May 5, 2021 • 58 mins
World famous drummer, Matt Sorum, defines “Rock n Roll Excess” and he has the wild stories to prove it. Matt takes us behind the scenes into what it was like touring with Guns N’ Roses during their heyday. We get into the surreal back to back world tours during their massive success of double album "Use Your Illusion", along with the parties, the exhaustion and the aftermath. Though seemingly enough for one lifetime, Matt shares how the wild ride continued with GRAMMY winning band Velvet Revolver. We get a candid look the highs and lows through his years in the music industry, Matt’s early days making ends meet smuggling cocaine across the border and how his audition with The Cult came just in time.
To learn more about Matt, his new music, his charities and to order his book, “Double Talkin’ Jive”, go to his social media: @MattSorum on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
To pre order his book, "Double Talkin’ Jive” go to: https://rarebirdlit.com/double-talkin-jive-hardcover-limited-edition-vinyl-signed-by-matt-sorum/
For behind the scenes photos from these interviews and to send us questions for the Aftershow, join us on social media at: @OnTourPod on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
On Tour is a production of Black Barrel Media and iHeartRadio, for more information about On Tour please visit our website at: BlackBarrelMedia.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
On Tour is a production of My Heart Radio and
Black Barrel Media. I'm your host, Brian ray On. This
show will take you behind the scenes of the music
business to give you the most raw and real tales
you've likely never heard before. We'll share our wildest, most unbelievable,
and yes, most embarrassing moments while on tour. Today I
reminisced with my good friend Matt Sorum Might get Away
(00:33):
Pat and Palm Springs. We chilled in my living room
and watched the sunset on my squeaky vineage leather chairs,
which you may hear from time to time. Matt was
one of my first calls when we decided to do
this show because his life defines rock and roll access
and he has the wild stories to prove it. Matt
was the drummer for Guns n Roses during the massive
(00:54):
success in Heyday of their double album Usual Illusion. He
won a Grammy in too thousand four with Velvet Revolver
and started his rock days with the Cult. However, before
there's a world famous drummer, he made ends meet smuggling
drugs across the border, and that's where we begin. You'll
hear a lot of references to Matt's book, Double Talk
(01:15):
and Jive. The release date changed while we were producing
this season. However, preorders are available now. Follow Matt Sorum
on social media for details. Here's my conversation with Matt Sorum. Matt,
(01:40):
it's good to have you here. Welcome to my show today.
So cool, Brian, right here in Paul Springs, California. Right
here we are kicking it in Palm Springs, driving our
v eights around this old town. And so we have arrived,
my friend, it's so fun, right petard Is, and now
we're here, we are that's all right, that's rightly in
life of living, a life of flip flops and and
(02:02):
Bermuda shorts began with the Night for me, that's it. Well,
so I was thinking about it in some ways for
a lot of people out there, You, for them, would
embody the sex, drugs, and rock and roll stereotype that
a lot of people have of rock stars. And you
just had a book come out that tells a lot
(02:23):
of juicy stories. But we're gonna try and get to
a few of them. There as a teaser to the book.
There's no way we can cover everything, but we'll get
to what we can. It wash. It's been a wild
ride so far. The wild rides continuing, I hope, but
maybe not in that aspect. In a different way. It's
a new wild ride. So tell us a little bit
(02:46):
about the book. It's title and it just was released.
Tell us about a little bit. Yeah, the books entitled
Double Double Talking Drive and you know, interesting title based
on a song that was ordered Unusual Illusions one and
two from the group I was in called Guns and
Roses of Them. Yeah. So my book really tells a
(03:10):
lot of tales of the trials and tribulations of being
in the business. And as you know, I've been in
a bunch of bands, so uh, you know the hills
and valleys. You know, a lot of hills and valleys,
like a lot of super highs and a lot of
super lows. And so Double Talking Job is sort of
(03:30):
my way of saying, Hey, this is gonna be really
a wild ride. It's gonna have a dark undercurrent of
kind of you know, the underneath underbelly of what people
really don't know. I mean they look at a band
like Guns and Roast and they say, oh, those guys
just must be party and you know, they think he
just got there by accident. You know, you didn't have
to work for it, right, You're just like, I'm in
(03:51):
a band, he's a rock star. He's like whoa, you know,
it's like, well, no, actually getting there. It was a
lot of hard work and and and when I got
in that band, and in the book I talked about,
you know, my drug addiction escalated based on the fact
that in those days, being in Guns and Roses was
what I felt like being on a pirate ship. It
(04:14):
was ho ho, you know, and and I felt like
I had to do it. It was almost like the
old expression waving the flag for rock and roll. It's like,
I'm in this band. The first thing I did is
when I got to take my first tattoo, you know,
because they were tattooed all over their bodies and I
(04:35):
wanted to be part of the gang, you know. I
was like, I'd come from the Colt, this British band,
which we'll talk about in a minute. But once I
joined G and R, it was just off the chain,
like go in, going in hard or or you're not
in the band, you know you might yeah, And you
(04:56):
know I remember I remember being on the road one night.
It was a sunny night, we were in pough Kitsie,
New York. Oh yeah, and here we've been on the
road like six months and pretty much every night was
a party, and I thought, maybe i'll sleep tonight. You know,
it's Pakitsie. There couldn't possibly be anything happening, you know.
So I'm in my room and I get a call
(05:17):
from the keyboard player, Dizzy Reed, which we can talk
a little bit about later, but ah, he calls Matt,
get down to my room, you know, And I remember
going down the hallway and opening the door and it
was like a scene out of Caligula, you know. It
was just on the hell I mean, you know, and
he rounded up like all the local party people because,
(05:39):
as we know, being in a band, we're on the
road forever. But for them, it's the greatest night of
their lives, that's right, one night only for them. Yeah,
for us, it's another night. Yeah, you're coming to town
and everyone wants to celebrate with you. So what are
you gonna do? I mean, you're a young man, you're
in a band, you know, you do it, And especially
(06:00):
in that that band, I really felt like obligated to
you know. Yeah, it might be the avatar of all
the rock era that might embody partying rock stars more
than any other band, you know. I think it came
from the guys that came before us, right, So we
grew up with great bands like you look at the Stones,
(06:20):
you go, I want to be like the Stones, I mean,
you know. And then of course here I was a drummer,
and who are my favorite drummers? You know, John Bonham
and Keithman, who both died of alcoholism. You know, but
you didn't seem to That didn't seem to register you.
You looked at the glitz, but not so much that. Yeah,
(06:41):
the final scene she always rolls Royce into a swimming pool. Yeah,
I love that. And when you're out on the road,
there was no information because there was no internet, so
I used to say more in three area codes away,
let's go. Right. It was like, even if even if
you had somebody that you had answer to the how
would they know what you're doing? They wouldn't because there
(07:02):
was none of this. That's right. There's no sort of retweeting,
no pictures of you in that hotel room of disease
people typsy people asked me what happened to rock and roll?
What do you think app and I said, well, I
think the Internet screwed us up in some respects. You know,
you have to look at the old days and you
know the mystique of rock and roll when we used
(07:24):
to think about led Zepp when in the cast, that's right. Yeah,
he'd be like, they're in the castle and they're writing like,
you know, this epic album that. Yeah, can you imagine
them like John Bottom tweeting a picture of his mic
set up? Yeah, we don't want to know. And there's
no evidence because of because if they just the occurrence
(07:47):
of there was no internet. Yeah. So as a young man,
I guess that's sort of what I had the way
I looked at it, and then once I got into
the band, you know, it was no holds barred and
I'm glad I did it that way. I mean, and
in the book it will be scraped sort of the
transition of what happens and what what goes to to
the demise of g n R, which when we broke
(08:07):
up in in ninety seven, everyone started to leave, and
but it wasn't based around clear thought. You know that
everything was a little like what decision would you make
if you were like a little more sobered up. It
was a a careeming quality. Well, let's get into some
of the early years. So I've read that you dropped
(08:30):
out of high school to be a drummer and got
caught up pretty seriously in the drug scene, selling pot
and smuggling cocaine heavy ship. Yeah, this is the book
goes deeper into it. But basically, I just didn't want
to have a real job. So you know, where I
grew up in Orange County, Dana Point Harbor was sort
of mecca for for smuggling, And if you look at
(08:52):
where I grew up, I just would know all these
guys that would be having nice cars, and you were
my friends, and it's like, what do you do? You man?
You guy? He's like, well, I just I saw weed.
So in between that gigs and stuff, I was like
struggling financially. Obviously, I was making a couple hundred bucks
a week playing Top forty or playing with Greg or
(09:13):
getting a little session. I meet this guy says he
wants to start a band and wants me to be
a drummer, and he's gonna pay me a salary, but
we're only gonna play once a month. Well, I'm in
what do I gotta do, so you're kind of schedule.
So in the book it describes this guy and I
end up finding out he's a big cocaine smuggler and
(09:35):
that's how he's paying the bill. And we're booked out
in like for months at like Baby of Studios. Remember
the Athletic club right up in the back. We would
go book that place. And he's like, you produced the album,
and there's endless flows of cash, and then there was
a lot of cocaine involved. So he offers to get
(09:57):
me in on the smuggling thing, and I end up
working for him, trafficking kilos of of the stuff overseas,
and it's got pretty crazy. If you read the book,
it goes in and when I get out, which is
the perfect time when you get out of the drug business,
I just had an intuitive feeling that something was going
(10:17):
to go wrong very quickly. Okay, let's just have just
a snapshot of one of your sort of main deals
that okay, that sort of chipped you off that this
might not be the career that you're going to keep
for Well, you know, it's interesting when I talk about this,
because you know it's for me. Now I look back
and I go, well, it's not something to brag about,
(10:38):
but I did do it. So I have to be truthful.
And the one I wrote my book, the thing I
wanted to be was honest, and I wanted to kind
of speak to the time that it happened. So my
voice changes throughout the book, and you know, I have
to bring back. I can't just be like totally clean
about it. It's the way I went down. So I
would literally strap two kilos of cocaine into my body,
(11:01):
very much like the film May Night Express. And in
those days when you went through UM security checkpoints at
the airport, there was no no you just walked through.
But there were dogs once well there was dogs, and
there was these guys that would watch you from behind,
these little pedestals that would look at you. So my
(11:21):
deal was, don't do any beforeaking on the plane, right,
don't be sweating. But I used to use this large
exercise UM like velcrow apparatus that they used to use.
It looked like a wetsuit and I would get literally
put on a baggy shirt and a large jacket and
I would get on the plane and most of my
drops are Hawaii, and uh, I would do that flight,
(11:45):
and I would take a surfboard with me, because I
did you kind of looked like a surfer. Yeah, I
had longer hair, and you know, I maybe go to
the tanning booth if I was like, because I was
partying pretty hard on those days, so I wasn't out
in the sun a lot, like never yah together. So
I would get on the plane like the surfer kid
(12:05):
fly to Hawaii and I would land there, and I
go to Waikiki and meet these guys and pick up
the cash and and I get back on the plane,
usually caring about grand cash wrapped around me, and go
back and drop the money and get my couple of
grand out of the deal. And that would get me
by for whatever amount of time. And and then, uh,
(12:29):
towards the end of that series of jobs that I
did for that guy, I just not that I was
doing enough drugs to get paranoid that way, but yeah,
probably I was. I was like, we're being watched and
all that. So I basically said, I gotta get out
of this right And exactly around that time, I get
(12:50):
the call to go on audition for the COLT. When
I left the guy that took my place on the
smuggling thing, got arrested going over, so they kind have
their number. They spent twenty years in federal penitentiary. He
ended up getting out in ten and it was international
smuggling charge, which that could have been me. And was
(13:10):
the guy who brought you into it? Was he one
of the people that were arrested or no, just the
guy who took your place to guy I took my
place doing the run. And he didn't writ anybody out,
thank god, because we were all freaking out, like, you know,
he's just gonna dump on all of us and we're
gonna be But when he never did write us out,
he did his time, and and you know, every day
(13:30):
I was waiting for a knock on the door for
a while, and but luckily at that point I moved
back to Hollywood. I was living down a long beach
and I in auditioned to the cult. I remember, I
don't know if you ever had this experience, but you
get a gig, but maybe you didn't know if he
completely how to get you had to wait a little
bit of time. So I got real superstitious about telling
(13:53):
anybody because Ian Astbury hadn't signed off on me yet,
so everyone would go, hey, how did the audition going.
