I think it shows how hungry the world is for rock and roll.
We get it all the time, people are coming up to us, ‘Thank you man. I didn’t know if I’d ever see a rock and roll show again.’ I think it’s not us resurrecting rock and roll, it’s the kids that are coming to the shows that are resurrecting it.
Hopefully they’re going home and starting up new bands like I did when I went and saw The Clash in ’79. Like, ‘Fuck man, I can do this. I can start a band.’
Tell me about doing the video for ‘Dirty Little Thing.’
That was the first time we let the label pick the single. That’s not the single we would have picked. I think we would have probably picked ‘Sucker Train Blues.’ But they did this whole thing with radio and what got the most response, and apparently it was ‘Dirty Little Thing.’
It was a very simple video to do. The animation was the most tedious process of that thing, getting the animation right. It was a fun video to do.
When we’re on that train playing, we were on this hydraulic floor that moves back and forth. So when we’re flying around, it’s like this floor is tilting back and forth.We did that part in a day.
It’s a good video, it’s just not getting any airplay, really.
What do you mean?
It’s just not getting much airplay. I think rock, well, MTV doesn’t play rock. Unless they’re playing out there, maybe it’s getting played on Fuse. We’re in a bubble on tour. It’s not like it’s a single that blew up, like the other two.
I think it’s a good video, and it’s a good song. I love playing it live, it’s a great song to play live, but if we put out another single from this record, it’ll probably be ‘You Got No Right,’ and if we do a video for it, we’ve got a ton of live footage, just do a live thing for that. We have a bunch of behind the scenes stuff, really cool footage. You gotta have a video like that every once in a while, kind of like the ‘Paradise City’ video.
Why for that specifically?
Because we have the footage. (laughs) We had one of the guys film all this stuff, and we had a 13- camera shoot in Houston, it’s 13 different angles, so there’s a lot of great stuff to pick and choose from that, and all the behind the scenes stuff.
It would be an easy video to put together, not overly expensive, and a nice ending to this record. A nice segue into the next record.
What was the 13 camera shoot for?
We got ownership of the film, it was for an HD network, Hi Definition TV. They filmed this show in hi definition and aired it on those random HD channels, just as a kind of thing to draw people, and they paid us for it, and they let us keep the film. It was a good deal. So we have this really great footage of the show from 13 different angles.
Do you guys have anything planned for the next record yet?
Well, we’ve been writing since last May, so we have a ton of stuff.We’re gonna do this American tour, then we’re going over to Europe to do a bunch of festivals. We’re doing the Download Festival and a bunch of others in Hungary, the Czech Republic.
We’re playing Iceland, Norway, Italy, the UK, north Germany, all over the place. And we get a month off from July 11 to August 11 and we’re going to start pre-production then, and we’re going to do seven dates on Ozzfest.
Yeah, how did that come about?
Sharon loves us. She put together this thing for tsunami aid. She picked us to do ‘Tears In Heaven,’ and it’s gonna be coming out pretty soon, if not next week. It was going to come out in March, March 22, but she decided to hold off.
Elton John’s on it, Gwen Stefani, Mary J. Blige, Scott, Steven Tyler, the opera singer Andrea Bocelli, Rod Stewart. All kinds of people, and it’s a beautiful version of the song, but she wanted to wait, and see where money was really needed for this thing before putting it out. So she held off for a couple months.
There’s a video that got filmed for it, kind of like the ‘We Are The World’ thing. But she loves the band and asked us to record the song. We did that in London in January.
Catch Velvet Revolver at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ on Friday, May 20. For more info on the band, just look around you, they’re everywhere. If that doesn’t work, hit up Velvet Revolver.com
