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

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On May 18, just days after he'd told Rolling Stone that he had officially become the band's singer, Weiland was arrested in Burbank after a police officer pulled him over for driving without headlights, then allegedly found heroin and cocaine in the car. The arrest marked the fourth time Weiland had been busted on drug charges; he'd previously been collared in California in 1995 and 1997, and New York in 1998. In 1999, he served a stint in prison when a Los Angeles judge ruled that the singer had violated the terms of his probation with a heroin overdose, and in 2001, he was arrested in Las Vegas on a domestic violence charge involving his wife. But rather than ditch Weiland over his latest brush with the law, the Velvet Revolver guys closed ranks around their grateful singer.

"They fuckin' had my back," says Weiland. "Totally, selflessly, those guys were there for me. None of these fuckers stab my back; there's no, like, 'You motherfucker, why do you do the things you do?' Like, I'm surrounded with a group of guys that are all fucking junkies, you know? They've done everything that I've done to the hilt, so there's no judgment there. After I got busted, my last fix was the morning after I got out of jail, just to get well. I went to the doctor and picked up some medication to kick with, and Duff and Dave flew me up to Seattle. We went up to the mountains, and I started kicking up there."

McKagan, who had gotten clean in the mid Nineties through an intensive martial arts regimen, contacted a teacher he knew in Seattle and booked himself, Kushner and Weiland into an extended stay at a martial arts retreat. "Scott had done his fair share of rehabs, and it just wasn't clicking," he says. "He knew the way I'd gotten sober, and he'd asked me about it."

"It was two-a-day sessions, starting in the morning with a run and tai-chi," Weiland remembers. "And then a light training session in Wing Chun Kung Fu, and then a class working into a heavier session. And then lunch, and then later on in the day a harder training session. It was pretty intense, and I'm still involved in it."

One month later, the band was back in L.A. for the show at the El Rey. Weiland looked shaky at the preliminary press conference, but he poured every ounce of pent-up rage and frustration into the band's raucous set, which included two originals ("Set Me Free" and "Slither") and covers of STP's "Sex Type Thing," GN'R's "It's So Easy," the Sex Pistols' "Bodies" and Nirvana's "Negative Creep.”

"He's a wild card," says McKagan of the singer. "And it's great, because you don't know what he's going to do. The night we played, he was in the audience; he was fucking rolling across the stage. It's not a safe environment -- Scott could come after you! " He laughs. "And that's missing from rock and roll -- that dangerous, 'What's gonna happen?' thing."

"That was really the birth of the band, that show," says Weiland. "After that, we just knew we were gonna move ahead full steam without looking back."

The success of the El Rey show inspired a label bidding war that ended when Velvet Revolver inked a deal with RCA after Clive Davis himself came forward to vie for the band's affections. (Thanks to his financial schooling, McKagan can now effectively translate record company contracts to his cohorts.) In August, Scott Weiland was sentenced to three years probation, with enforced counseling sessions and continuation of his rehab. The singer seems to be responding well to the band's brotherly support and is clearly firing on all creative cylinders.

"Melodically, arrangement-wise and lyrically, I'm happy with the whole package of where I'm at right now," he says. "The music is just really exciting to me. There's enough of a classic feel -- just like this fuckin' stab-you-in-the-gut rock and roll, this fuck-you rebellion. And then there's also total modern experimentalism going on."

The band is currently whittling its backlog of 60-plus songs down to 16 favorites, while auditioning prospective producers for its debut record, with an eye on an early 2004 release. "The record has to be 'in your face,' "says McKagan. "It's gotta sound like us. We just want guitar, guitar, bass, drums and vocals, everything just bashing you, with as little between the mic, the chord and the tape as possible."

As long as their producer search is shorter than their hunt for a lead singer, Velvet Revolver's debut album may well be out before Axl Rose puts the finishing touches on Guns N' Roses' long-awaited Chinese Democracy. But really, being able to wag a middle-finger salute at Axl isn't the point; that these five scarred-but-smarter rock vets have come together around something new and vital is the real story.

"The people who are skeptical, it'll take us touring a bit," says Weiland. "They'll understand when they see it."

The little girls, of course, already understand. "I was driving down the street last week," says Sorum, "and a couple of little chicks pulled up in a car next to me and yelled, 'Hey, you're Matt from Velvet Revolver!' I'll tell you, man, that was the best fuckin' day of my life!"

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