There’s a lot more to Matt Sorum than meets the eye. Most of you are familiar with him as a premiere hard rock drummer for Guns ‘N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver but Matt is a man of many talents. He is a talented vocalist and guitarist as well as a gifted songwriter. When he’s not busy with music, you’ll find him heavily involved in animal rights and charitable organizations. I had the chance to chat with Matt as he released his latest solo album, “Stratosphere.” Join us as we find out all the latest.
KE: Hi Matt! Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
MS: Sure!
KE: You have a new solo record out, “Stratosphere,” and it’s been a long time since your last one, “Hollywood Zen.” Can you tell us how this new project came about?
MS: Yeah, well you know after Velvet Revolver slowed down and stopped touring in 2008 I just started dabbling in different projects. This is something I’d been thinking about doing for a little while and basically I had a bunch of kind of tidbits of songs laying around. I don’t know if a lot of people know this about me but I’ve been playing guitar as long as I’ve been playing drums so I’ve got guitars all over the house and I’m always writing. So I just started compiling all the material and really writing kind of a record that I always wanted to do. Like “Hollywood Zen” was really more of a collaborative effort between me and another guy that I worked with. Some of the songs on that record were his songs and I had stuff of mine. This record I really thought I wanted to do something that was sort of all about what I’ve been through in my life and more of a cathartic process. I’ve got to say, kind of like a little bit of a cleansing. Things that I’d been thinking about, things that I’d written down, and when I started the process I realized it was turning into a bit of Americana, an eclectic Americana I like to call it. I don’t know, have you had a chance to listen to it?
KE: Oh yes, absolutely, I loved it. I especially liked the title of the project calling it Matt Sorum’s Fierce Joy. What a powerful statement and really matches the music and feel of the record. It has a real feeling that everything you’ve done has led up to this.
MS: Yeah I think it’s coming of age kind of thing. You know I just turned 53. I just got married. I think it’s a lot harder for a guy to grow up in the rock world. And a lot of times even if they are my age, they don’t want to grow up and want to still act like their young especially rock and roll. Rock and roll has this like a way of keeping you young in a way that’s sometimes physical but a lot of times mental. You’ve got people running around doing stuff for you. You’re not used to getting told no. You’ve been given this life of sleeping in all day and partying all night and I got real when I wrote this record. I started looking at the realities of what’s going on in my life and what’s going on around me. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve been in bands that I was never really in control of. There was always somebody else that had the say of if we’re gonna continue or if we’re not going to continue. I always say my life has been a little bit of a blessing and a curse. You know a lot of hard times in my bands. They haven’t been easy. None of them have been easy. So I’ve experienced a lot of pain with all the different processes that I’ve been in. It’s been a career of a lot of joy but a lot of pain. So when I wrote the album and I went on the road with Motorhead, Motorhead was the band I toured with a few years ago, I played drums for them and I realized how easy it could be to be in a rock and roll band. We went out on the road. I played 14 shows and went onstage on time every night. Everybody got along great . The crew was amazing. And I just looked at Lemmy and said you guys are beautiful man. This is like so easy. It’s not brain surgery. Why does it have to be so difficult? And he said you know mate my life is like fierce joy. You have to strive to make it that way. So I just loved that because you have to strive. You have to work towards the positive. You have to work towards being happy. For me, that’s my new high. How can I keep myself feeling good in the now? Because I live in Hollywood man. It’s just like, it’s just like the most turn your back on me, backstabbing place. It’s a tough, tough world in the music business to live out here. To have huge success and then that’s only taken with a grain of salt you know. It’s very, very difficult to navigate. So I made this album. I was like you know what, I don’t care what anybody says about anything. I’m just going to completely dive into this with the love of music and all the different stylings of music that I love and pull from the heroes that I’ve always loved but have never been able to represent like Neil Young, David Bowie, Wilco, Tom Petty to early Genesis, all kinds of different stuff that’s not rock. And I just started to sit down and put songs together and everything started flowing in a really natural way. I started feeling this really free sort of like I don’t know if you’ve ever done heroin but that’s how I felt when I did heroin. (Laughter)
KE: No, I can’t say that I have.
MS: Heroin makes you really happy. It’s almost like you have no worries. There’s no worries when you’re doing heroin. And I don’t do it anymore. I’m clean seven years.
KE: Awesome.
