STEVIE SALAS & MATT SORUM
by Tina Peek
LINKS:
Part Mescalero Apache, Stevie Salas was hand-picked by George Clinton as the guitarist on Clinton’s albums. He became Rod Stewart’s guitarist, playing football stadiums and flying around in private jets. Stevie traveled the world for two years advocating Native American rights with a group of Native American musicians for a World Peace project. He was music director for Terence Trent D’Arby (now known as Sananda Matreya). He has toured with Duran Duran, and he wrote and produced hits with vocalist Sass Jordan. In 2001, Mick Jagger personally chose Stevie as co-music director and lead guitarist for his solo venture. Stevie has also recorded more than a few solo CDs himself, starting with his debut album, Colorcode in 1990. His output is vast, starting with the Stuff EP in ’91; Bootleg Like a Mug (Live in Japan), 1992; The Electric Pow Wow, ’93; Back From The Living, ’94; All That…and Born to Mack (Live in Japan), ’95; Anthology (1987-1994), ’96; Alter Native, ’96; Alter Native EP, ’96; Le Bootleg (Live in Paris), ’97; Seoul Power, ’97; Viva La Noise, ’98; The Sometimes Almost Never Was, ’98; Sol Power, ’99; Shapeshifter-The Rise and Fall of Stevie No Wonder, 2001; Presents: The Soulblasters of The Universe, 2004; Presents: The Soulblasters of the Universe-Cosmic Flutie a Mixtape For The Underdog, ’04; The Sun and The Earth, ’07; and finally, Stevie’s latest album titled Be What It Is, released earlier this year. Whew! And as if that weren’t enough, Stevie is also the music director for such acts as Daughtry, Jordin Sparks, and more recently, American Idol winner David Cook. Stevie Salas has written, played on, and/or been a producer on over 80 major label releases, and even did the guitar score to the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, providing the finger work for Rufus’s stunning guitar solo. He signed the largest deal Island Records has ever forked over for a new artist, and his second solo album ousted the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith for Best Album in Japan. Most books name Stevie Salas as one of the Top 50 Guitarists of all time. The man has talent, there is no doubt about that!
His good friend Matt Sorum is no less talented. Born in Long Beach California and starting out as a young 14-year old playing the club scene in L.A., Matt played with a series of bands, including Population Five with bassist Prescott Niles from The Knack. He met a then-unknown Tori Amos in L.A., and together they formed Y Kant Tori Read. After playing clubs for two years, they landed a record deal with Atlantic. Matt also played with The Jeff Paris Band, recording an album for Polygram in 1987. In 1988, he joined The Cult and over the next two years went on tour alongside bands like Metallica and Aerosmith. That year, guitarist Slash saw Matt performing live with The Cult and was so impressed with his drumming skills that he was asked to join Guns’N’Roses as Steven Adler’s replacement. Matt’s chops can be heard on Use Your Illusion I, Use Your Illusion II and The Spaghetti Incident? The first song he recorded with the band was “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” for the movie Days Of Thunder. The band hit the road for a 3-year world tour, playing stadiums with sit-in guests that included Brian May, Jeff Beck, Ronnie Wood, Steven Tyler and Elton John, with Matt drumming on all 192 shows, 8 legs, and to over 7 million fans. Sorum has received two Grammy award nominations and two MTV awards. In 1995 he formed the band Neurotic Outsiders, which featured his old band mate Duff McKagan, Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols, and John Taylor from Duran Duran, and recorded their only album for Maverick in 1996, which was self titled. Early performances featured guest spots by Simon Le Bon, Billy Idol, and Iggy Pop. In 1998, Matt released his first and only drum instructional video (Drum Licks and Tricks from the Rock‘N’Roll Jungle). Joining The Cult once again in 1999, he was featured on their album Beyond Good and Evil and spent most of that year touring in support of the album. After touring with Aerosmith in the winter of 2001, Matt reunited with Slash and bassist Duff McKagan for a charity benefit, and deciding they still had great chemistry together, they formed a new band called Velvet Revolver, bringing in Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots on vocals. Velvet Revolver released two albums, their first in 2004 titled Contraband, and in 2007, Libertad. In addition, Matt released a solo album titled Hollywood Zen in 2003, and that same year began playing with the newly formed band Camp Freddy with Dave Navarro. He has toured with the Sex Pistols during their reunion tour in the ‘90s on drums. More recently, Matt has also strayed into the clothing foray, partnering up with his good friend Max Noce opening a men’s boutique, styled in rock‘n’roll fashion, called Sorum*Noce in Beverly Hills.
There, I did it. I’m sure I’ve missed something somewhere. But hey, with so much talent and such a massive body of work between two amazing artists, I hope I can be forgiven if I’ve been remiss. It wasn’t on purpose.
