For years now, Duff had been working with a martial arts instructor – a Sefu – in a gruelling regimen that had turned Duff from a bloated, out-of-shape, coke-addled alcoholic into a lithe, muscular athlete. Dejected by one failed rehab after another, Scott Weiland asked Duff if that regimen might help him clean up. Dave Kushner, who was the most sober of them all, took Duff and Scott to a doctor in LA who supplied them with the drugs they’d need to detox Weiland and, just like that, they were off to Seattle, heading for the mountaintop retreat of Duff’s Sefu, where together they put Scott through a 360-degree wellness programme that included punishing intervals of exercise, followed by meditation, more exercise, writing and a strict healthy diet. After three weeks, the light in Scott Weiland switched itself back on and Duff could add ‘Miracle Worker’ to his list of accomplishments.
Meanwhile, Slash and Matt Sorum were both anxious and sceptical, wondering if, instead of booking studio time for an album, a search for a new singer should be next on the band’s ‘To Do’ list. But when they saw the hale and laser-focused singer back in LA, their concerns evaporated and they finally got down to the business of recording the first Velvet Revolver album, although as part of his court-ordered outpatient rehab, Weiland was only allowed to work a few hours each day so he could return to his halfway house by curfew.
During the writing, Slash resurrected the melodic little ballad that he’d conjured up with Steve Gorman and handed it over to Scott, who, inspired by his most recent crash and all the terror and damage it inflicted on his wife and children, added the lyrics that became ‘Fall to Pieces’. ‘If it hadn’t been such a powerful song, on a musical level, I wouldn’t have been moved to write those lyrics, that melody,’ he said. ‘That song was the exact moment where I realised that Slash and I could really be one of those classic songwriting teams.’ Accompanied by a grim, emotionally charged video that drew from the real-life events of the singer’s addiction, the song showcased the very best of Velvet Revolver – Weiland at his most broken and vulnerable, Slash back in his element as the architect of chiming, anthemic riffs, and the band together again, playing grimy, four-on-the-floor rock’n’roll.
With a hit song already enjoying broad exposure and an album on the way, a bidding war erupted among the major labels and the band ultimately signed with Clive Davis at RCA. It was during these meetings that Duff first appreciated just how deeply his financial classes were paying off: he actually understood the complex financial considerations underpinning the deal, matters that he had never before bothered to learn. ‘People took me more seriously in business meetings. Cool shit. Sometimes I looked into the eyes of industry types and saw a flash of panic: Shit, I wonder if Duff knows more than I do.’
Weiland finished his vocals during the first week of December and the finished masters were sent to New York for mastering, with RCA announcing a release date of 27 April 2004. During this time, Weiland took to the band’s official site to call out the media for what he saw as their cynical portrayal of his high-profile struggles, writing: ‘First of all let me say that Rolling Stone magazine’s gossip columns exist only so rich college boys can wipe their fucking asses with the rag. As for the lad that interviewed me and then printed that I was drunk driving … get your facts straight you moron paparazzi fuck.’
They hadn’t planned it that way, but nevertheless the timing of the release of Contraband, as the band had decided to call the album, could not have been more perfect, in terms of snagging disaffected Guns N’ Roses fans. By 2004, Axl Rose’s ‘new’ Guns N’ Roses had lost whatever momentum they had built up with their unveiling three years before: Chinese Democracy was now the most well-known unreleased album in the world, its title a jokey euphemism for any black hole endeavour with little purpose or ending in sight. As the spring eased into summer, some observers wondered if a similar fate had befallen Velvet Revolver’s debut when the album’s release date was pushed from April to May, then to June. ‘We finished it sometime around Christmas,’ Matt recalled, ‘and I think that was just a record company thing, you know, as far as, like, the setup, and doing a lot of press … Duff and Slash went to Europe on a couple-week run over there, we had to do a video – there were a lot of factors. And we just really believed in Clive and … everyone at RCA. We weren’t worried.’
In fact, the delay was caused by concerns over whether Weiland would be legally able to tour with the band. Finally, in April, a California judge cleared the singer to tour with the band and they played a brief acoustic set on LA’s KROQ morning show later that month, running through ‘Slither’ from the upcoming album, and versions of STP’s ‘Interstate Love Song’ and GN’R’s ‘Used to Love Her’. In an effort to combat illegal file sharing on P2P platforms, RCA flooded fan-related websites with recordings of Scott, his brother and Doug Green reading poetry, naming the files after actual songs from the album.
Contraband was released six weeks later with the supporting tour starting in May. A thoroughly polished modern rock record, Contraband struck the halfway point between the Use Your Illusion sessions and Purple-era Stone Temple Pilots. It was a crowd-pleaser, a muscular blood-storm of bare-knuckled, fucked-up hard rock, erupting with vitality, tooth-rattling hooks and infectious, ear-worm choruses that begged for big, swaying crowd singalongs. The element of risk was not in the style of music, but in the band chemistry, and with Weiland’s vocals dovetailing seamlessly into Slash’s prismatic melodies, it was eminently clear from the radio play, the media coverage and the industry buzz that the risk had paid off handsomely. Reviews were mixed. ‘Anyone expecting Use your Illusion III will be in for a slight buzz-kill,’ declared Entertainment Weekly. ‘The songs suggest the pop grunge of Weiland’s old band more than the careening overdrive of GN’R.’ David Fricke in Rolling Stone was considerably more bullish, hailing the album as ‘a rare, fine thing’, saying that ‘[Weiland’s] grainy yowl – which, at the height of Seattle rock, earned Weiland a lot of lazy, cruel comparisons to Eddie Vedder – is actually a precision instrument that cuts through Slash and Kushner’s dense crossfire with a steely melodic purpose that, when Weiland piles up the harmonies in the choruses, sounds like sour, seething Queen.’ In the main, critics reluctant to reach for the word ‘safe’ described the album instead as ‘mature’, with one going so far as to call Contraband an ‘Appetite for Destruction for grown-ups’.
