“Be Professional And Kind” Words Of Wisdom With Matt Sorum of Guns N’ Roses

Yitzi Weiner
Authority Magazine
Published in
3 min readMay 24, 2018

I had the pleasure to interview Matt Sorum, a Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Grammy, Ama, Billboard award 2 Time MTV award-winning musician from Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, The Cult and now Kings of Chaos. He is a philanthropist, activist and co/founder of Adopt the Arts a 501c3 Non- Profit for music and Art in k- 6 public schools in LAUSD

Thank you so much for joining us! What is your “backstory”?

We started our charity 7 years ago and have been working within the public school system at K-6 getting music and art to kids in LAusd during the school day. We’ve done over 1 thousand guitar donations as well as other instruments like Keyboards, Drums and any other instruments the kids need.

We pay our teachers and have created a curriculum of modern music as well as classics and jazz to give our kids a well-rounded history of music and art.

We’ve done partnerships in Art with IFAW teaching kids about animals and the environment.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?

Well, I was in Guns N Roses, there are so many stories, So you will have to read my book that comes out next year, HaHa

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world? Are you working on any meaningful non-profit projects?

Adopt the Art is my baby and a passion, after seeing the way our program changes these kids lives there’s no way I can stop. With my Partner Abby Berman we work daily trying to build and get to as many kids as possible.

I also am on the board of Dolphin Project with Ric Obarry a world renown environmentalist and activist and have traveled to the Cove in Taiji, Japan protesting the slaughter and capture of Dolphins for abusement parks worldwide.

I serve as US Ambassador to Animals Asia which works in Vietnam and China rescuing Moon Bear for horrific bear bile farms.

Yitzi Weiner
Authority Magazine

A “Positive” Influencer, Founder & Editor of Authority Magazine, CEO of Thought Leader Incubator