I go, you know, I don't know, man, even though
Billy Duffy told me I had the gig, and I
just remember in those days, you know, dress cud was
very important. My buddy Terry Nails and Steve Jones and said,
don't wear your cowboy boots, you know Steve Jones, we're
(14:16):
all black. Yeah. For the call. Yeah, so I remember,
you know, she's something about your hey. You know, it's
kind of it was a little too poofy. Yeah, it
was a little big big for the call. Yeah. The
call was like actually it was called the Death Could
originally Yead the Death Call. Southern Death called said he
(14:37):
had this gothic kind of thing, and uh, you know,
so I dressed like that and went in there and
and then I waited for like two weeks to sing anything.
And then me and Astbury came back from London. We
did one more rehearsal and he came in. He looked
at me and he turned around and I go into
detail on the book, but turned around and looked at
(14:57):
me and he said, you got the gig, but just
smile so much. Yeah, that's perfect. So, I mean, it
is the Southern Death Cala. You want to make sure
you and I would you know that material like, And
I think that was the kind of the time when
I became the kind of drummer that could morph in
some different guys, because I needed to really sort of
(15:19):
just fit the bill right and in entirely like the
look how I was going to be in the band
and it and I got that gig, and within like
four or five days a rehearsal, we were on the
road with Metallica. The girls that would come to our
show were different than the regular rock girls. They were
usually gothic, you know, black hair and like red lips,
(15:40):
and they all loved Ian of course, but he was
not available, you know, he was just this very sort
of behind the scenes lead singer guy always had a girlfriend.
So me and Billy Duffy just basically would kind of
purvey that, you know, you had to feel to yourself, Yeah,
you to meet the singer, okay or whatever we had
(16:02):
to say. I mean, just like, even if you have
no intentions of introducing you know how you know it
guys out there, he's here. Back to bus. That was
so much fun, and me and Billy Duffy hit it
off and we ended up becoming cohorts, you know, on
the on that particular and that was my first real
entry to Mount Now on a tour bus. Uh. You know,
(16:26):
there's catering. I have a dressing room. I've never really
experienced that before because I've gone through clubs and crappy
tours and bands, and you know, here I was. Now,
you get on that bus for the first time and
you remember, you like I've arrived. And remember the first
time I went out. We were in Vancouver, Canada. I'll
never forget it because I'm backstage and it's like some
(16:48):
catered like sushi thing. I'm like, what like sushi? You know,
I'm not I've never even had sushi. You're a right
and afford it. And there was Steve and Tyler and
Mont Molly Cruz there because in those days that was
the mecca for band's recording member Bruce Fairburn and Bob
(17:09):
Rock all recorded in Vancouver, so here they were was
my first show, and I was just like, oh, I
was pretty nervous. Yeah, I wouldn't managine it. I remember
I think I played the set like maybe double time
because it was so lucky. No, no, no, you know
I It's like, Wow, that went by really quick. You know,
(17:31):
it's like we could they pull you over and have
a word with you. Matt, you might want to calm down,
unders down it bring it back on the tambos. Yeah,
and he in my mind it went brilly fast. And
I've seen like stuff where the band had a good
meter to it. The Cult was probably the best fit
for me as a drummer. I guess people say that
still to this day. Let me let me ask you this.
(17:52):
Did he In and Billy of the Cult? Did they
ever like Hayes you as the new guy? Did you
get any shipped from them? They did weird ship like
when we go to Europe because I've never really been
to Europe before. Here I was this kid from California
and they're both British. Yeah, they're British. They would do
weird ship like, well we have to exchange the money
when we go over the border to Scotland. You know,
it's like it's the same money, right, it's like still
(18:15):
found Yeah, and ship like that, or like they would
remember being in the subway one time in Paris and
we were getting tickets to get on the subway and
I Ian told me to ask the lady tickets for
the go up and get the titty sports mate, and
he told me how to say it in French. Basically
it was troble right here, It's like suck my dick please,
(18:38):
basically we need three blue jobs and whatever. It was,
you know that kind of sick you know, the lads
like you know, like, oh, you know, rassholes, that kind
of stuff. Perfect. Yeah, So so that was a long
time to be on the road. Your first tour with
them was like in eighty five days or something. I
(18:58):
got in the year, so like, how many nights and
road did you guys were kind of crazy to night
at five a week a week of me. Yeah, and
then there's there's a part in the book where I
get walking pneumonia and uh, and well, you know, we
were drinking a lot. I I can't see I was
(19:20):
doing as much. It was actually kind of a little
bit of a good thing for me because that was
a drinking band, and cocaine in those days in Europe
was a lot harder to get. You couldn't really find it,
so that was a good thing and kind of weaned
be awful a little bit. But I was drinking a
lot of boothies without they would basically beer drinkers, and
and we partied every night. You know, we would drink
and I started feeling pretty ill and back I had this,
(19:43):
you know, pneumonia. Yeah, I feel all. I mean, as
you would say, I had the ships. You know, I
just did. It's sick. And I get up on stage
and you know, you've been sick and gone on stage
and everything's fine. When you're on stage, you feel like, oh,
I'm great, fine, and then you come off and you're like, oh,
oh man, right, you got to being sick again. I
(20:05):
had food pointon ing once on stage with Nicolette Larson,
and it was bad sushi, and I had to do
they They really pressed me into doing it as as
green as I looked, and I did the whole gig
sitting out of stool, just green. Yeah, came out. Well,
you know, as in our position being in a band,
we're not the guy can go. Hey, I can't do
(20:28):
the gig tonight. You know, you just gotta keep going.
You gotta keep going. And I had a bucket next
to me the whole thing, and and we'll have remember
one night. It's a really funny story in the book,
but you know, it was like somewhere in mid America.
I literally had to get off the drum stool and
run to the bathroom in the middle of the show.
I was just gonna implode up there I was, and
(20:52):
fucking in on the mic. Drummers gone for a shot
to the audience. I'm like, come on, man, I mean,
just you know, can you do like or something you discover?
It could have been worse. Man. I was playing in
Paris at the big theater. They're called bear c You've
probably played in the middle of Paris at bear Cy
(21:14):
and the bass player was wearing you know, white jeans
and a white vest, and he got the ships and
he ran off and as she's rough, you see, he
making for all seventeen thousand people. Yeah, but he came
(21:34):
back and finished the gig because Rock and Roll back
the room. So let's move on to g N R H.
And I guess eventually Slashing Duff saw you play with
the Cult and asked you to join. That's really where
it took off for you. How did that happen? Do
you remember that night? Oh? Yeah, It's in the book
and I'll never forget it. Because we're backstage the old
(21:55):
Universal Lamp Theater. That was our last game ship, I
remember it well, and a gato and and this limo
pulled up and the door opened, and I always say,
out poured slashing duff. They were like, and you know,
I had a troop of girls with them, and it
just looked so cool. It was just the most scallywag
(22:18):
bunch of guys I'd ever seen in my life. I
mean a hole of the level from the Stones. Even
in those days, they were just a mess, you know,
but in a very rock and roll away. Yeah. And
I remember they kind of came pouring out of the
limo and there was this like velvet rope area that
they had for them, like a table, and there was
(22:39):
a guy they had, you know, and I was like,
what the fund this is my gig, right, I mean,
they like they came in like they fucking owned the place.
And in those days they were based ban in the world,
and they poured in there and they had their little
entourage set up, and I remember I didn't even go
say anything to them. But then I played the show
(23:00):
and it was the end of the tour for the Call,
and we were pretty in those days. If you go
back and I can go back and watch old videos,
and it was prime Cold era. You know, we were
on fire, the band was MTV was raging. They were
an older time and was you know the guy. You know,
it's just great. So I did that show and then
(23:21):
h I come off the road and I had no home.
I was a vagabond. I had a suitcase. What do
I do? I go to my mom's house in Orange
County and that's when my body completely fell out. And
I realized, you know, when you've gotten home off the
tour and then you get really sick, It's like your
(23:42):
body says, okay, now that you're home to guy for
like a month. And I ended up going, man, it's
I'm really something really wrong with me. And I went
to the doctor and he x RAYBI and said, you're
you have one whole lung full of fluid. You got
walking him own on. I broke out in this crazy rash.
(24:02):
Where had that that white camp what's that stuff called
calaminet all over my body? I was just like I was,
And it wasn't even affective because the raph is coming
from inside outside. I remember Mom, mommy, like she's bringing
me like juice, and and she one day she walks
(24:23):
in and uh, I think I said this in the
rock roll of Fame of my speech. When I get them,
my mom says, there's somebody named Slush on the phone,
and and I get on the phone slash and slashes,
Hey man, this slash. You know you've talked to him.
He's so quiet and that's very soft spoken like slash, Like, yeah,
(24:46):
that's Roses. He basically says our drummer. You know, he
said rehab doesn't look like he's gonna get out anytime soon.
And we saw you play and we loved watching you play.
Can you be up here to work with us on
this record? I'm like when he's like tomorrow tomorrow, tomorrow,
right tomorrow tomorrow ye movie version that Yeah, and you've
(25:13):
got walking Yeah, I'm sick. I'm likely. Yeah. Where people go, man,
you look great, because I was all skinny and like yeah,
and I was not feeling it. But I'm like, I go, Okay,
where am I going? And they go, we'll get you
an apartment at the oak Woods. That's trouble. Yeah. Yeah,
I've done a couple of stints there. A musician who's
(25:37):
come through l A has to understand it. They come on,
They're get me a place, the hot tub, the elevator.
I was upset, was out of control, out of control,
and so they give me a place and I moved
up there, you know, and I start rehearsing for the
usually allegiance records, for the recording of the records. But
I haven't told the Coult yet. So yeah, how did
(25:59):
that go? Tell me? How did that go down? Talking
to the cult about your new gig or had you
assured your spot in gen R yet? I hadn't assured
my spot, and I wasn't sure quite where where I
was gonna stand with that if I was just gonna
make the record or go back to the Colt. Right. Yeah,
So about a week or two went by and Slash said, hey, man,
(26:19):
let's go up to my house. You know, we're gonna
I'm gonna have a little barbecue and you know me
and we're gonna go up and come with us. And so,
you know, we would go out to little bars and stuff.
But this particular night I went up to his house
and that's when we all sat down and we would
drink Bocca cranberries. That was a Guns of Roses cocktail.
One of my favorites, and Spasha Cranberry that of course
(26:45):
we're gonna get the mixture right, and uh, that's when
you pop the question. You know, we want you in
the band and we really like playing with you and
want you to join the band. Where let's Steven go
blah blah blah. So I said, well, you know, I'm
already in a band. I said, but I gotta let
me talk to those guys. But thank you. And so
(27:05):
I took Billy Duffy hat to lunch, and remember typical
Billy Duffy awesome. I told him when it happened and
that they were going to offer me a membership in
the band. They were going to cut me in, and
I said, how can I turn that down? And uh,
he's Billy says will if I played drums, I would
take it. And then and then by I said, then
(27:28):
you know, thanks Billy, I think I'm gonna do it.
