Slash Promises New Velvet Revolver Will Be 'A Lot Heavier''When we started working with Scott, we started to lighten things up,' the guitarist says of former frontman Scott Weiland.By Kyle AndersonOther than taking a short break to play some riffs for Rihanna, top-hatted guitarist Slash spent the better part of last year working on his solo album, which many fans took as further proof that Velvet Revolver were no more.
The supergroup — made up of Slash, fellow Guns N' Roses alums Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum, Wasted Youth guitarist Dave Kushner and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland — produced a pair of well-received albums. Then Weiland went back to STP, leaving Velvet Revolver without a frontman. Still, despite the group having been mostly quiet for the last two years, Slash says they fully intend to push forward — and they even have some songs ready to go.
"As soon as we got off the road from the last tour and parted ways with Scott, we got together and wrote half a dozen really great, sort of heavy metal pieces of music," Slash told MTV News. "It's a lot heavier than what Velvet Revolver has put out, so I'm dying to put out the quintessential Velvet Revolver record."
Slash said the new material better matches the group's original intentions. "When Duff and Matt and I first got together, we wrote a ton of material that never saw the light of day, and that was all very heavy," Slash explained.
"It's definitely our natural way of doing things. But when we started working with Scott, we started to lighten things up a lot, and we progressively got lighter. As much as I love the two records we did do, one of the things that was progressively more and more frustrating was the direction the band took."
Slash's self-titled solo effort, released in April, features an eclectic mix of guest appearances, from Fergie to Iggy Pop to Kid Rock to former Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy, who's currently fronting the guitarist's touring band. And according to Slash, he wasn't the only Velvet Revolver bandmember with more than one iron in the fire.
"I've been doing this record, and there's a tour and Duff's been playing with Jane's Addiction, so everybody has been pretty busy," Slash said. "But at some point early next year, we're going to reconvene and take a good serious look at everything that we've got."
In the meantime, Velvet Revolver remain a band without a singer — but not for lack of trying. "This next record will be us doing what we want to do without making any concessions to anybody," Slash declared. "Which is why it's taking so long to find a singer, because we want to find the guy who can front that band and not something we have to conform to."
From MTV.comVideo interview:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1640481/20100601/velvet_revolver.jhtml