Behind the strength of chart-smashing hits like ‘Set Me Free’ and ‘Slither’, and power ballads like ‘Fall to Pieces’ and ‘Loving the Alien’, Contraband would sell over a quarter of a million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling debut album by a rock act in US chart history. Their debut would generate two supporting tours, stretched out over nearly two years, and land them a Grammy award for ‘Slither’ (Best Hard Rock Performance) and two additional nominations – ‘Fall to Pieces’ (Best Rock Song) and Contraband (Best Album). To date, Velvet Revolver’s debut has sold over four million copies worldwide. Interviewed retrospectively in the Mail on Sunday, Slash pointed out how ‘At first everyone thought we were just doing it for a quick cheque. But, trust me, getting this band off the ground required ultimate sacrifice and commitment. We toured Contraband for nineteen months, playing five shows a week in every country we could get into. It was never for the money. I can’t even say it was for the girls. Really, it was a music thing.’ In the same interview, Duff added, ‘Money’s never dictated me. I came up at the time of punk. People like Iggy and The Stooges were my heroes. They were never about the money. They never sat down and said, “Hey, let’s be rock stars”, they were just like, “Fuck you”, and that’s always stayed with me. When the three of us, me, Slash and Matt, played the benefit gig for Randy Castillo, it was the first time we’d played together for maybe eight years. And it just felt right.’
In the press junkets, the band fielded the same tired questions about working with a singer prone to such exceedingly public and outrageous behaviour. ‘I’m just not that judgemental,’ said Slash. ‘Look, I’m one of the biggest fuck-ups I ever met. So all things considered, how am I going to pass judgement on this guy? I don’t know one brilliantly talented individual in this business that doesn’t have a burial ground worth of skeletons in their closet. It was a given that Scott had this baggage that he’d been dealing with for years. He said he wanted to get clean and we could all relate. So we rallied for him. We had to jump a lot of hurdles, but it was worth it. Scott’s got a great rock’n’roll voice and charisma. Had we not taken those chances, we wouldn’t have the band we do.’ As Velvet Revolver lined up their touring commitments for the summer of 2004 amid a wildly successful radio launch, they received an intriguing offer. ‘We were offered a gig in Lisbon, Portugal, opening for Guns N’ Roses,’ Slash revealed. ‘The new Guns N’ Roses, whatever that consists of, but we actually said okay. We’d love to be there. It’d be very exciting. I think it would be quite a spectacle.’ However, the gig never materialised. Guns N’ Roses wouldn’t return to Portugal until the Rock in Rio Lisbon festival in 2006, when they were supported by The Darkness. Meanwhile, after finishing the ‘Fall to Pieces’ video in July, the band recorded cover versions of Cheap Trick’s ‘Surrender’, Aerosmith’s ‘No More, No More’ and Queen’s ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ to use as B-sides in subsequent releases.
The Velvet Revolver world tour began with 24 dates in America, playing the sorts of venues Guns N’ Roses had made their bones in nearly 20 years before, theatres and ballrooms, clubs and big halls. Contraband may have been Number 1 but the band were determined to start at the bottom and work their way up, building a solid fan base that reached beyond diehard Guns and Pilot fans, into a people-stratosphere all their own. They followed that with 22 shows around 15 countries in Europe. Headlining at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, the scene of GN’R’s early triumph 17 years before, they put on the most genuinely thrilling rock show seen there in many years. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page was there, turning to his friend, the photographer Ross Halfin, as they left the building and exclaiming, ‘Now that’s what I call rock’n’roll!’
They carried on in this fashion for the next 12 months, selling out rammed theatres and auditoriums, and becoming the big draw on the 2005 Ozzfest summer tour. With two big hit singles to their name in ‘Slither’ and ‘Fall to Pieces’, the band had been eager to make the fourth and final single from Contraband. RCA had other ideas, though, and instead released ‘Dirty Little Thing’, which presented an issue with the next video, as they had already fleshed out a concept for ‘Sucker Train Blues’ – a part-animation performance piece that takes place on a speeding train, crowded with dancing, under-clad women. The band was bummed at the thought of ditching the idea. Then Scott said, ‘Hey, why don’t we use the same treatment, just use a different song?’ The result made it hard to tell the difference, but the single was not a hit.
On tour in June 2005, Scott Weiland caused a minor stir in Germany, where the media accused him of wearing Nazi regalia on stage, an illegal act in Germany. Vigorously denying any Nazi sympathies, Weiland responded to the allegations by saying, ‘The Nazi SS hat that I wear in fact symbolises the loss of democracy and the shift to totalitarianism. One could make an argument that indeed the Government of the US is evolving into, or is already, a fascist police state, hiding under the guise of a republic.’ While nobody who knew him would ever mistake Weiland for a Nazi sympathiser, his explanation hung heavy from the weight of the sort of lazily contrived anti-authoritarianism one would expect to hear at a teenage punk show.