He says, I guess you're buying lunch. Then typical Billy
I go, yeah, I'll get the lunch. Okay, well you
did ask him out for the one mistake I did
make in that was I didn't have the same conversation
with Ian because this day I think he's still mad
at me about it, but I always I always wish
(27:51):
him happy birthday and stuff. So when I made the transition,
I that's when I started my journey with G and R,
which you know, it was pretty wild and just the
right time. Use Your Illusion was like the biggest album
(28:13):
in the world. That's incredible, And you were playing to
like crowds about a hundred thousand more doing massive drum solos. Right,
were you nervous the first time? Like you drum solo lights?
Just you Well, I gotta tell you that happened because
I you know, the craziest part was that's when my
cocaine came back pretty strong, because I always say when
(28:34):
I joined G and R, it was kind of like
walking into an opium den. They were all on Heroin
slithering around. Yeah, and I see you guys, I don't
know about this Heroin thing, like try cocaine because this
you guys are all like not not and ship like
because the fact I might know where you might get something.
(28:54):
You know, it's I swear to you, it's not especially
the drummer, Like the drummer on Heroin bad because the
drummer falls asleep on the drum stool, it all falls apart. So,
you know, God blessed Stephen. But you know, I think
they got ready in but you know, because that that
particular addiction. But um, I said, you guys, we need
to get going here. You know, because when I went
(29:16):
in there, it was very dark sort of period of
that band, and they were trying to find that second album.
When Axel came in and sat down on the piano
and started playing November Rain, I was like, there's pianos
in this band. I just I was like, wait a minute,
so that's not in my writer. I like that first record,
(29:37):
that Appetype thing was killer. What's the piano? Right? That's
very adult, very adult? And he had this opus, you know,
November Rain, and his strange was one song went out
for like twenty minutes. That was one piece of music.
So we started rehearsing all this music and it got
very grand. Oh yeah, it was a lot of stuff.
(29:58):
I thought we were going to record, you know, thirty
four or thirty five songs, and we're gonna do one
record twelve thirteen songs. And then another big part of
the book is when Axel comes into the studio and
we were recording M eight where you guys, I know
you recorded a lot, and Axel comes in full regalia,
(30:19):
you know, headband, the whole thing, and he's got like yeah,
like just full, just ready to go. And he announces
to us that we're gonna do two records. It's gonna
be a double album. We're putting it all out. And
we're all like what, and he says, but I've got
the idea of how we're going to do it. And
this is the moment I realized that as crazy as
(30:42):
Acle could be, he was a genius. And he says,
we're going to release the album simultaneous but separate, and
he had the whole reason why I wanted to do that,
since the covers are going to be the same piece
of art, but they're gonna be different colors Volume one
and Volume two. And the reason I want that to
be that way is that they'll be in the bend
(31:04):
and not behind the cast register. Because if an album
was over twenty bucks, remember if it was like a
right good good point, like a little marketing thing going on.
He was just smart like that, And then he could
go back to Daily Geff and to renegotiate the deal
and then we could tour. He was saying, was we
could tour for five years straight. And in those days
(31:26):
when those albums were released, you know, I remember Stuff
called me and said sold a million copies one day.
You know, I was like wow. And the wild Ride
just from that point forward, things just got really crazy.
It was like being Mr Toad's wild But yeah, I'm
just curious to like, so everyone but the drummers on heroin.
(31:47):
Yet there's incredible chaos as if everyone's on cocaine, because that,
for those who don't know, lends itself to chaos. Yeah,
how did it get so chaotic? What? Well, I'd like
to say that I did. I did get them to
do more cocaine, and like, you know, that's your contribution.
And Duff Duff never really did much herein so he
was really a big drinker. And and but Slash started
(32:10):
coming around, and then we Slash always had says the
amazing work ethic. I don't know if you ever heard
this story about Axel showing up late to sing with
the Rolling Stones. Keith Richard said, I slept in the
chandelier last night. What's the excuse. I'm here all the time, right?
I love it I slept in the chandelier and I'm
(32:32):
here on time. And Slash was that guy. He could
party all night, but he'd still be a rehearsalator, and
he crapped that whip where we were like, if you're
gonna party, our job is being in a rock and
roll band. If we can't get here at noon, you know,
that's not cool. So do what you need to do,
but be here. And that's a great story, man. So
(32:53):
we would we would rock every day and then you know,
we would do all of our stuff. But you know,
if somebody got out of line, you know, would be
like and in the book, I do get outline a
couple of times because something started happening inside that things
got so crazy and so chaotic that I completely had
no control of where I was going that day. In
(33:13):
the book, it gets kind of scary for me, and
I become a guy that goes on the sun of
benders and because actually I was, you know, just a
lot of fear. Did you go missing ever? Yeah, Yeah,
I went missing. I went missing in the jungle of
Crocot's Venezuela for a gig that was supposed to happen
in Venezuela. And they found me on a balcony of
(33:34):
a hotel. There's a bunch of really good, juicy ones
about me going on these crazy adventures. I'll never forget it.
We you know, we used to fly in the seven
seven MGM Grand and we all had our own bedrooms
and there was five stewards Is on the plane, and
you know, of course we were all sleeping with them,
and you know, it was just all like I was like,
(33:54):
you know, we wanted to be the Rolling Stones, cat
Sucker Blues. That's you know, that's what we we're doing.
It was just like, you know, people rolling down the
aisles of the plane while you're taking off and pick
up girls in the strip bar and like Houston fly
with us. You know, I forget who they were by
the time you arrived. Yeah, give him a Southwest ticket
back or you know, you know here we were. I mean,
(34:18):
you know, and like I say in the book, I
try to like write it in the voice that was then,
you know, because even looking back and talking through and
I'm like, wow, okay, uh, it was pretty heathenistic, you know,
but I was a younger man. It was a different time.
(34:38):
I never would like to think that anyone got hurt
in the process as far as like girls or you know,
everybody was in the party together, you know, coming to
your town. For sure, it was the time. Yeah, you
know that time has changed to they wanted to have
fun and I'm just doing the thing that was rock
and roll in those days. It was exactly that. But
(35:00):
by the end when that seven landed, I MGM grant
and I'll never forget it. It It was like song remains
the same with all the lingos pull out and we
literally remember looking at Dove going, oh, ship like I
used to gauge my alcoholism and they're looking at those guys.
We were all puffy look back on my face was
like this, you know, it's just like you know, it's
(35:23):
like liquid, you know. And uh we poured off that
plane three and a half year tour, played around the
world four times, and we were cooked and we never
we never got back back. And when we went into
trying to write that that next album was when I
got really dark and me and I so finally have
(35:44):
it out. He fires me and I remember I had
this killer house full rock star pad like by the
Beechwood Canyon, by the Hollywood Sign, six thousand square foot
pad with two elevated ars and recording studio, and I
remember I had two black portions because I forgot about
(36:04):
the first one, just like like, oh, I already bought it.
I already bought one. Now I had a career and
I had a target that so I remember pulling in
and I was producing this band a full recording studio
there and that band campbell Box they weren't remember them,
and Kevin and All I got to the Maverick or something.
(36:27):
They were all staying at my house because they had
all these rooms we were working on music. And I
walked in. I remember I had a case of beer.
Follow up Jack or something set act so fired me
and I think, this time it's for real. And that
was it. You know, I got the letter from the
lawyers and that was a really that was a really
(36:49):
strange time. And in the book it talks about sort of,
you know, okay, their gigs gone. Now what I've just
been in the biggest band in the world. I'm going
to follow this up and then um, you know, I
get clean. After that, I go through this period of
coming off of that you know, becomes the addiction got
(37:11):
really out of control because now it's really, let's just
face it. I was afraid of what the fund was
coming next. In retrospect, I always say to people it's
like kind of like watching somebody else's movie. It was
fucking out of control. But at the same time, it
was the greatest era of that particular band, and I
happened to be there, so that was a gift. And
(37:34):
then I always say because of that band, I've been
able to navigate the rest of my life based on
that's probably my highest accolade. So if people are even
lying people up and go, how many people know the
Cold out of ten? Maybe it might be too how
many people know that a Revolver? Maybe the Guns and
(37:56):
Roads ten. Yeah, so that's taking me down different paths
in my life, the journey, you know, my entrepreneurial efforts,
my things that I'm doing on you know, and charity,
and it's all based on my legacy with these particular groups,
especially gin R. So yeah, that's cool. What those were
(38:17):
the Healthyon days? Man, you really like you to have
been a part of it, and amazing I've heard that
you mentioned Felber Revolver was one of the best times
your career and as a founding member that fame came
(38:39):
to you in another band, which rarely happens, whereas G
and R of course was huge before you got there.
What made the experience with Felber Revolver so much better
for you? Uh? Well, you know that I was equal
in the band, um, which was cool. I was very
visionary in in that particularly a group. I was very
(39:02):
very respect Dolphin Slash always respected me musically and my
my sensibility for certain things about the music, if it
was arrangement or stylistically or production. Um, even fashion, I'd
be like Slash wear that red shirt like you know.
(39:24):
And then when me and Scott Wiland came together and
Scott joined the group, me and him had sort of
a sane sensibility about taking the rock and roll and
bringing it into now somehow, you know, making it current.
Like we couldn't. We knew we couldn't make another Guns
from Roses record with Scott Wild as the vocalist. We
(39:45):
couldn't rest on our laurels and just make like a
retro rock album, if you will. So we made a
really serious choice of trying to compete in a modern
rock and roll world. And here we were. You know,
I think I was like forty. When we launched that
band two thousand and four, I was so I was
forty four years old, you know, and we made a
(40:09):
really big well, everything that went into that band was like, Okay,
we're all sober, we're you know, we're clean. I got
really great shape. Scott was doing a lot better. We
got him cleaned up and he was sober that yeah, yeah,
we well we had some issues and that's in the book,
but I want to go too into detail with that,
because that's there's a couple of really long ended stories
(40:33):
where when we get him in the band, it's not
completely perfect at the beginning, we put you that way,
but he comes around and and things are on fire.
And um. The greatest thing that happened for me with
that particularly band was I wrote the riff the first
song that launched the band, which was the song I
(40:53):
wrote on guitar called set Me Free. And I had
the riff and I'll never forget playing it for Slack
because it dand Dodd do Dad and I played it.
But you know, here I am. You know, if I
was to play in front of you, I would be nervous.
I could be in front of fifty thousand people if
you're standing there. But I had to play guitar for
(41:15):
you know, you were slash. I'd be like, you know,
and you know, I can bag a few chords, but
here I got this riff slash. I really like that,
except that one note, you know. But then he came
up with this other whole thing and we recorded it,
and we got this big soundtrack for Angley's version of
(41:35):
The Hulk. Oh yeah. And we got this crazy uh
licensing deal and it was like probably more money than
I ever seen in my entire career, like in one
fatal swoop. It was just like what you know. And
then a publishing deal, and then we got signed by
our c A. Claud Davis, and it was sort of
the end of the big record deals and all of
(41:56):
a sudden, here I was equal. I had publishing deal
because I had written songs, so all the things were
really great in the band. The look of the band
felt right. We got the right guy to mix it,
Andy Wallace, and Clive Davis is such a genius. I mean,
I remember waiting five months to release the album. It
(42:19):
was done. We had the artwork conceptually, we had the
title contraband we we loved the title because it was
just about us. We were contract you know, we were like,
we created this great video slither where we went in,
but we had to wait and Clida, wait, we're waiting,
We're waiting. We were like, we waited a week in
(42:40):
another week. Why why were waiting? Clussus trust me. I
remember we were doing it like a show in Vegas.
