Eulogizing the former Stones Temple Pilot, Velvet Revolver singer By Peter Lindblad
Scott Weiland
The more callous among us are not surprised. Some will even go so far as to casually say, "I thought he was already dead," and in doing so, will not spill a drop of that milk of human kindness Shakespeare wrote about so eloquently in "Macbeth."
Scott Weiland's troubled life has ended, his well-documented battles with his addictions are over. Many are just waking up to the news that he died in his sleep and have expressed their sadness via social media.
Tributes are pouring in, and he is deserving of them, as Weiland was one of the last true rock stars, handsome, fashionable and debonair with a wild streak a mile wide and a riveting, charismatic stage presence. Not to mention that he had a commanding, confident voice capable of delivering the songs and poetry of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver with an assured air of someone who wanted all eyes and ears on him, but didn't need it. He was like a rock 'n' roll matador. Jesus, the guy even sang through a megaphone.
Weiland was no shrinking violet, which was actually refreshing. He sought the spotlight onstage at a time when many of his contemporaries were trying to flee it. And ironically enough, it was the onset of grunge – the very movement that made him a star – that seemed to foster a sense of guilt and shame for chasing fame and fortune. Weiland wouldn't have any of that. He dressed to attract attention. He dated beautiful women. He was damn sexy! Which seems like a terribly inappropriate thing to say now, but he was.
And, at the same time, he was at least partly responsible for making music that deeply touched people. Classic songs like "Plush," "Interstate Love Song," "Big Empty," "Wicked Garden," and"Vasoline" are proving to have real staying power, as does Velvet Revolver's "Slither." Their surreal, evocative lyrics left the door wide open to interpretation. Where some see them as nonsensical and shallow, others find sensuality, imaginative metaphors and interesting puzzles, as well as thoughtful ruminations about death, deceit, confusion and love in classics.
Is he a tragic figure? That's always a tricky question when it comes to those with self-destructive tendencies. We still don't know the actual cause of death. Those who cling tightly to the notion that "it's better to burn out than fade away" might believe that Weiland was the poster boy for such a philosophy. Then again, he was 48, not 27 – which seems to be the age when rock stars of a similar bent shuffle off this mortal coil. So, if he did indeed burn out, it was a very slow burn.
To those closest to him, however, such talk is horribly crass and offensive. It trivializes his life. All they care about is that he is gone and they are grieving the loss of their friend or their family member, no matter how difficult the relationship. To the rest of us, the fans, another great artistic voice has been silenced and somebody we felt close to, who somehow understood us even though we'd never met, is never coming back. So, yes, he is a tragic figure in that he died too young and had more to give. Rest well, Scott. "Where ya going to tomorrow?" None of us truly knows.
NYC siblings poised for something big By Peter Lindblad
The Raskins - S/T 2014
In light of recent news of a possible reunion of The Kinks, it's interesting that another brotherly combination, The Raskins, is just starting to make waves in the world of rock 'n' roll.
Their self-titled debut album is out now, and it's a stylish, high-energy fireball of East Coast retro-rock, outfitted with surefire hooks, attitude to spare and an electric New York City vibe that's impossible to deny. Tracks like the first single "We Had It All" are impossibly catchy, owing to their ability to pen well-crafted pop-rock that sets pulses racing.
Twin siblings Logan and Roger Raskin, the sons of well-known Broadway singer Tommy Raskin and a renowned jazz/blues singer in Judith Raskin, have already made a name for themselves writing and recording music for TV and movies. Having established their own record label, MIRAL Records, they're now ready to unleash their turbocharged, guitar-driven sound on the world, performing on the same stages as Scott Weiland and Saving Abel.
In Part 2 of our interview, Logan Raskins talks about his influences, what it's like working with his brother, the making of their first record and their experiences creating music for movie and TV.
How long as brothers
have you been making music and with the history in music of sibling combos,
you’ve probably been asked this a thousand times, but does that make it easier
or harder for you guys?
Logan Raskin: Well, I mean,
I grew up in a musical family. My dad was a big Broadway singer. He did all the
shows on Broadway. “West Side Story,” “South Pacific,” “Oklahoma,” “Annie Get
Your Gun,” “Damn Yankees” – my dad did all of those. I grew up going to see my
dad in all those shows, and my mom was a big jazz singer in the city, and she
traveled all over doing that. It was pretty much inevitable that we were going
to fall into the music industry, so the three brothers growing up … my mom had
three boys in one year. And the three of us just always grew up doing music
together, singing together. One of the first rock concerts I ever saw my parents took the three
of us to see Ray Charles at Eisenhower Park. That was the first show I’d ever
seen. I saw Ray Charles playing at that piano, man, I was just like, “Damn …
mom, you’ve got to get me a piano.” And she said, “Yeah? All right.” And she
stuck a piano in my room. I had a piano in my bedroom for the next 14 years.
