Matt Sorum has looked back at his time in Velvet Revolver, and said that the band “could have been” as big as Guns N’ Roses if it lasted longer.
The drummer formed the band in 2002 alongside fellow Guns N’ Roses bandmates Duff McKagan and Slash. Also joining up with guitarist Dave Kushner, they recruited Stone Temple Pilots’ frontman Scott Weiland, and went on to leave an unforgettable stamp on the rock scene.
They dropped two albums before breaking up in 2008: 2004’s ‘Contraband’ and 2007’s ‘Libertad’, and briefly united in 2012 for a one-off live show in Los Angeles.
Weiland died in December 2015, aged 48. He was found unresponsive on the tour bus while on tour with his band, The Wildabouts. It was reported that the cause of death was an accidental overdose, but those claims have been contested by the singer’s widow, Jamie Wachtel Weiland.
Now, Sorum has reflected on his time in the group and shared that he thinks the band could have been massive if they didn’t call it quits in 2008.
“It was difficult times, early days, but so worth it,” he said in a new interview with Get On The Bus. “Obviously, I was in the other band, but it was a new band and we had to recreate. We really couldn’t be Guns N’ Roses. We couldn’t just rest on that.”
He went on to explain how he thought Velvet Revolver stood out because their music was a reflection “of the times” they were in and brought back the sense of energy and conviction that each of the members had in their youth.
“It was a different rhythmic sense. The rhythm wasn’t this swagger retro rock and roll thing, it was more like a pumping kind of punky. It was a good club,” he added. “We were all in the best shape of our lives. We got really serious about ‘How are we gonna compete?’ We never talked about it like this ever, but it was known. It was just, ‘We have to be the best we can be. Let’s just f****** throw it down.’”
He continued: “The [debut] album blew up. It wasn’t as big as G’N’R, but it could have been. It just didn’t last long enough.
“We really wanted to keep it together. Unfortunately, it fell into bad habits again and the same old s*** and the wheels came off,” he added. “But I still reflect back on that [period fondly], especially picking up the Grammy. We never got a Grammy with GN’R — ever.”
The comments echo what Sorum also told Eddie Trunk earlier this month, saying again that Velvet Revolver “didn’t last as long as I wanted it to”.
“I was hoping it’d be more of a long thing and we’d still be here, but unfortunately it didn’t go that way,” he added. “But I think we could have really developed into a great rock and roll band, which I felt like we were on ‘Contraband’.”
That interview also saw him share praise for Weiland, despite the band ending on bad terms when they first split in 2008. “He was a great frontman, with his quirks and everything else that went with it,” he told Trunk. “Still, if you look back, in my opinion, he was one of the greatest rock and roll frontmen that I’ve been honoured to work with.”
As highlighted by Blabbermouth, after the band split in 2008, there was a brief period where they were considering coming back with Slipknot and Stone Sour’s Corey Taylor as frontman. They recorded demos of 10 songs together, before this eventually fell through.
At the end of last year, Weiland‘s son, Noah, covered tracks by Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver to mark the 10th anniversary of his father’s passing.
That show came just days after one of Weiland’s previously unreleased tracks, ‘If I Could Fly’ was shared. It was penned by the late frontman back in 2000 after the birth of Noah, and arrived on streaming exactly a decade to the day since Weiland passed away.
In 2024, it was also reported that Noah was reworking unreleased vocals from his father on a new song called ‘Time Will Tell’, after an alleged blackmail attempt.
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