Velvet Revolver: Three Guns N’ Roses Members, an Unexpected Voice and Just Two Albums

By the late ’90s, Guns N’ Roses was slowly falling apart. Slash left in 1996, Duff McKagan in 1997, and soon after, Matt Sorum was fired. Their differences with Axl Rose had made it impossible to carry on.

Each went his own way until 2002, when the death of a friend brought them back together. Randy Castillo, Ozzy Osbourne’s drummer, died of cancer, and the three of them played a benefit concert in his memory. Onstage, they realized the chemistry was still there.

They started rehearsing and brought in Dave Kushner, a guitarist with punk roots who had been Slash’s friend since school. That left the hardest part: the singer.

VH1 filmed the search under a working title: “The Project.” A long line of singers came through, Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach among them, but none of them clicked. Some, like Faith No More’s Mike Patton, didn’t even want to audition.

The answer was closer than it looked. Scott Weiland, the voice of Stone Temple Pilots, was a friend of McKagan’s: they went to the same gym. The first time, he said no, because his band was still together. When Stone Temple Pilots broke up in 2003, he said yes.

Their first recording together was “Set Me Free,” for the movie Hulk, along with a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Money” for The Italian Job. “Set Me Free” made it onto US rock radio with no record label and no promotion behind it.

They still needed a name. Slash liked “Revolver” for its many meanings: the gun, the revolving door and the Beatles album. Weiland suggested adding “Velvet”: he liked the mix of something soft with something dangerous. And it stuck.

The album went on to sell four million copies worldwide. “Slither” won the 2005 Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance, and that same year the band played Live 8, the massive concert against poverty.

But the nineteen-month tour took its toll, and the excesses came back. The second album, Libertad, came out in 2007 and peaked at No. 5. That year they toured South America with Aerosmith and North America with Alice in Chains.

The end came in March 2008, in Glasgow. Weiland told the crowd it was the band’s last tour, unaware that his bandmates were already planning to fire him. On April 1, his exit was announced, and he went back to Stone Temple Pilots.

Velvet Revolver spent years looking for another singer, and the search never really ended. They played with Weiland just once more, on January 12, 2012, at a benefit concert. It was the last time. Scott Weiland died on December 3, 2015, and the following year Slash and McKagan rejoined Guns N’ Roses.

Six years and two albums. Not much for a band with that résumé, but enough to leave behind one of the best snapshots of 2000s guitar rock.