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GNR + STP = VR
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There are several elements to an effective Axl Rose impersonation, and Scott Weiland already had the first one — rehab — out of the way by the time Velvet Revolver arrived for a sold-out gig at Avalon last Saturday. By the time the band took the stage — following a long, withering, Axl-like delay — he had nailed another. ("Ladies and gentlemen," went the group’s introduction, "the band that put the punk back in punctuality . . . ") To his credit, on Velvet Revolver’s debut, Contraband (RCA, out this Tuesday), Weiland gets over his Axl fetish after the opening "Sucker Train Blues." Last weekend, by necessity, the process took a little longer. Velvet Revolver’s set, which included three GNR covers and a pair of Stone Temple Pilots tunes and ended with a speed-metal dash through Nirvana’s "Negative Creep," was calibrated to play up the not-entirely-obvious similarities between its band members’ back catalogues. There was never enough room in STP for such a lyrical soloist as Slash, and Guns’ songs, loose and lithe, are a tough road for a singer of limited range. What they’ve found in common is a certain serpentine sleaze — not for nothing is the most effective hybrid on Contraband titled "Slither." The GNR-bred rhythm section, bassist Duff McCagan and drummer Matt Sorum, played straighter than usual, but Weiland seemed to understand that the band’s music should come from the hips. The third element in a good Axl impersonation is a ridiculously slinky dance. Looking as sinewy and taut as the band sounded, Weiland obliged with an androgynous slither that was part Sunset Strip rattlesnake shake, part shrugging, moonwalk-like shimmy. (Weiland’s stage garb — close-copped hair, a patrolman’s hat and vest — was as gay as anything the Village People or Rob Halford ever came up with; Axl, an ardent homophobe, would probably not have approved.) Only occasionally on Contraband do Weiland’s grunge-pop melodies and Slash’s leathery, blues-bent licks find each other; but live, at least, they managed to make STP’s "Sex Type Thing" and GNR’s "It’s So Easy" feel as if they’d crawled from the same lair, and in that context, VR’s "Do It for the Kids" seemed a worthy successor. Slash dedicated "Illegal I Song" to Steven Tyler, but they saved their best Aerosmith imitation for "Big Machine" ("All that first-class drug shit brings me down, down, down"). If you were looking for a "November Rain," you would have been left high and dry, though the power ballad (and, Weiland made it clear, eventual single) "Fall to Pieces" sounded awful close, and cynically so, to "Sweet Child o’ Mine." But Slash saved his best Slash impersonation for the encore. Coming out to play the ’88 GNR honky-tonk throwaway "Used To Love Her," he whipped out the most sacred Guns relic of all: his emblematic black stovepipe top hat. It got the biggest ovation of the evening.
BY CARLY CARIOLI
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