2016.05.11 - Forbes - Matt Sorum Talks Hollywood Vampires, Playing With Rock Legends

Matt Sorum Talks Hollywood Vampires, Playing With Rock Legends

By Steve Baltin

This Thursday night in Los Angeles, one-time Guns ‘N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum will be once again combining his two biggest passions--playing with rock legends while raising money for music education.

Sorum will be holding his annual fundraiser for Adopt The Arts, a program he co-founded to help raise funds for music education in schools. As part of the program, Sorum has two schools he fully funds, including paying the teacher salaries. “Every kid takes music and art, we have teachers that we pay, we have a curriculum that uses books that we’ve created,” he says.

So to raise the $100,000 he needs to pay for the two schools, the benefit Thursday night at L.A.’s Fonda Theater will bring together a slew of rock names, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, the Cult’s Billy Duffy, Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler, Stone Temple Pilots brothers Robert and Dean DeLeo, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Sorum’s old GNR band mate, Gilby Clarke, all to honor Cheap Trick vocalist Robin Zander and Deep Purple frontman Glenn Hughes.

Sorum had the idea to honor those two artists after watching both artists be inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this past April in Brooklyn. “I was out in Brooklyn, and I was just so happy. I thought it was such a long overdue thing, Cheap Trick especially, Deep Purple as well, two bands that should’ve been in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame a long time ago,” he says. “Cheap Trick is probably one of the premier American rock and roll bands and then I used to always say Deep Purple, in my opinion, was one of the great British three – Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple. So long story short, when it came time to do my event again, I thought Glenn would be amazing to honor with an award and Robin is flying out from Florida with his wife.”

Both newly inducted Rock Hall Of Famers will be performing at the event, which will also feature an auction of rock-related items, including signed guitars by Dave Grohl and Queen’s Brian May, as well as a Shepherd Fairey art piece on medal celebrating Black Sabbath.

All of this, Sorum hopes, will help him reach his goal of $100,000. “If you can believe that teacher salaries are a lot less than $50,000, $25 to $30,000 to work five days a week. And then we have insurances and things like that,” he says.

In 2013 Sorum went to Washington, DC to lobby congress for additional arts funding. Speaking about the issue now he turns back into that lobbyist, passionately advocating his case. “You can go online and look at education in America and look at the prison system, what it costs. And the federal prison system spent $60 billion a year on prisoners,” he says. “Just to give you a statistic, for a prisoner in any major penitentiary it’s $45,000 per prisoner, it’s gone up about $15,000 in the last couple of years only because health care, they need security, they need health care, all these different things we pay for. Just to go back to public education a kid in K-6 is $7,200 a year per taxpayer. [California’s] outlawed the third strike law, which refunded the state about 150 million a year. But where did that money go? It’s $18 million a year to fund music and art in the LAUSD, we have $525 elementary schools, about the same in high schools. That’s not a lot of money compared to $150 million that they took from the third strike law. Where did that money go?”

As strongly as Sorum advocates for music education he understands people coming to Adopt The Arts events are there to rock out. “When I do my pitch I try to educate people a little, but I don’t want it to be a downer,” he says.

He is also starting rehearsals this week for an upcoming Hollywood Vampires tour, the supergroup he plays in alongside Alice Cooper, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Johnny Depp. The band will be touring the U.S. in July, while Sorum’s old band, Guns ‘N’ Roses, is doing their high-profile reunion tour. Sorum is quite content where he is though. “I’m in the right band right now if you get my drift. I’m happy to be playing with my heroes,” he says.

The Vampires started as a tribute to the ‘70s drinking club, which included Cooper, John Lennon, Who drummer Keith Moon and Harry Nilsson, among others. Sadly, their repertoire has grown considerably in 2016 as Sorum tells us they will be paying tribute to other fallen friends.

“We’re adding a David Bowie song, we’re trying to pick which one. We’re gonna add a Lemmy song. All these people, including Scott Weiland, all these great artists, we’re gonna go out and celebrate them and celebrate their lives.”

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