In Toronto as a presenter at the Aboriginal People's Choice Music Awards Show and with his latest album Be What It Is up for an award (on which Sorum played the drums), Stevie Salas, along with his good friend Matt, were performing at the Academy the following evening as well. Needless to say, they were busy. I thought, perhaps they might be feeling less than gracious at the prospect of yet another interview request that day. But as I rode the elevator to meet with them in a suite set up for the various TV interviews and press, I was introduced to Stevie and Matt, and they greeted me with big, warm smiles and made me feel at ease immediately. I could tell they were good friends right away. The banter between them easy and the laughter quick, and like most good friends, they would finish each other’s sentences. I can say quite truthfully, that I wish I could’ve spent that entire afternoon listening to their many stories, most of them funny and all of them interesting. In fact, they gave such wonderful and lengthy answers, I wasn’t able to ask all the questions I’d thought up for them on this day. Hopefully there will be a next time. Oh yeah, and there was absolutely no attitude or rock star bullshit from these guys at all, either. These two musicians are simply very sweet, down-to-earth, regular nice guys, and I wanted you to know that... But don’t tell them I told you.
MATT SORUM: Lay ‘em on me!! [laughs]
TP: Okay great. The first thing I wanted to ask, is how did the two of you meet and how did you start collaborating together?
STEVIE SALAS: Actually, Matt is one of the first guys I met when I moved to L.A. In 1985, when I moved to L.A., after 2 months I was homeless and I used to sleep on a couch at Studio B, at Baby’O Studios, which was a studio on Sunset Boulevard. And I used to hang out there all the time. I cleaned up, and I locked up, and they let me crash out there. And Matt was there working with a band, and often bands were in there like KISS and all these big bands, and lots of times musicians were real pricks. But Matt was in there with some band, and Matt was totally, Matt always had that big Matt Sorum smile and was always nice, and he was actually one of the first guys I met in L.A.
MS: I remember walking through the lobby one time with a box of booze…because he used to order from Bogies all the time, remember?
SS: Yeah, yeah, yeah!!
MS: And when we taped the sessions at Baby’O, and the guy that I was working for was not that talented, he wasn’t a great singer, but what his main thing was is that he wanted to get a lot of booze for the sessions, and I remember walking through and you were… I can’t remember what you were doing in the lobby, but I had this big box, and you were like, [yells excitedly] “Dude, you guys are gonna’ rock tonight!!!” [laughter]
SS: That’s right, buddy. Your room was always a good party room!!
MS: Oh, yeah.
SS: When you guys were in the studio—because I lived there and I had nowhere to go, I had no money.
TP: [speaking to Matt] Who was this band you’re talking about?
MS: The band that I was producing was called Question 16.
SS: 1985
MS: Yeah mid-eighties, somewhere in there.
TP: So you guys have been pals for a long time…
SS: Yeah. And the funny thing about Matt and me was—Matt even played on my second album, a collaboration I did with Electric Pow Wow many years ago and where I had lots of different musicians in different sorts of situations. I had the bass player from Cheap Trick playing with Matt on drums with Sass Jordan singing and doing a Robin Trower song or something. Just a bizarre combination of musicians. And the thing that I really realized is, we’d be coming up and I’d run into Matt at the clubs and Matt would be like, “Wow, I just met this guy Jeff Paris, I’m gonna play with him. I think we’re gonna get to tour!!” And I’m like, “No way! You’re gonna get to tour?” Oh that’s like a dream to go on tour right? And then I’d run into him somewhere else and I’d just done this weird record and he was like, “Wow!!” And we were always like, “What are you doing?” And we’d just run into each other. And then I remember I got the gig with Rod Stewart and that was big. Then he got The Cult, [referring to Matt] and that was big. And then I got signed to Island Records, which was cool. And then Matt joined Guns’N’Roses. And then it was like, “Can you lend me a few bucks?” [we all laugh] Because we were all doing good, but then all of a sudden Matt was rich!! And you know, when you go from making five grand a week and you’re a young guy, then you’re kind of rich. But then you were like Matt rich. He had the mansion on the hill and all that stuff. But that’s how it went, where we would just run into each other and we’d be like, “I got a chance to do this weird record with some English guy!” “No way!” “I got to go to England last week!” “Wow, what was it like?” So it was like that coming up.
TP: And this isn’t the first time the two of you have collaborated, is it?
SS: No.
TP: What have you collaborated on in the past?
MS: Me and Stevie?
TP: Yeah.
SS: Glenn Hughes. We produced Glenn Hughes and stuff. You know Glenn Hughes, the old Deep Purple singer and bass player?
TP: Yeah.
SS: Well Matt and I did it. We wrote it.
MS: Yeah. We did it at my house.
