VELVET REVOLVER TRIVIA
Trivia
Velvet Revolver were to promote Libertad in Japan with four shows between 26 and 30 November 2007, promoted by Creativeman: Zepp Osaka, Zepp Nagoya, Yokohama Blitz and the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo. All four were cancelled when Japanese immigration refused the band visas; the announcement, posted on the band's website and relayed by the promoter, said officials had taken exception to the backgrounds of several members, which included arrests. The band apologised to its Japanese fans, said it could not understand why it had been refused when it had been granted visas for a successful tour in 2005, and appealed, saying its Australian tour from 4 December would go ahead. The Associated Press noted that Japan's Justice Ministry does not comment on individual cases, and that performers are rarely refused entry.
According to Classic Rock, while the three former Guns N' Roses members were writing, Slash began to hear Scott Weiland singing their songs in his head, and he sent the Stone Temple Pilots singer a CD. Weiland was not sold. In his 2011 memoir he wrote that the first disc sounded like Bad Company-style classic rock, which he had never liked, and his longtime collaborator Doug Grean has recalled him saying he could not stand in for Axl Rose. Film work opened the door: the band had been asked for soundtrack songs, among them a cover of Pink Floyd's "Money", and Weiland agreed to a jam. He wrote that he arrived hours late, still using drugs, to find music executives gathered for what was being presented as Guns N' Roses with Scott Weiland.
At the 47th Grammy Awards in February 2005, Velvet Revolver and its members were nominated three times: "Slither" for Best Hard Rock Performance, Contraband for Best Rock Album, and "Fall to Pieces" for Best Rock Song, a songwriters' award credited to all five. "Slither" won, while Green Day's American Idiot and U2's "Vertigo" took the other two. Slash later admitted that they got there too late to accept their award. On the telecast from the Staples Center on 13 February, the band backed an all-star "Across the Universe" for tsunami relief, sung by Bono, Stevie Wonder, Steven Tyler, Scott Weiland and others, and the recording went on sale through iTunes at the end of the show, with the proceeds going to the Red Cross.
Scott Weiland wrote in his memoir that "Fall to Pieces" was written at Lavish, the studio he had built in Burbank: he and Duff McKagan took a riff of Slash's and, in the middle of the night, turned it into a song about coming to terms, or failing to, with his heroin addiction, and about his marriage to Mary Forsberg Weiland as it fell apart. The song's video also drew on Weiland's struggles with drugs. When Mary Forsberg Weiland wrote a memoir of her own, she called it Fall to Pieces.
While it was looking for a singer, the band went by the Project. As Slash tells it in his autobiography, a film from Revolution Studios set him thinking of shortening "revolution" to "Revolver", and he proposed the name when he, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum and Scott Weiland met at an advance screening of Hulk at Universal. Weiland countered with "Black Velvet Revolver", for the softness of velvet set against a gun, and Slash suggested meeting in the middle; the vote for Velvet Revolver was unanimous. In May 2003, though, Weiland had told Rolling Stone that the band would be called Reloaded, and in 2008 he claimed that it was he who had officially named it.
The three former Guns N' Roses members first shared a stage again on 29 April 2002 at the Key Club in Los Angeles, at a benefit in memory of the drummer Randy Castillo, who had played with Ozzy Osbourne and Mötley Crüe. Slash had invited Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson, with Josh Todd singing, and alongside Guns N' Roses' "It's So Easy" and "Paradise City" they played songs by the Sex Pistols, Rose Tattoo and Buckcherry before Steven Tyler joined them for Aerosmith's "Mama Kin". Todd has said the five then became a band for about a month, writing songs and meeting managers, until Slash pulled out. Todd's guess is that Slash had another singer in mind; he calls the outcome a win-win, since Buckcherry went on to make 15.
Izzy Stradlin, who had left Guns N' Roses in 1991, was part of the project at the very start. Ultimate Classic Rock puts his time with it at two weeks in 2002, and Variety reported that he co-wrote about ten songs with the band before it had a name; Scott Weiland's memoir says Stradlin was in at first but soon opted out, and Dave Kushner took his place. On 7 September 2004 in Paris, Stradlin joined Velvet Revolver onstage for the Guns N' Roses songs "I Used to Love Her" and "It's So Easy", with Slash reportedly wearing his trademark top hat for the two. According to Olivier Rouhet of the French magazine Rock Hard, Stradlin had spent the afternoon with the band at their hotel without any of the many journalists there recognising him.