The RIAA certified Contraband as double-platinum in July, with the band latching on to the Ozzfest tour for August and September. Celebrations were soon quietened when Matt broke his hand in a water-skiing accident in August. He posted the following statement to fans: ‘Just wanted to say to all the fans that came to see Velvet Revolver on the last leg of the tour, including Ozzfest, how sorry I am that I couldn’t make it. It was very hard for me to sit on the sidelines while my band went out on the road without me. But it’s what they had to do and with my blessing. It was just a week before the tour when I went to my Mom’s house on Lake Havasu near the Colorado River. I was water skiing when I had a freak fall on the water skies by getting tangled in the ski rope and being dragged.’ The band brought in a former Ozzy Osbourne drummer, Brian Tichy, to handle Matt’s commitments until he himself had to leave for a tour with Billy Idol. The band then hired Mark Schulman, formerly the drummer with Simple Minds, for the remainder of their Ozzfest tour.
August would also prove contentious for other reasons. Later that month, Slash and Duff filed a suit against Axl in the federal court, alleging that Axl had changed the publisher of GN’R’s copyrighted songs and kept the royalties for himself. Earlier in the year, Axl had negotiated a multi-million-dollar deal with the Sanctuary Group – Axl’s new management, following the departure of Doug Goldstein – for the rights to GN’R’s back catalogue. Although this deal was reported by the press, Slash and Duff claimed that they had not been clued in to the details and argued that Axl had ‘omitted and concealed’ the scope of his dealings. It was their position that they weren’t aware of the scope of the deal until their royalty cheques stopped arriving. The lawsuit read: ‘Suffering an apparent attack of arrogance and ego … Rose recently decided that he is no longer willing to acknowledge the contributions of his former partners and band-mates in having created some of rock’s greatest hits.’ Duff’s lawyer, Glen Miskel, explained, ‘When the ASCAP cheque didn’t come, we called and they looked into it. We didn’t know all the facts at first.’
Yet while aggressively confronting Axl in the courts, in public, Slash still wore his chill, confrontation-avoiding persona. In February 2006, Slash said that he’d ‘always been supportive’ of his old singer and that he was as excited as anybody for the release of Chinese Democracy. If Slash offered such comments as something of an olive branch, Axl wasn’t having it. A month later, Axl filed a countersuit against Slash and Duff to clarify the property rights surrounding the copyrighted material in the GN’R back catalogue. Sanctuary issued an utterly scathing statement that branded Slash as ‘a consummate press, photo and media opportunist and manipulator’ who ‘has attacked Axl Rose on a number of levels’. The statement additionally alleged that ‘Slash has continually made negative and malicious statements about Axl [in the press] in order to garner publicity for himself’, further accusing Duff and Slash of making ‘numerous false allegations about Axl … [and that] Mr Rose believes that once apprised of the true facts, the judge or jury deciding these lawsuits will rule in Axl’s favour on every issue before them’. The statement went on to allege that Slash and Duff’s lawsuit ‘attacks [Axl’s] integrity as Slash and Duff, in a vindictive attempt to aggrandise their own stature, rewrite history through false statements, which have been repeated by the media. Their attacks on Axl stand in sharp contrast to Rose’s conduct. Axl has at all times worked diligently to maintain the artistic integrity of the band by choosing with great care which properties to license Guns N’ Roses songs to.’
In true scorched-earth fashion, the statement went on to claim that Slash had turned up at Axl’s house in October to offer a truce. According to Sanctuary’s statement, ‘Slash came to inform Axl that “Duff was spineless”, “Scott [Weiland] was a fraud”, that he “hates Matt Sorum” and that in this on-going war, contest or whatever anyone wants to call it that Slash has waged against Axl for the better part of 20 years, that Axl has proven himself “the stronger”. Axl regrets having to spend time and energy on these distractions, but he has a responsibility to protect the Guns N’ Roses legacy and expose the truth,’ the statement continued. ‘Axl believes he has been left with no alternative but to respond to these lawsuits. It would have been Axl’s preference to resolve disputes with Slash and Duff in private. The courthouse is not his choice of forum. However, Axl could no longer sit quietly and allow the continuing dissemination of falsehoods and half-truths by his former band-mates.’
Never one to knowingly walk away from a fight, Weiland weighed in with an open letter to Axl that read: ‘Get in the ring. Go to the gym, motherfucker, or if you prefer, get a new wig, motherfucker. I think I’ll resist the urge to “stoop” to your level. Oh shit, here it comes, you fat, Botox-faced, wig-wearing fuck! Okay, I feel better now.’ Then he continued: ‘Don’t think for a second we don’t know where those words came from. Your unoriginal, uncreative little mind – the same mind that had to rely on its band-mates to write melodies and lyrics. Who’s the fraud now, bitch? Damn, I couldn’t imagine people writing for me. How many albums have you put out, man, and how long did it take the current configuration of this so-called “band” to make this album? How long? And without the only guys that validated the name.
‘How dare you! Shame on you! How dare you call our bass player “spineless”? We toured our album over a year and a half. How many shows have you played over the last ten years? Oh, that’s right – you bailed out on your long-awaited comeback tour, leaving your remaining fans feeling, shall we say, a trifle miffed?! I won’t even list what I’ve accomplished because I don’t need to. What we’re talking about here is a frightened little man who once thought he was king, but unfortunately this king without his court is nothing but a memory of the asshole he once was.’