Went to do like corporate or something, and we all
got called into a conference room and it was the
you know, the phone thing in the middle of table,
and Clive came on the phone. It was I believe
it was a two these day and he says, gentlemen,
(43:03):
I'd like to give you the great news that you
have entered the Billboard charts at number one and we
sold two hundred and fifties six thousand records in the
first week. And uh, it pretty quickly jumped to platinum.
And then but that was Clive because Clive was waiting
for the week when there was no other competition to
(43:26):
make impact for the release. Yeah, because the week before
that was very true, it's gonna be usher like whatever
at that time. Yeah, it's beyond our pay grade those
kind of decisions. Yeah, he was just you know, and
then trusting that he was right on all fronts, because
that guy is just like, that's his world, and so
he was a big guy in that. And then the
(43:48):
great thing that happened was we got nominated for three
Grammys and you know, I never won a Grammy before,
and Roses got nominated for Grammy. It was a very
famous year where we lost the Jeffields all heading category.
We're like Acolonge, I mean, what remember that, it's all acts,
just what's tall and they won they won, yeah, sacrilege
(44:13):
heavy metal category. So I remember we went we won
one Grammy out of that. That was the year the
Green Day had the big records of Green Day got
this rock album. We were in that category. They had
that crazy So all that stuff was happening, you know,
and then um, unfortunately during the second album a lot
(44:33):
of bad habits came back. And there's a lot about
it in the book, But I fell off the wagon
after about six years being green and so some of
that same chaos that you'd experienced with J and R
started rearing its head with you a little bit of
that same chaos. Yeah, it's just like I don't know
(44:53):
if it was like the feeling of being out of
the road too long. We were all the first tour
was eighteen months, and I remember thinking, they're dang only
in the carrot because we're getting like big offers and
we're all beat up, and things were starting to go wrong,
and we're starting to be tension in the band and
everyone was getting back into their old habits, and Scott
(45:13):
was getting high and it was getting weird. It was
just starting to be enough fun and and Slash was
over and I could tell me it's over it. He
was ready to just so we we basically fired Scott
April one, we were in Amsterdahim whenever we get it.
We gave him like we let her. Literally all got
(45:34):
in a van and split and he got handed a
notice you're fired. Basically, it's not April fools. This is
for real, you know, looking back from retrospect loosing Scott
and stuff and going and looking back at him and
seeing how great he really was, you know, even though
he had his hiccups. Fuck, he was great. Yeah. It
was a great front man, great singer, funk. When he
(45:56):
was out there some nights, I'd be just like, holy shit, man,
Uh he had all the moves, you know, he was
like a little bit iggy pop mixed with like Perry Farrell,
mixed with Mick Jagger, mixed with you know, he just
emulated all these Bowie he Yeah, a lot of Bowie
in there. We did a gig together. We did a
live aid together in a Hyde park, remember that, yeah,
(46:17):
speaking freaking out. Yeah, I remember that day because there's
a picture of me and right before I walk out,
you know, here we are two hundred thousand seeds and
Paul reaches over and he shakes my hand. He goes
knock him dead, right, and I'm like, I went smaller
part here, I like, I mean, she wouldn't have you know.
And he's standing there watching us, right, you guys are there,
(46:40):
but he freaking freaking out. But there's a way of
doing that. Yeah, I mean you know what I mean. Like,
you know, you're on stage of all the times. It's
not a big deal to you because you've had that relationship.
But for me, it was like, holy shit, it's a beetle.
I didn't even look at him for the first six
months on stage. I'm a member of the band and
I'm literally looking down on our chiefs, like don't look
(47:01):
at him. You're like a might real screw up. I'm
sure you'll screw up if you even look at him.
Probably one of my greatest adventures recently was Billy Gibbons,
and I think it really brought me back to the
core of why became a musician. Billy Gibbons is the living,
breathing example of the pure vagabond um traveling minstrel. He
(47:31):
is the real deal. And I when I was on
the bus with him, I was just like I was
in awe about how good I felt just being out
there again, traveling down the highway in this bus. Didn't
give a ship if I had an hotel room, I
was having to be in my bug and the five
was killer. You know. We made sure that we had
(47:54):
like he liked sup that stage every day when we
rolled in. We all have the Amazon, We told stories,
We listen to music every night, and I just it
gave me a whole new, renewed sense of why I
started to play music in the first place. And I said,
I want to be like that guy right on it.
I mean, there's so few of them. It's like Willie Nelson,
(48:15):
Billy Gibbons, you know, And then that's sort of like
being a little bit older. Now, why do you want
to do it any other way? Right? I mean you're
working with one of the greatest artists of all time,
and I'm sure you guys have a machine that just
rolls right, and you do your gig and you you
(48:35):
have a great time and play these amazing the greatest
songs ever written. Yeah, it's it's it's fortunate territory. That's
for damn sure. Yeah. Well this has been a blast man. Listen,
we're gonna wrap it up in the lightning round. We'd
like to call the encore. Well, it said that tragedy
plus time equals humor. What's the most embarrassing thing that's
(48:57):
happened to you on stage? And how did you get
through it? Uh? Axel told me to stop at Giant
Stadium UM one time, and I was supposed to watch
because he would always pull out this whistle, and the
whistle meant we were going to start something called night train. Sure,
so I do walk from to John Block, right, and
then I go do do do do do do? I'm there, right,
(49:20):
I'm like huge like that right, and I didn't see
also check out the whistle and he's looking at me
and he goes and I'm like, no, go, I'm I'm
in right. Can we just switch it up? But everyone's
done the same. It's not a guitar change. And I
look at I think it's Gilby in those days, fucking start,
(49:40):
motherfucker go and he's like he's like this, like nope,
and so I'm going for a while, and also goes
on the mic. He goes stop. So I get up,
I take the drumsticks. I just motherfucking through the That
was trump and I would fuck you that's one way
(50:05):
to happen. But it was like it was like you
pull it up on YouTube. I think it shows the
whole scene. But the audience loved it. I love it.
Was that the snare drum you you drove your six
through or no, I drove Yeah, you wouldn't need that
on the next sor that's like one of those Yeah.
Do you have any uh preshow rituals or superstitions that
(50:29):
you Yeah. I don't do it as much anymore, but
I used to have a whole thing with underwear. I
always had to wear red underwear and then um, I
had a chain that always wore around my neck and
I would chew gumps with three songs and um, but
that was fucked up because the camera guys in the
front always had these horrible photos because they're also used
(50:50):
for three and I like, yeah, I always look like shit.
I'm like, oh, I wonder what. But so the chain.
One time, I remember were playing some normal modome and
I had this chrome hearts chain and I remember being
halfway around in the golf car going hold on, I
can't go on. I'm going with chin right, and they're like,
(51:10):
what the fund, come on, we gotta go you. I'm like,
I gotta go back. I can't play. And that's the
last thing of amazing. So our jobs, you know, are
so loud and it's exhausting and all that. We all
know that what do you do while on tour these
days to stay healthy and recharge and stuff? God, isn't
(51:32):
it different? You know It's like you go backstage now
it's sucking smoothies and you know, wheat grass and yoga,
you know, And I love that, you know, Like I said,
My everything I'm telling you in these stories is it's
the old Meum, I go out of the road down,
I'm I'm stretching. You know, It's all about stretching, like
drinking plenty of water, you know. I mean, we're not
(51:56):
even thinking about water in the old days, but now
I got to drink a lot of water. I gotta
make sure I get the right amount of rest. My
job is to stay as calm, and I found that
if I stay relaxed, I have a great show. It's
all about things staying show. Oh, let me ask you this,
what what new music are you're listening to right now?
(52:16):
My god, I'm out here in the desert. You know,
I got my vinyl going. I'm listening to all the
cool ship. But there's a young band that I really like.
And whenever there's kind of a little bit of a
movement of musicians playing instruments that are young, it excites me.
Like I know, people have had an issue with um
GREATAVM Fleet being too Zeppelin or whatever, but the reality
(52:39):
is young kids don't really know Zeppelin, so anybody's playing
an instrument is cool. There's a band called Joyous Wolf
that I'm really watching out for. If you heard him, no,
I haven't. Um they kind of remind me of a
young I want to say Sabbath meets Lint Thin Lizzy
and that excites me like a new generation of the
(53:02):
stuff we grew up on, kids that are studying the
good ship but somehow bringing it. So before we wrap
it up here, Uh, what are you doing nowadays? I
know you get involved a lot of charities and stuff.
I tell us just a little bit about what they
mean to you. Well, I'm a I'm a co founder
of Adopt the Arts and that's my main charity that
I run with my partner, Abbey Burman, and we do
(53:24):
music and art for kids in public schools. And we
just finished a curriculum in a book that that really
embodies what we're what we're about. And I think a
lot of people think music is a curricular activity that
you know, maybe it's the first thing it needs to
go and setting up education. But in my opinion, how
(53:45):
much of life have we learned about being musicians? Obviously
we've traveled, but not only where the music comes from,
you know, culturally, but what kids can learn about working
together in a group setting. It's about competition, about listening, melody, harmony, harmony,
you know when you say the word harmony, that's very
(54:08):
important to me. And then I'm I'm in some animal
groups too. I'm on the board dolphin project Captivity of dolphins. Uh,
I don't believe in any captivity of any wild animals.
Great work, man, So, uh, what is your favorite original
song you've written or performed and are you writing and
(54:28):
producing anything new that you want to tell us about
right now? Yeah. Well, I gave a couple of solo records,
and I've just re released my second solo month Final,
which people can pick up on the Experienced Final dot com.
And I made a record I called the band Fierce
Joy Matt SRMs Fierce Joy. So I made this record
(54:50):
called Stratosphere, and I was sort of into like a
real uh, I don't know, just thinking about the world
in general when I wrote the record. And there's a
song on the album that was the lead track called
the Sea. It's kind of real petty Americana. And I
didn't even play drums on the kind of play guitar.
And so that's probably lyrically and the most meaningful. It's basically, uh,
(55:14):
an emotionally cleansing lyric sort of everything that we've been
talking about up until you noticed my voice has changed.
Now I'm this other guy, and I like to say
that my book is probably that kind of a life journey.
You know. We all go through stuff. I just happened
to do it in a puck and roll, you know,
and then you end up someplace and you look back
(55:36):
and they go, well, hey, that was why, and then
where are you now? So when I wrote that album,
that's exactly where I was at emotionally. When you write
a record, you're feeling something right, so you write sort
of what naturally comes to you, could be culturally or
what's happening in your life romantic. So that particular song,
(55:59):
it's probably my face with Well you got a full life, man.
I thank you so much man for making some time
for us today and coming on over here and sharing
your stories. It's been amazing. Well, I appreciate it. Brian,
this is a great vibe here. I feel like you
should be almost like now that sun is going down,
you know, the Martinis come out. That's right. Playboy after
Dark kind of thing, that's right. Some saxophone, that's rights.
(56:22):
Some light saxophone was brushes on a snare drawing. So
let's start that band, sax Is after Dark. Matt Sarman,
Brian ray Man, Springs, California. Yeah, band your life so far?
Keep going, keep rocking. That's right. Thanks so much man.
