turned to me and said, ‘You’re having one now aren’t you?’ Then he sorted me out.”
Kushner goes to bed early too, Weiland is nowhere to be seen but is probably in his hotel room eating – something he likes to do after gigs if his wife isn’t with him. If she is, as he says, he likes to, “Have sex with my wife.”
Sorum, after arriving back at the hotel in a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, gets settled in at the hotel bar, his girlfriend on his arm, and stays there until five in the morning. The next morning, he sleeps until noon, blowing out the band’s soundcheck in Newcastle later in the day, much to McKagan’s annoyance.
“There tend to be arguments in this band,” says McKagan. “They come from nowhere too – they can just escalate like you wouldn’t believe. We’re all type-A people, we’re confident in what we’re doing and what we want to do, so it happens.”
Sorum agrees: “I don’t think me missing flights goes over the whole time. I try to be professional but I’ve had a few rough and tumbles here and there. They don’t mind me being human once in a while. Duff and I are like brothers though, we beat each other up, we’ve chased each other round hotel rooms. I can get pretty uppity at times and I’m usually the one that starts it – I have a temper. Duff’s very even-keeled, he’s never really been a prick.”
Have you?
“Yeah, I’ve been a prick. An occasional prick.”
INSIDE THE Velvet Revolver tour bus the day after the Glasgow gig, it’s like watching a different band. This is home to them, this is their space and, within reason, they do exactly as they please here. There’s something gratifyingly human and even mundane about it. It’s a chance to see how they operate as people rather than rock stars.
It’s a nice bus, but not overly luxurious – not something that would be beyond the means of lesser bands. It’s wood panelled and equipped with leather seats – all very comfortable but not hugely elaborate. The kitchen is loaded with breakfast cereals – not the whiskey and drugs of old. Virtually every one of them plumps for a bowl of Country Crunch, then Slash tries to nap in one of the bunks. McKagan watches Ali G on the TV in the back, pacing up and down every now and again and, with an appalling Ali G accent, repeating the word, “Poonani” out loud to anyone that might listen.
Sorum gets into a bunk with his girlfriend while Kushner chats for a while, then moves back down the bus.
Weiland is pacing about in baggy trousers and a shirt, and couldn’t be more of a contrast from his onstage persona. He looks tired. We’re supposed to be doing an interview now but he’s not in the right mood, instead he just sits and chats about his family, about how thrilled he is to have them back, how he misses them and how he’d like to take them on the road the whole time with him. “It’s complicated though and not always the best thing for the kids,” he says. “Kids need stability and a routine, they need to know when they’re going to eat, where they’re going to bed – that’s not always something that’s easy to provide on tour.”
The love and tenderness with which he speaks of his children and wife is surprising only if you think Scott Weiland is just the person you see on stage. He’s palpably not.
“I get treated for a bi-polar disorder,” he says later, after the Newcastle show. “But it’s the only way I can operate. For years I tried to negotiate my way through life by not taking medication. So, for years I self-medicated.”
He’s engaging to talk to. Honest but guarded, aware he’s talking to a journalist – and journalists haven’t always treated him fairly. Sometimes the wall goes up and what comes out is a great quote but doesn’t get you very near to the man. When he gets going though, he’s fascinating…like this:
“A great gig is like great sex. It’s a reaffirmation of one’s self as a creative entity, a reaffirmation of yourself as a human being. It’s another reason to live. It’s a way of exercising fantasies that I have that I can’t exercise in my own life. In a lot of ways I’m quite a shy person. I’ve lived my life under a microscope – for better and for worse – and I really appreciate the times when I have a little privacy. I like to put on a coat and cap and try to be one of the crowd.”
Would you prefer to be never recognised or always recognised?
[There’s a pause that lasts for nearly a minute] “I guess…” [Ten seconds] “…Well, I guess I’m a contradiction like every rock star. Never recognised when it suits me but always recognised for the music I’ve created, for the legacy I hope I’m part of.”
Do you have a lot of self-confidence?
“It’s like a pendulum. It constantly goes back and forth. It’s not a constantly shifting thing as it used to be. I have a much better grasp on who I am than I used to…”
So, who are you?
[Thirty seconds] “…um…that’s an interesting question…” [Thirty more seconds] “…I think I’m a guy that was born with a lot of gifts and a lot of talents, with almost equal parts insecurities. Those insecurities were a gift in a sense because they were there to balance out and test the natural talents like creativity that I had. If I didn’t have those self doubts I never would have pushed myself as far as I did. There have been a lot of dark spots and, I think, a lot of brilliance and bright spots too. A lot of the dark spots, a lot of the light spots and the beautiful colours between have combined to make me who I am.”
Would you be willing to exchange the peaks and troughs for a flat line through the middle?
[Quick as a flash] “Never, never, never. No.”
NEWCASTLE’S GIG is an improvement on Glasgow, the routine before the show is the same though. The arena is better, the band crisper and Slash seems to have fallen into his groove this time. Backstage the crew operate with the same military efficiency. When it’s over, most of Velvet Revolver head into their bus, ready for the drive to Manchester. Weiland has press to do though, he wants a shower and meal first and goes back to a nearby hotel in which he has a room. He stays in there for hours, enjoying a few moments of privacy – apart from the phone interview he does – and keeping his head down, in his own way being one of the crowd. The band wait for him outside, his tour manager pacing up and down, trying to keep somewhere near the schedule.
It’s moments like these, moments Weiland believes vital for his head, that almost certainly infuriate his bandmates as they wait outside in the bus. Whether it actually does or not, is impossible to tell because they present a united front when asked. Not one of them has anything other than glowing praise for Weiland, a man they – and plenty of others – believe to be the best frontman in the world. Because they are all there to support each other, a circle of trust that, through years of experience in other bands, can withstand a hell of a lot. Three of the members of Velvet Revolver used to be in one of the grittiest, most rock ‘n’ roll street gangs that ever existed. They may well have just got themselves another one.
© Tom Bryant 2010