SS: Yeah. We did it at Matt’s old house. Matt’s big, old mansion house, not the new house where we record now. [laughter] We did Glenn Hughes together, and he did my Electric Pow Wow album, and we’ve jammed like, tons of times where we’d be out in the old days where there would be tons of rock stars and everyone would play together.
MS: This CD, this last album kind of came about very organically. He heard about my studio and then he started working in it, and I think there was an earlier project that you worked on first though, right?
SS: Maybe so, I don’t remember.
MS: Yeah. And then he liked it so he said, “I wanna do my album here.” And I was just kind of around and he said, “Hey Matt, do you wanna do a couple of tracks?”
SS: I kind of lied to you. I’d go like, “I’m just trying to get this song. I’m trying to work it out in my head, you know, can you just play a little beat for me?” And he came in from checking on the gardener or somebody was finishing the painting on the house or something and he goes, “Well, hang on,” and he sits down on the drums, [imitates Matt playing drums] and I’m like, “Alright!!” And we’d have the track. [they both laugh]
MS: Well, I think a little bit of what was happening
to me in my career was when I did get into Guns’N’Roses and
everyone thought I was this mega-rich guy, I stopped getting calls from
people who just wanted to do stuff. I mean, I think people were either,
maybe embarrassed to ask me or just didn’t think I would be willing
to do it, ya know? They’d be like, “Well what do you need
to do this for?” But the fact of the matter is, I really like to
play music, and I’m up here with Stevie as a really fun—and
Stevie’s music is really…he’s a bit of a slave driver,
he cracks the whip and I like that. He knows what he likes in his music
and it’s always a challenge to play with Stevie because in every
instrument, he knows. He knows what he’s hearing. It’s not
like with my band, with Velvet Revolver where we all do our own thing
and every once in a while we’ll suggest something. With Stevie,
he’s got an idea of where the music should be, from the high hat
to the kick drums, everything, where it should be placed, the rhythm and
the bass, where it should fit in with the drums.
TP: So basically, he’s bossy. [we all laugh; it’s clear I’m teasing and suddenly they’re both talking at the same time] I’m only kidding! [laughter]
MS: [laughs] I like that. See, but I like that about Stevie because I’m the same kind of guy, musically. But I’m in a situation with guys that you can’t really go there, but you wish you could. You know what I mean? Like, you wish you could push a little bit harder and make the music even better, and I think that’s what Stevie does, is he always strives for the best as a musician. And for me, he actually pushes me to be a better musician, and that’s a lot of why I’m here. I left for Thanksgiving and I told my girl, I said, “You know I really wanna go play with Stevie because this is a little funkier music than I’m used to playing, even though I know I got it in me!” I can do it. Ya know what I mean?
TP: Right.
MS: And I’m not used to playing as funky as this.
I’m more of a straight-ahead rock guy usually, but I have it in
me and Stevie brings it out of me. So for me to come here I told my girl,
I said, “I gotta leave for Thanksgiving because I’m going
to musically challenge myself, see if I can tackle nine songs after one
hour of rehearsal.” [Matt bursts out laughing]
SS: Yeah we haven’t really rehearsed.
TP: Really?
SS: [laughs] Oh yeah. We were flying all over the place, all over the world. And then Matt came in and he was at Sundance and I was in Winnipeg or somewhere and we flew in and we had literally four hours one day and four hours the other day and we’re going to rehearse a little today.
MS: So it’s junk, you know what I mean? [laughs]
TP: Well it gets the juices flowing when you’re not always so prepared right?
MS: Oh it does. It really does.
SS: If you just let the guy get to the point, like Matt’s instincts are so…he’s such a pro with his instincts and when it comes to the details and when it comes to show-time, Matt just flips a switch and it’s like total pro. We used to get together in Mexico out of the blue, and John Entwistle from The Who would be there and Sammy Hagar, and we would get shit down and without thinking, our instincts would take over and that was probably, I mean, you could’ve recorded those gigs and that would’ve been spectacular!
MS: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: Spectacular stuff man!
MS: And I think the kind of guys we were, as young musicians coming up, the reason that we did get those gigs is we had good instincts and we were able to learn quick. We were quick learners. We could scuffle right into a gig and just grab the songs and get it. And I think that’s why people liked us as musicians to get us those jobs, you know what I mean?
TP: Right. Wow.
SS: It’s true. When I was with Mick Jagger, we had four days to get it together for Saturday Night Live—just four days.
MS: Even with The Cult... With The Cult I remember it was four days and the next show was sold out. We were opening for Metallica in Vancouver at the big, wherever the fuckin’ Enorma-dome is. [laughter]
SS: [laughs] Is that what it’s called?