(56:58):
I'd like to thank everyone and for listening, and a
big thank you to my friend Matt Soreum for sharing
his amazing stories as much as we got to during
this interview, there's a lot we couldn't cover, so make
sure to grab a copy of his book, Double Talk
and Jive, available for preorder now. On Tour is a
production of iHeart Radio and Black Barrel Media. This show
(57:20):
is produced by Mandy Wimmer with executive producer Noel Brown
and I'm Your host Brian Ray. For more information about
On Tour, visit our website black Barrel Media dot com.
For behind the scenes photos from these interviews and to
interact with us. Visit our social media at on Tour
pod on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For more shows from
(57:42):
My Heart Radio and Black Barrel Media, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
favorite podcasts. M H
On Tour is a production of My Heart Radio and
Black Barrel Media. I'm your host, Brian ray On. This
show will take you behind the scenes of the music
business to give you the most raw and real tales
you've likely never heard before. We'll share our wildest, most unbelievable,
and yes, most embarrassing moments while on tour. Today I
reminisced with my good friend Matt Sorum Might get Away
(00:33):
Pat and Palm Springs. We chilled in my living room
and watched the sunset on my squeaky vineage leather chairs,
which you may hear from time to time. Matt was
one of my first calls when we decided to do
this show because his life defines rock and roll access
and he has the wild stories to prove it. Matt
was the drummer for Guns n Roses during the massive
(00:54):
success in Heyday of their double album Usual Illusion. He
won a Grammy in too thousand four with Velvet Revolver
and started his rock days with the Cult. However, before
there's a world famous drummer, he made ends meet smuggling
drugs across the border, and that's where we begin. You'll
hear a lot of references to Matt's book, Double Talk
(01:15):
and Jive. The release date changed while we were producing
this season. However, preorders are available now. Follow Matt Sorum
on social media for details. Here's my conversation with Matt Sorum. Matt,
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it's good to have you here. Welcome to my show today.
So cool, Brian, right here in Paul Springs, California. Right
here we are kicking it in Palm Springs, driving our
v eights around this old town. And so we have arrived,
my friend, it's so fun, right petard Is, and now
we're here, we are that's all right, that's rightly in
life of living, a life of flip flops and and
(02:02):
Bermuda shorts began with the Night for me, that's it. Well,
so I was thinking about it in some ways for
a lot of people out there, You, for them, would
embody the sex, drugs, and rock and roll stereotype that
a lot of people have of rock stars. And you
just had a book come out that tells a lot
(02:23):
of juicy stories. But we're gonna try and get to
a few of them. There as a teaser to the book.
There's no way we can cover everything, but we'll get
to what we can. It wash. It's been a wild
ride so far. The wild rides continuing, I hope, but
maybe not in that aspect. In a different way. It's
a new wild ride. So tell us a little bit
(02:46):
about the book. It's title and it just was released.
Tell us about a little bit. Yeah, the books entitled
Double Double Talking Drive and you know, interesting title based
on a song that was ordered Unusual Illusions one and
two from the group I was in called Guns and
Roses of Them. Yeah. So my book really tells a
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lot of tales of the trials and tribulations of being
in the business. And as you know, I've been in
a bunch of bands, so uh, you know the hills
and valleys. You know, a lot of hills and valleys,
like a lot of super highs and a lot of
super lows. And so Double Talking Job is sort of
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my way of saying, Hey, this is gonna be really
a wild ride. It's gonna have a dark undercurrent of
kind of you know, the underneath underbelly of what people
really don't know. I mean they look at a band
like Guns and Roast and they say, oh, those guys
just must be party and you know, they think he
just got there by accident. You know, you didn't have
to work for it, right, You're just like, I'm in
(03:51):
a band, he's a rock star. He's like whoa, you know,
it's like, well, no, actually getting there. It was a
lot of hard work and and and when I got
in that band, and in the book I talked about,
you know, my drug addiction escalated based on the fact
that in those days, being in Guns and Roses was
what I felt like being on a pirate ship. It
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was ho ho, you know, and and I felt like
I had to do it. It was almost like the
old expression waving the flag for rock and roll. It's like,
I'm in this band. The first thing I did is
when I got to take my first tattoo, you know,
because they were tattooed all over their bodies and I
(04:35):
wanted to be part of the gang, you know. I
was like, I'd come from the Colt, this British band,
which we'll talk about in a minute. But once I
joined G and R, it was just off the chain,
like go in, going in hard or or you're not
in the band, you know you might yeah, And you
(04:56):
know I remember I remember being on the road one night.
It was a sunny night, we were in pough Kitsie,
New York. Oh yeah, and here we've been on the
road like six months and pretty much every night was
a party, and I thought, maybe i'll sleep tonight. You know,
it's Pakitsie. There couldn't possibly be anything happening, you know.
So I'm in my room and I get a call
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from the keyboard player, Dizzy Reed, which we can talk
a little bit about later, but ah, he calls Matt,
get down to my room, you know, And I remember
going down the hallway and opening the door and it
was like a scene out of Caligula, you know. It
was just on the hell I mean, you know, and
he rounded up like all the local party people because,
(05:39):
as we know, being in a band, we're on the
road forever. But for them, it's the greatest night of
their lives, that's right, one night only for them. Yeah,
for us, it's another night. Yeah, you're coming to town
and everyone wants to celebrate with you. So what are
you gonna do? I mean, you're a young man, you're
in a band, you know, you do it, And especially
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in that that band, I really felt like obligated to
you know. Yeah, it might be the avatar of all
the rock era that might embody partying rock stars more
than any other band, you know. I think it came
from the guys that came before us, right, So we
grew up with great bands like you look at the Stones,
(06:20):
you go, I want to be like the Stones, I mean,
you know. And then of course here I was a drummer,
and who are my favorite drummers? You know, John Bonham
and Keithman, who both died of alcoholism. You know, but
you didn't seem to That didn't seem to register you.
You looked at the glitz, but not so much that. Yeah,
(06:41):
the final scene she always rolls Royce into a swimming pool. Yeah,
I love that. And when you're out on the road,
there was no information because there was no internet, so
I used to say more in three area codes away,
let's go. Right. It was like, even if even if
you had somebody that you had answer to the how
would they know what you're doing? They wouldn't because there
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was none of this. That's right. There's no sort of retweeting,
no pictures of you in that hotel room of disease
people typsy people asked me what happened to rock and roll?
What do you think app and I said, well, I
think the Internet screwed us up in some respects. You know,
you have to look at the old days and you
know the mystique of rock and roll when we used
(07:24):
to think about led Zepp when in the cast, that's right. Yeah,
he'd be like, they're in the castle and they're writing like,
you know, this epic album that. Yeah, can you imagine
them like John Bottom tweeting a picture of his mic
set up? Yeah, we don't want to know. And there's
no evidence because of because if they just the occurrence
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of there was no internet. Yeah. So as a young man,
I guess that's sort of what I had the way
I looked at it, and then once I got into
the band, you know, it was no holds barred and
I'm glad I did it that way. I mean, and
in the book it will be scraped sort of the
transition of what happens and what what goes to to
the demise of g n R, which when we broke
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up in in ninety seven, everyone started to leave, and
but it wasn't based around clear thought. You know that
everything was a little like what decision would you make
if you were like a little more sobered up. It
was a a careeming quality. Well, let's get into some
of the early years. So I've read that you dropped
(08:30):
out of high school to be a drummer and got
caught up pretty seriously in the drug scene, selling pot
and smuggling cocaine heavy ship. Yeah, this is the book
goes deeper into it. But basically, I just didn't want
to have a real job. So you know, where I
grew up in Orange County, Dana Point Harbor was sort
of mecca for for smuggling, And if you look at
(08:52):
where I grew up, I just would know all these
guys that would be having nice cars, and you were
my friends, and it's like, what do you do? You man?
You guy? He's like, well, I just I saw weed.
So in between that gigs and stuff, I was like
struggling financially. Obviously, I was making a couple hundred bucks
a week playing Top forty or playing with Greg or
(09:13):
getting a little session. I meet this guy says he
wants to start a band and wants me to be
a drummer, and he's gonna pay me a salary, but
we're only gonna play once a month. Well, I'm in
what do I gotta do, so you're kind of schedule.
So in the book it describes this guy and I
end up finding out he's a big cocaine smuggler and
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that's how he's paying the bill. And we're booked out
in like for months at like Baby of Studios. Remember
the Athletic club right up in the back. We would
go book that place. And he's like, you produced the album,
and there's endless flows of cash, and then there was
a lot of cocaine involved. So he offers to get
(09:57):
me in on the smuggling thing, and I end up
working for him, trafficking kilos of of the stuff overseas,
and it's got pretty crazy. If you read the book,
it goes in and when I get out, which is
the perfect time when you get out of the drug business,
I just had an intuitive feeling that something was going
(10:17):
to go wrong very quickly. Okay, let's just have just
a snapshot of one of your sort of main deals
that okay, that sort of chipped you off that this
might not be the career that you're going to keep
for Well, you know, it's interesting when I talk about this,
because you know it's for me. Now I look back
and I go, well, it's not something to brag about,
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but I did do it. So I have to be truthful.
And the one I wrote my book, the thing I
wanted to be was honest, and I wanted to kind
of speak to the time that it happened. So my
voice changes throughout the book, and you know, I have
to bring back. I can't just be like totally clean
about it. It's the way I went down. So I
would literally strap two kilos of cocaine into my body,
(11:01):
very much like the film May Night Express. And in
those days when you went through UM security checkpoints at
the airport, there was no no you just walked through.
But there were dogs once well there was dogs, and
there was these guys that would watch you from behind,
these little pedestals that would look at you. So my
(11:21):
deal was, don't do any beforeaking on the plane, right,
don't be sweating. But I used to use this large
exercise UM like velcrow apparatus that they used to use.
It looked like a wetsuit and I would get literally
put on a baggy shirt and a large jacket and
I would get on the plane and most of my
drops are Hawaii, and uh, I would do that flight,
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and I would take a surfboard with me, because I
did you kind of looked like a surfer. Yeah, I
had longer hair, and you know, I maybe go to
the tanning booth if I was like, because I was
partying pretty hard on those days, so I wasn't out
in the sun a lot, like never yah together. So
I would get on the plane like the surfer kid
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fly to Hawaii and I would land there, and I
go to Waikiki and meet these guys and pick up
the cash and and I get back on the plane,
usually caring about grand cash wrapped around me, and go
back and drop the money and get my couple of
grand out of the deal. And that would get me
by for whatever amount of time. And and then, uh,
(12:29):
towards the end of that series of jobs that I
did for that guy, I just not that I was
doing enough drugs to get paranoid that way, but yeah,
probably I was. I was like, we're being watched and
all that. So I basically said, I gotta get out
of this right And exactly around that time, I get
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the call to go on audition for the COLT. When
I left the guy that took my place on the
smuggling thing, got arrested going over, so they kind have
their number. They spent twenty years in federal penitentiary. He
ended up getting out in ten and it was international
smuggling charge, which that could have been me. And was
(13:10):
the guy who brought you into it? Was he one
of the people that were arrested or no, just the
guy who took your place to guy I took my
place doing the run. And he didn't writ anybody out,
thank god, because we were all freaking out, like, you know,
he's just gonna dump on all of us and we're
gonna be But when he never did write us out,
he did his time, and and you know, every day
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I was waiting for a knock on the door for
a while, and but luckily at that point I moved
back to Hollywood. I was living down a long beach
and I in auditioned to the cult. I remember, I
don't know if you ever had this experience, but you
get a gig, but maybe you didn't know if he
completely how to get you had to wait a little
bit of time. So I got real superstitious about telling
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anybody because Ian Astbury hadn't signed off on me yet,
so everyone would go, hey, how did the audition going.
