Slash

by Slash

  By this time about eight months had gone by since we decided to do this thing and we were starting to get weathered. It didn’t help much when some bigwig at VH1 who had seen the footage of our show came down to the studio to tell us to “turn up the drama.” The reality of us behind the scenes apparently wasn’t cutting it, so we fought with the producers from that point on. In the end, the footage they captured of a few of the singers was made to look way more dramatic than it actually was. Unfortunately, our time with Sebastian Bach became the main theme of that program.

  Among the professional singers we knew, Ian Astbury of the Cult came down to check out what we were doing (off camera); Sebastian Bach was also a contender, but that was never really considered as a possibility. We rehearsed with Sebastian for a while and even had him come into the studio to put vocals on a few tracks. At the time he was singing in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar and it was great to see this whole new professional side of Sebastian. Nonetheless, it didn’t work out; it sounded too much like the sum of our parts, not like anything new—it was Skid Roses.

  And throughout it all, Scott Weiland’s name kept coming up. Everyone in the band knew him one way or another, except for me. Dave had been in a band called Electric Love Hog that had opened for STP, and Matt had been in rehab with Scott. Duff ’s wife, Susan, was friends with Scott’s wife, Mary. I just thought he was a great singer, and he’d always been on my mind for this band. He was the one vocalist that I knew had the kind of voice that would serve what we were going to do: he had a John Lennon-ish quality, a little bit of Jim Morrison, and a touch of almost David Bowie. He was the best singer to come out in a long time in my opinion.

  Since everyone else knew him, I told Duff to call him up. He did and he asked Scott if he’d like to hear some of our demos. Scott was into it, so we got four tracks together, got them recorded, and I brought them down personally to his apartment. At the time he was living on Blackburn, ironically, just a few doors down from where I’d lived with my dad for a while when I was a kid. That night he was doing a show with STP, so I left the CD on his doorstep and the rest of us waited eagerly for his call.

  A week later he called us, and as positive as he was about the music and what he thought we were doing, he was honest about the fact that STP was still together. They were having their problems, but Scott was straightforward about the fact that he intended to stick it out and see where it was going.

  “Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to try to drive a wedge between you and your band.”

  We left it at that. And Duff, Matt, Dave, and I went back to the tape pile…

  WE ENLISTED THE ASSISTANCE OF MY old attorney, turned manager, Dave Codikow in our quest. It’s a good thing we did, because as it continued to go nowhere, a few months later, David let us know that Stone Temple Pilots had broken up. I was happy to hear it—for entirely selfish reasons. I didn’t really care about being polite; I asked Duff to call Scott right away to ask him if he was interested in coming down and checking us out.

  We had just written the music to “Set Me Free,” and we gave Scott the demo, asked him to listen to it and, if he liked it, to come by and see us rehearse—no pressure. He kept the track for a week, in which time he took it into his own studio and put a vocal track on it. At the time we were very much seeking him out, while Scott was trying to map out a plan for himself. He was unsure if what we had going on was right for him, but when we heard his vocal for that track, we knew that it was exactly what we’d been looking for: what he did was far beyond anything I’d imagined for that song. He took to another level; it sounded different and better than anything we’d done up to that point. I’ve never asked Scott how he felt after he’d recorded those lyrics…all I know is that the rest of us were excited as hell. And I got the feeling he was, too.

  Scott delivered the track himself that day; he came walking into Mates wearing one of those fisherman’s hats pulled way down over his eyes and one of those surfer sweaters with a hood and two-sided pocket in the front. The door of our rehearsal room was about two hundred feet from the stage we were on, but even at that distance, as low profile as he was, he had an amazing presence that struck me immediately. When he came up onstage to say hello, it felt like I’d known him for a very long time. We got to talking, we listened to the demo he’d made, and it seemed like we were reconvening more than starting anew.

  SCOTT’S VOCAL SOLD US. WE WERE TOTALLY committed; it brought together all of the elements that we’d been working on. The only problem was that he wasn’t sure he wanted to join our band. He was thinking about recording another solo record and he also had some personal issues that he was trying to sort out.

  Slash and Scott belting it out at the Avalon Ballroom in Hollywood in May 2007.

  David Codikow, who with Dana Define had gone to work at Immortal as a management team, took an active interest in us and set up a showcase for the industry down at Mates. We performed just one song: “Set Me Free.” Our audience was made up of music producers, musical directors, and music coordinators from the big movie studios. Tom Zutaut was there, too—it was sort of like old times.

  It was the first time the band had ever performed together for an audience. And that was interesting because Scott didn’t show up until moments before we had to go on. We were scurrying to find him and he got there in the nick of time. We hadn’t established the kind of bond with him to know what he’d done with his previous twenty-four hours so we were a bit on edge.

  It didn’t matter because when he got there we ripped into it, and from the first note all was fine. It was one of those situations where you’re nervous before you play, but as you’re standing there in front of those industry executives, and from the first note on, you know exactly who you are and you don’t give a shit. There is nothing cornier than a showcase like that, but we were so into the song that we didn’t care. We just did our thing and that was that.