So I was composing music from when I was six, just fiddling
around on the piano and writing these songs. So we grew up writing music
together, my brothers and I, doing little talent shows and acoustic shows for
the family. So we were raised on that, but getting the opportunity to do it on
this level with my twin brother Roger is pretty amazing. I mean we do
everything together. We live together. We write and record music together. We
bounce ideas off each other. It’s pretty amazing. It’s not always sunflowers
and sunshine and dandelions and roses. We go through our battles. We’re guys
writing music. We fight, we have our ups and downs, but at the end of the day,
it’s amazing. I always have someone I can rely on, and I always have someone I
can trust and we bounce ideas off each other, creatively and emotionally, and
it’s incredible. And he gives me his honest opinion.
That means a lot to me, especially as a songwriter. What’s
funny with Roger and I, our personalities, even though we’re twins, are so
different, and it shows in our writing styles and it makes for an interesting
combination when we combine our music. Sometimes we write music together,
sometimes we write music separately. Sometimes we have partially written songs
and we give them to each other and we finish each other’s songs. So it’s been a
very cool relationship in that regard, being able to do music with your brother
like that, and we’re starting to really make it work for us. We’re starting to
have a little bit of success, and who knows what the future is going to bring
for us? We want to keep it going.
The Raskins - We
Had It All single
What was the easiest
song on the new album to write and what was the hardest?
LR: That’s a good
question. I think there’s a song on the album that we wrote, “Where Do We Go from
Here?” I was always playing two really simple chords in the song, and before we
wrote the song, I was always feeling around like a C or a D chord, and I was
just kind of playing with these opening chords, and I came up with this cool
melody with these two chords, and I was just, “It’s just so simple. I don’t
know if I want to write a song that simple. There should be more chord
structure to it.” So I just put it to the side, but I couldn’t get the melody
that I was singing over and those chords out of my head, and I just said, “You
know what? Let me bring it into the studio, and throw it up in a session and
see what happens.” And literally, I probably wrote the song and it took me a
matter of 10 minutes.
It trips you out a little bit to write a song that quickly,
and you say to yourself, “It can’t be that good to write a song that quick.” But I couldn’t
get it out of my head, couldn’t get the melody out of my head, so we put it
into a session and starting layering guitars over the thing, and I was just
blown away at the melody we were doing layering it. And then when we started
doing the vocals, the hair just started standing up on my neck, and it ended up
being one of my favorite songs on the record. We haven’t played it out yet, but
we’ve prepared it, we’ve prepared to play it out and we have it prepped for
this tour. We haven’t played it yet. I sure hope we get to play it, because
it’s just amazing. I mean, because we have a certain amount of time we have to
keep in for our set list, it’s a longer song, but yeah, it’s just funny. It’s
one of my favorite songs on the record. I love playing it acoustically, I love
playing it electrically, I love singing it. It feels so good to me, and the
song was written in an instant.
So there’s that, but I would also probably say that one of the
last songs we wrote, “Scream Out Loud,” was probably the last song that came to
the table, and it was actually a song that Roger and I got our bass player
involved in, and he had this really aggressive riff that I was just like, “Wow!
This is really different and really, really cool.” He was just like, “Yeah, but
it’s not really in you guys’ style,” and his name is Johnny Martin, and I said,
“Johnny, I tend to disagree with you on that.”
I mean, my whole concept behind this record is like, “Look, I don’t want
to … it’s a rock song. Just because the riff is a little different doesn’t mean
… Let me get my hands on it.” So I took the riff and we brought it into the
studio, and it took a long time for us, because the style was a little bit
different than what we were more used to, because it was a little more of a
modern-rock kind of a riff – almost had kind of a drop beat kind of a feel to
it. It’s just something we don’t do too much of, but I do like it. So, it took
a while, man. I sat with that song for honestly about a month, and failing with
different melodies, I wasn’t sure if I could go aggressive, but finally, it’s
just one of the songs we banged out and we just chipped away at it and got to a
point where it just felt so good to me (laughs). And I said, “Johnny,
congratulations. You’re making the record.” He couldn’t believe it, you know? I
love writing with other people, too. Roger and I, we’re open to that. We’re not
those guys where we’re like, “Well, we’re going to write all the music.” I’m
just a music lover, and on this second record, I tend to do a lot more of that
by the way.
What’s different about writing a rock song for yourselves as The Raskins as opposed to
what you were doing writing music for shows?