I go, you know, I don't know, man, even though
Billy Duffy told me I had the gig, and I
just remember in those days, you know, dress cud was
very important. My buddy Terry Nails and Steve Jones and said,
don't wear your cowboy boots, you know Steve Jones, we're
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all black. Yeah. For the call. Yeah, so I remember,
you know, she's something about your hey. You know, it's
kind of it was a little too poofy. Yeah, it
was a little big big for the call. Yeah. The
call was like actually it was called the Death Could
originally Yead the Death Call. Southern Death called said he
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had this gothic kind of thing, and uh, you know,
so I dressed like that and went in there and
and then I waited for like two weeks to sing anything.
And then me and Astbury came back from London. We
did one more rehearsal and he came in. He looked
at me and he turned around and I go into
detail on the book, but turned around and looked at
(14:57):
me and he said, you got the gig, but just
smile so much. Yeah, that's perfect. So, I mean, it
is the Southern Death Cala. You want to make sure
you and I would you know that material like, And
I think that was the kind of the time when
I became the kind of drummer that could morph in
some different guys, because I needed to really sort of
(15:19):
just fit the bill right and in entirely like the
look how I was going to be in the band
and it and I got that gig, and within like
four or five days a rehearsal, we were on the
road with Metallica. The girls that would come to our
show were different than the regular rock girls. They were
usually gothic, you know, black hair and like red lips,
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and they all loved Ian of course, but he was
not available, you know, he was just this very sort
of behind the scenes lead singer guy always had a girlfriend.
So me and Billy Duffy just basically would kind of
purvey that, you know, you had to feel to yourself, Yeah,
you to meet the singer, okay or whatever we had
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to say. I mean, just like, even if you have
no intentions of introducing you know how you know it
guys out there, he's here. Back to bus. That was
so much fun, and me and Billy Duffy hit it
off and we ended up becoming cohorts, you know, on
the on that particular and that was my first real
entry to Mount Now on a tour bus. Uh. You know,
(16:26):
there's catering. I have a dressing room. I've never really
experienced that before because I've gone through clubs and crappy
tours and bands, and you know, here I was. Now,
you get on that bus for the first time and
you remember, you like I've arrived. And remember the first
time I went out. We were in Vancouver, Canada. I'll
never forget it because I'm backstage and it's like some
(16:48):
catered like sushi thing. I'm like, what like sushi? You know,
I'm not I've never even had sushi. You're a right
and afford it. And there was Steve and Tyler and
Mont Molly Cruz there because in those days that was
the mecca for band's recording member Bruce Fairburn and Bob
(17:09):
Rock all recorded in Vancouver, so here they were was
my first show, and I was just like, oh, I
was pretty nervous. Yeah, I wouldn't managine it. I remember
I think I played the set like maybe double time
because it was so lucky. No, no, no, you know
I It's like, Wow, that went by really quick. You know,
(17:31):
it's like we could they pull you over and have
a word with you. Matt, you might want to calm down,
unders down it bring it back on the tambos. Yeah,
and he in my mind it went brilly fast. And
I've seen like stuff where the band had a good
meter to it. The Cult was probably the best fit
for me as a drummer. I guess people say that
still to this day. Let me let me ask you this.
(17:52):
Did he In and Billy of the Cult? Did they
ever like Hayes you as the new guy? Did you
get any shipped from them? They did weird ship like
when we go to Europe because I've never really been
to Europe before. Here I was this kid from California
and they're both British. Yeah, they're British. They would do
weird ship like, well we have to exchange the money
when we go over the border to Scotland. You know,
it's like it's the same money, right, it's like still
(18:15):
found Yeah, and ship like that, or like they would
remember being in the subway one time in Paris and
we were getting tickets to get on the subway and
I Ian told me to ask the lady tickets for
the go up and get the titty sports mate, and
he told me how to say it in French. Basically
it was troble right here, It's like suck my dick please,
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basically we need three blue jobs and whatever. It was,
you know that kind of sick you know, the lads
like you know, like, oh, you know, rassholes, that kind
of stuff. Perfect. Yeah, So so that was a long
time to be on the road. Your first tour with
them was like in eighty five days or something. I
(18:58):
got in the year, so like, how many nights and
road did you guys were kind of crazy to night
at five a week a week of me. Yeah, and
then there's there's a part in the book where I
get walking pneumonia and uh, and well, you know, we
were drinking a lot. I I can't see I was
(19:20):
doing as much. It was actually kind of a little
bit of a good thing for me because that was
a drinking band, and cocaine in those days in Europe
was a lot harder to get. You couldn't really find it,
so that was a good thing and kind of weaned
be awful a little bit. But I was drinking a
lot of boothies without they would basically beer drinkers, and
and we partied every night. You know, we would drink
and I started feeling pretty ill and back I had this,
(19:43):
you know, pneumonia. Yeah, I feel all. I mean, as
you would say, I had the ships. You know, I
just did. It's sick. And I get up on stage
and you know, you've been sick and gone on stage
and everything's fine. When you're on stage, you feel like, oh,
I'm great, fine, and then you come off and you're like, oh,
oh man, right, you got to being sick again. I
(20:05):
had food pointon ing once on stage with Nicolette Larson,
and it was bad sushi, and I had to do
they They really pressed me into doing it as as
green as I looked, and I did the whole gig
sitting out of stool, just green. Yeah, came out. Well,
you know, as in our position being in a band,
we're not the guy can go. Hey, I can't do
(20:28):
the gig tonight. You know, you just gotta keep going.
You gotta keep going. And I had a bucket next
to me the whole thing, and and we'll have remember
one night. It's a really funny story in the book,
but you know, it was like somewhere in mid America.
I literally had to get off the drum stool and
run to the bathroom in the middle of the show.
I was just gonna implode up there I was, and
(20:52):
fucking in on the mic. Drummers gone for a shot
to the audience. I'm like, come on, man, I mean,
just you know, can you do like or something you discover?
It could have been worse. Man. I was playing in
Paris at the big theater. They're called bear c You've
probably played in the middle of Paris at bear Cy
(21:14):
and the bass player was wearing you know, white jeans
and a white vest, and he got the ships and
he ran off and as she's rough, you see, he
making for all seventeen thousand people. Yeah, but he came
(21:34):
back and finished the gig because Rock and Roll back
the room. So let's move on to g N R H.
And I guess eventually Slashing Duff saw you play with
the Cult and asked you to join. That's really where
it took off for you. How did that happen? Do
you remember that night? Oh? Yeah, It's in the book
and I'll never forget it. Because we're backstage the old
(21:55):
Universal Lamp Theater. That was our last game ship, I
remember it well, and a gato and and this limo
pulled up and the door opened, and I always say,
out poured slashing duff. They were like, and you know,
I had a troop of girls with them, and it
just looked so cool. It was just the most scallywag
(22:18):
bunch of guys I'd ever seen in my life. I
mean a hole of the level from the Stones. Even
in those days, they were just a mess, you know,
but in a very rock and roll away. Yeah. And
I remember they kind of came pouring out of the
limo and there was this like velvet rope area that
they had for them, like a table, and there was
(22:39):
a guy they had, you know, and I was like,
what the fund this is my gig, right, I mean,
they like they came in like they fucking owned the place.
And in those days they were based ban in the world,
and they poured in there and they had their little
entourage set up, and I remember I didn't even go
say anything to them. But then I played the show
(23:00):
and it was the end of the tour for the Call,
and we were pretty in those days. If you go
back and I can go back and watch old videos,
and it was prime Cold era. You know, we were
on fire, the band was MTV was raging. They were
an older time and was you know the guy. You know,
it's just great. So I did that show and then
(23:21):
h I come off the road and I had no home.
I was a vagabond. I had a suitcase. What do
I do? I go to my mom's house in Orange
County and that's when my body completely fell out. And
I realized, you know, when you've gotten home off the
tour and then you get really sick, It's like your
(23:42):
body says, okay, now that you're home to guy for
like a month. And I ended up going, man, it's
I'm really something really wrong with me. And I went
to the doctor and he x RAYBI and said, you're
you have one whole lung full of fluid. You got
walking him own on. I broke out in this crazy rash.
(24:02):
Where had that that white camp what's that stuff called
calaminet all over my body? I was just like I was,
And it wasn't even affective because the raph is coming
from inside outside. I remember Mom, mommy, like she's bringing
me like juice, and and she one day she walks
(24:23):
in and uh, I think I said this in the
rock roll of Fame of my speech. When I get them,
my mom says, there's somebody named Slush on the phone,
and and I get on the phone slash and slashes,
Hey man, this slash. You know you've talked to him.
He's so quiet and that's very soft spoken like slash, Like, yeah,
(24:46):
that's Roses. He basically says our drummer. You know, he
said rehab doesn't look like he's gonna get out anytime soon.
And we saw you play and we loved watching you play.
Can you be up here to work with us on
this record? I'm like when he's like tomorrow tomorrow, tomorrow,
right tomorrow tomorrow ye movie version that Yeah, and you've
(25:13):
got walking Yeah, I'm sick. I'm likely. Yeah. Where people go, man,
you look great, because I was all skinny and like yeah,
and I was not feeling it. But I'm like, I go, Okay,
where am I going? And they go, we'll get you
an apartment at the oak Woods. That's trouble. Yeah. Yeah,
I've done a couple of stints there. A musician who's
(25:37):
come through l A has to understand it. They come on,
They're get me a place, the hot tub, the elevator.
I was upset, was out of control, out of control,
and so they give me a place and I moved
up there, you know, and I start rehearsing for the
usually allegiance records, for the recording of the records. But
I haven't told the Coult yet. So yeah, how did
(25:59):
that go? Tell me? How did that go down? Talking
to the cult about your new gig or had you
assured your spot in gen R yet? I hadn't assured
my spot, and I wasn't sure quite where where I
was gonna stand with that if I was just gonna
make the record or go back to the Colt. Right. Yeah,
So about a week or two went by and Slash said, hey, man,
(26:19):
let's go up to my house. You know, we're gonna
I'm gonna have a little barbecue and you know me
and we're gonna go up and come with us. And so,
you know, we would go out to little bars and stuff.
But this particular night I went up to his house
and that's when we all sat down and we would
drink Bocca cranberries. That was a Guns of Roses cocktail.
One of my favorites, and Spasha Cranberry that of course
(26:45):
we're gonna get the mixture right, and uh, that's when
you pop the question. You know, we want you in
the band and we really like playing with you and
want you to join the band. Where let's Steven go
blah blah blah. So I said, well, you know, I'm
already in a band. I said, but I gotta let
me talk to those guys. But thank you. And so
(27:05):
I took Billy Duffy hat to lunch, and remember typical
Billy Duffy awesome. I told him when it happened and
that they were going to offer me a membership in
the band. They were going to cut me in, and
I said, how can I turn that down? And uh,
he's Billy says will if I played drums, I would
take it. And then and then by I said, then
(27:28):
you know, thanks Billy, I think I'm gonna do it.
He says, I guess you're buying lunch. Then typical Billy
I go, yeah, I'll get the lunch. Okay, well you
did ask him out for the one mistake I did
make in that was I didn't have the same conversation
with Ian because this day I think he's still mad
at me about it, but I always I always wish
(27:51):
him happy birthday and stuff. So when I made the transition,
I that's when I started my journey with G and R,
which you know, it was pretty wild and just the
right time. Use Your Illusion was like the biggest album
(28:13):
in the world. That's incredible, And you were playing to
like crowds about a hundred thousand more doing massive drum solos. Right,
were you nervous the first time? Like you drum solo lights?
