Dave Kushner Talks Velvet Revolver Singer Search, Scott Weiland & Izzy Stradlin In AlternativeNation.net Interview
Published On May 27, 2014 | By Brett Buchanan | Featured, Grunge Report, Hard Rock   

Yesterday we published an exclusive track by track look back at Velvet Revolver’s Contraband to commemorate its upcoming 10th anniversary with the band’s rhythm guitarist Dave Kushner, and today we bring you an in-depth Q&A session where Kushner candidly describes his long road to success in rock and roll, Velvet Revolver’s singer search, his relationship with Scott Weiland, Velvet Revolver’s one off reunion with Weiland in 2012, his fears of Izzy Stradlin replacing him before Velvet Revolver even got off the ground, and unreleased VR material. Kushner is honest and humble, with no agenda. This is a must read for any Velvet Revolver fan, and is one of my favorite interviews I’ve done in the 5 year history of AlternativeNation.net.

Going back to the 80?s when you joined Wasted Youth and then Electric Love Hogs, Scott mentioned in his book that he knew you back then. I don’t know if these were the Mighty Joe Young days or the Swing days. What are your memories of these times, and your encounters with Scott and the early version of STP?

It was just a great time for music, it sounds so cliche. It’s just my history is that I was around for all of that, and it was a great time for music. Wasted Youth was so fun, it was the first time I got to make a record. Playing with those guys, and then playing in this other jam band Trulio Disgracias at the time, which was the guys from Fishbone, the Chili Peppers, and Funkadelic. It was just so cool to be a part of all that stuff. Then when I was in the Love Hogs, it was just a cool time because we played these small clubs in Hollywood like the Coconut Teaszer, which was a small club on Sunset.  We played with Rage Against The Machine because they were just starting, and Tool. Playing with bands like that in tiny clubs, with 60 people in them, was just a really cool time for music being around those bands to start. There was just so much talent back then, and seeing the talent in clubs, not just seeing it on the internet, because there was no internet. It was just a really cool time.

I remember seeing Scott at this club, now it’s a strip club called Cheetah’s, but back then it was a music club called the Shamrock. I remember seeing them, it didn’t become STP until after they got signed as Mighty Joe Young, and then they changed the name and the sound from what I remember. But I remember seeing him the day they got signed, and he was just so genuinely happy, and unjaded and unaffected at that point. He was telling me the whole thing: ‘Oh we got a record deal, and yeah we didn’t get a lot of money but we’re going to work with this producer guy that used to work for Rick Rubin! It’s going to be really cool, we can do whatever we want,’ and blah blah blah. I will always remember that night because of his genuine enthusiasm, and his kind of kid like enthusiasm, it was so cool. To be the only guy who was in a band with him later that knew that side of him was kind of a memory that I always have, part of the Scott Weiland memory.

When you joined how long did it take to get the chemistry right, especially with Slash? I know you played with Dave Navarro though, so you probably had experience with lead players like that. And what was it like playing with Izzy Stradlin, when he briefly played with you guys?

I think that I was nervous going into it because I knew the potential, even though there was no singer yet, I knew the potential of playing with Duff, Slash, and Matt from Guns N’ Roses. The thing that made it easier for me is I have known Slash since I was 14, when we went to junior high and high school together, and I saw him during the whole growth of Guns N’ Roses, I was in Wasted Youth at the time. I guess it was just more comfortable for me, and I had been playing with Duff in a side project for like 6 months, so I was comfortable playing with him.

To be honest with you, Duff and Slash played really loud, and they were just used to that, so for me there was a wall of bass between me and Slash. So a lot of times I couldn’t hear a lot of what he was doing, so I just came in and I brought my pedal board and I didn’t try to play like Izzy or play like what I thought he would want. I just did what I did and tried to use pedals and stuff like that for different voicings instead of trying to stay in this blues based Izzy Stradlin kind of realm. That’s where that sound came from.  As far as the Izzy thing, when Izzy came around, it’s funny, have you seen that Foo Fighters movie?

Yeah, I’ve seen it.