By March 2003, VH1 was filming the band's search for a singer, its songwriting and its studio sessions. Slash insisted to MTV.com that it was a documentary, not a reality show: no cameras would follow them home, to dinner or to the gas station. Besides an open call for demo tapes, the auditions included Sebastian Bach, Josh Todd, Kelly Shaefer, Pat Briggs and Travis Meeks, and of at least three more candidates who tried out after filming began, one refused to be filmed. Looking back in 2014, Slash said Bach had sounded like "Skid N' Roses", a little too predictable. VH1 broadcast the story in 2004 as Inside Out: The Rise of Velvet Revolver.
Getting clean was part of the plan from the start. Matt Sorum has said the band made a pact that everyone would sober up, on what he called the Aerosmith model, and that the first tour was the first time any of them had gone on the road clean. Duff McKagan took Scott Weiland to Lake Chelan in Washington State to train with a martial arts teacher he knew, whose hilltop home McKagan describes as built into the ground. McKagan remembers the stay as about two months; Weiland wrote that he meant to stay one month and stayed three. Weiland was sober when Contraband was made, McKagan says, but the wheels came off around the second album, and Sorum admits that he and the others went back to drinking and drugs.
Of the two songs the band recorded with Scott Weiland in the spring of 2003, the first was a cover of Pink Floyd's "Money". In April the band played showcases at its rehearsal studio for film and record executives, and Kathy Nelson, head of film music at Universal, hired it to record "Money" for the soundtrack of The Italian Job. Rolling Stone wrote that the recording put Weiland in pole position for the singer's job. "Set Me Free" for Hulk came after: Variety reported in mid-June that it had been recorded less than a month earlier.
Kathy Nelson, who oversaw film music at Universal, said she had not been looking for a song for Hulk, only told the band she would consider one. "Set Me Free" was played to the director, Ang Lee, and the composer, Danny Elfman, who both approved it, and it became the only song in the film. Because the band settled on the name Velvet Revolver after Decca's soundtrack album had been printed, the disc credits the song to Scott Weiland, Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum and Dave Kushner by name. Sent to radio as something of a surprise, it was the most-added song at active rock and mainstream rock stations that week, picked up by 32 playlists against 15 for the runner-up.
The band's first public appearance was an invitation-only event at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on 19 June 2003. Its six songs opened with the Sex Pistols' "Bodies" and took in "Set Me Free", Stone Temple Pilots' "Sex Type Thing", "It's So Easy", which Scott Weiland called his favourite Guns N' Roses song, and the new "Slither", with Nirvana's "Negative Creep" as an encore for that band's former drummer, Dave Grohl. Ang Lee was in the audience, as were A&R scouts from Columbia, Warner Bros. and Island Def Jam, for the band was still unsigned. Slash later said they had even thought of simply going on tour without making a record. The live "Bodies" from that night was later released on the "Slither" single.
Contraband opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in June 2004 with first-week US sales of 256,000, knocking Usher's Confessions down to No. 2, and CNET News pointed out that it was the first No. 1 album in the US to be loaded with anti-copying protection. The disc was labelled on its cover as protected against unauthorised duplication, but the SunnComm software could be bypassed simply by holding down the Shift key while the CD loaded on a computer, a work-around the companies involved said they had long known about. Sony Music Japan's profile of the band likewise notes that the US and UK editions were the first copy-controlled CDs to enter the Billboard chart at No. 1.
In May 2004, shortly before Contraband came out, PBS's Frontline presented Velvet Revolver as a band on which RCA Records was betting heavily. The Los Angeles Times reporter Jeff Leeds spoke of a bidding war to sign the group, and contrasted the million-dollar sessions of the members' early days with the half a million dollars this album was costing to record. Leonard J. Beer, editor-in-chief of Hits, forecast sales of one to two million and called a million and a half a win. The RIAA certified Contraband double platinum on 26 July 2005, and by November 2008 it had sold 1.98 million copies in the US, against 302,000 for Libertad. That month the band asked to be released from its RCA contract, to have complete freedom in replacing Scott Weiland, and RCA agreed.