Just you Well, I gotta tell you that happened because
I you know, the craziest part was that's when my
cocaine came back pretty strong, because I always say when
(28:34):
I joined G and R, it was kind of like
walking into an opium den. They were all on Heroin
slithering around. Yeah, and I see you guys, I don't
know about this Heroin thing, like try cocaine because this
you guys are all like not not and ship like
because the fact I might know where you might get something.
(28:54):
You know, it's I swear to you, it's not especially
the drummer, Like the drummer on Heroin bad because the
drummer falls asleep on the drum stool, it all falls apart. So,
you know, God blessed Stephen. But you know, I think
they got ready in but you know, because that that
particular addiction. But um, I said, you guys, we need
to get going here. You know, because when I went
(29:16):
in there, it was very dark sort of period of
that band, and they were trying to find that second album.
When Axel came in and sat down on the piano
and started playing November Rain, I was like, there's pianos
in this band. I just I was like, wait a minute,
so that's not in my writer. I like that first record,
(29:37):
that Appetype thing was killer. What's the piano? Right? That's
very adult, very adult? And he had this opus, you know,
November Rain, and his strange was one song went out
for like twenty minutes. That was one piece of music.
So we started rehearsing all this music and it got
very grand. Oh yeah, it was a lot of stuff.
(29:58):
I thought we were going to record, you know, thirty
four or thirty five songs, and we're gonna do one
record twelve thirteen songs. And then another big part of
the book is when Axel comes into the studio and
we were recording M eight where you guys, I know
you recorded a lot, and Axel comes in full regalia,
(30:19):
you know, headband, the whole thing, and he's got like yeah,
like just full, just ready to go. And he announces
to us that we're gonna do two records. It's gonna
be a double album. We're putting it all out. And
we're all like what, and he says, but I've got
the idea of how we're going to do it. And
this is the moment I realized that as crazy as
(30:42):
Acle could be, he was a genius. And he says,
we're going to release the album simultaneous but separate, and
he had the whole reason why I wanted to do that,
since the covers are going to be the same piece
of art, but they're gonna be different colors Volume one
and Volume two. And the reason I want that to
be that way is that they'll be in the bend
(31:04):
and not behind the cast register. Because if an album
was over twenty bucks, remember if it was like a
right good good point, like a little marketing thing going on.
He was just smart like that, And then he could
go back to Daily Geff and to renegotiate the deal
and then we could tour. He was saying, was we
could tour for five years straight. And in those days
(31:26):
when those albums were released, you know, I remember Stuff
called me and said sold a million copies one day.
You know, I was like wow. And the wild Ride
just from that point forward, things just got really crazy.
It was like being Mr Toad's wild But yeah, I'm
just curious to like, so everyone but the drummers on heroin.
(31:47):
Yet there's incredible chaos as if everyone's on cocaine, because that,
for those who don't know, lends itself to chaos. Yeah,
how did it get so chaotic? What? Well, I'd like
to say that I did. I did get them to
do more cocaine, and like, you know, that's your contribution.
And Duff Duff never really did much herein so he
was really a big drinker. And and but Slash started
(32:10):
coming around, and then we Slash always had says the
amazing work ethic. I don't know if you ever heard
this story about Axel showing up late to sing with
the Rolling Stones. Keith Richard said, I slept in the
chandelier last night. What's the excuse. I'm here all the time, right?
I love it I slept in the chandelier and I'm
(32:32):
here on time. And Slash was that guy. He could
party all night, but he'd still be a rehearsalator, and
he crapped that whip where we were like, if you're
gonna party, our job is being in a rock and
roll band. If we can't get here at noon, you know,
that's not cool. So do what you need to do,
but be here. And that's a great story, man. So
(32:53):
we would we would rock every day and then you know,
we would do all of our stuff. But you know,
if somebody got out of line, you know, would be
like and in the book, I do get outline a
couple of times because something started happening inside that things
got so crazy and so chaotic that I completely had
no control of where I was going that day. In
(33:13):
the book, it gets kind of scary for me, and
I become a guy that goes on the sun of
benders and because actually I was, you know, just a
lot of fear. Did you go missing ever? Yeah, Yeah,
I went missing. I went missing in the jungle of
Crocot's Venezuela for a gig that was supposed to happen
in Venezuela. And they found me on a balcony of
(33:34):
a hotel. There's a bunch of really good, juicy ones
about me going on these crazy adventures. I'll never forget it.
We you know, we used to fly in the seven
seven MGM Grand and we all had our own bedrooms
and there was five stewards Is on the plane, and
you know, of course we were all sleeping with them,
and you know, it was just all like I was like,
(33:54):
you know, we wanted to be the Rolling Stones, cat
Sucker Blues. That's you know, that's what we we're doing.
It was just like, you know, people rolling down the
aisles of the plane while you're taking off and pick
up girls in the strip bar and like Houston fly
with us. You know, I forget who they were by
the time you arrived. Yeah, give him a Southwest ticket
back or you know, you know here we were. I mean,
(34:18):
you know, and like I say in the book, I
try to like write it in the voice that was then,
you know, because even looking back and talking through and
I'm like, wow, okay, uh, it was pretty heathenistic, you know,
but I was a younger man. It was a different time.
(34:38):
I never would like to think that anyone got hurt
in the process as far as like girls or you know,
everybody was in the party together, you know, coming to
your town. For sure, it was the time. Yeah, you
know that time has changed to they wanted to have
fun and I'm just doing the thing that was rock
and roll in those days. It was exactly that. But
(35:00):
by the end when that seven landed, I MGM grant
and I'll never forget it. It It was like song remains
the same with all the lingos pull out and we
literally remember looking at Dove going, oh, ship like I
used to gauge my alcoholism and they're looking at those guys.
We were all puffy look back on my face was
like this, you know, it's just like you know, it's
(35:23):
like liquid, you know. And uh we poured off that
plane three and a half year tour, played around the
world four times, and we were cooked and we never
we never got back back. And when we went into
trying to write that that next album was when I
got really dark and me and I so finally have
(35:44):
it out. He fires me and I remember I had
this killer house full rock star pad like by the
Beechwood Canyon, by the Hollywood Sign, six thousand square foot
pad with two elevated ars and recording studio, and I
remember I had two black portions because I forgot about
(36:04):
the first one, just like like, oh, I already bought it.
I already bought one. Now I had a career and
I had a target that so I remember pulling in
and I was producing this band a full recording studio
there and that band campbell Box they weren't remember them,
and Kevin and All I got to the Maverick or something.
(36:27):
They were all staying at my house because they had
all these rooms we were working on music. And I
walked in. I remember I had a case of beer.
Follow up Jack or something set act so fired me
and I think, this time it's for real. And that
was it. You know, I got the letter from the
lawyers and that was a really that was a really
(36:49):
strange time. And in the book it talks about sort of,
you know, okay, their gigs gone. Now what I've just
been in the biggest band in the world. I'm going
to follow this up and then um, you know, I
get clean. After that, I go through this period of
coming off of that you know, becomes the addiction got
(37:11):
really out of control because now it's really, let's just
face it. I was afraid of what the fund was
coming next. In retrospect, I always say to people it's
like kind of like watching somebody else's movie. It was
fucking out of control. But at the same time, it
was the greatest era of that particular band, and I
happened to be there, so that was a gift. And
(37:34):
then I always say because of that band, I've been
able to navigate the rest of my life based on
that's probably my highest accolade. So if people are even
lying people up and go, how many people know the
Cold out of ten? Maybe it might be too how
many people know that a Revolver? Maybe the Guns and
(37:56):
Roads ten. Yeah, so that's taking me down different paths
in my life, the journey, you know, my entrepreneurial efforts,
my things that I'm doing on you know, and charity,
and it's all based on my legacy with these particular groups,
especially gin R. So yeah, that's cool. What those were
(38:17):
the Healthyon days? Man, you really like you to have
been a part of it, and amazing I've heard that
you mentioned Felber Revolver was one of the best times
your career and as a founding member that fame came
(38:39):
to you in another band, which rarely happens, whereas G
and R of course was huge before you got there.
What made the experience with Felber Revolver so much better
for you? Uh? Well, you know that I was equal
in the band, um, which was cool. I was very
visionary in in that particularly a group. I was very
(39:02):
very respect Dolphin Slash always respected me musically and my
my sensibility for certain things about the music, if it
was arrangement or stylistically or production. Um, even fashion, I'd
be like Slash wear that red shirt like you know.
(39:24):
And then when me and Scott Wiland came together and
Scott joined the group, me and him had sort of
a sane sensibility about taking the rock and roll and
bringing it into now somehow, you know, making it current.
Like we couldn't. We knew we couldn't make another Guns
from Roses record with Scott Wild as the vocalist. We
(39:45):
couldn't rest on our laurels and just make like a
retro rock album, if you will. So we made a
really serious choice of trying to compete in a modern
rock and roll world. And here we were. You know,
I think I was like forty. When we launched that
band two thousand and four, I was so I was
forty four years old, you know, and we made a
(40:09):
really big well, everything that went into that band was like, Okay,
we're all sober, we're you know, we're clean. I got
really great shape. Scott was doing a lot better. We
got him cleaned up and he was sober that yeah, yeah,
we well we had some issues and that's in the book,
but I want to go too into detail with that,
because that's there's a couple of really long ended stories
(40:33):
where when we get him in the band, it's not
completely perfect at the beginning, we put you that way,
but he comes around and and things are on fire.
And um. The greatest thing that happened for me with
that particularly band was I wrote the riff the first
song that launched the band, which was the song I
(40:53):
wrote on guitar called set Me Free. And I had
the riff and I'll never forget playing it for Slack
because it dand Dodd do Dad and I played it.
But you know, here I am. You know, if I
was to play in front of you, I would be nervous.
I could be in front of fifty thousand people if
you're standing there. But I had to play guitar for
(41:15):
you know, you were slash. I'd be like, you know,
and you know, I can bag a few chords, but
here I got this riff slash. I really like that,
except that one note, you know. But then he came
up with this other whole thing and we recorded it,
and we got this big soundtrack for Angley's version of
(41:35):
The Hulk. Oh yeah. And we got this crazy uh
licensing deal and it was like probably more money than
I ever seen in my entire career, like in one
fatal swoop. It was just like what you know. And
then a publishing deal, and then we got signed by
our c A. Claud Davis, and it was sort of
the end of the big record deals and all of
(41:56):
a sudden, here I was equal. I had publishing deal
because I had written songs, so all the things were
really great in the band. The look of the band
felt right. We got the right guy to mix it,
Andy Wallace, and Clive Davis is such a genius. I mean,
I remember waiting five months to release the album. It
(42:19):
was done. We had the artwork conceptually, we had the
title contraband we we loved the title because it was
just about us. We were contract you know, we were like,
we created this great video slither where we went in,
but we had to wait and Clida, wait, we're waiting,
We're waiting. We were like, we waited a week in
(42:40):
another week. Why why were waiting? Clussus trust me. I
remember we were doing it like a show in Vegas.
Went to do like corporate or something, and we all
got called into a conference room and it was the
you know, the phone thing in the middle of table,
and Clive came on the phone. It was I believe
it was a two these day and he says, gentlemen,
(43:03):
I'd like to give you the great news that you
have entered the Billboard charts at number one and we
sold two hundred and fifties six thousand records in the
first week. And uh, it pretty quickly jumped to platinum.