MS: No, it’s Enormo-dome
SS: Giant dome [laughter]
MS: Jumbo dome.
TP: Clearly then you guys will have some future collaborations together, right?
SS: Oh yeah, we’re producing a really cool thing right now. We’re developing a thing called the Darling Stilettos, which is in L.A., which is really awesome!
TP: Really?
MS: Yeah!
SS: Super awesome!
TP: [referring to Stevie] You are probably one of the busiest musicians I have personally interviewed, to date. I mean, you’re the Music Director for American Idol, your new album Be What It Is released earlier this year, world-wide touring, you’re the musical director for acts like Daughtry, Jordin Sparks and David Cook, which I heard debuted at number three on the Billboard Charts, and that’s the best showing for Idol in a few years I think?
SS: Yeah. He’s gonna be big, really big.
TP: I don’t know how you manage. Like, how do you find the time to do…
SS: I don’t have any time anymore. I literally, I’ve never been this busy in my life! I used to be really busy, but then it got in the mid ‘90s where I had these really amazing recording contracts around Europe and Japan, where they gave me, literally, half a million dollars every year and I didn’t have to do anything if I didn’t want to, so I surfed a lot and I was sort of uninspired. And then pretty much since Mick Jagger called, I’ve been like busy, busy, busy. And now it’s to the point where even when we’re trying to get together, [referring to Matt] and work more on some of these tracks for the girls. And last night I was hosting the Awards dinner for the Aboriginal Awards, and Matt’s phone’s blowing up, and it’s Jason Flom the President of Universal Music wanting to know, “Where’s the music for the girls?” And so we have to get home and we’re like, “When we get home we gotta knock this out!” So it’s just, we don’t have a lot of time these days.
TP: So will they be signed or are not signed yet?
MS: Well, we don’t know.
TP: Is this with Universal?
SS: I wouldn’t say that, he’s just blowing up the phones you know, once we go out we’ll see what he has to say. We’ve gotta do the wraps.
MS: Yeah we’ve gotta work. We’ve gotta work hard.
SS: We’ve gotta do the wraps.
MS: We have to do a lot of work.
SS: [smiling] Guadalupe Islands, yeah!
TP: Yeah, and I saw that submarine and thought that was pretty wild. It was crazy!
SS: That was insane! I got back from Ensenada, Mexico at six in the morning, and I jumped in the car, went to San Diego to my house there, saw my son for two hours, had some breakfast, got in the car and went out and started David Cook that day up in Hollywood. It’s like boom, instant [snaps fingers several times] non-stop. The Guadalupe Island thing was insane though.
TP: Yeah, weird story how you met Steve Drogin.
SS: He’s a legendary guy. I met that guy in a
plane from Chicago. And I was way up in Hudson Bay--I’m getting
ready to develop a young native singer named Melisa Pash for Arbor Records—and
on my way back I sat next to this guy and his wife on the plane and we
just started talking about our love for Africa and wild life and the ocean.
Next thing you know, it turns out the guy’s got a 135-foot yacht,
and he invites me on a trip full of scientists and he owns his own submarine!
MS: No, I haven’t.
SS: Oh, you gotta see them. They're on my web page. Look at the bottom. I was in this submarine. It’s got this glass dome and giant Great Whites are swimming all around us.
TP: That’s just crazy, I would love to do that! So you do that and you’re so busy, I just wonder, with so many hats, how do you spread yourself out without spreading yourself too thin?
SS: If you really wanna be a true rock‘n’roll person, and this sounds kind of corny, but I kind of come from the days of, I think, real rock. And I think a lot of rock‘n’roll kids now that I see, like the Fall Out Boys and all this, I wouldn’t know ‘em if they were standing next to me and they were number one on the charts. I just find them to be so—real rock‘n’roll is not just standing around in a club and being all cool. I like going to Africa and to go on Safari, and go to the Indian Ocean and sail around islands, and come back and rock some stadiums or arenas, you know what I mean? It’s like real rock‘n’roll!!
TP: How do you find the time? To me, that’s the key.
SS: You find a way. If it’s worth it, you find a way.
TP: Of course you do. Anything that’s important, you always find time for, right?
MS: Yeah.
TP: Okay, you’re part Apache and I wondered how it felt, not only to be nominated, but also win in the category of Best Rock Recording at the 2008 Native American Music Awards for your album The Sun and The Earth earlier this year?
SS: Oh! What did I win? Was that the one? Oh by the way, did you guys know this, I won here for…
TP: Best Rock Album.
MS: But they screwed it up last night, I heard.
SS: I also won here this week with…last night?
MS: Yeah.
SS: Last night they announced it by accident. The guy was announcing the Best Instrumental Album and they handed him Best International Album and they go, “Stevie Salas, for Be What It Is” and I’m like, “What?” And everybody else is like, “What?” And there were three other albums on the screen.