(Laughs) There’s that scene where Chris Shiflett talks about Pat Smear coming back in the band. It’s like, everything that he describes feeling wise is exactly what I went through. It was like so verbatim, it was just like I knew Izzy was coming and I heard talks about it. We still hadn’t found a singer, and I was just like oh great. That’s it, now I’m going to get replaced.  I remember talking to Duff, and he was just like: ‘Look dude, Izzy won’t stay, I guarantee you it won’t happen. He comes in and plays for a few weeks, a few times, and then he just gets sick of it and he does something else, he disappears.’   And that’s exactly what happened, he came in, they wrote a few songs. I was in the room for some of it, I mean I was in the room and then we had 3 guitar players and we just fucked around and wrote songs, which was really great because I love Izzy, as a person and a player. As a songwriter he’s just great, but I didn’t want to lose my position. I think they even went in the studio, the 4 of them, and wrote some stuff, and recorded like 2 or 3 demos. I wasn’t there for that, which just escalated my fear of being left out. Then a couple days later he was just gone, and that was it. Then things were just back to normal, and it was just a weird thing.

With the early demos, I don’t know if it was with Izzy or something before that, but you guys had reached out to Scott in 2002 and he said in his book that it sounded a little too much like Bad Company for him at first, and then he later ended up coming on. What changes in the band songwriting wise, from then, to when Scott eventually joined?

Honestly, I don’t really know. I don’t remember that. The band started because Randy Castillo, Ozzy’s drummer, passed away. I think his family needed help financially with funeral arrangements and everything. I remember Duff and I were in a diner eating, and Matt, who lived around the corner, came in, and he was talking to Duff. (Phone reception briefly cuts out)

So basically, Matt asked Duff about this show, and basically the band started with those 3 guys from Guns N’ Roses and Keith and Josh from Buckcherry. They played this benefit for Randy, and they liked the way it felt so they kept playing. They wrote, I think 8 to 10 songs, and I think “Dirty Little Thing” was one of the songs from that batch. So I don’t know, I don’t really remember any of those songs sounding like Bad Company. Maybe that’s how Scott heard it? I don’t know if it really changed, we wrote songs that were all over the place.  There were some total like Iggy Pop sort of sounding songs, there were some pretty rock sounding songs, there was a song that sounded like Faith No More to me, there were songs that sounded more like heavy metal songs. It was just really all over the place, the songs that Izzy brought in sounded almost like Rolling Stone songs. I’m not really sure what Scott first got, but from what I remember he was still trying to be in STP, and he just didn’t want to do it at the time. Then he wasn’t in STP, and he could do it, that’s what I remember.

In early 2012 you put together the Velvet Revolver one off reunion for the John O’Brien benefit show, and a few months after that Scott said that the band was back together and writing new material, which Slash then denied. What was that reunion like, why do you think Scott said that the band had a full on reunion after that?

It was such a weird time dude, I just really don’t know. Me and a couple of friends of mine put that whole benefit together, my wife was really sick at the time and I don’t really remember a lot of the band part of it. I was just trying to deal with my best friend dying and all that kind of stuff, and getting all those people and trying to secure talent. I mean we didn’t really have anyone helping us. It was just me, the drummer from Alanis Morissette’s band, Matt Wallace the producer, and my buddy John Fister, trying to put together a big event, and going to these bands directly. It was a cool event. The vibe with the band was still tenuous, there was no: ‘Alright! This is great, this feels great, like I’m putting on an old pair of whatever.’ It definitely wasn’t that vibe. Then obviously there was a ton of talk and speculation about what was going to happen. We just kind of, no one really talked that much any more.

I have no idea where or why out of nowhere Scott said that to someone in some press thing. Honestly, it just really came out of nowhere. Maybe someone had been saying to him: ‘Maybe you guys can do a record now!’ Or someone had given him that information, that maybe that potentially was going to happen? I think I was talking to someone in management saying: ‘Maybe we can write some songs or whatever, and see how this goes.’ I think that that little bit of information, by the time he heard it, it was like a game of telephone.

