Scott Weiland
Not dead but for sale: Scott Weiland
Scott Weiland admits he joined Velvet Revolver purely for the money – and although he liked the band’s music he didn’t think it was his best work.
The singer joined ex Guns n’Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum alongside guitarist Dave Kushner in 2003, after he left Stone Temple Pilots. They recorded two albums together before the band kicked him out for his continuing drug addiction issues.
In his biography Not Dead And Not For Sale, published next week, Weiland says his first reaction to being invited to join was: “Sounds like a lot of egos – sounds like a lot of trouble.
“They put some songs on a CD and my wife said, ‘They think you’ll like what they’re doing.’ I didn’t; it sounded like Bad Company and I never liked Bad Company. A week or so later another CD arrived with songs custom-designed for me. The tunes had STP written all over them.
“I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to hook up with these guys. Duff said, ‘There’s soundtrack stuff we’ve been asked to do, and the money’s great.’ The money attracted me.”
But when Weiland jammed with the band he found they had great chemistry. Having been a long-time fan of Slash and an admirer of Kushner’s previous band Electric Love Hogs, he decided to sign up.
The singer says: “We went on the road for two years, toured the world and established ourselves as a premier rock band. There was so much energy on the stage that at times it felt combustible – anything could happen at any time. We were dangerous.”
But despite the success of 2004 album Contraband, with over four million sales and giant singles Slither and Fall to Pieces, Weiland wasn’t overwhelmed by the work.
“I liked our first record, but I can’t call it the music of my soul,” he says. “There was a certain commercial calculation behind it. We wanted hits – we wanted to prove that, independent of Guns n’Roses and STP, we could make a big splash. And we did.”
Not Dead and Not For Sale will be published on May 17 in the US by Scriber, and imprint of Simon and Schuster. It’s available elsewhere in June.