.

A Guns n' Roses Reunion With Sorum and Adler? Drummer Spouts Off in New Interview

May 7, 2009 4:17 PM ET

Former Guns n' Roses/current Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum likes to talk, and we like to listen — especially when he's talking Gn'R. During a recent interview with the Pulse of Radio (via Blabbermouth), Sorum spouted off about the prospects for a bona fide reunion of the original Gn'R, why he thinks it's lame that Axl insists on touring under the Guns banner and laments life as a lowly drummer.

"Being the drummer in a rock & roll unit, you know you're not the guy that's making the decisions or, you know, which you'd like to be," Sorum explains. "If you look at a lot of great bands that are out there, there's a couple I can name that are run by drummers — Metallica, run by Lars Ulrich and a band called U2, run by Larry Mullen." (Edit note: We're sure Bono and James Hetfield would beg to differ). "I would like to think, 'If you guys just let me run this band, things would go different,' but it's not the way it is."

If hell were to actually freeze over, and Rose submit to a reunion of the band's original lineup, Sorum, who joined the band three years after the release of Appetite for Destruction, thinks he and first Guns drummer Steve Adler should both participate.

"If it's me on drums or Steven or whatever, if it happened, it'd be great," says Sorum. "I would actually say to them, 'Hey, bring both of us back.' We'll have two drum kits. I don't care. If Appetite sounds better with Steven playing it, have both guys up there. They can afford it."

When it comes to Rose's use of the Gn'R moniker, Sorum thinks he should just tour as a solo act with a backing band, not as Guns. "I understand the core of the band, which is Slash and Duff and probably Izzy," he offers. "It's a shame, and you know what, this goes back to a Paul McCartney thing. Does he call himself the Beatles? Not saying we were as big as the Beatles, but — does Sting call himself the Police? No. Does Jimmy Page and Robert Plant go out there calling themselves Led Zeppelin?"

Well, not yet, anyways.

Related Stories:

Ex-Guns n' Roses Drummer Steven Adler Is Scaring the Crap Out of Us
Duff MacKagan Opens Up About Guns n' Roses, Punk Band Loaded and Steven Adler

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prev
Music Main Next

blog comments powered by Disqus
Stay Connected

Sign up to get Rolling Stone's daily newsletter.

Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

More Song Stories entries »