Matt Sorum was asked whether he would put Velvet Revolver back together with Lzzy Hale as singer. He did not bring the idea up himself — it came from the journalist — but he did not dismiss it either: “I’d do it. I don’t know what the other two are doing, but give them a call,” he told Mike Hsu of the station “100 FM The Pike”.
The prompt was a performance. Hale sings Bad Company’s “Shooting Star” on “Sound & Vision Live”, the concert recording Sorum curated, and he does not hide his enthusiasm: “I believe people will be blown away. Even Geezer Butler came up and told me: ‘she’s the best singer I’ve heard since Tina Turner’.” Behind her played Sorum on drums, Stevie Salas and Phil X on guitars, Robert DeLeo on bass and Mike Mangan on keys. The show took place on 2 March 2026 at the Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs, at the first Sound & Vision Awards, where Paul Rodgers and Geezer Butler were honoured — with a cast that also included Corey Taylor, Glenn Hughes, Nuno Bettencourt and Charlie Starr, all for free. Proceeds go to Adopt The Arts, the foundation Sorum started in 2012 with Jane Lynch for music education in public schools.
Velvet Revolver formed in 2002 out of Sorum, Slash, Duff McKagan and Dave Kushner. They searched for a singer for almost two years — at one point asking the public for demos — and landed on Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots. “Contraband” (2004) hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won a Grammy for “Slither”, while “Libertad” followed in 2007. Weiland left in 2008, the four played together one last time at a charity show in 2012, and the band has been inactive since. A version with Corey Taylor on vocals got as far as demos of ten songs before Slash said no. Weiland died in December 2015 at the age of 48. Hale, for her part, has stepped into another band before: in 2024 she sang live with Skid Row.
See also: Guns N’ Roses: They brought back “Think About You” after decades | Skid Row: They enter the next phase of their singer search
