Guns N' Roses' second drummer, Matt Sorum, recalled being thrown in the deep end upon joining the band for their sprawling Use Your Illusion sessions. During an appearance on Drum For The Song, Sorum who was a member of Guns from 1990 to 1997, described his initial work with the band: “To just make the story straight — I was not a hired side guy, I was a member of the Guns N' Roses band. I went in and I made those records, we started recording everything as we were going to make one album. So the idea was: we're gonna record 30 songs and we're going to whittle that down with 12 or 13-to-14 songs.”
He went on to say, “In those days, a lot of bands would record a lot of material; maybe not 30 (songs), but 25 or 20. And then a lot of times in the recording process, some songs come out better than others, and you get like, 'Wow, I had no idea it was going to be so great.' So that was the mindset until one day Axl (Rose) walked in and said, 'We're going to make a double album.' We were, 'What. . .?' And at that particular time, just joining the band, I was like, 'Wow, this is kind of over the top, it's a lot of material.' And now we had to go and we had to complete over 30 songs, which took a lot of time. They put the band out on the road. Before that, Axl had to finish all his vocals, so now he had to sing 30 songs.”
Sorum went on to explain the sheer amount of work the band was prepping at one time was massive: “We started recording 'The Spaghetti Incident?' while we were waiting for Axl to finish the vocals, so those particular records, that record was done before we even left to go on tour with Use Your Illusion 1 and 2.”
“So. . . we started on the big world tour, and we haven't finished the records yet; we hadn't even finished the albums. We had about three months of touring where we were playing songs no one ever heard before. You got to remember, that was pre-internet, nobody would be able to get away with that now.”
Matt Sorum, who went on to drum in Slash's Snakepit and joined forces with Slash and Duff McKagan in Velvet Revolver, was not asked to rejoin the band for its latest incarnation. Sorum was very vocal about Axl Rose touring a version of Guns in which the singer was the sole original member, telling us a while back: “I'm not saying I'm an original member, okay, but I understand the core of the band, which is Slash and Duff and probably Izzy. It's a shame, and y'know what, this goes back to a Paul McCartney thing. Does he call himself the Beatles? Not saying we were as big as the Beatles, but — does Sting call himself the Police? No. Does Jimmy Page and Robert Plant go out there calling themselves Led Zeppelin? Nope.”