Many months later, Beta Lebeis told the official GN’R website the following: ‘I was the one whom Slash spoke with when he came to Axl’s house in [October] 2005 and expressed his negative comments regarding the others in his new band.’ She went on: ‘Behind the scenes it is a very different story than what the public is told.’ Forced to respond, Slash now admitted in an interview with New Jersey’s Home News Tribune that, yes, he had visited Axl’s home in an effort to call a truce. ‘I actually did go to Axl’s house at one point, but I never saw him. I never talked to him. I left a note with his person over there having to do with the lawsuit that we were in. I don’t know how it got turned into what it got turned into.’
April 2006 found the members of Velvet Revolver returning to Earth long enough to consider producers for their second album, bringing in both pop and hip hop maestros Pharrell Williams and Lenny Kravitz. Duff said, ‘I’ve always been a huge fan of early Motown and soul and Prince, so to explore something like that with Pharrell would be amazing. There’s nothing like that out there. It’s uncharted territory. Dude, it’s going to be way cool. It’s going to be stinky. Pharrell’s a genius.’ There was also talk, however, of working with Rick Rubin, even of making the second album a concept album. In November, however, Velvet Revolver turned to the Midas touch of the Stone Temple Pilots’ former producer Brendan O’Brien. ‘We were really excited about six months ago, when we first began writing,’ Weiland explained. ‘Then we really kind of flat-lined for a while, We didn’t know which way we were going. Once Brendan came on board, it was kind of like a shot in the arm. It was a new energy.’
Serious work on the album, now titled Libertad – Spanish for ‘freedom’ – began in December. According to Weiland, he hadn’t been ‘this excited about a rock record since 1993, when I went into the studio to record [STP’s] Purple’, hailing Libertad as ‘a really inspired rock and roll album, but it’s got many textures. It’s multi-dimensional, which I think is one thing Brendan brings out in artists. I mean, [Slash, Dave, Duff and Matt] are amazing players, and they’re capable of anything. They’ve reached completely new heights, and pulled something out of themselves. Instead of doing what’s completely comfortable, what they’ve done before, they have gone to new places, emotionally, musically and spiritually.’
If publicly the musicians appeared inspired and energised, privately they had begun to fall apart, one man at a time. ‘I was clean and sober for two years and then I started drinking,’ Wei-land later confessed, ‘and that all seemed cool for about a year, but then it started escalating. During that time is when the guys started falling off the wagon. Matt relapsed and went into treatment, then Duff relapsed and went into treatment, and then Slash had his situation. So everybody in the band ended up falling off, except for Dave, of course. At that time I was maintaining my problem in a sane way and I really didn’t fall off intensely until my brother died.’ Indeed, while it had seemed like they had found new designs for living that insulated them from the cravings and emotional obsession over drinking and using, the success of Contraband had pushed them back over the edge. ‘I definitely went way down the fucking drain for a minute there after the Contraband record came out and we went on tour for two years,’ said Slash. ‘I started drinking heavily and revisited my opiate passion.’
Though Dave Kushner had been sober the longest of anyone in the group, Duff had always appeared to have transcended his alcoholism in the most inspirational sense, replacing drinking and self-destruction with a robust exercise and academic rigour. As the realities of success and touring began piling up, however, even the stolid bassist caved in. While touring, Duff said, he let the stress of trying to be the band’s decision-maker get to him. ‘I’ve had panic attacks since I was seventeen,’ he told his hometown newspaper, the Seattle Times, ‘so I keep a pack of Xanax on me, for stress. But I’m a drug addict and an alcoholic. A guy like me can’t take anything for stress. I got myself caught up in a nice habit for two weeks. Luckily, I had my kids and my wife; I didn’t let myself go too far. But I didn’t see that stuff coming. I’ve learned relapsing is part of recovery. I did twenty of those [Xanax] pills a day, and I’m thinking, “Hey, I’m not doing blow, I’m not drinking, I’m not doing heroin or Vicodin …”’
As 2007 unfolded, Weiland’s situation grew progressively darker. He split with his second wife, Mary Fosberg, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and his younger brother, Michael, died of an overdose. Michael’s death would cripple the singer, who was called to identify the body of the man he considered ‘the best friend I ever had’. Publicly he admitted to a brief slip-up, stating, ‘I had a setback after Michael, I had a coke binge, but then I put myself back in rehab.’ But comments from Slash and later interviews with Weiland suggested that the wounds ran far deeper. ‘I was suicidal,’ he told the Mail in 2008. ‘I wanted to kill myself. My wife kicked me out. I’d barely seen my two kids. I’d missed birthdays, Christmas, Easter. I wanted to stop, I just couldn’t. I’d go into detox, clean up and go fix again as soon as I got out. It was just horrible.’
A few days after Michael Weiland’s fatal overdose, Daniel Sorum, Matt’s 11-year-old brother, passed away from brain-stem cancer. A day after the funeral in Minnesota, Matt had to fly back to meet the rest of the band to play a pair of Van Halen songs at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York City. They played a song by each of the two Van Halen singers – ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love’ from the David Lee Roth era and ‘Runaround’ from the Sammy Hagar era. The event was not without drama. According to Weiland, Roth had wanted to sing ‘Jump’, one of Van Halen’s biggest hits. But the band demurred. ‘We felt from an artistic standpoint, and I’m being totally honest with you, that it wasn’t a song we felt comfortable with. We don’t have keyboards. To bring a keyboard on stage wouldn’t work for us. We said we’d do “Jamie’s Cryin’” or “You Really Got Me”, and he was adamant that wasn’t okay.’
