Former Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum recently opened up about the formation of Velvet Revolver and the band’s potential.
Sorum reflected on how Velvet Revolver came together following a split from Guns N’ Roses. He expressed his belief that the band could have reached the same heights — or even greater ones — had they continued.
“So that got me, of course, Velvet Revolver because that was three of us from that,” Sorum said. “And at that particular time, Axl was calling himself Guns N’ Roses. So me and Slash and Duff united and it was time for us.”
The drummer went on to describe how much the band meant to him and the ambitions he had for it.
“We knew we needed to make a statement and we did,” he continued. “We had a good band and that was the band that I really wanted it to last. I really thought that was maybe could have been even — and I said this in the press and someone was like, ‘No way!’ — it could have been as good or as big as Guns N’ Roses if we kept going.”
Sorum did, however, acknowledge the towering legacy of Guns N’ Roses’ debut record as a benchmark that is difficult to match.
“The thing about Guns N’ Roses is they wrote that Appetite for Destruction album,” he said. “That first record — I don’t know — that’s a tough one to beat.”
The numbers suggest Sorum’s confidence was not without foundation. Velvet Revolver made an immediate and undeniable impact from the moment they arrived on the scene.
Their debut album, Contraband, released in 2004, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It sold 256,000 copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling debut album by a rock act in American chart history. The record spawned major singles including “Slither,” “Fall to Pieces,” and “Dirty Little Thing,” cementing the band’s place at the forefront of hard rock in the mid-2000s.
The band’s achievements extended beyond chart performance. Their single “Slither” earned a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. It is a distinction that Guns N’ Roses, for all their cultural dominance, never achieved during their career. It remains one of the more striking footnotes in the Velvet Revolver story.
Their follow-up album, Libertad, arrived in 2007 and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. The band had already begun to fracture internally by that point. The momentum that had defined their early years proved difficult to sustain.
Velvet Revolver officially disbanded in 2008, leaving behind just two studio albums and a legacy that many fans and band members alike feel never reached its full potential. Sorum’s recent comments make clear that the split still resonates — and that, in his view, the story did not have to end the way it did.
