From 2003: The members of Velvet Revolver discuss how the band came to be.

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Since leaving Guns N' Roses in 1997, the same year McKagan quit, Sorum has immersed himself in a wide variety of musical projects, including film scores, production gigs and even a solo album (Hollywood Zen, due out this fall). But the bitter aftertaste of his GN'R exit still rankles. "We got the shitty end of the deal, me, Slash and Duff," he says. "We got kinda kicked to the curb, you know? Not that we have anything to prove, but we do."

Though Slash, McKagan and Sorum had all contributed in various combinations to several post-GN'R projects, they all admit that they'd been leery of doing anything that would be seen as a reunion. "We didn't want to make that statement," says Duff. "We were very careful about how we did it. I'd get a call from Izzy once in a while -- 'Hey, you wanna play on my record?' Or Slash would come through town, so I'd see him. But it just wasn't in the cards until now."

Deciding to carry on in the wake of the Buckcherry misfire, the three musicians invited Dave Kushner to join the party. Kushner and Slash had been friends in their L.A. junior high school days but had never played music together, since Kushner didn't become serious about playing guitar until after Slash had moved to a different neighborhood. Having paid his dues in such L.A. punk and hard rock bands as Wasted Youth, Electric Love Hogs and Infectious Grooves, Kushner moved to Japan a few years ago to seek his musical fortune. He didn't find it, but he did run into McKagan in a Tokyo nightclub.

"I was playing in this band called Zilch," Kushner recalls. "It was this crazy thing with a guitarist named Hide -- he's big in Japan -- and Joey Castillo from Queens of the Stone Age on drums. Duff was there with his band, Loaded. We'd met before, and we just started talking and hanging out." Kushner eventually joined Loaded, and when the rhythm guitar slot opened up in what would become Velvet Revolver, he seemed like the obvious choice.

"Dave's real forte is sounds," says McKagan. "He's got a million different pedals, and that adds a whole other 'mad scientist' element."

"He's got really good ideas," Slash agrees. "Dave's as sober as a judge; he used to be a real fuckup at one point, but now he's got this great work ethic."

"I've always been into really tweaky sound effects," says the deceptively mild-mannered Kushner. "I think it was because I could never afford good amps, so I always bought tons of effects -- wah-wah pedals that sound like talk boxes, that kind of shit. In this band, I'm just really trying to do something that takes it a little further from being a straight-up, five-piece, two-guitar rock band."

While Kushner's predeliction for Fernandes guitars, Bogner heads and a whole arsenal of Line 6 and Boss pedals might seem at odds with Slash's Les Paul-into-Marshall approach, the two guitarists quickly meshed. But when Izzy Stradlin suddenly started showing up at rehearsals, Kushner began to wonder if his days in the band were numbered. "Izzy just came out of nowhere, as Izzy does," Slash says, laughing. "Poor Dave. Izzy's sitting there, this ominous presence, and Dave's thinkin', That's the original guitarist from Guns N' Roses. Am I still gonna have a job? But we're real loyal people. It wasn't like, 'Hey, Dave, we're gonna work on some songs with Izzy; call us back in a couple of weeks!' When Izzy was there, we just played with three guitarists."

Stradlin hung out and jammed with his old mates for several weeks, but Slash and McKagan both say there was never any real possibility of their old guitarist joining their new band. "The Izzy thing probably got misconstrued a little bit," says McKagan. "I think he wanted to come in, like, 'Let's go out on tour right away! I've got eight songs, let's go! We'll do some covers; Duff and I will sing!' [laughs] But Matt and Slash and I were more like, 'If we're gonna do this, we're gonna have to do it so it's amazing.' I've heard a lot of fans saying, 'Why don't you have Izzy in the band now?' Well, this isn't cut out for him; he's more of a guy who will be here one day and be gone the next, and you won't know where he's gone to. But he added a new energy that we probably needed at that point."

"You have to understand our relationship with Izzy," Slash explains. "lzzy's always been the guy who's sort of there and sort of not there. Duff and I have seen Izzy periodically; I've played on his records a couple of times, and Duff has done the same thing. And then he called up right when we were in the midst of writing, and he actually came over and brought a couple of songs with him. And then we just started hanging out and jamming, and we wrote, like, 10 or so songs. It was just a lot of fun, but he didn't want to deal with the fuckin' long haul at all. As soon as we started to physically audition singers, we didn't see him again.'' Slash laughs. "He's so fucking shattered from his experience [with Axl] that he refuses to ever do anything involving a singer again!"

ARMED WITH A brace of new songs, the band began the endless, agonizing process of auditioning lead singers. "I couldn't envision the guy or the voice or anything like that," says Slash. "I just knew it had to be pretty unique; we already knew what the music was like, so it had to be somebody who could work with that." After placing ads in Rolling Stone and various British music papers, the band was deluged by CDs of singers from around the globe. "There were times when you'd do nothing but listen to submissions and end up wanting to hang yourself by the end of the day," Slash says with a laugh. "You went in going, 'Okay, we're gonna do this! There's gonna be somebody in here! ' And fucking 100, 200 CDs later, you're like, 'Oh, there's no future! '"

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