LR: Well, I mean, there’s a huge difference. And like I was
saying earlier in our conversation, when you’re writing for like a film,
basically they’re telling you what they want. You’re writing for someone else.
They’re giving you a scene to a movie, or something like for a movie like
“Middle of Nowhere” we did with Susan Sarandon, they basically … like the
trailer we did, they wanted like a love song, but they wanted something like an
up-tempo love song. And I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting,” because like
normally, you think of love songs, the first thing that comes to my mind is a
slower ballad kind of thing, which we have a lot of that. We get requested a
lot times for this slower ballad, love song kind of thing. They wanted the
up-tempo one, and I didn’t really have something like that, so we had to write
a song and we wrote this song called “Kiss You One More Time,” and it was
actually used as the trailer for that movie, “Middle of Nowhere,” which is
actually on Showtime right now. It’s airing on cable right now, and we actually
play it in our set. It’s a song that’s not off of our album, but it’s such a
cool song, like I love this song. And I showed it to the guys, and we played it
(laughs), and they’re like, “We’ve got to play that song.” We played it last
night. I was telling all the fans, “Hey, this song’s not on the record, but
it’s a song we wrote for this movie ‘Middle Of Nowhere,’ and we hope you dig
it.'"
And it went over really well. I got to play this song on the Scott Weiland
tour. It was cool. It was cool, but yeah, so when you’re writing for someone
else that’s a client, you kind of disassociate from it and just basically, it’s
writing for them. You’re trying to please the client. And it took me a while to
adjust to that, but at the end of the day, I loved doing it. It’s kind of a
trip, but look, if the client’s happy, I’m happy. That’s the whole point of it.
And it’s still very cool, I mean, to see your stuff on TV on “CSI” or on
commercials or sitcoms, or on some of these reality shows or whatever, on the
big screen, it’s so gratifying on any level, so just accomplishing that is cool
in and of itself, but yeah, obviously, when we’re writing our own music,
there’s a lot more emotion attached to it and I’m writing exactly what I want.
You know, my brother and I, we mixed this whole record. Not only did we record it,
we mixed it ourselves. I just didn’t want to entrust it into the hands of …
look, there are some killer mix guys out there. There are guys that’ll blow me
out of the water. I know that. I pull my hair out with that concept sometimes,
because trying to get across what it is I want or how I want it to sound,
sometimes it’s a painstaking process. So, being able to mix a record on your
own, some songs I mixed in a day, some songs it’s taken me three weeks and just
going back with headphones at three o’clock in the morning, just really
tweaking out on it. I love doing that, where if I’m writing for someone, I
still put in that kind of attention, but when they’re happy with it, I’m happy,
where they look at it like it’s like a product. They’re like, “It’s great, it’s
done.” I’m like, “Well, I think we should …” And they say, “No, no, no. It’s
done. This is perfect. It’s exactly what we want.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay,”
where I would have done this, I would done this, I would have done that, but
that’s not the case. So, yeah, there’s definitely a big difference between the
two.
You mentioned you
still have your vinyl. What would you say are the five most influential albums
on you?
LR: Ah, that’s
the best question in the world. It’s an easy question to answer.
I would think it’d be
tough.
LR: Let me put it
to you like this. The first rock concert I went to was, as I told you, Ray
Charles, but probably the one that made me want to be a rock ‘n’ roll musician,
my parents took my brother and I to KISS and Judas Priest when I was 8 years
old. And they took us to the Nassau Coliseum in New York to see KISS and Judas
Priest opened up, and we sat in the last row, but it changed my life. And being
in New York, it’s one of those bands coming out of New York at the time that
made me want to be a rock musician. One of the first vinyl records I ever
bought was KISS Alive, but actually,
this is kind of random, but these are the first two albums I ever bought on
vinyl – KISS Alive was the first,
with the Bay City Rollers (laughs) … I don’t know why, but I loved those guys’
image, man. I loved the image, I loved their sound (laughs) … I thought, “Man,
those guys are cool.” So, yeah, the Bay City Rollers. Queen, News of the World was it for me.
Foreigner, Double Vision – huge for
me. And then, of course, Meat Loaf, Bat
Out of Hell. Those are my first, and I think there may have been a Styx Grand Illusion in there, as well.
I think that was the
first album I ever bought with my own money was Grand Illusion.
