Slash

by Slash

problem: no

singer. It is the story of my life, isn’t it?

For a group of seasoned, professional musicians you’d think that we’d have a clue of how to find a singer. No chance. We looked at one another with no idea of the pro...

“This feels like the time that we first hooked up,” I said.

“When Steven and I first met you and we had a band. We wrote some great shit but finding a singer was just impossible.”

Our “project” started being reported on the radio, blogged about on the Internet; all of a sudden we’d generated a lot of attention just by trying to find ourselves a singer relatively on the down-low.

“Hey, what are you doin’? It’s Izzy.”

“Hey, cool. I’ll come down.”

It was classic Izzy; he’s so elusive, he’ll pop up somewhere out of the blue, hang out intensely, then disappear for a couple of months. He came down to the studio with his guitar and amp and he brought a couple of demos. We jammed with him for two weeks and it was great: we wrote about twelve songs that would have been the best Guns N’ Roses record, hands down. We talked about the old days, we shared war stories; we laughed a lot and we had a really good time.

him. He was, in general, very anti–lead singer. I can’t imagine why.

I was dead set on finding a solid front man regardless, because I was taking this project very seriously. I was getting

sick of the fact that we weren’t getting out there and playing.

I contemplated that idea…fo...

going. At the same time I was intent on pursuing this, as was Duff and Matt, so I wasn’t sure why Izzy would want to take it to the next level by suggesting the studio.

In any case, the songs we did together were great, and I wasn’t going to put an end to that.

studio, Izzy ducked out. There weren’t any hard feelings or anything, he just had to go and said his good-byes.

there. I told Gilby,

Bronx. He thought we were crazy.

“You’re never gonna find a singer,” he said, smirking. “With the level you’re at, you just can’t do that. You can’t just look for raw talent; that’s nowhere near your level. There are only so many singers around...

I wasn’t going to be discouraged; ...

had endless tapes coming in and there had to be something of value in ...

all: we held it together for ten months doing that.

very best imitation of Guns.

singers who just loved Guns to an unhealthy degree.

doing really bad versions of “Welcome to the Jungle”;

that I swear to God they must have recorded them on the mike in their boom box.

how strange this process was.

time about eight months had gone by

Duff ’s wife, Susan, was friends with Scott’s wife, Mary.

him, I told Duff to call him up.

where I’d lived with my dad for a while when I was a kid.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to try to drive a wedge between you and your band.”

committed; it brought together all of the elements that we’d been working on.

studios. Tom Zutaut was there, too—it was sort of like old times.

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.

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.

track I got a call (from Duff )

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.

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 str...

there…I liked the beginning o...

Revo...

appropriate name to me because of its multiple meanings: not only did it evo...

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 ...

room, I brought up my idea of the name Revolver as a possibility.

Black Velvet Revolver,”

something intimate like velvet juxtaposed with something deadly like a gun.”

“How about just Velvet Revolver.”

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.

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,”