MIGHT THERE BE A SUITABLE VELVET REVOLVER FRONTMAN HIDDEN IN THE TRACKLISTING OF SLASH’S SOLO ALBUM?
Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 12:00pm by Gary Suarez
All this talk about Slash’s upcoming solo album has got me playing “Fantasy Velvet Revolver” in my head once again. Though I still hold out hope that Axl’s idea of having Perry Farrell front the band comes to fruition, I know in my heart that there’s probably a better chance of Scott Weiland rejoining the band, which is admittedly a pretty remote possibility. Remote like Siberia.
So looking through the list of vocalists purportedly gracing the axeman’s new record, I see a number of qualified albeit unlikely candidates to fill Weiland’s still-vacant spot. Yeah, it would be a heavy music lover’s dream to have Ozzy Osbourne sing for the band, considering the craptastic nature of his last few solo albums. Realistically, that would be an unholy managerial nightmare with the potential capacity to yield a catastrophic clusterfuck to put the legal woes of Black Sabbath and Guns N’ Roses to shame. Dave Grohl’s too busy counting his money and playing geriatric rock with his idols to commit to yet another band. These days, Alice Cooper and Lemmy Kilmister have the commercial drawing power of, well, Alice Cooper and Lemmy Kilmister, and maybe would shift a few more units than a Velvet Revolver fronted by an unknown (anyone remember Eric Dover or Rod Jackson?) or that dude from Spacehog. Don’t even get me started on Fergie.
One other name on that list, however, actually makes sense…





I imagine that when the members of, say, Daath get together for rehearsal, no one expects to be paid for said rehearsal. They’re all dudes who are friends – some of them even grew up together, if I’m not mistaken – and it’s not like they’re making squillions of dollars playing metal. Rehearsal, then, has to be viewed as an investment – get better as a band, put on a good show for the crowd, and, knock on wood, your band will get bigger and the money will come.


In case ya didn’t know: in the years following his time in Guns N’ Roses, Duff McKagan actually went back to school and got his degree in… finance. If I’m not mistaken, that makes him the only member of the original GN’R to have a college degree – when they were most at their most successful, only Izzy Stradlin was even a high school graduate – which may explain why Duff and Izzy are the only members of the original band who have not completely humiliated themselves in the years since, either by appearing on a reality show, becoming a fucknuts recluse, taking gigs with anyone who can meet their quote, or being Matt Sorum.