LR: Right? Grand Illusion, man … I love that
record. Then it got crazy. Then I started getting into all my punk stuff, like
The Stooges, The Ramones, and then it just got crazy – the Velvet Underground,
The Plasmatics. Yeah, I went nuts for all that stuff. But I think those are the
biggest influences, yeah. I mean, like KISS, Styx, Queen, Foreigner, Meat Loaf
– I mean those are my biggest influences coming up. And that includes
everything from AC/DC to Van Halen to Zeppelin, although funny enough with me,
I didn’t get heavily into Zeppelin, and I didn’t get heavily into for instance
Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, which, of course, everybody knows
about. I don’t care. I mean if you’re a rock musician, you’re into those bands,
and of course, I am. But at that age, I didn’t understand the music – couldn’t
wrap my head around it. It didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t connect with
Zeppelin until later on. I didn’t connect with the Rolling Stones until … and I
love the Rolling Stones, love those guys, love the music, but until I matured,
I didn’t connect with it until a little bit later in life, but those are my
first albums, and then, of course, The Beatles. And the Beatles … I was
listening to them at a young age and I just didn’t get it. I used to say to my
friends, I was upset … my older sister was listening to them – The Beatles,
man! And I just didn’t connect with it at a young age. Of course, when I got
older, the Beatles were everything. But yeah, those were some of the first
bands for me.
And you two guys being songwriters, those are some of your
favorite songwriters as well.
LR: No question about it. But I think like … Simon &
Garfunkel were a big influence on me. I like the simplicity of those guys, but
what really appeals to my brother and I were melodies, not so much bands that
were ripping out. I can’t say I was heavily blues influenced, though I liked
the blues. My mom was a real good blues singer and jazz singer, and I always
heard it from her growing up. To me, it was just like eating breakfast in the
morning. You eat your cereal in the morning? Yeah, I heard Mel Torme or Tom
Jones. I’m eating my cereal and that’s what I heard. So it was just something I
related to, but it just kind of reminded
me of when I was young and hearing those rock bands and those melodies … Roger
and I were so into melodies and people who had great voices and great
harmonies, which is probably why we love Simon & Garfunkel, hearing those
harmonies that they did. I loved it, and we try to do that to this day. We rock
out and we’re onstage, the pedal is to the metal, and we’re rocking out hard,
but our choruses hit and we’re doing harmonies and we’re in sync with each
other.
New York City retro-rock siblings do it their way By Peter Lindblad
The Raskins - The Raskins 2014
When the major labels started sniffing around New York City retro rock ‘n’ roll animals The Raskins, they said, “Thanks, but no thanks. We’re
good.”
At one time, long ago, they would have jumped at their
offers, but like another Big Apple icon, the Chairman of the Board Frank
Sinatra, twins Logan and Roger are set on doing things their way, and it’s
gotten them pretty far. So, they turned them away.
“It’s funny, when my brother and I kind of finished all our
videos, we finished doing the web site, we finished recording the record,
everything was done, our fan base was growing leaps and bounds – all of a
sudden, we started getting all these record deals,” Logan related. “I was in my
attorney’s office, and he goes, ‘You know, you’ve got six major labels wanting
to sign you guys right now – six!’ He put four contracts right in front of me,
dropped them on the deck. He goes, ‘There you go. Four major labels want to
sign you guys. What do you guys want to do?’”
Taken aback by all the sudden record label attention they
were getting, The Raskins’ heads were swimming, and they needed some objective
advice.
“And I said, ‘Well, if I’d have been younger, I’d have been
freaking out,’” said Logan. “And I said, ‘As my attorney, what do you advise us
to do?’ And he said, ‘Well, as your attorney, I advise you to do it all
yourselves. You don’t need them. You don’t need those labels for anything. Why
would you want to give away everything you’ve done and give away all that
control, give all that power, everything you guys have worked for? You guys
have done it all on your own to this point.’ He goes, ‘You’ve got it.’ He goes,
‘You have it all. Don’t give it away.’”
An honest-to-goodness DIY success story – of which there are
precious few these days – The Raskins have been surrounded by music their whole
lives. Their father, Tommy, was a Broadway singer who appeared in such shows as
“West Side Story, “ “Oklahoma” and “South Pacific,” among others, and their
mother, Judith, known in the entertainment community as Judith Lee, was a jazz
singer of some renown.
Successful forays into the world of making music for TV and film helped The Raskins make a name for themselves, but in recent years, they've felt a tug to break out of that box and perform for the masses their own uniquely New York-style rock 'n' roll, an exciting, punched-up blend of singer-songwriter pop, the gritty, sleazy proto-punk of the New York Dolls and The Stooges and sophisticated classic rock clothed in tight black jeans, black leather and spiked hair and brimming with attitude.
Cover for The Raskins'
single "We Had It All"
Their self-titled debut album dropped in May, which includes the red-hot single "We Had It All," while the duo was on tour supporting ex-Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver front man Scott Weiland. Soon, they will embark on another jaunt with modern-rock heavyweights Saving Abel, and the day before this interview, they got even bigger news. We'll let Logan talk about it in Part 1 of our Q&A with these rising stars.