The tension backstage was not helped by the personal crisis everyone in Velvet Revolver except Dave Kushner was now embroiled in. While Duff, Matt and Slash would all straighten out sooner rather than later, Weiland continued his terrifying slide backward. Slash reflected: ‘We all eventually came out of it and made the Libertad record, which I thought, musically, was a good record, but we lost Scott and we never regained that. I thought the overall spirit of everything was declining at that point …’
On Thursday, 3 May 2007, Velvet Revolver played a show at the Avalon, a small club at the top end of Sunset Strip, in the promotional run-up to the release of Libertad. It was a tribute show, for the benefit of Michael Weiland’s family, and Scott spoke of the passing of both his brother and Matt’s brother, saying, ‘It literally crushed us. It made this record happen for both of us.’ He turned his back to the crowd, and the band launched into Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, with Matt singing harmony and a video screen above showing montages of Michael, his wife and his two daughters. The band debuted a number of tracks from Libertad, including ‘She Builds Quick Machines’, ‘The Last Fight’ and ‘Get Out the Door’, all of which would later be released as singles, plus another new song, ‘Just Sixteen’. Everybody said how great the gig was. How special the band was. But everyone in Velvet Revolver already sensed the band had turned a corner – and suddenly found themselves lost.
For two years, Velvet Revolver had managed to balance their herculean egos, they had survived lawsuits, bitchy media speculation and the onset of relapse, but in August 2007 Scott Weiland admitted that bad cracks had begun rippling through the band’s foundations. ‘When things really go south,’ he told the Washington Post, ‘and we start getting in that big drill car and driving to hell, we usually get together and talk. How successful that is depends on everybody’s state of mind at the time. Usually it works out fairly well. But lately there’s been some things that have happened that definitely shouldn’t have happened – where band members have irresponsibly used the media as a tool and said things that they shouldn’t have said. And that’s fucking blasphemy, because a band should be a safe haven regardless of what goes on. It doesn’t matter what kind of problems a family is having; it should always stay in the family. The fucking media is bad enough as it is. It seems like everyone’s got an agenda, and the agenda seems to be selling magazines or air time with sensational stories. Look at the shit with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, these tragic figures. It’s not like any of that stuff is new; that kind of shit has been happening for years. It’s just that the media didn’t hound them. When people fell, they either fell again or they picked themselves up and figured it out. But it wasn’t on E! or the celebrity news shows 100 per cent of the time. It’s become an addiction for the American public. People are more interested in that shit than the upcoming election.’
Weiland was referring to a recent Rolling Stone article in which Matt Sorum had seemed to suggest that Velvet Revolver were on the verge of breaking up after just two albums, prompting a band meeting to circle the wagons. Matt subsequently sought to emolliate his comments, stating, ‘A lot of that stuff I said was taken out of context. We’re getting along pretty good right at this moment. We have days here and there where we have a beef just like anyone else who might be in a working relationship or like a relationship with a husband and wife. It’s about ten million times better than when it used to be when Guns N’ Roses was running back in the day where everything was so dramatic all the time.’ Pressed to comment on possible Guns N’ Roses or Stone Temple Pilot reunions – rumours of which had both been gathering momentum throughout recent months – Matt stonewalled: ‘We don’t know anything about it. I’m sure our managers and agents and everybody else probably have got something up their sleeves. We’re so in Velvet Revolver right now; we’re booked on this tour for another year. [The reunions] are not going to happen anytime soon. There’s never been any mention of it between us.’
In fact, there had been tentative discussions behind the scenes to do with reuniting Slash and Duff with Axl but there were still several stumbling blocks. Top of the list: Axl’s raw need to save face and get Chinese Democracy out of the way first. But with Axl still insisting the album was about to be released anytime now and Velvet Revolver gearing up for a second and final album together, the feeling was that it could happen within the next couple of years. The money was certainly there, millions of dollars just to do some weekend festivals; a great deal more if they could actually keep it together long enough to make a new album. Easygoing Slash was certainly up for it, even though it was fairly obvious that Axl would not countenance working with Matt Sorum again, nor with Steven Adler. As for Izzy Stradlin, that question would remain moot. After he had bailed out early on from Velvet Revolver, nobody was ready to engage with that question unless it became a necessity. In the meantime, born-again businessman Duff presented the biggest stumbling block when he insisted he and Slash would only consider a reunion tour if Axl was made accountable for any financial penalties or losses incurred from the singer either not showing up on time, not showing up at all, and/or, God forbid, walking off mid-set, thus triggering another riot on the scale of St Louis. According to one insider, it was this last point that killed the deal.
Meanwhile, Velvet Revolver had finished Libertad in February, and the mixing was completed in March. They released its first single, ‘She Builds Quick Machines’, in May, with the full album release on 3 July. By most standards, its entry into the charts would have been impressive, debuting at Number 5 and selling over 90,000 copies in the first week. Compared to Contraband, however, it was a disappointing performance that did little to engender the sort of us-against-the-world camaraderie of its predecessor. Which was a pity as, musically, Libertad was much more of an instant hit than its sometimes murky predecessor. As soon as the pumping riff to ‘Let It Roll’ came tumbling out of the speakers like a machine gun spraying bullets, it became clear that all those months on the road had helped rub off the rough edges, helping the bloody stumps left peeking out of their fancy new clothes heal into a brand new multi-limbed creature no longer reliant on their mangled former musical bodies to make sense. It’s the same story with tracks like ‘She’s Mine’ and ‘Get Out the Door’: top-drawer, shades-on rock delivered with such private-plane panache the album goes straight to the mainline.