What was funny was reading Slash’s denial of the whole thing was like wow (laughs), very adamant. When I asked him about it, he said it was because he was touring for his solo record, and he didn’t see it in the press. He was at some morning radio show at like 6 or 7 in the morning, whenever you do those morning talk shows, and got asked by a couple of DJ’s about the whole thing. That’s where his reaction came from, like: ‘What? I don’t know, he’s crazy, I don’t even know what the fuck he’s talking about.’ It was like not enough coffee, early morning, kind of blindsided by this whole thing. That’s partly why his reaction sounded as harsh as it did. But yeah, it just never went anywhere.

That clears it up a lot, definitely. Now with Scott, I think you played a couple private performances with him last year. I think I saw some video of you playing with him at a house or something.  So what’s your relationship like now with Scott playing these occasional things?

I don’t really have anything against Scott. Scott is Scott. He’s kind of the same guy he was coming into the band that he is now. I think it’s silly to have an expectation this way or that way about about: ‘How come this happened?’ It just happened. I don’t really talk to him, I don’t really hang out with him much, but at the same time I don’t have a problem with him. I was playing a benefit, it’s funny because we all have done these things, where now that everyone has kids in school, and all schools need money, all of the parents that are in bands always end up playing something for their kids school. If you look at any person from Dave Grohl to Gwen Stefani to me to Slash to Duff, I know for sure because we all live in the same general area, and have kids that have gone to school together, that all of us have played benefits for our schools. That was a thing that I had asked Scott to do for my son’s school, and he said yes. Donovan Leitch and I both have kids who are in the same school, and we asked Scott if he’d do a couple songs with us acoustic for our kids’ school, and he said yes. He showed up and did a couple songs, and that was that.

You mentioned something very interesting [in our track by track look back at Contraband], and also Slash has mentioned it recently, about trying out a new singer. I know you can’t reveal everything about it, but what’s going on with the singer situation? You guys are rumored to have tried out a lot of guys like Corey Taylor, Franky Perez, and Royston Langston. A lot of names have been floated out there over the last 6 years, so what is the situation right now when it comes to a singer for Velvet Revolver?

I think it’s one of those things that no one wants to close the door on it, but I also agree that replacing Scott is a hugely arduous task for anybody. I don’t know if we actively look all at the same time. Everyone has stuff going on: Matt has his solo record and is involved in a lot of different things, Slash obviously has his solo thing, Duff has other bands like Loaded and Walking Papers, I’ve been doing a lot of work as a composer and doing my other project Pusher Jones. We all have kids and busy lives, so it just depends on, for a lack of a better term, when the stars align and we all start a conversation for some reason. Because we’re always playing together in some different iteration.

Oh, and that thing at the house was at my wife’s birthday party. I don’t know if Scott was there, but me, Gilby Clarke, Franky Perez, Duff, Matt, and Joey from Queens of the Stone Age all played in my backyard for my wife’s birthday party, which was cool, it was also like a housewarming party. So we always play together, whether it’s a party, or a benefit, or some kind of tour. Then inevitably we talk, and everyone’s kind of lives are on autopilot. We just talk about it then someone throws a name in a hat and everyone goes: ‘Okay cool.’ If we uniformly agree to try that person or to give them some blank songs to put vocals on, that’s what we do. Then we’ll listen to it and kind of weigh in on it.

Unfortunately so far it has not been a unanimous decision on whoever gets thrown in a hat. But there’s always someone. Someone has a friend that says, ‘Yeah I know this guy that might be right.’ Or some producer or record industry person or A&R guy says: ‘Hey you guys still looking for a singer?’ And maybe we’ll hear something that piques everyone’s interest. Now with the internet, it’s so easy to just obviously send MP3?s and say: ‘Hey check out this guy, here’s his site, here’s what he looks like, here’s what he sounds like.’ We get to move forward that way without having to get too physically or emotionally involved. It’s like a dating service, you can look at the pictures online and talk to the people online, and see an interview with them, before you even set up a date with them. That’s what the internet affords you for trying out singers.

When it comes to unreleased Velvet Revolver material, is there any stuff that could ever see the light of day? Maybe some of this material you’re working on with these unnamed singers, there’s also this song called “The House Is Alive” that was talked about in 2006 as well. There were some names written on the boards during the Libertad sessions too, so are there any songs out there that could be released someday?