  It felt like a band. It felt like us against them again. We made a good impression on our own terms that day. That was first gear, but I knew that we were just getting going and wouldn’t be stopped. The open road lay ahead.

  WE TALKED ABOUT SCOTT GETTING CLEAN a lot, because it was definitely an issue. We let him know that basically all of us had been there and that we’d rally for him if he needed our support should he decide that he really wanted to get clean. We weren’t pressuring him, we were showing him that we understood, firsthand (to say the least), and I think in the end that is what made him feel more comfortable. Once it seemed that Scott was in, we started taking it to the next level.

  I THINK THE GREATEST THING ABOUT this band is that we never behaved like a new band; from the start we acted like we’d been together for years. I suppose in some ways we have. We found an appropriate vehicle to use as a first run for a band that had been together a while: David and Dana reached out to a few movie studios to see what films were coming out that needed an original song. We were presented with a handful but we decided on The Hulk and The Italian Job, which were offered to us by Kathy Nelson from Universal, mostly because they seemed perfect and because we liked Kathy.

  We went into the studio with Nick Raskulinecz, and did a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Money” for The Italian Job. Scott nailed it and the whole thing came together very quickly. We rehearsed it at Mates in one afternoon, then took it to Chalis Studios in Hollywood and got it down. Then, for The Hulk, we went into Oceanway to do a proper version of “Set Me Free.” We knew that track would be the one to establish our sound and we’d seen a rough cut of the film and liked it. Plus we were excited that Ang Lee was directing. We had Nick produce that track as well, but it wasn’t smooth sailing: we had a hard time getting it mixed because we couldn’t get it right. We ended up going through a series of mixes and eventually got it together the morning of the deadline.

  That wasn’t the most awkward aspect of that session: on the way down to Oceanway Studios to record the track I got a call (from Duff ) telling me that Robert and De
an DeLeo from Stone Temple Pilots were producing Alien Ant Farm in the studio right next door to ours. I was very concerned about how Scott might react to that. I got down there before him to make sure nothing happened and I ran into Robert at the Sparkletts machine in the lounge. He was leaning over me as I filled my Solo cup with water, and I had no idea who he was.

  “Uh, Slash?” he said.

  “Uh, yeah. Hi.”

  “Hi, I’m Robert DeLeo. Nice to meet you…Much respect.”

  He seemed nice enough, but I was still worried about Scott. He came in through a back entrance so they didn’t have to cross paths for the duration of that session.

  Those soundtrack jobs were a test; we were putting ourselves out there in a controlled, limited way. We were a solid rock-and-roll band, but we hadn’t made the final leap: Dave still had a day job as a construction worker at that point and Scott had been through a long and arduous decline in his last band, so he was still wary and fragile. Duff and Matt and I were one hundred percent committed: we’d dropped everything else at this point to focus on this band. So we persevered and moved forward.

  Choosing a name was a recurring theme at rehearsal and we’d not really gotten anywhere on that front. One night Perla and I went to the movies and I can’t remember what we saw, but once the lights went down and the credits came up, I was struck by the name “Revolution Studios.” Perla mentioned something about it as well. There was something there…I liked the beginning of the word. And so I thought of Revolver. It seemed an appropriate name to me because of its multiple meanings: not only did it evoke a gun, but there was also the subtext of a revolving door, which, considering how many members of other bands this band was composed of, seemed entirely right. Plus of course it’s the name of one of the Beatles’ best albums.

  The next day I met the band at Universal Studios, where we were going to see a screening of The Hulk to decide if we wanted to lend our song to the soundtrack. On the walk from Kathy Nelson’s office to the screening room, I brought up my idea of the name Revolver as a possibility.

  “That’s cool, I like that,” Duff said.

  “I do, too,” Matt said.

  Scott was quiet for a minute. “How about Black Velvet Revolver,” he said. “I like the idea of something intimate like velvet juxtaposed with something deadly like a gun.”

  I thought about that for a minute. I totally agreed with where he was going, but it seemed like a mouthful.

  “Hey,” I said. “How about just Velvet Revolver.”

  “That’s cool,” Scott said.

  Everybody else agreed.

  We were all on the same page and I was inspired; I sat down and started sketching logos right away. I came up with the VR that we are still using and everybody seemed to like that as well.

  We were on a roll: we booked a small press conference and performance showcase at the El Rey Theater. It was primarily for industry people, but the public was admitted as well: we wanted to announce that we were officially a band, with a singer and a name, and we would be recording an album very soon. We had just written “Slither,” so we did that; we did “Set Me Free,” “It’s So Easy,” “Negative Creep” by Nirvana, and the Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant.” It wasn’t so much a question of song selection; at the time those were the only songs we knew.

  It didn’t matter; the energy level was so high that it was just in-your-face. The chemistry of the band live was powerful stuff and as organic as it gets. That was the defining moment for us: we were finally a group. We had worked together in every capacity except for the most essential one—live performance. That El Rey show was the moment of truth. In the dressing room afterward, we were so inspired by our chemistry onstage that we didn’t know what to do—should we make a record or should we just go on tour—right now?