MS: But I got this high from this and I thought wow this was the original reason I played music in the first place. It was like you go into a garage with a bunch of buddies and just jam and there was no preconceived notion that anything else would come of it. Not like, oh I’ve got to go make a record because the record company wants to put it out and then I’ve got to go on tour and make money because I’ve got to pay for my mansion bullshit. You know, like, I’ve got to write a song for Joe Blow or Warner Brothers records will fine me. And I’m like fuck, wow. I kind of just write whatever I want. No way. So I started putting a record together and I’m like should I take it to anybody. Nah. I’m just gonna put it out myself. And what I did was I put the record together. I did the artwork, my friends. I made all the webisodes with a buddy. I just finished a video that’s gonna come out next week with this young, cool little filmmaker girl that was just into it. She just wanted to do it because. It wasn’t like we’re gonna shoot your video for a million dollars. I’m like no, not really. I’ve done all that. It was so beautiful to work with people who just wanted to do it for the passion of it. Even the guy that I’m working with on the record independently, Tom Smith, this dude is just like fired up and in love with the music and loves the business of trying to get it out there. My whole team is like that. So even if I only sell 10,000 records or 5,000 records I’m successful. I look at it that way. This is a successful record because I think a lot of people can say in their lives I did it, I got it done. The music is exactly how I wanted it to be. I started writing stuff and I called a bunch of buddies of mine. I had people ask me, do you have any big name guests on the record? I’m like, no, I’m not. (Laughter)
KE: It’s all you. It’s your baby.
MS: Yes it is. Basically what they wanted to say was Matt I doubt you’re gonna be able to sell any records unless you put some big name guests on there. That’s really what they wanted to say. (Laughter) You better put some guests on it so you can sell some records!
KE: You know that true fans of music are going to love it.
MS: That’s really what I think. It’s like hey man if old fans of mine will listen to it for the sheer fact that it’s good music and if I find new fans and I can create a new career that I can dabble in and have fun with then that’s cool too.
KE: Any chance of a tour with this album?
MS: I would love to be able to get out, to afford to go out and tour a bit. I’m thinking that’s the next phase. And it doesn’t even have to be for people that have known me before. I’m not as recognizable as some of the other guys in my bands. So I can maybe fall into a different niche. As a drummer, I’ve always been a survivor anyway. To navigate through the business and still have a career and not have to work a regular job has been a blessing.
KE: Being known as a drummer, was it hard to make the transition for this album doing guitars, vocals, and kind of everything?
MS: No, not really because I’ve been producing records since the early nineties. I became a producer and I had a pretty big hit with an artist named Poe back in the mid-nineties and then I started producing a lot of film scores and my musicality growing up helps. I grew up in a classical family. My mother was a classical pianist and my grandfather was a professor of music. So I was around a lot, I don’t want to say more trained musicians than what I grew into as far as being a rock musician. I studied ensemble and orchestration when I was a kid and a lot of methods of songwriting and all those kinds of things. You know all the string arrangements on this record were my string arrangements with my composer buddy. So my background is I don’t want to say deeper than the other guys from my rock band but I have much more of an upbringing in classical and stuff like that. When I was in high school, I was in three different band classes a day. I don’t think I really ever got to use my musicianship. This has been the first experience where I’ve been really able to pour it all out. A lot of times, being in a rock band is a pretty simplistic approach to music. Rock and roll has got a certain thing that it does. It’s got a swagger. It’s got a riff. It’s got a groove. It’s not always about these elaborate productions. My album’s fairly elaborate, slightly epic at times.
KE: There was one track in particular that I wanted to ask about, “For The Wild Ones,” and you’re involvement in the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Can you tell us a bit about that one and how you got involved with the organization?
MS: Actually, I have a charity called Adopt the Arts. It’s for kids and I’m a co-executor of that. I’ve actually been running that for two years now. And what I do is I bring art to kids in the Los Angeles area. We started doing an arts project and what we wanted to do was figure out a way to always cross things together to teach kids while doing something else. For instance, The International Fund for Animal Welfare already had an arts program that they do with K-6 that involved elephants. I thought that was really cool so basically last year what we did was we did a huge art program with 40 schools and all the kids learned about elephants. Where they come from, how they come from the wild and they all painted elephants and they learned that elephants really shouldn’t be in circuses or the situation going on with poaching in a very gentle way and they learned what was happening with these animals. So I got involved with them and soon after I took on another charity called Dolphin Project and I ended up trucking over to Japan. I don’t know if you know about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan but I went there and I started hanging out with them. So I basically am involved with three projects, IFAW, Dolphin Project and another group called Animals Asia. I’m gonna be going over to China in the early part of June for the rescue of about 40 moonbears over there. Moonbears are beautiful bears that are actually used for bear bile extraction in laboratories and farms actually called bear bile farms. Really, I didn’t want to take on another charity but when I saw it I couldn’t deny it. I was just, oh my God, this is a joke. I said to my wife something’s calling me. I have to do this and I’m American ambassador for Animals Asia and I did a PSA (Public Service Announcement) with a bunch of rockers for the bears. I shot stuff with Slash and a bunch of friends of mine have done stuff for it. So I started bringing awareness to bears to America because a lot of people didn’t know about it. So I hooked up with Lesley Nicol from the show Downtown Abbey, she plays the cook, we’re partners on that. I’ll be heading there in June and I’m very, very big on the dolphin thing. I’m gonna work on that. Basically what I’m trying to do is an eco-tour. With my album, I want to go on a kind of Earth Day eco-tour where I can cross causes into music events. So I’d have speakers and have music. I did it here in L.A., Dolphin Project benefit and I put that together myself and a thousand people came. You know a lot of people in L.A. that are heavy into the animal activism showed up like Tony Kanal from No Doubt, Moby was there and a lot of actors and actresses from different genres. I played with a lot of cool people. Slash got onstage, Corey Taylor from Slipknot. People came and basically showed people what was going on and the awareness factor puts a lot of pressure on the governments to sort of change their ways. I like the activism thing because it feels like a new rock and roll rebellion to me. It’s a way to sort of get out there and push the envelope and see what I can do. A lot of people think that they can’t do anything but I think especially now with the internet and positive chat rooms and different change.org and those kinds of things, are getting things moving in a really positive direction.