The only perplexing moment was the inclusion of a cover of the 1974 ELO hit ‘Can’t Get It Out of My Head’. The original was a classic orchestral pop moment. This sounded like unnecessary filler. Conspiracy theorists had a field day, however, pointing out that while none of Velvet Revolver’s principal members had ever professed a liking for ELO, they had famously always been one of Axl Rose’s favourites. The album’s coup-de-grâce came in the final track, ‘Gravedancer’, a toxic ballad built around a sinuous Slash guitar figure in the ‘Fall to Pieces’ mould, Weiland once again apparently speaking to himself as he stares in the mirror: ‘Every time it goes down / Every time she comes down / Every time we fall down / She dances all over me …’
Libertad was also pervaded by a strong sense of the dominant artist on each track: ‘For a Brother’ (Weiland’s ode to his brother) and the audaciously infectious ‘Mary, Mary’ (the name of the singer’s ex-wife), while tracks like ‘Let It Roll’ and ‘Spay’ tapped into the serpentine pulse of Use Your Illusion-era Guns N’ Roses. Reception was again mixed, with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke hailing Libertad as boasting ‘plenty of thrill in the fuzz-lined hard-rubber bends of Slash’s guitar breaks and the way bassist Duff McKagan keeps time, like a cop swinging a billy club. There is honest depth here too.’ Entertainment Weekly gave the album an A–, calling the album ‘so chock-full of the tight’n’crunchy pedigreed hard rock that’s in short supply these days, it feels both comfortingly familiar and vaguely exotic … Our advice? Stop pining for a new Guns N’ Roses release, break out your air guitars, and bask in the glory of Libertad.’ The New York Times offered a more critical assessment, stating, ‘Libertad sounds old, heavy, wrapped in a tough skin. At the same time, by virtue of sheer out-dated flamboyance, it seems almost wilfully naive.’ Time has revealed the truth to be somewhere in between. Aided by O’Brien’s talents and vision, Libertad felt sonically much more cohesive than Contraband, with considerably greater depth and scale. Lyrically, Libertad revealed Weiland to be at the very top of his game, summoning a confessional intimacy that at times felt disconnected from the chugging riffs and sleaze-rock posturing. Ironically, while some dogged on Contraband for suffering a lack of connection between singer and material, that criticism rang true on Libertad, with Weiland’s clean, velvety croon often at odds with the jagged thrust of Slash and Kushner’s dual-fretted onslaught. Fair or not, had another band released Libertad in 2007, they would have been hailed as the new standard-bearers of classic rock. Measured against the impossibly high commercial watermark set by its predecessor, though, and overshadowed by the towering legacies of Velvet Revolver’s feeder bands, it never stood a chance.
They filmed videos for ‘She Builds Quick Machines’ and later ‘The Last Fight’ and headed out on tour in September 2007 with Alice in Chains opening for them. ‘This has been one of the best tours I’ve ever been involved in,’ Slash said at the time. ‘It’s cool because this band is really good friends with the Alice in Chains guys. We’re from similar backgrounds, a similar period. We’ve all been through a lot, and it’s all been really cool.’ However, the guitarist would later reveal that the weather in the Velvet Revolver camp wasn’t quite so sunny, confessing that he felt like the band were losing their connection with Scott, whom he described as appearing ‘out to lunch’. Certainly the shadows now appeared to be swallowing them. Although they had planned to tour Japan and Australia for a second time and added shows in Nagoya, Osaka, Yokohama, Tokyo, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, the Japanese dates were cancelled when the band’s request for visas was refused.
Internally relations between Weiland, Slash and Duff were now in tatters. In January 2008 they kicked off the Rock’ N’ Roll As It Should Be tour, cutting the campaign short after just ten dates so Scott could check into another detox and rehab. They first cancelled their 7 February show in San Diego, then released a statement that read: ‘Velvet Revolver regret to announce they’re unable to perform their five upcoming concert dates in Australia that were scheduled for February 15–20. The cancellation of these shows will allow lead singer Scott Weiland to continue treatment at a rehab facility, which he voluntarily entered after the band’s February 6 performance in Los Angeles. Velvet Revolver deeply apologize to their fans in Australia and thank them for sticking by the group when various members have relapsed during the last year and a half.’
According to Slash, the Australian cancellations were the last straw, so that even before leaving for their final tour in the UK, they had agreed to fire their singer, stating, ‘When [Scott] came back [from the January tour], he was supposed to go to rehab, so we postponed our Australian tour but he didn’t really go to rehab. That was the final blow. We had a lot of commitments, like the tour in the UK, which we didn’t want to go back on, so we wanted to finish those before telling him.’ As if the situation could bear any additional complexity, the Stone Temple Pilots announced that they were reuniting with Weiland for a 65-date North American tour, beginning in May with Ohio’s Rock on the Range festival. Apparently unfazed, Slash announced that the band would return to the studio at the completion of the STP tour to begin work on Velvet Revolver’s next record. But few inside the VR camp actually believed that. Or that, if there were to be another album, Weiland would be on it.
