Matt Sorum Announces Memoir Publication Date
Matt Sorum announced that his memoir will be published on April 7 under the title Double Talkin' Jive: True Rock 'N' Roll Stories From the Drummer of Guns N' Roses, the Cult and Velvet Revolver.
The book features a foreword by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. Publishers Chicago Review Press said it “avoids all the usual rock biography cliches."
“Cocaine smuggling, shoot-outs and never-ending decadent parties: Matt Sorum’s Double Talkin’ Jive could almost be described as the autobiographical equivalent of the film Blow," the company claims. "But rather than becoming a premier drug smuggler, Matt Sorum becomes a world-famous drummer.”
The narrative follows Sorum as he “drops out of high school to become a drummer, but turns to selling pot to support himself, and later smuggling large quantities of cocaine.”
A year after joining the Cult, he was hired by Slash and Duff McKagan to replace Steven Adler in GNR, at which point his life was “transformed” – but when Axl Rose’s studio attendance became unreliable, the band “staggered toward their downfall.” The book continues through the formation of Velvet Revolver, Sorum’s temporary position with Motorhead and the creation of his supergroup Kings of Chaos.
“During his time as a professional drummer, Matt battles alcohol and coke addictions, but meeting his girlfriend, Ace Harper, helps him manage to go clean," the statement notes.
In 2018 Sorum said he’d considered naming the book Rock ’n’ Roll Smuggler. “Before I was in a rock band, I was a drug smuggler," he said. "I used to smuggle cocaine across borders. I’d fly on airplanes with two kilos strapped around my waist.”
He noted that the last time he smuggled "two kilos to Hawaii, I remember thinking I was being followed, and it wasn't because I was paranoid on cocaine — I really felt that I was being followed. I told the guy that I flew this stuff for — I was the mule, and I got, like, a couple grand every time I went — 'I can't do this. I'm being followed.' He's like, 'Oh, man, you're just high.' I'm like, 'No, man. I'm not doing it. I'm going back to L.A.' The guy that took my place got arrested. Twenty years in a federal penitentiary, international drug smuggling. That would have been me."