How did you get on the Scott Weiland tour?
Logan Raskin:
Well, you know, we have an album coming out May 13. So our management and our
label over Sony/Red obviously they’re looking to get us on to the biggest tours
possible that are going out this summer, and the Scott Weiland tour was one of
the opportunities that came across their desk for us, and of course, they had
asked my brother and I how we would feel about going out with Scott Weiland,
and you know, Scott Weiland is a big influence on my brother and I. Our musical
styles, I feel, are very similar, so for me it was a no-brainer. I said,
“Absolutely. Let’s get out there with Scott. I think it would be a really good
pairing.”
So they called Scott’s camp, and they told Scott about the band, and
Scott, it was really his decision. So they’re management said, well, we’ll talk
to Scott about it and it’s really up to him. So, yeah, Scott checked out our
music and our videos online, and he really dug what we were doing and said,
“Yeah, let’s get these guys out on the road with us.” So the first show we did
last night. We’re doing an 11- to 12-show run with Scott, and then when we get
back, we’ll go back to Hollywood for about 10 days and then we’ll go back out
again and we have about 20-plus shows booked with Saving Abel. So, we’ll go out
with Saving Abel and do all that, and actually, we just found out it looks like
we might be doing some of the Motley Crue-Alice Cooper shows. So believe it or
not, you’re the first person I’m telling that to. So we actually got offered 27
dates with them. I don’t know exactly … the label and our management right now
are working on all the details and the scheduling of it all, because I mean,
obviously, that’s the biggest tour of the year. And we already have contracts
signed with the Saving Abel tour, so we have to work out all the logistics with
that. Obviously, I’m like, “Let’s make it work (laughs).” So, let’s see:
Madison Square Garden is on there, Hollywood Bowl is on there … I’m like, “Are
you guys kidding me? Of course, let’s go. Let’s make it happen.” (See The Raskins' video for "We Had It All" below)
So it’s overwhelming, things are really taking off for the
Raskins, and you know, we’re just trying to take it day by day. It’s a
whirlwind, but my brother and I are just taking it day by day. We’re taking it
in stride. The band is kicking ass and playing amazing. The show last night
with Scott went great. Really, our focus right now is the Scott Weiland tour.
We really want to try and make this a successful tour, and last night, the
first night was great. A lot of kids bought our CDs, and we signed a ton of
posters and stuff. I mean, the response was pretty much overwhelming. So I’m
really excited about things to come and moving long with the Scott Weiland tour
now.
Wow. That’s pretty
amazing news. LR: Yeah, you
didn’t expect me to say all that, right?
No, that’s kind of
mind-blowing.
LR: Yeah, let me
tell you something. It’s like every day things change with us, and different
opportunities come up. Our single right now is being played on 150 radio
stations across the country, our single “We had it All,” and our album [wasn't] even out yet. So it’s like the single is starting to do really well. The video
is blowing up online. We’ve got almost two million views online with YouTube, so the
response has been really, really great. The anticipation of the album coming
out [was] really high, so we’re excited about that; it just seems like
everything is coming together at the right time. We’re firing on all cylinders
right now. We just want to keep this train on the tracks and keep things moving
forward for us.
I have to tell you
after listening to the songs on the electronic press kit, this is the kind of
music I miss.
LR: Cool, man.
It’s cool to hear you say that, and you know what? Me, too (laughs). You know
what’s funny, for the last several years, my brother and I were writing a lot of
music for TV and film. And we got heavily into that for a while, and we were
known as The Raskins. We were writing a lot of stuff for different film projects,
and we were getting an overwhelming amount of e-mails from fans – pretty much
not just in the U.S., but all over the world – that were seeing these movies or
seeing these TV shows that we did the music for, and they were always asking,
“Where can we get your guys’ music? When can we see you live?” So it was just a
matter of time before my brother and I were like, “Look, I think it’s time. The
writing is on the wall. I think it’s time we just put the band together and
start playing out at The Raskins.”
So we decided to do that a couple of years
ago, and then last year or about a year a half ago, we started recording the
music for this album that’s coming out and we
took our time writing it, and we just wanted to put together a solid group of
songs that really represented my brother and myself, our writing styles and our
influences.
Being from New York City, we really wanted to incorporate
that rock ‘n’ roll style that my brother and I grew up with, but also
incorporate the different style of our writing ability. Because, look, some of
our biggest influences were The Stooges or the New York Dolls or the Ramones,
but it was also acts such as Simon & Garfunkel and Steely Dan – those acts
out of New York City. We kind of grew up with those influences and it really
influenced our writing style, and we wanted to put together a record that
encapsulated those styles. And I think we accomplished that with this record.