Velvet Revolver’s disastrous final tour took place in Europe, beginning in March. With the smiling subterfuge of a mafia hit, unbeknownst to Weiland, the band embarked on the campaign having already decided to fire the singer when the tour concluded, though the singer soon sussed the plans because of how they all now treated him. ‘We basically didn’t speak a word [to Scott] that whole time,’ said Slash. ‘We gave him the cold shoulder in the UK like nobody’s business. There were a couple of arguments around the stage, but, other than that, nobody spoke to him. I imagine he was quite uncomfortable. No wonder he didn’t have a good time. Then he told everyone in Glasgow that the whole band was over. We were like, “Oh well, I guess we’ve got a surprise coming for you, Scott.” For the most part, I don’t really remember seeing much of him. We flew to Dubai together … Well, I think I remember him being on the plane, anyway. We sort of got used to him not being around. He’s never really been part of the mechanics of the group, he’s always been separate and doing his own little thing.’
On 20 March, at a sold-out show at Glasgow’s SECC, Weiland announced from the stage that the audience were seeing something special – ‘the last tour by Velvet Revolver’. Weiland had only articulated what everyone had been thinking for months, and with that simple statement the singer brought to a close the most commercially successful and transfixing supergroup of the ’00s. In the wake of the show, a vitriolic war of words raged, beginning with a statement from Matt Sorum the morning after the Glasgow show: ‘So last night was interesting. Had a little band turmoil on stage, as you probably all could tell. Being in a band is a lot like being in a relationship. Sometimes you just don’t get along. I guess there has been more turmoil lately, with the cancellations and all. It has been frustrating, I am not going to lie. My career and life in rock’n’roll has come with its ups and downs. Unfortunately, some people in this business don’t realise how great of a life they have. Touring the world, meeting great people and fans all over the world. And just playing music for a living. I feel truly blessed. But sometimes the road can be draining for some. Being away from home and family does grind on you sometimes, with all the travelling and different beds. Personally, I love this shit and sometimes can’t believe I am so lucky to still be doing what I do for a living. Everybody could see who was unhappy last night, but all I can say is let’s keep the rock alive, people! In this life, you just pick up and keep moving. And don’t ever let anybody stand in your way.’
Weiland wasn’t going to let him get away with that, responding swiftly: ‘Well, first of all, the state of my family affairs is really none of his business, since he is too immature to have a real relationship, let alone children. So don’t attempt to stand in a man’s shoes when you haven’t walked his path. Secondly, “keeping rock’n’roll alive”? I’ve made many attempts to remain cordial with the members of VR, but mainly, the likes of you. Funny though – this is your first band, as opposed to being a hired gun. I’ve been making records (now on my ninth), which have sold over 35 million copies worldwide and have maintained a level of professionalism regardless of how many drugs I’ve ingested into my system. I have only cancelled one tour during the entire course of my 16-year run and that was the “make-up” Australia tour. Now, shall I open that can of worms, Matthew? Release the Kraken? Serve … Volley! You cancelled the Aussie tour in the fall because you went to rehab, but I won’t say why … As for our fans – I will sweat, bruise, and bleed for you. And will continue to do so until the end of this tour. However, you deserve to hear Velvet Revolver playing … not certain individuals singing along to get a muddied-up sound. God forbid – could one imagine if I grabbed a guitar and started soloing along with Slash? That would never happen because I know my place. It’s a shame … we were a gang. But ego and jealousy can get the better of anyone. I wish the best and plan to annihilate the stage in the last few shows.’ Then the coup de grâce: ‘On a separate note, we did an STP photo shoot before this tour and it was fun, inspiring and it gave me that thrill – that feeling that got my rocks off from the get-go.’
On 1 April 2008, the band made it official, announcing that Velvet Revolver had parted ways with Scott Weiland. According to a press release from Slash, ‘This band is all about its fans and its music and Scott Weiland isn’t 100% committed to either. Among other things, his increasingly erratic onstage behaviour and personal problems have forced us to move on.’ Though both Slash and Duff would insist that Velvet Revolver would find another singer and carry on, four years would pass before the band would play another gig, and then only as a one-off, as a kind of belated farewell.
Unsurprisingly, Weiland’s response the next day was both swift and withering. ‘I find it humorous that the so-called four “founding members” of Velvet Revolver would decide to move on without me after I had already claimed the group dead in the water on 20 March in Glasgow.’ Referring to his reunion with STP, the singer said, ‘I choose to look forward to the future and performing with a group of friends I have known my entire life. This also speaks to my commitment to the fans who I feel would much rather watch a group of musicians who enjoy being together as opposed to a handful of discontents who at one time used to call themselves a gang.’ Unable to resist a parting shot, he concluded with a snarky valedictory call to his former bandmates, saying, ‘Good hunting, lads, I think Sebastian Bach would be a fantastic choice.’
They would audition a fresh raft of singers, including Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, who seemed enthusiastic about a role in the band, although Slash felt that stylistically the pairing lacked the vibe he sought, saying, ‘Corey came in, just like a lot of other guys came in. Of course, Corey’s Corey, and he’s probably one of the best guys out there. I love Corey. I just thought it was a different style than what Velvet Revolver was trying to capture. But, still, the songs are cool. But if we were gonna do anything with that, they would have to be rerecorded and … Cos, I mean, it was very raw and very, sort of, “making it up on the spot” kind of deal. And so we’d have to revisit everything and then we’d put it together, I think. But that’s not really a plan. I’m just saying if it was … I don’t wanna get any ideas in anybody’s head. That would be the only way that it could be released, [and] I’m not saying that it’s going to.’