Two singles from Contraband reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart in 2004: "Slither", which held the top spot for nine weeks, and then "Fall to Pieces", which held it for eleven. "Slither" also spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Alternative chart, where "Fall to Pieces" peaked at No. 2. On the Hot 100 they got no higher than No. 56 and No. 67, yet the RIAA certified both singles gold in 2005.
In Britain the second album charted higher than the first. On the Official Albums Chart, Contraband peaked at No. 11 in its first week, in June 2004, while Libertad reached No. 6 in July 2007. Both went to No. 1 on the Official Rock & Metal Albums Chart, Libertad for two weeks, and Contraband spent 90 weeks in all on that chart, besides returning to the main albums chart for two weeks in July 2005. In September 2024, the month its 20th-anniversary edition came out internationally on vinyl and digitally, Contraband re-entered the Rock & Metal chart at No. 23.
Classic Rock named Contraband its album of 2004 and made Velvet Revolver its band of the year. Interviewed in a Boston hotel room, Slash said he took the praise with a pinch of salt, but that the record made him feel he was still getting better, and that what he was doing now was the best he had done so far. Ten years later, for its 200th issue, the magazine chose the 200 greatest songs of its lifetime, counting from November 1998, and placed "Slither" at No. 7.
On 2 July 2005, Velvet Revolver played Live 8, the event against global poverty, in London's Hyde Park, performing "Do It for the Kids", "Fall to Pieces" and "Slither". The same bill brought David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright together as Pink Floyd for the first time in 24 years, and their set included "Money", the song Velvet Revolver had covered with Scott Weiland for The Italian Job two years before.
"Dirty Little Thing" carries a sixth writer's name: Keith Nelson of Buckcherry, who had played with Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum alongside Josh Todd in 2002 and came away with a songwriting credit on Contraband. In August 2008 another claimant appeared. Tony Newton, bassist of the British band Voodoo Six, said a friend in Los Angeles had rung him after hearing what he thought was Newton's song on the radio, and Newton's publisher, Universal, alleged that the riff and melody copied "Cyber Babe", which he had written for his previous band, Dirty Deeds, and released in 1999. According to the reports, Velvet Revolver settled and signed over 20 per cent of the song's royalties.
Scott Weiland first floated Libertad, Spanish for freedom, as a working title on the red carpet at the Radio Music Awards in Las Vegas in December 2005, saying he wanted a concept album in the spirit of Exile on Main St. and The Dark Side of the Moon rather than a dozen songs built around three singles. Where the title came from is told in different ways. In the label's announcement of April 2007, Weiland said the idea of freedom kept coming up as the album neared completion, and then Duff McKagan turned up at a session in a "Libertad" T-shirt and Slash found a coin stamped with the word; Kerrang! traced the title to a Mexican T-shirt McKagan had been seen wearing a year earlier. Matt Sorum said Weiland had the title before the writing began, just after the Contraband tour, and that the concept survived only in the packaging and artwork.
Libertad was begun with Rick Rubin producing. Slash recalled that Rubin would come by for half an hour, then reappear two or three weeks later for another half hour, while working on many other records at the same time, until the band grew frustrated and disillusioned. They turned instead to Brendan O'Brien, who had produced Stone Temple Pilots. Slash said that within three weeks of O'Brien's arrival the songs and arrangements were done, and that the album was then recorded one song at a time, with Scott Weiland singing in the room with the band; Matt Sorum remembered O'Brien wanting them in at noon, six days a week.
Scott Weiland dedicated Libertad to his brother, Michael Weiland, who had recently died. Speaking to The Sun in August 2007, he said the title suited the album because his brother had been looking for his own freedom, and that after being angry with him at first, for the sake of their parents and family, he had put that anger and grief into "The Last Fight" and "For a Brother". "The Last Fight" became the album's second single, and Matt Sorum has said that "For a Brother" was one of the songs he wrote.
