It was last seen drifting into LA’s Sunset Strip sunset, swinging a bottle of Black Death vodka and a Flying V guitar, whistling a forgotten heavy metal ballad, drunkenly dreaming of night trains, brownstones and rocket queens, but no. It was supposed to go to the lounge of oblivion and have post-fame whiskey with dead groupies and colleagues from Poison, Cinderella, White Lion, Faster Pussycat, Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, Warrant, Slaughter, Whitesnake, Winger, Great White, Firehouse, Dokken and other deceased ‘80s glam rock bands, but no. It was supposed to hang up its leopard-print spandex pants, put away headbands and hairspray, and curl up in a coffin, but no. It was supposed to die choking on hair and ego, but hell no.
Instead, we get impossibly glam The Darkness, ironically aping that era with tongue-in-cheek, pointed guitars, Queenly falsettos and ridiculous songs about love, shucks, ruts and rock. (Expect more Aqua Netted blokes to jump into the neo-glam bandwagon.) And we also get an album from super-group Velvet Revolver, composed of members from Guns N’ Roses (easily the best band of ‘80s glam) and Stone Temple Pilots (which to me was more glam than grunge).
There was much hype surrounding the band that features vocalist Scott Weiland, guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan, drummer Matt Sorum and guitarist Dave Kushner. Big, bold and brash hype just like the one that surrounded super-group Audioslave, composed of Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and three-fourths of Rage Against the Machine.
After all, GNR was the rock n’ roll equivalent of writer Charles Bukowski: rude, irreverent, venereal, and smeared with blood, phlegm and hooker makeup. And STP, despite being initially tagged as a Pearl Jam rip-off, showed verve and versatility with albums such as "Purple" and "Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop." (Strange, I could still dust off those STP CDs and listen to them again, unlike Pearl Jam discs that came after "Vitalogy.")
Hype is all air. Hype is deceptive. Hype is supposed to be hypnotic. We shouldn’t fall under the spell of hype and then fool ourselves into liking a mediocre album. I really, really want to dig VR’s "Contraband." How could you lose with a band that does away with the ridiculous W. Axl Rose (owner of hair extensions, puffy cheeks, a mythical "Chinese Democracy" record and all) and instead recruits soulful crooner/tragically-underrated lyricist Scott Weiland (owner of plush pipes, interstate love songs, wicked garden rockers and all)? But at best, "Contraband" is a mixed bag.
Sucker Train Blues is a strong opening cut, which is heralded by Duff’s distorted bass (just like in the Gunners’ It’s So Easy). But whatever is unfurling inside Weiland’s drug-addled, wasteland mind, it’s hard to tell. Sample lines: "Somebody raped my tapeworm abortion/Come on bitches and deliver the cow/Brain and body melting while there’s roaches multiplying." Beam me up, Scotty. What in hell’s name are you on again?
Anyway, Slash saves the day with a dirty, bluesy and raunchy pentatonic scale solo. The erstwhile Guns N’ Roses guitar hero has lost none of his flair. His instrument – probably the same tiger-striped Gibson Les Paul – plugged into a stack of Marshall amps sounds uncannily like the ones used in past sessions. He still sounds part-Joe Perry, part-Jimmy Page, part-Mick Taylor and all-Slash.
Although cryptic in most of the songs, Scott makes sense in Big Machine: "All that first-class drug brings me down, down, down/It’s a big machine, it’s a big machine." This is the supposedly former junkie’s anti-drug rap, the rock n’ roll equivalent of Satan swearing off sinning.
It is difficult to write about Velvet Revolver without making comparisons to Guns N’ Roses or Stone Temple Pilots. It can’t be helped: VR is derivative and unadventurous. A case in point is Illegal i Song, which has a riff reminiscent of GNR’s You’re Crazy. Only in this case, Axl’s feral caterwaul is replaced by Weiland’s effects-laden delivery.
I believe one of the best tracks of the album is Fall to Pieces, an achingly lovelorn ballad that tries to be the bastard child of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird and the Allman Brothers’ Sweet Melissa, but instead becomes a Boston baby. Not that there’s anything wrong with Boston, mind you. Better is Loving The Alien, which boasts introspective lines from Weiland and evocative guitar fills from the guy with the top hat.
Headspace picks up where Paradise City tapers off. It’s a great tune with vintage Weiland lyrics: "Free my mind, levitate/Don’t let any of those others in my headspace." Of course, it will never be as good as "Flies in the Vaseline we are/Sometimes it blows my mind/Keep getting stuck here all the time" (Vaseline), or "Too much walkin’, shoes worn thin/Too much trippin’ and my soul’s worn thin" (Big Empty). I guess we just have to wait for Weiland’s head to clear up for lyrical bits like those.
I think "Contraband" had been hastily put together: too many throwaway tracks for it to be deemed a good rock n’ roll record, too many sound effects muddying the vocals, too short a time for the band to grow as a unit. You can blame Slash and company for striking while the glam metal rod is hot, because in the case of Weiland, inconsistency is the very essence (a line filched from Boethius).
Who knows what will happen next in Scott Weiland’s velvet soap revolving door life?