2019.05.15 - Appetite For Distortion - Dave Kushner talks Velvet Revolver, Axl Rose, and Chester Bennington

Velvet Revolver's Dave Kushner makes his return to the show. He updates us on his new tv/music composing venture "Monkey Mind Music Group" and his work for "F is for Family" with comedian Bill Burr. Dave also shares his opinion on Guns N' Roses covering "Slither" and opens up about losing his friend Chester Bennington.
Co-host for this episode is Marcelle Sirkus (Ep. 77). Marcelle went to Fairfax High School with Dave, Slash, and Flea to name a few. They reminisce with some funny stories and we also have a serious mental health conversation.



Excerpts from Ultimate Guitar:
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During an appearance on Appetite for Distortion, Velvet Revolver guitarist Dave Kushner talked about Guns N' Roses covering "Slither" on the ongoing reunion tour, as well as about VR rocking GN'R tunes live in concert back in the day.

"I don't know, I just saw it online, and it was funny," the musician said about first hearing Guns play "Slither," adding (transcribed by UG):

"It was funny to hear Axl's reaction. I don't know if you saw it, but after they did it - he had a weird reaction to it, like, 'If that didn't really go the way I planned it...', it was, like, this weird, kind of, like, 'Okay, well, that's done,' some weird thing like that. But I thought it was alright. Sometimes I hear the song, even when we did it, it doesn't seem as great as I remembered. Just that song, in particular, it's got a weird kind of thing to it. I just thought it was weird, but I knew about it."

Explaining how he found out the guys had plans to cover "Slither," Dave added:

"I didn't know they were gonna do it, but I knew it was on the setlist because I've done the rehearsal, I went to get something from Duff or something, and they rehearsed. We were all kind of living in the same part of LA, we went to rehearsal, I think it was Duff, and he was, like, 'Dude, check this out,' and he was pointing on the setlist on the floor, and I was, like, 'Really, dude?'. He said, 'Yeah, it was actually Axl's idea. I know, it's weird.' Just thought it was an interesting thing."

A lot of fans said it got better as the tour went on. I guess it's not his song, so he has to learn how to do it, I was just curious about what your thoughts were about that.

"I think certain songs, like for instance when I played with Bill [Burr] last night, we played 'I'm Broken,' the Pantera song, which is, like, my favorite Pantera song - I'm a massive Pantera fan. And when we played the song, there were certain parts where I'm, like, 'I don't know, it might be more fun to listen to than to play it'. It's just, like, it's different when you're in a room playing it and hearing it differently than you're used to hearing the original. You're used to hearing how rad it is, you're used to hearing those guys playing it. It just associates with a different part of your brain. When you're actually playing it, it doesn't sound this good, it's not them playing it, it's not the version you're used to hearing, it's the version that someone else is doing."

When you were with Velvet and Scott would do GN'R songs or STP songs - it's not Axl singing those songs, it's not STP, the band playing. So did he have a preference of what he enjoyed doing, or maybe one or both of those songs not sounding right to him because it was not with the original band who did it?

"I got to be honest: contrary to everything I just said, when we did those two bands in Velvet Revolver, it felt really good. That was the one time where you musically had the guys from GN'R playing, you had all the Slash stuff and the Duff's stuff, and Matt, you really had all of those elements, so it's different. When you're doing GN'R with three-fifths of GN'R, it's kind of GN'R. Scott was a fucking great singer, so he could do both of those parts. He could do the low baritone parts, he could do all that stuff, so I think it was a little bit of a different thing. He picked the songs that he wanted to do. At the end of the day, the singer's got to be the most comfortable one, and with the band guys, the only thing they never wanted to do was, like, 'Sweet Child of Mine' or 'Welcome to the Jungle,' those were kind of the two off-limits songs."

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/dave_kushner_names_2_gnr_songs_that_were_off_limits_for_velvet_revolver_to_cover_reacts_to_axl_singing_slither.html