Duff McKagan is explaining how to have a good time backstage. McKagan, formerly the bassist for Guns n' Roses, is something of an expert on this topic: He has consumed drugs and drink in such vast quantities, his pancreas exploded. "You get third-degree burns on the inside of your intestine and your stomach," McKagan says. "For a lot of people, they split their skin open to get the steam out. I had morphine in this arm for the pain, and then I had lithium in this arm for the d.t.'s."

So, a little weather-beaten at age forty but improbably still alive, McKagan demonstrates his latest concoction: "You take the Total cereal and you mix it with the granola, then you add the rice milk, and you've really got something."

All of McKagan's bandmates in Velvet Revolver have similar tales of excess from before they got straight. Guitarist Slash, also of Guns n' Roses: "We took the days of the charter 727 to a whole new level of debauchery. I'd be aisle-surfing with a cigarette in my mouth when the plane took off — we obeyed no aviation rules whatsoever." Guitarist Dave Kushner, formerly of Dave Navarro's band: "I knocked out all my teeth when I was drunk and running across Sunset Boulevard." Lead singer Scott Weiland, formerly of Stone Temple Pilots: "I had a fucking horrendous heroin habit." Drummer Matt Sorum, also formerly of Guns n' Roses: "I've never been arrested like Scott, but I guarantee I did more drugs. I've been to Colombia. I bought the shit for three dollars a gram."

Backstage at Detroit's State Theatre, five wardrobe cases are shoved close together. On top of Slash's case is his trademark top hat. McKagan's case is decorated with a picture of a princess, colored by one of his two young daughters. Weiland and Slash also have young children; the tour will take a break for a month this summer when Slash's second child is born. Legendarily sybaritic movie producer Robert Evans came up with the baby's name: Cash.

In a corner of the room, Slash quietly noodles on his guitar, playing the lick to David Bowie's "China Girl." He talks about how Bowie dated his mom after Slash's parents split, why he thinks John Fogerty is a prick and the wisdom gleaned from a life on the road: "There's nothing worse than a bunch of guys on a bus watching porno movies. It triggers a chain reaction of debauchery and hospital visits."

Sorum struts into the room, cheerful and loud. "This is the part of the night where I take my pants off and get my cock out," he announces, and proceeds to do just that. He looks much leaner than he did during his Guns years; he says he lost thirty-five pounds after he stopped drinking. "A good cigar is better than crack," he says jovially. Weiland applies his eyeliner silently, hunched over his mirror, enjoying the camaraderie but remaining a little apart.

Nobody would have guessed the five members of Velvet Revolver would all be alive in 2004, much less making music together as good as their powerhouse new album, Contraband. But they all seem genuinely pleased to be part of a band, sober and well-behaved. They're all mature enough now to know that being a rock star is fundamentally a ludicrous occupation but immature enough to want to do it anyway.

"This can't be a supergroup," says Kushner. "Otherwise I wouldn't be in it." The former members of Guns n' Roses emphasize that they didn't form this group to thumb their collective nose at Axl Rose — although, as Sorum puts it, "Axl Rose was a training ground for everything that you could possibly ever imagine to test your patience." Guns n' Roses' last real album was 1993's The Spaghetti Incident? "We got off the road and we spent, like, three years fucking around," Sorum says. "I think Axl just got afraid." Rose got ownership of the band's name, and in 1996 he fired Slash, announcing the move with a bizarre fax to MTV (it began, "Due to overwhelming enthusiasm and that 'dive in and find the monkey' attitude... "). The same fax promised the imminent release of "a new Guns n' Roses 12 song minimum recording with three original 'B' sides"; nearly eight years later, little more than the title, Chinese Democracy, has emerged.

Sorum says Rose fired him the following year for sticking up for Slash. "I said, 'We need Slash.' He said, 'Fuck that, I'm Guns n' Roses, I don't need Slash.' I said, 'I think you're mistaken.' " Sorum shakes his head sadly. McKagan quit soon after, leaving Rose with a posse of hired Guns. Work on Chinese Democracy continues to this day.

"I don't know any more than you do," Slash says of Chinese Democracy. "There's only a couple of songs with vocals on it — I know that for a fact. But it will come out one of these days." Since then, Slash has played with his band Snakepit and lent guitar parts to everyone from Rod Stewart to Ray Charles. Sorum was doing production and soundtracks, and McKagan worked on an undergraduate finance degree at Seattle University, pulling down a 4.0 GPA his freshman year. (He's still a semester shy of graduating.)