MS: It was very obvious, very obvious.
TP: Yeah, but they’re two different awards. This one is for The Sun and the Earth.
SS: Sun and the Earth, yeah.
TP: For Best Rock Recording.
SS: Yeah, Sun and the Earth won one in NAMMY for Best Rock Recording, Sun and the Earth won at the Indian Summer Music Awards for Best Alternative Album in America, and also Be What It Is won Best Alternative Album this year. In some places it’s a rock album, but in some parts of the world it’s an alternative album, I dunno.
TP: My question is, how does it make you feel? Because initially, when you started your career, you didn’t really acknowledge your heritage that much and that happened…
SS: But I still didn’t, I’ll get that straight about that.
TP: Okay.
SS: It got to the point where after a while…I’ve always been Apache. I mean, always. And sometimes Randy, Randy Castillo, the drummer from Ozzy Osbourne, he was also Apache, and him and I would go off, completely unrelated to anything rock‘n’roll. I don’t even know if you, [to Matt] knew we were doing these things, but we would go to New Mexico and we’d play with groups of Native kids from Pine Ridge and places. And we’d do Native music, acoustic guitars and acoustic drums, and we went to England and did this big World Peace thing with all these Indians and people from Africa. And we would do these things in between our big ol’ wild nights of Hollywood and cocktailing and women and sports arenas. [Matt laughs] So we got a good balance. I was always doing something, but it wasn’t always something I talked about a lot. But then after a bunch of years, I started to realize a lot of Chiefs from different big casinos and big reservations and that, and I’d meet the Chiefs, and I’d meet other influential Aboriginal people, and they’d be like, “How come you get to play all over with these famous people and tour the world and the other Native guitar players don’t?” And it hit me, I went, “Well that has nothing to do with me being Native.” So I thought to myself, maybe I should start coming in here and start to figure out how to help these guys get their stuff sorted out. Because I would say to them, “Let me tell you, you have this artist that you just wanted me to meet. You made a record with them and now you’ve got three thousand CDs in your garage?” And they’d be like, “How did you know?!” I mean, I knew the game immediately because I’ve owned my own record label and stuff, so I realized I should come in here and start helping these people figure this out. Then I met Brandon Friesen who owns Arbor Records, from Canada, and he came to my house in L.A. And he was like, “Look, you could be the guy—everyone’s trying to bring the Native musician to the mainstream, but you could be the guy who brings the mainstream to the Natives”, ala Matt Sorum and hanging out here, inspiring the kids. Last year I brought Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ drummer and bass player in. And so Brandon and I did it and I realized then that we could start developing and I could help. My knowledge could then help, and that’s where that came in. And since I am Apache, I can come to these events and speak to the people as one of them and not as an outsider.
SS: I feel a little guilty to tell you the truth, coming and getting these awards. I feel like it’s an unfair privilege or advantage that I have over everybody. C’mon, I get to make a record with these kind of guys [gestures towards Matt] playing on it and it’s gotta be better than the stuff that’s made in someone’s bedroom. And so I feel I have an unfair advantage over everyone. And I don’t like going up there, “Oh here I am, a big-shot and now I’m gonna come in and take this from you.” I don’t want to do that. But of course I’m very grateful, and I’m very honored, and I’m very humbled if I get it. And what I am happy about and if I do win an award, is that maybe more Native kids will actually get turned on to my records and listen to it and perhaps they’ll get inspired by the guys playing on ‘em.
TP: And like all young kids, they look up to the rockers that inspire them, rockers they admire.
SS: Yeah, and I’m cool with that.
TP: I bet. I imagine you would be. So I was going to ask Matt what the experience has been like for you being here with Stevie and being involved with a lot of the Aboriginal dinners and awards, because you’ve been to Toronto plenty of times, but you’re seeing it perhaps in a different kind of way or light. So I wondered what you’re taking away from this experience?
MS: Well, [pauses] Stevie told me we were playing the Skydome. [we all break out laughing] And I I said, “I’m there!! [room full of laughter] It’s like another day at the office for me!” He said there’d be teepees. [lots of laughter and Matt, who was clearly joking around, has to wait for everyone to stop] No wait, wait, let me tell you something. Last night at the Awards show I was absolutely captivated by the whole thing.
TP: Were you?
MS: Yeah, and these drummers got up, I think they were called Black Bear…
SS: The Black Bear Singers.
MS: The Black Bear Singers, right. So these nine or ten guys get up and they’ve got this traditional drum and it’s a very spiritual thing you know, and they come from like two hundred and fifty miles north, two hundred and fifty kilometers north of Quebec.
SS: North of Montreal.