The lead single, “We
Had It All,” dropped on Feb. 18 and I was going to ask about what kind of
feedback you’re getting, but it seems like it’s been pretty good. What inspired
that song?
LR: And it’s
funny, Peter, because I was nervous about it because when you’re writing music
for somebody, basically they’re telling you what they want. So it’s an easy
process for me, because I kind of try to detach myself from the music because
I’m basically just giving the client what it is that they want. And a lot of
times, we’ll finish a composition for a client, and I’ll say, “Well, I know how
I would have written that,” but they’re very specific about how they want
things, and we try to just give them that when we’re writing for these
different music supervisors for these movies and things like that, and we just
read the client. But with the record and writing for us, we really took our
time and wanted to really come forward with our influences and our styles we
grew up with , and really try to capture that on this record.
I really love the
songs “On the Radio” and “We Had it All.” Can you talk about what inspired those
songs?
LR: Absolutely.
Well, first of all, “On the Radio,” it’s pretty much exactly that. Every
musician growing up, I don’t care if you’re young or old, the first thing you
dream about as a musician is hearing your music on the radio. It’s the first
thing. For my brother and I, the first time we ever heard our music on the radio
that was a big moment for us. And I assume it would be a big moment for any
musician coming up. So for us, I remember exactly where we were, the moment it
happened, the first time I heard our song coming across the airwaves on the
radio. It was a big memorable moment and one for me I’ll never forget. And I
felt it was an important thing to write about, because that was an important
moment in our music career. That’s exactly what that song is about, “On the
Radio,” and it means a lot to us. It was important in our music career, and I
wanted to write a song about that. And then the single, “We Had it All,” which
by the way, it was difficult to figure out what was going to be the initial
single for this record. (See the video for "On the Radio" below)
I was going to ask
about that.
LR: Yeah, I mean,
I’m so attached to all these songs. But this particular song ... I’ll explain what
it’s about, and you’ll see why we decided to use it as a single. I mean, the
song was basically written about how the music industry is today. My brother
and I, being from New York City, spending our whole lives growing up and doing
music in New York, and our parents being in the music industry, we were doing
our thing musically and we were struggling, just kind of pushing along, playing
all the clubs in New York, and trying our hand at being musicians. But my
brother and I had gotten some opportunities to go out to Los Angeles to work
with a couple of pretty big producers out there, and I thought it was a good opportunity
maybe to go out to L.A. and try to expand on our career, and try to push our
career forward, and as we were doing that, it was an interesting time in the
music industry.
I mean the music industry was really changing, so like the
way the online market is now, you don’t even see record stores anymore. I grew
up with vinyl. I still have my vinyl collection. I remember going to the record
stores and paging through my favorite vinyls and buying vinyl, and you can’t
even go to a record store and buy a CD anymore. It’s all digital downloads now.
Getting back to my point, from when we kind of got out to L.A. and we were
working with those producers and stuff like that, my brother and I kind of
realized that we never really had to leave New York, or we never really had to
change what it was that we were doing to be successful. We had everything we
needed to be successful, and I never really realized that until we made that
trip out to Los Angeles. I mean, we packed our car, drove out, packed up
everything we had and just drove out to Los Angeles, started working out there,
trying to play the clubs out there, working the system and doing recording,
working with the producers out there, but I realized the way the music industry
is right now, if you have the knowledge and the wherewithal, you can do it all
on your own. You don’t need anybody. If you’re not lazy, you can do it all on
your own. The way the Internet is now, you can work your online market, the way
Twitter is, the way Facebook is, you can get your music up online. You can
build your fan base online. And that’s exactly what we started to do.
And I realized how to make all that work for us, and we also
learned how to record our own music, to do it in our own home. We built a
recording studio. We have a recording studio in our home in Los Angeles, and I
have one in my home in New York, but when I learned how to do that, the way
recording music has changed, they’re not using the big recording studios. A lot
of those big recording studios are going out of business now. You can record
killer quality tracks in the privacy of your own home. Everything’s digital
now. So, basically, the song is “We Had It All.” I never had to leave. We never
had to leave New York. We had it all. We had everything we needed to become
successful. And I realized that. My brother and I had all the music. We had the
knowledge and the wherewithal on how to record the music. We knew exactly how
to market and promote our music online, sell our music online, and that’s
exactly what we did. And that’s exactly how we built our fans. We built up our
fan base online, we recorded all the videos ourselves and released them to
YouTube and pushed and worked our fan base there, and that’s exactly what the
song is about. It’s called “We Had it All.”