KE: Thanks for all you do Matt. It’s fantastic. Can you give us an update on Velvet Revolver? Will there be anything new on that front?
MS: No, not right now. It looks like Slash has got another record coming out and he’s gonna tour with Aerosmith so he’s pretty busy. Me and Duff are hanging pretty tight. We’re talking about doing a new Kings of Chaos record which is our new side project. It’s a cool band. I actually went out on the road with it a few times. We’re supposed to be taking it out on the road closer to the fall. So no Velvet Revolver yet but it’s something that we haven’t been able to abandon. We feel like that the time will arrive when we want to do it again. Slash has got almost three records and three tours under his belt. I’m hoping he comes back at some point. He seems to be having fun doing what he’s doing and I understand that. I get it. I can’t pressure him.
KE: Now back in 2012, you were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Guns ‘N’ Roses and there was some controversy surrounding that. What are your thoughts on the current situation with KISS being inducted and their choice not to perform?
MS: The whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is such an emotional thing for the band. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I think, only wants to put on an event and get people to pay $2,000 a ticket to come and see it. And they never really think about the ramifications of what’s going on behind the scenes. I got to say that the whole situation with us was very, very difficult emotionally and hard to kind of sort of walk through again. It’s almost like someone calls you up twenty years after you divorced your wife and says you gotta get back in a room with your ex-wife and hang out and act like you love each other again. (Laughter). And that’s a very uncomfortable kind of thing to be put into. Some people opt to just say fuck that, I ain’t doing it. I think maybe they don’t realize or they don’t care that there is a lot of wreckage behind the scenes, a lot of damage and people get hurt in the process. I mean, I got hurt. I got hurt. It hurt bad, about six months of it. I had to think about it and then when I got there I didn’t know if we were gonna play. All of a sudden we’re on stage and then there’s Steven and what do you say. You know it’s just uncomfortable for everybody but at the same time you just kind of have to step up and man up and do the best you can. It’s unfortunate now that we have the internet because you get to hear all the ramblings. You know, wah, wah, wah. I wasn’t the best. I mean I said a few things. And I should have just shut up and showed up but I didn’t because I was feeling things and before you know it, it got to the press and it’s on the internet. And maybe that wouldn’t have happened back in the day. You know what I mean? Maybe when the Rolling Stones got in or the Beatles, you didn’t hear anybody talking shit about anything because it really wasn’t around. The internet wasn’t really around to grab bits and pieces of things like Twitter and Facebook or whatever. So it becomes now this big drama fest and it seems to be sort of the going thing the last few years for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Just a big drama fest especially with the groups like Van Halen, the Sex Pistols that went on with those bands and obviously Guns ‘N’ Roses and now KISS which is sad. It’s all a drag and it’s not easy on anybody that’s the point I’m trying to make. I’m sure everyone is going to show up but then the other two guys, the original guys get hurt, the new guys get hurt. You know like Gilbey Clarke with Guns ‘N’ Roses. Why did he get left out? He was there as much as anybody. Who gets to make that decision? And then you see the Red Hot Chili Peppers with 20 guitar players and 5 drummers and you’re like I guess they’ve got a lot of drummers and a lot of guitar players and a couple of guys are left out. Dave Navarro for whatever reason, so who knows? It’s all a mystery. (Laughter)
KE: Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. Best of luck with the new record.
MS: Thanks Kris!
Here’s a video to the single “The Sea”