MS: Montreal, so they didn’t really speak any English and I don’t even think they spoke much French either. [laughs] I think they were speaking Cree. And these guys did their thing man, and I’m tellin’ ya, I was blown away!!
TP: Were you really?
SS: It ended up on my iPod.
MS: I felt this whole movement, this emotional movement in my chakras, and I was like, “Wow, this is pretty heavy,” and they were really focused, man. And it was so awesome to see them do their traditional trip, ya’ know? And afterwards Stevie goes, “Hey man, go ask those guys to open up for us!” So I went over there….
TP: Did they know who you were?
MS: I think vaguely, maybe they don’t have TVs up there, I don’t know. So I went up and tried to talk to them and they didn’t speak English. And this one guy says to me, “They’re speaking in their Cree native language and a little bit of French. [laughs] So I think I got through to them and…
SS: I kept seeing Matt go, [making gestures in his palm, imitating Matt] “This Stevie, that’s him, [points] that’s me, Saturday.” [I’m laughing]
MS: Yeah. [laughs]
SS: “Good place to be, you come! You come!”
MS: The whole vibe was great. I mean, I’ve toured through Canada many times, the first time, with my band The Cult. And when I was in The Cult, Ian our singer was very much into the Aboriginal, Native American Indians a lot. Be was really into that. So there was a lot of that going on around us, especially in the late 80’s. And I remember when we played in Rapid City, North Dakota and he invited half the reservation to come back and see us, [laughs] and that kind of thing. So I’ve always been around that, and Randy Steele has always been a very, very dear friend of mine. But this is a great experience to be here, though, and I’m really diggin’ it. I’m having a great time!
SS: Last night I walked through the lobby…
TP: Oh, I’m being given a sign that we’ve only got five minutes left and I still have a few questions for you guys.
SS: Naw, we can give her more time. [turns to his PR person who’s in the room with us] We’re not in a big hurry, are we in a hurry? [the guys are told they have rehearsal] He can wait. We can give her more time.
MS: I don’t need to practice. [laughs]
TP: Aww no, I don’t want to do that to you guys.
SS: It’s okay, Leo can wait a little bit. Let’s give her what she needs.
MS: Sure, no problem.
SS: So last night I walked into the hotel lobby and there must have been sixty or seventy kids. They looked like kids, but I think they were all like, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, girls and guys, and they’re all from Yellowknife or somewhere, [turns to Matt] right?
MS: Yeah, yeah, Yellowknife.
SS: And they’d come down to do some modeling things for the Pow Wow show or something. And Matt was sitting in the middle of them, in a chair, and they were all sitting around him like little chickens and all standing around him and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I walked by saying, “Tell them never to take drugs!” [laughs]
MS: I was actually talking to them about Yellowknife, because Yellowknife is a place I’ve never been really. You know these kids were saying—I asked them if they get many bands up there, and they said, "Well, Trooper came." And I’m like, “Trooper?” [laughs] That’s like 1972! Which is great that Trooper went to Yellowknife, but I’m like, “Anybody else?” And someone said, “The White Stripes came once!” And I was like, “Well that’s pretty cool!”
TP: That is pretty cool.
MS: So I thought it over and I was thinking, “Wow, there’s a whole untapped universe in Yellowknife where kids are craving rock‘n’roll.”
SS: And not just Yellowknife, all over the world there’s places like that people don’t bother getting to.
MS: That bands don’t get to. Yeah, but it was cool to talk to them and to hear what’s going on with them, because now with the Internet and everything else, kids are so tapped in to the rest of the universe, you know? And they create music up there. So I said to Stevie, “Dude, we gotta go to Yellowknife.” [much laughter]
TP: So are you gonna go?
MS: Yeah, we’re talkin’ to them and they're from waaaay the hell up there. So it was cool.
SS: You know we started, we have a television show coming up in March on APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network) called Arbor Live. Matt’s on the show and Tommy Lee and all kinds of people are gonna be on the show.
TP: Is this your show?
SS: Yeah, I’m the host of the show.
TP: Really? What’s it called?
SS: Arbor Live, it’s a music show; it starts in March on Saturday nights, and the point about the show is that I went to people at the networks and I also went to some of my rock star friends and I said, “This show reaches places.” It’s like, why would Motley Crue care about being on my little show, other than Tommy’s a friend? And I go, “Guys, there’s places all over this country where kids love rock‘n’roll and they would never get an opportunity to see you on their channel, or in a different light, other than the press junket stuff that they get fed.” You know what I mean?
TP: Yup.
SS: And a lot of the managers in America were all like, “I get this.” There’s a whole gigantic market for rock‘n’roll. I betcha if Matt had fifty albums to sell last night, he could’ve sold fifty of his solo albums to all those kids. They would’ve bought ‘em right there on the spot. And even though you can’t sell a record anymore, those kids were chomping at the bit. And I walked past them and they were just captivated by Matt.