We always had it all. I never realized that. I was always
talking to my friends and saying, “I wish we could do this. I wish we could do
that. I wish I could work with this person. I wish I could work with that
person.” And I try to tell it to a lot of younger kids coming up: “You’re not
lazy. The way the music industry is set up now, you can do it all yourself.”
You know, my dream growing up was to get signed by a major label. Now, it’s the
worst thing, the worst thing. The only deals that these major labels are giving
out now are 360 deals. They believe that with the digital market now, the
online market, the only way these major labels can make any money is to take a
percentage of everything you own, everything.
So my brother, Roger and myself and my older brother,
Micah Raskin – who’s our business manager, and he lives in New York, owns a
computer software company in New Jersey and he’s great with business, great
with business, and he handles all our business and is our business manager –
and the three of us put together our own record label. And we called the label
MIRAL, which stands for Micah “Mi,” and I “Roger,” and “Logan” – MIRAL records. So we signed ourselves to our own record label, and then once we did
that, Michael said, “Okay guys, we have everything we need. Everything is done.
The only thing we need is distribution.” I said, “Micah, there’s only one place
to go.” He said, “Where’s that?” I said, “Sony Red. Go to Sony.” And he said,
“Okay, I’ll go.”
Called him up, set up a meeting, just my brother went down
with the attorney, they signed us in 20 minutes. It took 20 minutes, that’s it
and it was done. Now I have my own label that I’m signed to, three brothers own
it all outright. I have total control over my musical career, creatively …
everything. And I have distribution through Sony. It’s been amazing, amazing.
And let me tell you it was hard work, but this is what I try to tell people,
and I try to tell these young kids out there, I’m like, “You can do all this.
You can do all this on your own.” And that’s what we’ve done, and it’s a great
feeling, a great feeling. I go to sleep at night with a big smile on my face,
just having the ability to play music every day and do it full-time is a major
accomplishment for my brother and I.
It’s a major accomplishment, and we’re the
kind of guys … I don’t need to make millions of dollars, I don’t need to make a
lot of money, because I’m a music lover. And the reason why we got involved in
music was to just play music. We loved it. And just the fact that we have the
opportunity to do that now, to travel all around the country and travel all
around the world, playing music and giving out our message to all the kids out
there, it’s crazy. So I’m living the dream, man. And I think this is just the
beginning, but I’m having the time of my life with it.
This is the kind of
album – guitar-driven, melodic, with lots of hooks – that would appeal to a
wide range of people, and music is so fragmented these days. Can an album like
this break down some of those walls?
LR: I mean, look,
I totally agree with you, but what was happening … like I would just take maybe
five years ago. That’s before you really saw the radical changes in the music
industry with the online market, the record labels really would get confused
with a lot of these bands. And they had the mentality like, look, we need to
know exactly what bin we’re putting this music in. Are you guys rock? Are you
guys rap? Are you guys pop? Are you guys heavy metal? Are you guys country? And
that’s how they would define it. So a lot of these bands would go along with
that protocol, and they’d only put out rock or they’d only put out heavy metal,
or only put out punk, and they were some great bands, but they would only be known
and categorized as just that, but my brother and I, being in the situation that
we’re in, I don’t have to answer to anybody. I can sign my own people.
I can put out all the music I want in the style that I want,
and it’s very important for my brother and I to let our fan base and to let the
public see our musical influences – the styles we grew up with, and the kind of
music that we love. It’s not just aggressive rock. It’s also really good pop
songs, and most of the music that I write is off of an acoustic guitar. So a
lot of those Simon & Garfunkel or Steely Dan or Richie Havens influences
come out in our writing styles. And we really want to try to have those hooky
chords, those pop chords and there’s a lot of harmonies going on, whether it be
in an aggressive rock song or whether it be in a slow ballad. It’s important to
us. So I don’t really care. I wanted to make sure that Roger and I were happy
with our finished product and happy with the music that we’re putting out
there. That’s the most important thing.
We write for ourselves. And I know the beauty of the
position we’re in is that I don’t have to answer to a president of an Atlantic
or an Interscope or an Island, or whomever, and that’s all good, but I can put
out the kind of music that I want and it took me to this point in my musical
career to get it to this point and learn. Believe me, we went through the
trials and tribulations of all of it, but now we’re at this point where we were
able to take our time writing the record, and we had an amazing time doing it.
