Matt Sorum recalls the exact moment he realized he wanted to be a drummer.

He was sitting on the couch with his mom, dad and older brothers, Mark and Mike, eating handfuls of popcorn and watching “The Ed Sullivan Show” as they did every Sunday night in their Long Beach home in 1965. The Beatles were the musical guest and when they launched into “I Feel Fine,” the then 5-year-old Sorum said he turned to his mother, pointed at the drummer and said, “I want to be like him.”

“He captured my attention and it was that way for a lot of people in America,” he added. “For a lot of drummers that are around my age, Ringo stood out. He was an equal member of that band, too, and that’s how a drummer should be.”

Sorum, who went on to anchor bands like The Cult, Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver as well as get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, dives deep into his journey to rockstardom — with all the craziness, music, addiction, rehab, death and hard, yet sometimes comical lessons learned in between — in his new memoir “Double Talkin’ Jive,” which comes out May 10.

Sorum spoke via Zoom from his home in Palm Spring in June ahead of the book’s original 2021 publishing date, which shifted to May 2022. At the time, he and wife Ace Harper were expecting the arrival of their first daughter.

He described what it’s like to revisit his past for the book.

“It’s definitely a cathartic experience,” Sorum said of writing the memoir during our chat. “Emotionally, it’s like reliving your life on a roller coaster. You get very emotional around it because you lived it and now you’ve got to relive it. There’s things I would have done differently, but then you look back and you go, ‘Wow, I’ve changed.’ And that’s OK because it was all a part of the journey. I guess I’m glad I did it the way I did it and I used to say, as a joke, ‘Well, this would be good for the book.’”

After Ringo, Sorum soon discovered other drummers like The Who’s Keith Moon, Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and jazz drummers Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa. In 1975, while Sorum was in high school and living in Mission Viejo, he went with some friends to see Kiss at the Long Beach Arena and had an epiphany during Peter Criss’ drum solo.

“If he can do it, I can do it,” Sorum wrote of that moment in the book.

He formed the band Prophecy, dropped out of high school, got his GED and moved up to Hollywood to pursue a music career. After gigging around and even playing music in a band for a short time with Tori Amos, he still hadn’t made it.

So that’s when he got paid to smuggle large amounts of cocaine from Southern California to Hawaii instead, which he details in the chapter titled “Rock ‘n’ Roll Smuggler.”

Sorum got out of that life before he got caught, and not long after he landed his first big break when he joined Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy in The Cult in 1989 to tour in support of the “Sonic Temple” album. He continued to live the fast-paced rock lifestyle while on the road – and learned that trashing a hotel room will cost you at least two weeks’ pay.

Related Articles

“I grew up with like John Bonham, you know what I mean, what am I supposed to do,” he said with a laugh recalling his first tour faux pas. “It’s like, I’m a drummer and as soon as I was given that first big gig, I was like ‘Oh my God, this is my dream!’ I just went with it.”

And that’s not even the craziest thing he did on the road.

He also writes about escaping his own band security and sneaking out of hotels to party when he was in Guns N’ Roses, which he joined in 1990, replacing Steven Adler. Sorum was in the band for the release of “User Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II” in 1991 and the 1993 covers album, “The Spaghetti Incident?”

He was there for some of Guns N’ Roses most lengthy tours and recalls a four-night stint at The Forum in Inglewood in 1991 when vocalist Axl Rose decided he wanted to break Bruce Springsteen’s record for the longest concert at the venue, which clocked in at just over three hours.

“I remember that I was actually fairly ill then, too,” Sorum said. “It was toward the end of a pretty whirlwind leg of that tour and we were ending in Los Angeles and to play The Forum, that was a big deal for me because as a kid, that was my spot. That’s where I saw Alice Cooper and Zeppelin and a lot of great bands.”

He said the first three sold-out nights were fun and crazy. However, before the fourth show began, Sorum said he was sitting backstage, covered in acupuncture needles to ease his aches, when Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Slash walked in and told him “Axl wants to play every song we’ve ever written tonight,” he recalled.

“It was all going well that night and then at the end of the set Axl turned around and he looked at me and pointed to his watch and said, ‘Keep going,’ so at the end of ‘Paradise City,’ we went for it,” he said with a laugh, noting that Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan kept track of the time and reported that the show lasted three hours, 36 minutes and 19 seconds. “I was so done, but that was Axl’s deal; He loved breaking records.”

Looking back, Sorum said he did have a lot of fun, but considers himself lucky to have made it through all of those crazy times. In 2005, he won his very first Grammy Award for the Velvet Revolver single “Slither” and in 2012 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Guns N’ Roses. He’s continued to drum on a variety of projects, more recently joined forces with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons to co-write, co-produce and play drums on Gibbon’s latest album, “Hardware,” which was released last year.

However, at the moment, he’s focused on family and being a first-time father “at the age of 60,” he reminds, as his daughter, Lou Ellington, was born in June 2021.

“I’ve lost a lot of friends along the way for much less crazy curricular activities,” he said. “So yeah, when I look back I go ‘Wow, someone was watching over me.’ Here I am with a wife and a baby and I look at life with a lot of gratitude. I definitely pushed it to the limit. We lived very dangerously back then, but that was that and this is now, and life is great now.”