Former Velvet Revolver and Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum discussed Scott Weiland’s death in a new interview on 2 Hours with Matt Pinfield.
“Duff [McKagan] is the one that called me and told me about Scott,” Matt said. “It was shocking, but it was not unexpected. At the same time, I thought Scott was a lifer. I thought he was like Keith Richards, and so did he. It was like one of those guys that just could keep hitting it, and it wasn’t going to kill him. He’d been through so much — so many rehabs and so many things — that I thought, ‘This guy is not going to die. He’s just going to live through it all and be a lifer.'”
He also discussed other rock and roll deaths and drugs.
“When you’re young [and] in rock n’ roll, we’re slapped in the face with that every day — like, ‘You’re in a rock n’ roll band!’ You feel like you almost have to wave the flag, because rock n’ roll from where we come from, the ’70s and stuff, that was part of the deal,” Matt said. “If you were in Led Zeppelin and you were John Bonham or Jimmy [Page], that was just, like, part of [it]. The gig part of it [too], but wrecking Rolls-Royces and swimming pools with Keith Moon and, you know, throwing TVs out windows and being destructive to yourself… Obviously, we lost John Bonham and we lost Keith Moon.
That was the first time when I ever realized, ‘Holy shit — I just lost two of my biggest heroes,’ but I still didn’t quite figure out why. I just thought, ‘That was cool,’ that they were these bigger-than-life personalities, and I felt that I had to kind of be that if I wanted to succeed. Now when I see guys that are older still partying, I’m just like, ‘Man, time to tighten it up, bro. Clean it up, man. It’s a bad look now.’
It’s like it’s acceptable when you’re young to be crazy. [But] partying and all that stuff was great. A lot of people that get clean go, like, ‘Oh, man. It was all horrible.’ I go, ‘That’s bullshit. What happened was, you started out having a lot of fun, and then the fun got out of control, and then it became a problem.’ When it becomes a problem, you’ve got to nip it in the bud.”