We recorded 50 songs … 50 songs! It took us almost a year and a half. I wasn’t
under pressure. I wasn’t under a time restraint. We just had a great time
recording music, and when we felt like it was done, it was done. We had 12
songs that we felt good about, that had a good flow and that really represented
us and put it on the record and that’s what we wanted to represent us. That’s
what we wanted to put out into the universe. So I hope that maybe it catches
on, and I do think it will catch on, because the music industry is changing so
radically and I think that these kids are going to be doing more and more on
their own, and I think the music is going to change with that. There’s a lot of
talent out there. There really is, and the way the industry is now, it’s
freaking beautiful. It’s amazing. I love it. I love it. It’s giving the power
back to the artist. And that’s the way it should be. That’s the way it should
be. I think the music that the world is going to see now, it’s going to blow
people’s minds. It’s going to blow people’s minds. So that’s what I would like
to do. I can’t wait to get on to our second record.
Our management and Sony and everybody and Sony Red, it’s
like you guys for the next year and a half we just want you to tour the shit
out of this album. And I’m like, “Well, that’s cool. I love touring, too.” But
creatively, I’m like, “Aaaahhhh …” I can’t wait to do this next record. There
are so many songs I want to get out there. So, it’s exciting. It’s exciting,
and I think it’s going to catch on, I really do. And I hope that we can
influence a lot of these younger artists out there to follow what we’re doing.
I think that it’ll be good for the public to hear, to change it up and hear
that quality of music coming from these new artists, these up-and-coming
artists.
On paper, it was a match made in heaven, or at least somewhere on the Sunset Strip. Four ex-members of Guns N' Roses – Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum and Dave Kushner – backing a slithering, swaggering, fashion-plate of a singer with a highly publicized drug problem in former Stone Temple Pilots' Scott Weiland seemed like a super group that might just rekindle the crash-and-burn, gutter-rock firestorm of Appetite for Destruction. To a large extent, the promise of this shotgun wedding went unfulfilled – that is if you were expecting Appetite … II, the Sequel.
With Contraband, Velvet Revolver came out swinging with a fairly strong debut, even if it didn’t quite provide the grit and utterly debilitating punch to the gut that Appetite did. A lack of new ideas, some rehashed guitar riffs and Weiland’s subdued sleaze all caused Contraband to fall just a bit short of expectations, which is not to say that Contraband missed the mark entirely. Gripping grooves, tough, irresistible rhythms and the occasional flashes of brilliance in Slash’s solos rescued Contraband from utter failure and gave hope that better days lay ahead for VR.
At the very least, none of the Velvet Revolver team has anything to be ashamed of in Contraband. It just wasn’t Appetite, and maybe, just maybe, it was asking too much to believe that it would be. After all, this wasn’t Guns N' Roses, and comparing the two projects is a little unfair. But, let’s be honest. From day one when this project was announced, everyone was waiting to see if VR measured up to both Guns N' Roses and the Pilots.
At the time of this writing, Weiland had returned to the Pilots, and Velvet Revolver was being coy about whether or not it had settled on a new lead singer. “Live in Houston,” a concert DVD that captures the band live in 2005, shows what the Weiland version of the band was capable of onstage.
A gutsier, sleazier, edgier Velvet Revolver emerged this night. Aside from the lamentably forced exhortations from Slash and Weiland for the crowd to abandon their inhibitions and lose themselves in all the sexual energy that a down-and-dirty rock show can muster, Velvet Revolver acquits themselves nicely, playing with vim and vigor in stomping through originals and a few covers of Guns N' Roses and Pilots tracks. They attack the heavy opener, “Sucker Train Blues,” with a pounding, frothing-at-the-mouth intensity that unrelentingly barrels on through satisfying, riff-heavy numbers like “Do it for the Kids,” the epically huge “Headspace” and an equally explosive “Crackerman.” Weiland plays the role of debauched ringleader perfectly, crawling around the stage like a predator, pouncing on monitors and pouring out sweaty vocals through a megaphone, while the band lets loose furious, bump-and-grind metal grooves. And on the Guns N' Roses classic “It’s So Easy,” Weiland sounds just as dangerous as Axl ever did.
Captured from a variety of camera angles, Velvet Revolver sizzles live, and the quick cuts and creative image shaping add to the excitement of a live performance that tears the roof off the place, even if VR flat-lines on a weakened “Big Machine” and a boring take on “Used to Love Her” before reviving itself for “Slither,” which comes down from its atmospheric headspace to hit the streets with roaring guitars.
Overall, “Live in Houston” is not only a cracking concert DVD, but it’s augmented by no-holds-barred, behind-the-scene footage and candid interviews that talk openly about helping Weiland get sober and how the band fought over who the lead singer would be before getting Weiland. Expertly filmed and edited, with a whole lot more to offer than just electrifying live rock and roll, “Live in Houston” finds Velvet Revolver firing round after round of tough, angry rock to a crowd eager to lap it all up. Stay tuned. Evidently, the Velvet Revolver story is far from finished.
