Velvet Revolver interview

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Interested in writing for us? Click here. Also join us at for contests and further news. Thanks for visiting!

Velvet Revolver interview

While some things will always change, it’s good to know others remain forever the same. The rangy one-time bass player for the infamous Guns ’n’ Roses, Duff McKagan, happily falls into the latter. With his characteristic bad-bleach job, regrowth and stringy long hair, McKagan is a rock ’n’ roll icon, one of the last true great rock stars – a little crustier, a little craggier, to be sure, but still good ole Duff. And while he probably has earned the right to play the role of dismissive elder-statesman of rock, the Velvet Revolver bassist retains his friendly laid-back air and is as mildly enthusiastic as ever about the sophomore album Libertad.

“Yeah, we’ve already been touring it for the past three months and we’re pretty excited for this thing to finally come out,” drawls McKagan casually.

In contrast, the most animated I have ever heard the bass player was the release of the debut Contraband, when he was gushing about the newfound dynamic he and his band members had discovered in Velvet Revolver. He was literally pumped and saw it as the kind of act that would be releasing an album every year. Obviously, that didn’t happen. “Did I actually say that… oh.” he trails off in search of the memory. “Well, I probably didn’t mean every year, you know? I also didn’t foresee things taking so long – we ended up touring a lot longer that any of us really expected, by the time we’d finished we’d been touring 18 months.

“The downside is that you’re standing in line every fucking day, sitting in aeroplanes, checking into hotels and literally living out of each other’s pockets everyday. There was never really a break, and any breaks that we did have just got filled in, simply because the record was so successful. And I don’t care what five people you do that to, you’re gonna get sick of each other.” As a result Velvet Revolver took some time off to regroup and write songs before even considering at a new album. “I think we planned at taking about three weeks, because we’re all such A-type personalities who are all used to constantly working – but after a week, it became clear how exhausted we actually were and none of us were really ready to get back into a room.”

So, he’s happy with the new album Libertad? “You know, I really, really am. Musically, we kind of drew a line in the sand and said ‘we have to move past this’. We really pushed ourselves and the Contraband tour allowed to know what boundaries we didn’t have. We knew what we were capable of. I mean, I loved Contraband. It was a big fuck you, it was aggressive and it was really the perfect first album for us, but knew with a bit of downtime we could really go and explore some new musical stuff and make a really organic rock ’n’ roll record without tons of guitar overdubs.”

Undoubtedly, Libertad is a stronger album, not just in songwriting or hooks, but texturally. I put to McKagan that where Contraband was immediately recognisable as the guys from Guns ’n’ Roses and the singer from Stone Temple Pilots (ie. the big riffs, the predictable solos from Slash) Libertad seems to contain songs that have their own definitive flavour. Velvet Revolver are finally their own animal. Does he agree? “Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s funny you should say that. I literally just did a TV interview with Slash and Don Was (the famous American producer and well-respected music historian), and he was like ‘I‘ve been listening to this record a lot and there’s parts of songs where I might not have guessed it was even you guys playing. It wasn’t that instantly identifiable Slash soaring-lead, or even if was Weiland singing.’ So, yeah, I think we really just serviced the songs on this one.”

What was the reasoning behind covering an old ELO song by Jeff Lynne, Can’t Get It Out Of My Head? “Ahh, that was really Brendan O’Brien (producer),” hedges the bass-player. “He came up with the idea, and he was so into it. Even though the band really wasn’t, we knew Scott could probably sing the crap out of it. I mean, Slash really was not into it.” He chortles fondly at the guitarist’s reluctance. “But somehow managed to get us to try it. And that really was Brendan’s thing on this album, he’d come in, pick up a guitar and say ‘hey guys, have you thought about doing this? You might think it sucks, but just humour me, ok?’ He tried everything in order to make it sound great to us. By the time Slash put a solo on it, it came out great and I think it’s ok that we have a cover on the record. It’s kinda tongue-in-cheek, and I’m happy made the record….although, I don’t think we’ll ever do it live. Jeff Lynne has heard it and he loves it, so that’s cool in of itself.”

Rick Rubin was originally engaged as producer, and I suppose initially that must have been an exciting proposition for the band. In the end, though, it didn’t work out. “It was kind of a bummer. He approached us, and although we’d heard stories that Rick takes forever on records, because we had known him for so long as a friend – since, really, the 80s – in the back of mind we thought that with us it would be different. It didn’t turn out that way… let’s just say it didn’t work out how we planned. When we say, ‘let’s get started, we’re ready to go’, we mean it. And while there’s no ill will towards Rick, it did take about four months out of our calendar waiting for him.”

In more ways than one, it’s been a trial by fire for Velvet Revolver – particularly with singer Weiland’s notorious battles with an eight gram per day heroin habit and a painful divorce. Did the experience made them tighter, personally? “I think it did,” muses McKagan. “It wasn’t new territory for us, it just happened that Scott was the latest of us to go through it, and it helped that he wanted to get sober, he wanted to rock ’n’ roll. I mean, no one wants to be strung out, so he was in the right place around guys like us who had been through it and could understand. I know a big deal was made of us coming in and ‘pulling him from the darkness’,” he snorts at the drama of it, “but he actually came to us and asked us for help, and once someone asks you for help, then it’s a no-brainer. Of course you say yes.”

It’s been 20 years since McKagan recorded Appetite For Destruction. Cliché or not, that’s a lot of water under the bridge. Does he ever wish that he had the same understanding of personal problems that individuals struggle with a little earlier so that maybe other, more well-documented estrangements, could have possibly been avoided? “Umm, I know what you’re getting at,” he says carefully. “I just think that that experience is where I earned my understanding, you know? I mean I was fucked up then, and so a lot of all that shit kind of fed each other.” He is, of course, referring to famous implosion of Guns ’n’ Roses, and the ongoing acrimonious split between ex-members of the world’s most dangerous band. “The machine was just so big. There was no way out, and there were just so many yes-men, and there’s a myriad of reasons. Mostly it’s because it was out of control. I know I self-medicated my way through the entire Use Your Illusion tours. It wasn’t til it was done did I know I had a health problem, and I got sober. That’s where I got a lot of experience in dealing with people and strange situations – I got a crash course from ’86 through ’93, an expert education. There was a time where if it were up to me, I would have salvaged things, and even Slash tried many times. We all wanted to save it, it’s not like we all walked up one day and said ‘fuck you!’”

He exhales slowly. “You see, he (Axl) was a singer in this meteoric rock band that sort of captured the imagination and hit some sort of nerve with a whole reputation, and while every member of than band was important to making that happen, he was the singer. The focal point. I know that more yes-men came his way, and I think that soon your sense of reality gets a little eschewed, and that the real friends you have either change on you or those other people close them out. I can’t speak for Axl now, and I haven’t hung out with him for a real long time now, but a lot of this happened to me… but I wasn’t the singer. So I was able to escape it. So yeah, it’s sad, man.”

Libertad is out now through Sony / BMG.

http://www.beat.com.au/article.php?id=871

Share This