As the next few years rolled by, Slash would embark on a solo career, bringing in Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy as frontman. Duff toured again with Loaded and Dave Kushner and Matt Sorum engaged in various side projects. By any reasonable estimation, Velvet Revolver appeared to be on ice – permanently. That is, until the band announced that they would be reforming for a special one-off appearance in January 2012. The singer? Scott Weiland. ‘“Love You Madly:” A Concert for John O’Brien’ took place at West Hollywood’s House of Blues, boasting an eclectic roster that included Maroon 5, Tom Morello, Stephen Stills, Sheryl Crow and Fishbone. While Maroon 5 were the only performers currently charting (their Mutt Lange-produced Hands All Over album had just spawned a huge international hit with ‘Moves Like Jagger’), it was clear that the evening belonged to Velvet Revolver. The group had announced that they would perform three songs and, beyond that, no one was prepared to predict their future. The mere sight of Velvet Revolver walking onto the stage, though, detonated a rousing hail of applause as the band took their positions, with Weiland bouncing at centre stage, cigarette and bullhorn in one hand, microphone in the other. Duff fired off the intro to ‘Sucker Train Blues’ and, just like that, four years disappeared. Weiland, looking like a young Howard Hughes with his retro leather jacket and slicked-back hair, gyrated and spun as Slash prowled the side of the stage, stepping forth to issue blistering leads before retreating into the corners during the verses. Each time the spotlight hit him, the audience roared with approval.
The rejuvenated band followed with ‘She Builds Quick Machines’ and ‘Slither’, which showcased a roof-destroying solo from Slash that suggested he was in the best form of his life. Whatever water might have passed under the bridge was not apparent. In fact, the band could have been in the middle of the Libertad tour, so polished was their execution. Though three songs were promised, the band could not resist a fourth, closing the evening with Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’. Afterwards it was hoped this had been a curtain-raising event in lieu of a full VR reunion. But it was not to be. Slash would go back to his progressively successful solo career, Duff would record with Loaded and later form Walking Papers, Dave found a lucrative second life writing and scoring television soundtracks, co-writing the theme song for the mega-popular biker drama Sons of Anarchy. Matt would bounce around a number of side projects and Scott Weiland would eventually split from Stone Temple Pilots again in 2011, attempting to reignite his flagging solo career. He was found dead on his tour bus on 3 December 2015, the victim of an accidental drug overdose.
Before he died, I had one last phone conversation with Scott Weiland. As usual he was a hard man to pin down. I’d been trying to speak to him for weeks, but each night as it got to the time when I was supposed to call, one of his ‘people’ would call and give me the same old excuses I’d got when I first met him nearly 20 years before. He was unwell. He was unexpectedly called away. He just wasn’t answering the phone. Finally, I gave up. Told them not to bother him any more. And then he rang me.
He sounded sad on the phone, but then he always sounded at something of a loss whenever I had spoken to him. Not at all like the way he came across in his angry press statements, when he’d be flogging at Slash and Duff and even Axl. It was the first time we’d spoken since he’d published his autobiography, Not Dead & Not for Sale – a chillingly frank self-portrait in which he talked for the first time about being raped as a 12-year-old – and where he claimed Velvet Revolver ‘came out of necessity, not artistic purpose’. He had also recently designed his own ‘English Laundry’ clothing range and completed a set of paintings which he planned to exhibit. But I didn’t really want to talk about that. I wanted to know what he meant by the ‘came out of necessity’ remark about VR?
‘Well, I think we did a really good job of it,’ he said wistfully. ‘It was a great band to see live and I think we made two exciting albums.’
So … no hard feelings? I mean, were they the kind of people he would invite to dinner?
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘We patched things up and we get along. I see them every now and again, we text each other. And, you know, I mean, you can never say never. But, you know, it’s like, uh, um, who knows, maybe we’ll do some shows sometime …’
The conversation drifted. I found myself asking him what, when he looked back, was he most proud of? I was thinking in terms of his career. He was thinking of something else.
‘I am definitely most proud of my children,’ he said with a whisper. ‘They are what keep me up when I feel low, seeing the light in their eyes and that kind of unconditional love is even more important than my music, they keep me going definitely.’
Was there such a thing as a ‘secret to success’, I wondered?
‘I don’t believe so. People often think that it’s luck, because there are so many talented people who don’t ever get to have success or even a record deal. But I have this mantra that is: you really create your own luck. But it’s part of serendipity too. If you work hard, you have talent and you put yourself in situations enough of the right times, you’ll meet people along the way that eventually notice you … Serendipity, timing, God and hard work, they all sort of have to merge together – having a vision of where you want to be and what it’s gonna take to get there.’
God? Did he accept there was a higher power?
‘Oh, yeah, I believe in God, definitely. When I was a kid I went to church every Sunday. My brothers and I would be watching cartoons and my dad would be, “All right, Mark, Scott, Michael, get dressed.” I’d be like, argh! [But] I look back on it fondly and when I go to church, I don’t go regularly, but it brings like a sense of [getting] back in touch with what you believe in. I was very lucky with the church that I went to, a Catholic church, it was very sort of progressive and wasn’t all that dogma-based. And my mother and father also were brought up with believing in God and Jesus. But that’s a personal thing [not] something you try to push on others, that spiritual connection that you have.’
How did you look back on grunge?
‘That was a magical time for music and art and social change. It was a different climate and there really hasn’t been such a massive movement in rock’n’roll since – though [STP] never really considered ourselves a grunge band. But it was a real time of enlightenment and a lot of hope.’
It was getting late. We’d run out of things to talk about. And there would always be a next time. Lastly then, I asked him, out of the blue, what he would like written on his tombstone? Here lies Scott Weiland …
‘… he loved his family. He loved his children. He loved his friends. And never ceased to pick himself up off the ground.’
We left it like that.