TP: So is this TV show on an Aboriginal…
SS: It’s on an Aboriginal network. It’s a music show with a lot of Aboriginal talent on it.
MS: And I think for me it’s kind of a trip, that maybe in my little bit of celebrity or whatever, I’m probably, well who knows, I might have been the biggest celebrity they’ve ever met, you know what I mean? I don’t know.
SS: Absolutely.
MS: I had a picture of Slash’s top hat on my cell phone and they all wanted to see it. “Really?” I showed them the picture. I go, “I got his hat, wanna check it out?” [laughter] But it reminded me, one time I went to this little island in Brazil off the coast of Sao Paulo and I was treated like the Mayor. And I asked them, “Has there ever been a celebrity, or a big celebrity here before?” And they were like, “Nope, you’re the biggest one we’ve ever had.” [breaks out laughing] And I was like, “Oh.” I mean Guns’N’Roses used to tour Brazil, but that was the same kind of feeling I got from these kids. They’ve never really been anywhere in the vicinity of anybody that they know from a big record.
TP: That’s crazy, eh?
MS: Yeah.
SS: My friends, like my Native friends like ShoShona from Digging Roots, who’s a very popular girl here in the community, she comes over to me and says, “I have to apologize, but I had to go up to Matt Sorum and say, ‘Hi,’ I didn’t want to bother him you know.” And I was like, “You’re not going to bother him, I’m sure he loved it!” So it’s like she really felt bad, “I didn’t want to bother him, but I really just wanted to say ‘Hello’ and ask for a photo.” So you know what I mean? That’s another Canadian thing that’s different from Americans. Americans would be like, “Take a picture with me.” And you’d be like, “Hang on, give me five minutes.” “You’re a prick!”
MS: Yeah.
TP: Oh really?
SS: Yeah, Canadians are much more polite.
TP: Yes, we are a polite people aren’t we?
MS: It’s a great country.
TP: It is. How come you’re not living here then? [I laugh] You spend an awful lot of time here, Stevie.
SS: I like to surf. [laughs]
TP: So do you have a love affair going on with Canada? Like why are you…
SS: I’ve had a lot of love affairs with a lot of Canadian women, I’ll tell you that much!
MS: Yeah, me too.
TP: [laughing] Really?
MS: Oh yeah, for sure.
TP: Wow. That’s because Canadian women rock. That’s what it is. We kick ass. [they both laugh]
SS: Yeah. And they’re nice. They don’t yell at you half as much. [laughter]
TP: Because we’re polite, aren’t we girls? [I turn to the two PR ladies in the room with us and Matt laughs].
SS: And they speak nice, even when they’re calling you a prick. They’re like, [imitates in a soft girlie voiced whisper] “Well, you are actually being very much of a prick right now.” [laughter]
TP: How old were you when you started playing guitar and are you self-taught?
SS: Fifteen, self-taught, learned by ear. Never took a lesson.
TP: [turning to Matt] Drums?
MS: Five.
TP: Really?
MS: Yeah, sort of tapping around and then I got pretty serious around twelve or thirteen and started playing clubs in Hollywood at about fourteen.
TP: Did you? Any tips?
MS: Just listen to bands, listen to records, and play along with records.
SS: I did that a lot. That’s how I learned. It’s funny, because you say you played along with records. I used to sit in my bedroom in San Diego, in the afternoons when I was in high school, and put on Aerosmith’s Rocks or I’d put on Led Zeppelin II, and I would just play to the record. And I think by playing to the record it teaches you how to come in at the right time and have time and swing, right?
MS: Yeah.
SS: And then ironically enough, all of a sudden ten years later, you’re doing MTV Awards with Steven Tyler from Aerosmith and it becomes a very weird thing, but I learned how to play on those same records.
MS: Yeah, just played along with the headphones, Deep Purple, Sabbath, Zeppelin and all the great bands, you know.
TP: And were those your idols growing up?
MS: Some of them, yeah. The thing about those days, I think that we were very fortunate to have, was we had very diverse groups of musicians and groups that sounded so diverse that it really helped you create your own style. Where nowadays, it seems like there’s twenty Green Days and there’s twenty Limp Bizkits and all these different—so in those days we had all these things to draw from. And by playing along with Deep Purple, Hendrix, and then going over and playing with Sabbath and then maybe jamming to like, Genesis or Yes or whatever, that kind of meshed all your sounds and styles. And you could draw from these different people and you could say, “I like that fill,” or “I like that riff,” and then you’d morph it into your own thing and that becomes your style.
TP: Do you guys find that a lot of music now is—and not criticizing, not everyone is like this, but do you find it’s a lot more generic now where one band is starting to sound just like the next and they’re….
