while many guns n' roses fans are outraged that skwerl is facing criminal charges, it begs the question, who was ultimately responsible for his arrest? i figured i should contact guns n' roses management directly and attempt to find the answer.

and so my search began . . .

i called irving azoff first and ended up speaking with his secretary. when i identified myself i was promptly told, "mr. azoff is not willing to speak with you." alright, one strike i guess. good thing axl has two managers, right? so, then i called andy gould. his secretary kindly took a message and said he'd call me back.

twelve hours later i'm still waiting. won't be holding my breath for that call.

next, i decided to ask a few friends in the industry what they'd heard about the situation. i've been told mistersaintlaurent.com is pretty popular in the warner, sony bmg, and EMI offices, which still cracks me up. everyone agreed the timing of the arrest had azoff's fingerprints all over it, but there was still no official word of any sort from the GNR camp.

eventually gunsnroses.com was updated with a brief mention of the incident, including this gem:

"guns n' roses representatives have been made aware of the arrests and are leaving the matter to the authorities," said band spokesman larry solters.

between that and the document up on the smoking gun, many fans feel that the band is in the clear. however, just as many if not more have expressed feelings similar to those expressed by metallica fans after the napster fiasco.

so who really wanted to put skwerl behind bars? well, i don't think anybody can say for sure, but i might as well offer my opinion. one of the reasons it took so long for me to negotiate with axl's lawyers last year was because universal was intent on going after me and the GNR camp was trying to talk them out of it. while beta was blaming merck for the leaks at the time (and she may have honestly believed that, but we can now be fairly certain it was fernando), whatever the case may be, GNR realized the fuck up was on their end, not universal's.

this time however, the infamous skwerl leaks were most definitely a UMG fuck up and with the leak coming from the universal ship and not axl's, my gut tells me universal had the final call on going after skwerl and not guns n' roses.

make of it what you will.

saw the smashing pumpkins again tonight and really wanted to finally write about it. what does this have to do with guns n' roses you ask? a lot actually. see, it's a very common complaint amongst hardcore GNR fans that the band relies too heavily upon songs from their first album. fans engage in similar set list debates for most bands i'm sure. hardcore fans tire of hearing the same singles tour after tour while casual fans want to hear the hits.

while axl may use appetite as a crutch, billy corgan's choices for the set list of his just finished tour were certainly on the opposite end of the spectrum. while an obsessive fan like myself went absolutely bonkers for some of the obscure selections, the majority of the fans (especially on wednesday) were left scratching their heads. out of the 21 songs played, LESS THAN HALF appear on any of smashing pumpkins' proper albums.

that's right, the majority of the set consisted of unreleased songs, b-sides, soundtrack contributions, covers, and tracks only available on imports. while axl may be criticized for trying too hard to placate the casual audience, seeing so many older fans leave early on wednesday during what seemed like a 30 minute guitar solo made me think about how unfair it is to the majority of the audience to not focus on material they're familiar with.

like all things in life, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. i've always felt that trent reznor of nine inch nails has done a fantastic job through the years of finding a balance between the hits and deeper cuts while also throwing in one or two songs for the dedicated fans. so while i wouldn't expect axl and company to rip through crash diet on the next tour, would it be too much to ask for more than one original song each from use your illusion I & II when the band only has three proper albums to their credit?