Matt Sorum on Honouring Rock Legends Through Adopt the Arts
For Matt Sorum, honouring rock legends is not a red-carpet exercise. It is personal, musical, and tied to a cause he cares about deeply: getting instruments, arts education, and real creative experiences into the lives of young people.
Sorum, best known to many as the drummer who powered some of rock’s biggest stages, speaks about Adopt the Arts with the warmth of someone talking about family. He is a founder of the organisation, and when he discusses its Sound Division Awards, the names may be huge, but the heart of the story stays small and human.
Billy Gibbons, Chad Smith, Butch Trucks, Paul Rodgers, and Geezer Butler are not just names on a list. In Sorum’s telling, they are friends, inspirations, and living links between the music that shaped generations and the children who may shape whatever comes next.
Adopt the Arts is Sorum’s passion project
When Sorum says Adopt the Arts is his “big love”, it lands because the work sits close to the reasons many musicians started playing in the first place. Before the large venues, platinum records, and famous collaborators, there is usually a classroom, a rehearsal room, a borrowed instrument, or one adult who says, “Try this.”
That is the space Adopt the Arts tries to protect.
Arts programmes are often treated as extras, the first things to be reduced when funding gets tight. Sorum’s view comes from the opposite direction. Music is not decoration. It builds confidence, teaches discipline, sparks friendship, and gives children a language for things they cannot always say out loud.
His status helps. He knows that. A name with rock history behind it can open doors, bring attention, and persuade other artists to show up. But the mission is not built around celebrity for its own sake. The stars serve the cause.
That difference matters.
The Sound Division Awards work because they make the connection visible. A legendary musician does not simply receive praise from a distance. They step into a room where young people are singing, playing, waiting, watching, and learning what a life in music can look like.
The Sound Division Awards honour more than fame
The list of honourees is striking. Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers. Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band. Paul Rodgers, one of Britain’s great rock voices. Geezer Butler, the bassist and lyricist who helped define Black Sabbath.
On paper, it reads like a classic rock hall of honour. In practice, Sorum’s choices seem to come from a more personal place.
He does not describe a committee ticking off names by genre, sales, or chart history. He talks about relationships. He talks about moments. He talks about whether an artist connects with the purpose of Adopt the Arts.
That gives the awards a different texture. They are not only about what someone achieved decades ago. They are about what their presence can mean now.
The best honourees have two qualities:
A body of work that changed rock music
A willingness to stand beside young musicians and treat them seriously
That second part is vital. Children know when they are being used as scenery. They also know when someone genuinely sees them. Sorum’s most emotional stories come from the artists who show up with that second quality intact.
Paul Rodgers showed up for the children first
Sorum’s story about Paul Rodgers begins not with an award, but with friendship.
He met Rodgers through a dinner party, where Rodgers arrived with Simon Kirke. Even after a career spent around famous musicians, Sorum still remembers the surprise of that moment. There is something disarming about hearing a seasoned rock figure admit to being starstruck.
From there, the connection grew naturally. They spent time together. Rodgers came to Sorum’s house for his birthday. The idea of honouring him came later, after the relationship had become real.
That order matters. Sorum did not simply cold-call a rock legend and ask for a public appearance. He waited until there was trust.
Rodgers had recently been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, though health issues had kept him from attending. Yet he came to Sorum’s event and sang with the children. He performed “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy” with the choir.
For Sorum, that was overwhelming.
“That made me cry,” Sorum recalled, describing the emotion of hearing Rodgers sing with the kids.
It is easy to understand why. Rodgers is not just any singer. His voice carries the history of Free, Bad Company, and a long career in rock. To hear that voice blend with a children’s choir turns a tribute into something else entirely. It becomes a handover.
The children are not expected to understand every layer of rock history in that moment. They feel the room. They feel the respect. They learn that their voices belong in the same space as the voices they hear on records.
Geezer Butler represents the roots of heavy music
Geezer Butler’s honour came through a different path, but again, the personal connection came first.
Sorum had worked with Butler in Deadland Ritual, a short-lived band that also featured other major rock players. That experience gave him a direct line to Butler not as a distant icon, but as a bandmate.
After difficult news around Ozzy Osbourne, Sorum says his first instinct was to call Butler and see how he was doing. The conversation moved towards music. Butler mentioned that he had been writing and making solo material. Sorum then asked whether he wanted to come and play.
Then came the bigger question: would Butler accept being honoured?
Butler’s reaction, according to Sorum, was modest. “Honour me?” he asked.
Sorum’s answer went to the heart of Butler’s place in music history. Butler was not only Black Sabbath’s bassist. He was a founder, and he wrote many of the lyrics that helped give the band its dark, poetic weight.
That point can get lost when heavy metal history is reduced to riffs and volume. Butler’s bass playing gave Sabbath menace and movement, but his words gave the music its worldview. War, fear, madness, religion, social collapse, and moral confusion all ran through those songs.
Honouring Butler, then, is not just honouring a player. It is honouring one of the architects of heavy music’s language.
Why these honours matter to young musicians
Awards can sometimes feel detached from real life. A speech, a trophy, a photograph, then everyone goes home.
Sorum’s version feels more useful because it places young people near the source of the music. They are not reading a paragraph about rock history. They are singing with Paul Rodgers. They are standing in the same event as Geezer Butler. They are seeing artists treated with respect not only for being famous, but for making something that lasted.
For a child learning drums, guitar, bass, or vocals, that can shift what feels possible.
It also gives older artists a meaningful setting in which to be celebrated. They are not being honoured by nostalgia alone. Their work becomes part of an active chain. The music helped shape Sorum. Sorum helps bring arts education to children. Those children carry the experience forward in whatever way they can.
That is the quiet power of Adopt the Arts.
Sorum’s choices reveal what he values
The most revealing part of Sorum’s comments is not the fame of the names. It is the way he talks about asking them.
He does not describe a transaction. He describes timing, care, and friendship. He gets to know people. He checks in on them. He thinks about what they contributed. Then he asks.
That approach explains why the honours feel sincere. Paul Rodgers was chosen not only because he is one of rock’s great singers, but because he came in and sang with the children. Geezer Butler was chosen not only because he helped found Black Sabbath, but because his writing and musicianship deserve recognition in the presence of a new generation.
The common thread is service to the song, and, through Adopt the Arts, service to young artists.
The real legacy is in the room
Matt Sorum has played with giants, but the Adopt the Arts stories show a different measure of success. The moving moment is not only that Paul Rodgers sang, or that Geezer Butler accepted an honour. It is that children were close enough to feel the weight of those moments.
Rock history can seem distant when it is locked in documentaries, anniversary editions, and old tour footage. Sorum brings it into the room. He lets young musicians stand near it, sing with it, and maybe believe they have a place in it too.
That is what makes the Sound Division Awards more than a celebration of legends. They are a reminder that the arts survive when one generation makes time for the next.
If you would like to watch the feature we recorded with Matt it is available now on the main page of the website or you can just click the link here if you prefer to watch on youtube.
Remember if you are quick you can get your hands on a copy of the vinyl simply head over to Experience Vinyl https://experiencevinyl.com/products/sound-vision-live-double-vinyl-album-honoring-paul-rodgers-and-geezer-butler-to-benefit-adopt-the-arts-foundation-vinyl-lp and by the way they have some great vinyl releases here as well so be sure to check out the whole website.
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