  WE OPTED TO MAKE A RECORD BECAUSE that was the more practical thing to do. Besides, at the time we were in a writing zone and new material was coming to us very quickly. Before we’d gotten together with Scott, we’d been writing for over ten months, so to say that we overloaded him with potential songs to write lyrics for is an understatement. We gave him more than anyone could expect anyone to listen to.

  He came through, though: he chose a few and turned them into things that we’d never have expected and loved all the same. Scott has a small studio and rehearsal space in Toluca Lake called Lavish, where he works with his engineer, Doug Grean. They took those demos and rearranged the music to accommodate the vocal parts that Scott came up with. Out of that huge body of material, we got “Big Machine” and “Dirty Little Thing,” while we continued to come up with new stuff, like “You Got No Right,” “Slither,” and “Sucker Train Blues,” which we all worked out, as well as a song called “Do It for the Kids,” among others. Everything came together really cool.

  It all seemed to be going great until Scott got arrested in the parking lot at Lavish one night: he was caught sitting there with some girl and they had drugs in the car. He was already on probation, and that was his last strike. It was a real turning point for him: when he was released from jail, he didn’t go home, he went back to his studio. He cued up a piece of music we’d given him a while before. And he wrote the lyrics to the song that became “Fall to Pieces.” Scott let it all out in that song: it’s a more honest portrait of where he was and what he was dealing with at that particular time than anyone could ever hope to see. It really paints a picture of what was really going on with him, and consequently with us as well.

  WE WEREN’T SURE WHO SHOULD PRODUCE our record, so we tried out a few people; we threw around a few different names: Rick Rubin, Brendan O’Brien, and a few more. I’m not exactly sure who suggested Bob Ezrin, but we went into the studio and recorded “Slither” with him at Henson Studios. He’d just done the latest Jane’s Addiction record, but aside from that, his past work with everyone from Alice Cooper to Pink Floyd spoke for itself. It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped it would; Bob’s creative input for the song was too produced. He had too many things going on at once, using up too many tracks; the end result sounded too congested and too complex for what we saw as a simple song from a fairly simple rock-and-roll band.

  We then decided to record a track with Josh Abraham, whom all of us knew. He was relatively new on the scene; his big claim to fame was producing the Staind record, which was a big hit. At least I was familiar with it and at the time he was working on the new Courtney Love record. We did a test track of a new song called “Headspace” with him at NRG Studios in North Hollywood. The track sounded good, the drums and guitars and vocals sounded good. It was enough for us to decide to do the rest of the album with him.

  At that point the word was out about Velvet Revolver and we were getting a lot of interest from all of the major labels, although there weren’t that many left at that particular time. There was Chrysalis, Elektra, RCA, and Warner’s, and they were all interested. In the end we went with RCA.

  But first we did the whole wine-and-dine free-lunch shuffle out in New York for a week or so. It wasn’t hard to decide who we’d go with once Clive Davis got on a plane with his A&R guy, Ashley Newton, to come see us rehearse in Toluca Lake. It was a great show of integrity and solidarity considering the setting. They sat in a room that was about twenty feet deep, with a pool table separating them from us and all of our amps right in their face. They sat through five songs like that. They wanted to get past the hype that now surrounded the band and see us play in our natural habitat.

  “That was great, really great,” Clive said when we were done. “Thank you.”

  They loved “Slither” and “Fall to Pieces,” and pretty much after that, our mind was made up. We went with RCA.

  After preproduction with Josh at Lavish, we moved over to NRG to do the basic tracks. Coincidentally in the studio next door, Dean and Robert from STP were working on some new stuff, once again, right next door to us. This time they were unavoidable; they were literally in the next room and we shared a lounge. It was only a matter
of time before Scott ran into them no matter what we did, but it was cool. They’d gotten over it; Dean sat down with Scott and I don’t know what they talked about, but afterward there were no hard feelings. Scott even played him our demos, all of us hung out, and it was all okay. That was the first time I met Dean, and I’ve seen both of those guys around since then and it’s been nothing but fine—both of them are really good guys.

  WHEN IT CAME TO RECORDING MY guitar parts for the album, I wanted to go into a smaller studio to save the band some money, so Josh suggested that we do them at his studio on the south corner of Highland and Sunset boulevards; it is where Jimi Hendrix recorded Axis: Bold as Love. I walked in and the place was just a bit funky: bad shag carpet, an old paint job, cockroaches…stuff like that. I got into the studio with Josh and there was a really nice mixing board, but I looked up and noticed that there were just two small Yamaha AS-10 studio monitors for speakers, which are great for listening to stuff back, but I record my guitar in the studio by placing my amps in the main room, where the microphones are, and playing in the control room, where the producer and the mixing board are. I do this mostly because I can’t stand headphones. This setup was not going to work at all for my purposes. Up until then, as a rule, I’d recorded the basic tracks live as scratch-guitar tracks and redone them in the control room at megadecibel levels so that it felt like an actual concert when I truly laid them down. The monitor speakers are my reference points as to what I am recording, so they need to be big and they need to be loud. The pair in front of me weren’t going to cut it.