Slash/Chester - Crazy

elevendayempire

Holy shit, I had no idea this had leaked. It's like a holy grail for me, since I'm convinced that Chester should've fronted VR when Scott left.

Wonder if that's all there is or if there's a longer version out there.

EDIT: looks like a full version is being released: https://www.guitarworld.com/news/slash- … bennington

FlashFlood

Eh. Love Chester but Dr. Alibi is a good song and there isn’t really anything interesting about this version.

Triple H

I would have been interested in hearing a VR album with Chester.

elevendayempire

Triple H wrote:

I would have been interested in hearing a VR album with Chester.

That, to me, is one of the greatest missed opportunities in rock music. We know Chester had the skinny-cool Weiland vibe; the fact that he was hired for STP shows that, and the songs he wrote with them made a decent fist of replicating Weiland's lyrical flair. We know that he had a wider vocal range than Weiland, which opened up the possibility of covering more GN'R tracks beyond the low-register stuff that Weiland could do, and would've widened the scope of the original stuff they could write. He did a pretty decent job covering Slither:

And we know he could belt out Paradise City:

I suspect the thing that stopped it from happening was bloody record company politics, the same thing that stopped his Slash collab going on the album. Linkin Park's management didn't want him doing any side projects, or whatever.

FlashFlood

I never once believed VR would go on with a new singer. Not because of GnR reunion drama but because they maximized what they could with VR. What made people appreciate VR was the combination of the GnR guys with the STP guy, much like the Audioslave dynamic. If it became the GnR guys with a revolving door of singers it kills any perception that it’s a new, original band and interest wanes. Hell, I’m pretty sure Matt even mentioned in an interview post-VR that he was disappointed in the venues VR was playing. It was never going to work no matter who came in (though I love Chester).

Vale

They should have gone with Franky Perez and stopped playing GN'R songs. Sure losing Scott was a major setback, but with Perez they could have released new stuff without drama and started building up their audience again. Didn't they tease the third record being way heavier? That would have been a good place to start..
The songs Kushner eventually released with Perez that I assume were intended for VR sounded promising...

elevendayempire

Vale wrote:

They should have gone with Franky Perez and stopped playing GN'R songs. Sure losing Scott was a major setback, but with Perez they could have released new stuff without drama and started building up their audience again. Didn't they tease the third record being way heavier? That would have been a good place to start..
The songs Kushner eventually released with Perez that I assume were intended for VR sounded promising...

Nah, Perez is – with the best will in the world – a middle-tier talent. Scott had incredible stage presence, charisma to burn and a lyrical songwriting touch. It takes something special to follow that up, and I think the VR guys realised that the people they were auditioning didn't measure up. Or if they did (Chester, etc) they were already in major bands and weren't available.

Vale

elevendayempire wrote:

Vale wrote:
They should have gone with Franky Perez and stopped playing GN'R songs. Sure losing Scott was a major setback, but with Perez they could have released new stuff without drama and started building up their audience again. Didn't they tease the third record being way heavier? That would have been a good place to start..
The songs Kushner eventually released with Perez that I assume were intended for VR sounded promising...
Nah, Perez is – with the best will in the world – a middle-tier talent. Scott had incredible stage presence, charisma to burn and a lyrical songwriting touch. It takes something special to follow that up, and I think the VR guys realised that the people they were auditioning didn't measure up. Or if they did (Chester, etc) they were already in major bands and weren't available.

Oh don't get me wrong - none of these candidates were on par with Scott. But I would have preferred a world with VR and a "good enough" singer to the endless Slash w/ Myles Kenndy boredom.

elevendayempire

Vale wrote:

elevendayempire wrote:
Vale wrote:
They should have gone with Franky Perez and stopped playing GN'R songs. Sure losing Scott was a major setback, but with Perez they could have released new stuff without drama and started building up their audience again. Didn't they tease the third record being way heavier? That would have been a good place to start..
The songs Kushner eventually released with Perez that I assume were intended for VR sounded promising...
Nah, Perez is – with the best will in the world – a middle-tier talent. Scott had incredible stage presence, charisma to burn and a lyrical songwriting touch. It takes something special to follow that up, and I think the VR guys realised that the people they were auditioning didn't measure up. Or if they did (Chester, etc) they were already in major bands and weren't available.
Oh don't get me wrong - none of these candidates were on par with Scott. But I would have preferred a world with VR and a "good enough" singer to the endless Slash w/ Myles Kenndy boredom.

Nah. For me, 90% of what made VR special was that electric combination of charismatic, lyrical frontman and the GN'R instrumental section. As you can hear from the Project demo tracks and the various leaked post-Scott audition tracks, that band with a generic frontman would've been vastly less interesting.

Apparently Jeff Angell from Walking Papers auditioned at one point. He would've been interesting, since he's a close analogue to Weiland in terms of vocal stylings and the poetic quality of his lyrics - though it would've meant being stuck within the same baritone vocal range as Weiland. And he's considerably less well-known that Scott was.

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