VELVET REVOLVER Frontman Says He Doesn't Understand The 'Nu Metal Thing'

VELVET REVOLVER frontman Scott Weiland told U-Press Telegram in a recent interview that he initially resisted joining joining the group following his departure from STONE TEMPLE PILOTS.

"I had really made up my mind before (VELVET REVOLVER) that I wasn't going to be involved with rock," Weiland revealed. "I didn't want to be a part of what that current, I wouldn't even call it a movement, was about. There was that nu metal thing. I didn't known anything about it. I didn't understand it.

"The music I was hearing was based all around detuned riffs that laid within one or two different keys. Every riff I was hearing was the same regurgitated chord patterns with absolutely no melody," Weiland said. "The attitudes were cartoon versions of heavy metal guys pretending they were rappers. I found it very unrock and roll and unsexy while at the same time very sexist."

At the same time, Weiland says the breakup from STP left him feeling burned out.

"I'd just gotten out of a long relationship with STP that had really worn thin," Weiland said. "That was a tight family with four guys who had been through hell and back. I wasn't too excited about going through the whole thing all over again. It really took some coaxing to get me down to that studio.

"I was tepid and wary about the idea of it being a GUNS N' ROSES reunion. But Duff [McKagan, bass] convinced me it was something altogether different and that the wild card lay in Dave Kushner," Weiland said. "I'd known Dave for a long time. I'd done gigs with him when he was in ELECTRIC LOVE HOGS. I could see where that was the truth."

Weiland said the recent emotional and mental chaos he has endured from trying to get his life back on track was a well of lyrical inspiration.

"This record was serendipity," Weiland said. "It was a change or die period for me. I had to man up. It was a difficult thing to do. I had to find strength to be able to do everything that I had previously not been able to do.

"Because it was that point in my life, it was that sort of place musically. There was a whole world of emotions going on," he said. "I was in a band with people who had gone through a lot of the same experiences I" d gone through. Those guys were able to lay down an instrumental bed of music for me to write melodies and lyrics on top of.

"It was extremely powerful, extremely high energy, extremely emotional, extremely vicious, extremely angry, extremely sexual — every high intensity that I was feeling at the time into one," Weiland said.

"As I got out of the medicated phase I was in and into the complete live wire, raw nerve phase where there was nothing blocking my emotions, I had so much to write about."