Slash (55 page)

“Hey Slash, Eric Luftglass. I hear that you and Duff and Matt are putting together a band and looking for a singer,” he said.

“Yeah, do you know anyone?” I said.

“That’s funny! No, but I wanted to know if you’d be interested in having us document your search for a VH1 special. It would be a great launchpad for the band. Hey, do you guys have a name?”

“No, we haven’t gotten there yet. We’re still stuck on the singer part. But wait, I swear, I was just thinking that I should call you to let you know about all of this.”

Eric sent a pair of camera guys down to Mates and we weren’t sure about how it would work. We decided to reserve judgment until we met them. They were both named Alex and they’d recently shot the Aerosmith episode of
Behind the Music,
which I’d enjoyed. We started hanging out with them and it was cool; they started to get casual behind-the-scenes footage of us. We had gotten some interesting demos that were pretty good; most of them were done with talented singers who were just not the right style for what we were looking for but they were good nonetheless. I estimate that one out of every two hundred demos we listened to was someone that intrigued us enough to have them come in to the studio. One of those was this guy named Steve from England who was pretty good. He was in a band called Little Hell, but I might be wrong about that. His band was almost punk rock with lots of attitude and sarcasm in the lyrics. We had him come out and he ended up on our VH1 special but nothing happened as far as his joining the band.

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 Dean 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.