SS: Look like it, sound like it.
TP: Yeah.
SS: It’s not all their fault though.
TP: No, it isn’t.
SS: Because the record companies encourage, if one thing is really popular, they encourage a bunch of other music just like it and when I—I hate to keep going back and saying, “Well back in the old days” but back in the 80’s…
TP: How old are you?
SS: I’m in my forties now.
TP: Are you? I didn’t know that. [Matt laughs]
SS: Yeah. So in the late 80’s when I was getting development deals, before I got signed to Island Records, I had a development deal at A&M Records and I had a development deal at Elektra Records and they would literally give you, “Here Stevie, here’s twenty grand, just go in the studio and experiment.” Not like now. Now it’s, “Give me a hit record.” Just experiment and see what you come up with. I got to go to Amsterdam. They wanted me to play on some record, Elektra Records in England, and I didn’t wanna go, so in order to get me to go, they gave me, “Here’s five thousand dollars extra for you and you can go away and not do any guitar sessions, go in the other studio there and cut some songs for us. Maybe we can make a record with you.” And they would encourage you to try and come up with something unique.
TP: [asking Matt] Did you find that as well? Did they do that with you too?
MS: Well they weren’t giving me loads of money, [laughs] but when I was coming up, bands were different. But in the mid 80’s is when things started to change a little, like hair band rock came in and there was a certain style. But if you notice from that era, you notice all the hair bands from the mid 80’s, the one that stood out, the one that pulled out of that crop, was Guns’N’Roses. Like Warrant and Winger and all those kind of bands were almost left behind and sort of, like people look at it as the hair generation, but the one band that stood out was Guns’N’Roses because we were a little bit more of a dirt-bag band. But there’s always been waves of music to come in, like Nirvana started the grunge movement, but Nirvana was the one band that really stood out, and yeah Alice In Chains is still cool, Pearl Jam, but Nirvana was the cream of the crop and they started the movement. And I think it’s still good when movements start like that, when bands will come along like, let’s say The Strokes or The Killers or White Stripes and they start this—in my opinion that started more of a retro movement, which brought back a lot of great music. But I see, with the rock‘n’roll thing that’s happening now, I was just reading that rock sales are really up which is really exciting for guys like us. And it only brings more to us. And with records like AC/DC, Metallica, and even the Chinese Democracy album being out now, finally, is bringing back rock‘n’roll in a time of a recession. Rock‘n’roll is the thing that people always seem to gravitate to.
TP: I agree. It’s definitely making a resurgence. For a while there, I found that rap was kind of obliterating the rock world.
SS: Yeah.
TP: But I feel that rock is really coming back. So have you heard Chinese Democracy?
MS: No I haven’t. I haven’t really heard it. I haven’t sat with the record. I’ve heard the single, and I liked it. I would like to sit with it and listen to it. I remember, even back in the 70’s when I used to get records, some records that I really, really love now I didn’t always understand on the first listen, you know? It would have to be one of those records you listen to four or five times. I think even the second record that Velvet Revolver made, I think if you listen to it the third or fourth time, it starts to grow on you more than it would if you heard it the first time. You might not like it, you know what I mean?
TP: Yup.
MS: There are so many different little things in there, I think that’s—the one thing I gotta say about Chinese Democracy, and it’s interesting, I read it in the Rolling Stone today, I think Axl probably did about the most rock‘n’roll, punk rock move ever, of all time. And I’ve just thought about it, and I was thinking about it last night. He doesn’t give a fuck. [breaks out laughing] He’s like, “Fuck you, I’m going to take seventeen years to make my record, and I’m going to put it out, and I don’t give a fuck what you say.” Right?
TP: Very true.
SS: How punk rock is that? [Matt laughs]
MS: “I’m going to take all your fucking money, because you’re gonna to give it to me.” [breaks out laughing]
TP: I think it’s doing really good.
MS: I think it’s doing good, but I think it’s probably the most anti-establishment, anti-record label—“I’m going to take my fucking time and I’m gonna create this—whatever it comes out to be.” So you gotta hand it to him for that. And people can call me an ass-muncher or whatever, but it’s like, I thought about it, and I’m like, “Man, that’s a fuckin’ pretty bold thing to do.”
TP: Pretty ballsy thing to do. [Matt laughs]
MS: He’s always had balls. [I laugh] That’s all I’ve got to say about that! [laughter]
TP: [Once again I’ve been given the sign to end the interview] Well, it looks like we have to wrap this up or I’m going to get in trouble. [laughter]. I still had some questions, but you guys are such great storytellers. It’s been amazing. Is there anything else you want to add before we end the interview?
SS: We’re just glad to be able to be alive and still be able to rock! [laughter]
