Velvet Revolver to Launch Web Site to Recruit New Singer

If Axl Rose wants back with his old Gn'R band mates, he's going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: by auditioning over the Internet. Slash of the currently singer-less Velvet Revolver told Billboard that the band plans on setting up a Web site where potential vocalists will post video of themselves in hopes of swaying VR. "The band is actually talking about building a Web site [and] doing some auditions via that, so that's been something that's developing at this point," Slash said of the site, which should be up "in the next month or so." It's like when Journey recruited a singer on YouTube, or Rock Star: Supernova without the television. Contrary to what Slash told RS last month, the guitarist said the band has no one specific in mind to fill the vacancy left by Scott Weiland's departure. Velvet Revolver does have an upcoming gig in Las Vegas — a concert booked before Weiland's exile — and will feature special guests taking turns at the microphone. No word whether Sebastian Bach has been invited.

Related Stories:
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• Scott Weiland Responds to Velvet Revolver's Overthrow, Recommends Sebastian Bach
• Velvet Revolver Part Ways With Scott Weiland Due to "Erratic Onstage Behavior," "Personal Problems"

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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