There’s stuff, I mean there’s not a lot. I remember another 1 or 2 songs I think that we did for Contraband that never got finished. The music was recorded, I’m not sure if the vocals were ever finish or if Scott put vocals. “The House Is Alive” was a theme song submission for that Monster House animated movie.

I remember Slash saying that he fell asleep during the screening for that movie.

Yeah, I remember that, he totally did. But it was a kids movie, it wasn’t The Hulk or Fantastic Four. To be honest with you, I don’t really know if there is a lot of stuff. Even for Libertad, the B-sides came out in different- these days there’s all of these retailers who all want something special. There’s Wal Mart, and Best Buy. So you’ve got to give this extra song to Best Buy for their exclusive, and this extra song to Wal Mart for their exclusive. So at the end of the day you put out a 12 song record, and you record 15. Those songs end up going somewhere, it’s just a matter of finding them online now, or finding the different versions of Libertad.

Yeah the hardest to find is “Gas And A Dollar Laugh.” Which to me is one of the best songs you guys have done, but it wasn’t on an album unfortunately.

Yeah, well cool. I have it obviously on my computer. That was another riff that I wrote that Scott kind of championed. He heard that riff and loved it, and made it into a song. I don’t even know which iteration that came out on.

Now like I contacted you about, it’s been 10 years now since Contraband, how does that feel now looking back 10 years later, and what it’s done for your career? And also, what is coming up for you in the future?

Well I mean the first part is, it changed my life. I was a guy that was, like you said, I tried to make a living playing music for years. Playing with everyone from those bands you mentioned, to Danzig, to Sugartooth, to this band and that band. It’s like I’d get a little farther, and back to a day job, and a little farther, and back to a day job. For me, my whole life changed at the beginning of that band, because I had met my wife right before I got in the band. I was broke loading gear on a truck for 60 bucks cash. If you watch that VH1 special, you’ll see the first time I’m shown in that video, if you look closely my pants are covered with paint, and I’m wearing work boots, because I actually took a job at that rehearsal studio for 13 bucks an hour so that I wouldn’t lose my spot in VR. I wouldn’t take a job set building, which is what I did, because I didn’t want to be gone for 10 days working and miss out on being in the band. So I would go to the rehearsal studio at 9AM, and work until 2PM, and then be there for the rehearsal from 2 to 6. So that was my job at the time, and then everything changed.

We made a record, and we got money, and we got a No. 1 record and a Grammy. It changed everything for me. I got married when we were mixing the record, my whole life changed from 180 degrees. From a guy who had nothing and was just dating some girl and no career, to a guy who had his whole dream come true basically. To now have 2 kids, a wife, 2 cars, a house in a nice neighborhood, plaques, a Grammy, an Emmy nomination, all this stuff, which is a dream come true to be honest and I couldn’t be any more grateful for all of it. It’s changed my life dramatically, I have more opportunities as a result of being in that band, I’ve just gotten to see the world. I guess in just every way you can imagine, it changed my life.

But at the same time, you’re still human in that craziness. So there is still just the every day kind of insanity you’re dealing with.  I mean my life during the band was an episode of Behind The Music, I mean all that stuff I had seen on VH1 was my life. All the absurdity, and the craziness, and the insanity, I lived it. But here I am on the other end of it, and really happy. So that’s the answer, it’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years, because I hear those markers like it’s the 20th anniversary of Appetite For Destruction. I’m like wow, I actually did something that is marked like that, so it’s cool and amazing.

As far as what’s coming up, I’ve been composing a lot of stuff. Since we fired Scott, I did the theme song for Sons of Anarchy and now that’s coming up on its last season. I’ll still work with Bob the composer to do stuff, and we’re working on some stuff for the last season. I do a show on TBS called Sullivan & Son, it’s in its third season. I’m still just working on this project, it’s been a pet project of mine, which I mentioned before Pusher Jones. I just wanted to play with my favorite drummer [Joey Castillo from Queens of the Stone Age] and my favorite bass player [Scott Shriner from Weeer], which are those two guys, and two of my best friends, and Franky who I love. To be able to do this project musically and artistically, and hopefully developing it for a TV show, for an animated show, I’m just working hard on that still and it’s getting closer and closer to coming to fruition.

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