When Van Halen were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at New York's Waldorf-Astoria on 12 March 2007, Velvet Revolver inducted them and played two Van Halen songs in the band's place. Eddie Van Halen had just entered rehab, and of the band only Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony attended. David Lee Roth stayed away, saying the Hall would not let him sing "Jump". Scott Weiland explained backstage that Roth wanted "Jump", which the band, having no keyboards, did not feel comfortable with, and that Roth turned down their offer of "Jamie's Cryin'" or "You Really Got Me". The Hall said Roth had been offered a song of his choice with its house band or with Velvet Revolver.
On 20 March 2008 in Glasgow, Scott Weiland told the crowd they were watching Velvet Revolver's last tour. On 1 April the band announced that it had parted ways with him, Slash telling Billboard.com that Weiland was not fully committed and pointing to his erratic behaviour onstage. Weiland replied that he had already pronounced the band dead in Glasgow and, mockingly, suggested Sebastian Bach as his replacement. Slash told Guitar World that the others had resigned themselves to carrying on without Weiland before the final leg began, so the Glasgow announcement surprised them; it was Weiland's last show, he said, not the band's. Weiland later told Billboard that he had already told Slash a Stone Temple Pilots tour was coming, that he made the announcement after Matt Sorum criticised him online, and that he had meant it.
Replacing Scott Weiland took far longer than the band had expected; Duff McKagan admitted they had thought they would find someone within a couple of weeks. In April 2008 Slash spoke of a website where singers could post video auditions; reality-TV producers, Mark Burnett among them, pitched a series, which the band turned down; and Spacehog's Royston Langdon was among the singers who auditioned. In February 2009 McKagan said it was down to a couple of candidates from 400 submissions, adding that it would not be a star of Chris Cornell's kind and that the singer had to be not just good but amazing. No new singer was ever announced.
Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour was among the singers Velvet Revolver tried after Scott Weiland left. Taylor has said he recorded nine or ten songs with the band, three of them written together and the rest set to music the band already had. In 2011 Matt Sorum said there were ten songs finished and they could have put out an album the next day, but Slash was not feeling it, and the band would only go ahead together. Slash called Taylor the nearest anyone had come since Weiland, but said his macho style lacked certain elements the band needed, and that the raw recordings would have to be redone before they could ever be released. Taylor's answer was that Slash was entitled to his view.
Velvet Revolver played with Scott Weiland once more on 12 January 2012, at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, at "Love You Madly", a benefit concert for the composer John O'Brien. The idea came from Dave Kushner. O'Brien, his childhood friend, had been found dead in a Chicago hotel room in August 2011, aged 45, and Kushner's wife urged him to stage a benefit for O'Brien's family and to get Velvet Revolver back together. Kushner asked Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum one by one at a Road Recovery benefit in New York, then called Weiland, who agreed. Kushner had proposed three songs; they played four, "Sucker Train Blues", "She Builds Quick Machines", "Slither" and Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here", their first show together in four years.
On 3 June 2018, opening their European tour at Berlin's Olympiastadion, Guns N' Roses played "Slither" for the first time, with Axl Rose singing the part of Scott Weiland, who had died in 2015, and Slash and Duff McKagan playing the song they had recorded with Velvet Revolver; a clip of them rehearsing it on the stadium stage had already circulated. Alternative Nation had reported the song on a Guns N' Roses set list in 2016, though it was not played then. In June 2025, Weiland's son Noah Weiland released a cover of "Slither" of his own, with a video he made using AI.
For the Fantastic Four soundtrack, Velvet Revolver wrote a new song, "Come On, Come In", and recorded it in May 2005 in Raleigh and Cleveland, in the middle of their Electric Wonderland arena tour, co-producing it with Doug Grean and Nick Raskulinecz. Wayne Isham directed the video in Los Angeles before the band left for Europe. In March 2007, just before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, the band went back to Lava Room Studios in Lakewood, Ohio, to track B-sides for Libertad; Duff McKagan said they had recorded "Come On, Come In" there and liked the sound and the feel of the place.