And then but that was Clive because Clive was waiting
for the week when there was no other competition to
(43:26):
make impact for the release. Yeah, because the week before
that was very true, it's gonna be usher like whatever
at that time. Yeah, it's beyond our pay grade those
kind of decisions. Yeah, he was just you know, and
then trusting that he was right on all fronts, because
that guy is just like, that's his world, and so
he was a big guy in that. And then the
(43:48):
great thing that happened was we got nominated for three
Grammys and you know, I never won a Grammy before,
and Roses got nominated for Grammy. It was a very
famous year where we lost the Jeffields all heading category.
We're like Acolonge, I mean, what remember that, it's all acts,
just what's tall and they won they won, yeah, sacrilege
(44:13):
heavy metal category. So I remember we went we won
one Grammy out of that. That was the year the
Green Day had the big records of Green Day got
this rock album. We were in that category. They had
that crazy So all that stuff was happening, you know,
and then um, unfortunately during the second album a lot
(44:33):
of bad habits came back. And there's a lot about
it in the book, But I fell off the wagon
after about six years being green and so some of
that same chaos that you'd experienced with J and R
started rearing its head with you a little bit of
that same chaos. Yeah, it's just like I don't know
(44:53):
if it was like the feeling of being out of
the road too long. We were all the first tour
was eighteen months, and I remember thinking, they're dang only
in the carrot because we're getting like big offers and
we're all beat up, and things were starting to go wrong,
and we're starting to be tension in the band and
everyone was getting back into their old habits, and Scott
(45:13):
was getting high and it was getting weird. It was
just starting to be enough fun and and Slash was
over and I could tell me it's over it. He
was ready to just so we we basically fired Scott
April one, we were in Amsterdahim whenever we get it.
We gave him like we let her. Literally all got
(45:34):
in a van and split and he got handed a
notice you're fired. Basically, it's not April fools. This is
for real, you know, looking back from retrospect loosing Scott
and stuff and going and looking back at him and
seeing how great he really was, you know, even though
he had his hiccups. Fuck, he was great. Yeah. It
was a great front man, great singer, funk. When he
(45:56):
was out there some nights, I'd be just like, holy shit, man,
Uh he had all the moves, you know, he was
like a little bit iggy pop mixed with like Perry Farrell,
mixed with Mick Jagger, mixed with you know, he just
emulated all these Bowie he Yeah, a lot of Bowie
in there. We did a gig together. We did a
live aid together in a Hyde park, remember that, yeah,
(46:17):
speaking freaking out. Yeah, I remember that day because there's
a picture of me and right before I walk out,
you know, here we are two hundred thousand seeds and
Paul reaches over and he shakes my hand. He goes
knock him dead, right, and I'm like, I went smaller
part here, I like, I mean, she wouldn't have you know.
And he's standing there watching us, right, you guys are there,
(46:40):
but he freaking freaking out. But there's a way of
doing that. Yeah, I mean you know what I mean. Like,
you know, you're on stage of all the times. It's
not a big deal to you because you've had that relationship.
But for me, it was like, holy shit, it's a beetle.
I didn't even look at him for the first six
months on stage. I'm a member of the band and
I'm literally looking down on our chiefs, like don't look
(47:01):
at him. You're like a might real screw up. I'm
sure you'll screw up if you even look at him.
Probably one of my greatest adventures recently was Billy Gibbons,
and I think it really brought me back to the
core of why became a musician. Billy Gibbons is the living,
breathing example of the pure vagabond um traveling minstrel. He
(47:31):
is the real deal. And I when I was on
the bus with him, I was just like I was
in awe about how good I felt just being out
there again, traveling down the highway in this bus. Didn't
give a ship if I had an hotel room, I
was having to be in my bug and the five
was killer. You know. We made sure that we had
(47:54):
like he liked sup that stage every day when we
rolled in. We all have the Amazon, We told stories,
We listen to music every night, and I just it
gave me a whole new, renewed sense of why I
started to play music in the first place. And I said,
I want to be like that guy right on it.
I mean, there's so few of them. It's like Willie Nelson,
(48:15):
Billy Gibbons, you know, And then that's sort of like
being a little bit older. Now, why do you want
to do it any other way? Right? I mean you're
working with one of the greatest artists of all time,
and I'm sure you guys have a machine that just
rolls right, and you do your gig and you you
(48:35):
have a great time and play these amazing the greatest
songs ever written. Yeah, it's it's it's fortunate territory. That's
for damn sure. Yeah. Well this has been a blast man. Listen,
we're gonna wrap it up in the lightning round. We'd
like to call the encore. Well, it said that tragedy
plus time equals humor. What's the most embarrassing thing that's
(48:57):
happened to you on stage? And how did you get
through it? Uh? Axel told me to stop at Giant
Stadium UM one time, and I was supposed to watch
because he would always pull out this whistle, and the
whistle meant we were going to start something called night train. Sure,
so I do walk from to John Block, right, and
then I go do do do do do do? I'm there, right,
(49:20):
I'm like huge like that right, and I didn't see
also check out the whistle and he's looking at me
and he goes and I'm like, no, go, I'm I'm
in right. Can we just switch it up? But everyone's
done the same. It's not a guitar change. And I
look at I think it's Gilby in those days, fucking start,
(49:40):
motherfucker go and he's like he's like this, like nope,
and so I'm going for a while, and also goes
on the mic. He goes stop. So I get up,
I take the drumsticks. I just motherfucking through the That
was trump and I would fuck you that's one way
(50:05):
to happen. But it was like it was like you
pull it up on YouTube. I think it shows the
whole scene. But the audience loved it. I love it.
Was that the snare drum you you drove your six
through or no, I drove Yeah, you wouldn't need that
on the next sor that's like one of those Yeah.
Do you have any uh preshow rituals or superstitions that
(50:29):
you Yeah. I don't do it as much anymore, but
I used to have a whole thing with underwear. I
always had to wear red underwear and then um, I
had a chain that always wore around my neck and
I would chew gumps with three songs and um, but
that was fucked up because the camera guys in the
front always had these horrible photos because they're also used
(50:50):
for three and I like, yeah, I always look like shit.
I'm like, oh, I wonder what. But so the chain.
One time, I remember were playing some normal modome and
I had this chrome hearts chain and I remember being
halfway around in the golf car going hold on, I
can't go on. I'm going with chin right, and they're like,
(51:10):
what the fund, come on, we gotta go you. I'm like,
I gotta go back. I can't play. And that's the
last thing of amazing. So our jobs, you know, are
so loud and it's exhausting and all that. We all
know that what do you do while on tour these
days to stay healthy and recharge and stuff? God, isn't
(51:32):
it different? You know It's like you go backstage now
it's sucking smoothies and you know, wheat grass and yoga,
you know, And I love that, you know, Like I said,
My everything I'm telling you in these stories is it's
the old Meum, I go out of the road down,
I'm I'm stretching. You know, It's all about stretching, like
drinking plenty of water, you know. I mean, we're not
(51:56):
even thinking about water in the old days, but now
I got to drink a lot of water. I gotta
make sure I get the right amount of rest. My
job is to stay as calm, and I found that
if I stay relaxed, I have a great show. It's
all about things staying show. Oh, let me ask you this,
what what new music are you're listening to right now?
(52:16):
My god, I'm out here in the desert. You know,
I got my vinyl going. I'm listening to all the
cool ship. But there's a young band that I really like.
And whenever there's kind of a little bit of a
movement of musicians playing instruments that are young, it excites me.
Like I know, people have had an issue with um
GREATAVM Fleet being too Zeppelin or whatever, but the reality
(52:39):
is young kids don't really know Zeppelin, so anybody's playing
an instrument is cool. There's a band called Joyous Wolf
that I'm really watching out for. If you heard him, no,
I haven't. Um they kind of remind me of a
young I want to say Sabbath meets Lint Thin Lizzy
and that excites me like a new generation of the
(53:02):
stuff we grew up on, kids that are studying the
good ship but somehow bringing it. So before we wrap
it up here, Uh, what are you doing nowadays? I
know you get involved a lot of charities and stuff.
I tell us just a little bit about what they
mean to you. Well, I'm a I'm a co founder
of Adopt the Arts and that's my main charity that
I run with my partner, Abbey Burman, and we do
(53:24):
music and art for kids in public schools. And we
just finished a curriculum in a book that that really
embodies what we're what we're about. And I think a
lot of people think music is a curricular activity that
you know, maybe it's the first thing it needs to
go and setting up education. But in my opinion, how
(53:45):
much of life have we learned about being musicians? Obviously
we've traveled, but not only where the music comes from,
you know, culturally, but what kids can learn about working
together in a group setting. It's about competition, about listening, melody, harmony, harmony,
you know when you say the word harmony, that's very
(54:08):
important to me. And then I'm I'm in some animal
groups too. I'm on the board dolphin project Captivity of dolphins. Uh,
I don't believe in any captivity of any wild animals.
Great work, man, So, uh, what is your favorite original
song you've written or performed and are you writing and
(54:28):
producing anything new that you want to tell us about
right now? Yeah. Well, I gave a couple of solo records,
and I've just re released my second solo month Final,
which people can pick up on the Experienced Final dot com.
And I made a record I called the band Fierce
Joy Matt SRMs Fierce Joy. So I made this record
(54:50):
called Stratosphere, and I was sort of into like a
real uh, I don't know, just thinking about the world
in general when I wrote the record. And there's a
song on the album that was the lead track called
the Sea. It's kind of real petty Americana. And I
didn't even play drums on the kind of play guitar.
And so that's probably lyrically and the most meaningful. It's basically, uh,
(55:14):
an emotionally cleansing lyric sort of everything that we've been
talking about up until you noticed my voice has changed.
Now I'm this other guy, and I like to say
that my book is probably that kind of a life journey.
You know. We all go through stuff. I just happened
to do it in a puck and roll, you know,
and then you end up someplace and you look back
(55:36):
and they go, well, hey, that was why, and then
where are you now? So when I wrote that album,
that's exactly where I was at emotionally. When you write
a record, you're feeling something right, so you write sort
of what naturally comes to you, could be culturally or
what's happening in your life romantic. So that particular song,
(55:59):
it's probably my face with Well you got a full life, man.
I thank you so much man for making some time
for us today and coming on over here and sharing
your stories. It's been amazing. Well, I appreciate it. Brian,
this is a great vibe here. I feel like you
should be almost like now that sun is going down,
you know, the Martinis come out. That's right. Playboy after
Dark kind of thing, that's right. Some saxophone, that's rights.
(56:22):
Some light saxophone was brushes on a snare drawing. So
let's start that band, sax Is after Dark. Matt Sarman,
Brian ray Man, Springs, California. Yeah, band your life so far?
Keep going, keep rocking. That's right. Thanks so much man.
(56:58):
I'd like to thank everyone and for listening, and a
big thank you to my friend Matt Soreum for sharing
his amazing stories as much as we got to during
this interview, there's a lot we couldn't cover, so make
sure to grab a copy of his book, Double Talk
and Jive, available for preorder now. On Tour is a
production of iHeart Radio and Black Barrel Media. This show
(57:20):
is produced by Mandy Wimmer with executive producer Noel Brown
and I'm Your host Brian Ray. For more information about
On Tour, visit our website black Barrel Media dot com.
For behind the scenes photos from these interviews and to
interact with us. Visit our social media at on Tour
pod on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For more shows from
(57:42):
My Heart Radio and Black Barrel Media, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
favorite podcasts. M H
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