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#171 Re: Guns N' Roses » The Chinese Democracy Sequel References Thread » 388 weeks ago
the "fire and ice" comment was from buckmaster, apparently... although i can't find the original source anywhere.
It's a mid-up, kind of biting 4 minute song with an aggressive rhythm section. The way I wrote for the string section (32-piece, consisting of ten 1st Violins, eight 2nd Violins, six violas, and eight cellos) gave the song another dimension. The song is powerful, like fire and ice.
zakk wylde referred to what he heard as "afd on steroids."
between that and the shit about "zeppelin remixed by reznor & beck," this album never had a chance. there's no way it could have lived up to the mythos that was built around it.
some super interesting rumors about the supposed catcher video from chinese whispers 2002:
The Catcher Shanghai'd
The rumors of GNR taking a trip to Shanghai to film a new video kept coming, zeroing in on early October. Meanwhile, the rumored release date crept up a notch, now landing on 12/03, just before the show in Madison Square Garden, New York.
"Axl Rose was spotted in Shanghai on Tuesday (October 8). Was the Guns N' Roses mastermind taking Chinese Democracy to the streets instead of the studio? Who knows ... there's still no release date in sight." (MTV, 10/09/02)
"Guns N' Roses were apparently [...] in Shanghai [...] last week [...] recording a video for the track 'Catcher In The Rye', which is taken from their forthcoming new album 'Chinese Democracy'." (Metal Hammer, 10/20/02)
"We had the following sent to us from a DJ at a radio station. They are doing an interview with Axl and his management sent over the following info to them:
3. The interviewer should ask about:
d) He spent some time in China and wrote songs there - what was it like?" (Metal Sludge, 12/06/02)"Bach: And than you were telling me the other day that you lived in China for three months?
Axl: Yeah, we went and stayed in China for about three months, Beijing, Shanghai, and Xian." (Eddie Trunk show, 05/05/06)
i wonder which songs were written there? the later stuff, like better, shackler's or scraped? or stuff we've yet to hear?
At the time of release, he didn't have a lead guitarist.
i love robin for that. gave axl a taste of his own medicine. twice! i'm surprised axl didn't find a way to recall all of the cd's from best buy to erase robin's parts and replace them with dj ashba solos.
the real shame in all this is that robin is likely all over the 2nd record and we will probably never hear any of it. we might see some of the material in 5 years, but it will have slash all over it by then.
if any album deserved a box set, it's chinese democracy.
#172 Re: Guns N' Roses » The Chinese Democracy Sequel References Thread » 389 weeks ago
the timing around the naming of the record is very interesting.
august '99 - the "2,000 intensions" title is mentioned as a possible name in the famous kerrang article.
http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/arti … ticleid=27
in the article, they call out a bunch of song titles. 2 of which actually ended up on the album; the rest axl confirmed as nonsense. out of the 11 names mentioned, we only know of 2 actually being legitimate. that leaves kerrang with an 11% score. not exactly a passing grade.
Over the next 12 months, the band apparently recorded 30 songs for the album, continually reworking them. Tracks recorded were said to include ‘Prostitute’, ‘Cock-a-roach soup’, ‘This I love’, ‘Suckerpunched’, ‘No love remains’, ‘Friend or foe’, ‘Zip it’, ‘Something always’, ‘Hearts get killed’ and ‘Closing in on you’.
Interestingly, sources even suggested that the album already had a title - possibly ‘Cockroach soup’ or, more realistically, ‘2000 intentions’. And then....nothing.
september '99 - oh my god was released. at the time, i don't believe the name chinese democracy was rumored or mentioned anywhere.
november '99 axl sat down with his ol' pal kurt loder for a chat about how the album was coming. here, the title was now confirmed to be chinese democracy. so either kerrang was getting disinfo (or making shit up), or the name chinese democracy came shortly after their article was released.
Loder: You're going to call this album "Chinese Democracy." What is the meaning of that, since there is no Chinese democracy, of course?
Rose: Well, there's a lot of Chinese democracy movements, and it's something that there's a lot of talk about, and it's something that will be nice to see. It could also just be like an ironic statement. I don't know, I just like the sound of it.
january '01 - axl told the story of what inspired the song chinese democracy. the way he talks about it, he makes it seem like the song was written just a few weeks ago. like beta was honking the horn outside screaming at axl, and he was inside watching kundun with his jaw on the floor. it's almost like the year 2000 didn't exist for axl.
Maybe he did.
He said soon was the word with the Better video release in the chats but that’s it. You get what you outsource to Fernando’s friends.
There was a supposedly commissioned Catcher music video that was basically stock footage of someone’s kid in LA.
There was a unreleased Sorry music video but didn’t feature the band.
Some cancelled tour documentary doohickey in the Ashba era.
Mickey Rourke would’ve played The Shackler if a Shacklers revenge video were made.
The Sorry one was an improvement but still not greatly impressive.
Axl had his ass kissed for 20 years and also the record company refused to furnish funds for promotion. Not a good creative promotional combo. Then Ashba Creations took over.
found an additional comment by axl in the 2009 billboard article.
Billboard: Are you planning to make videos?
Axl: We're finalizing a video for "Better" and writing a couple others now. Over time different ideas have been tossed around, written up or submitted but that was then. Nothing we had come up with -- or at least the approaches so far -- felt right. We have been discouraged from making a video all along by Interscope, up until Best Buy requested one after the release, and in a manner by Interscope then of, "So where's the video?," taking everyone more than off guard.
the line about interscope discouraging them from making a video is interesting. in axl's head, that's probably another way the label "didn't support him". in reality, that was probably the recording company going "a fucking video?! finish the goddamn album first!"
#173 Re: Guns N' Roses » alice in chains & guns n' roses » 389 weeks ago
The Mad Season album was practically a suicide note. Easily the most depressing album I've ever listened to.
no kidding. "river of deceit" and "wake up" are brutal listens. layne is probably the rawest, most honest writer in rock n' roll history.
i guess that may be another reason why there isn't much coverage of the band. want to know the details of layne's heroin abuse from his own perspective? just listen to "junkhead". it's all there. no need for any additional article, story or biography.
not sure if I missed this info in your essay, it's extremely new though: http://gnrcentral.com/2018/03/27/walkin … ming-tour/
(+ that old bw photo way up looks like Tommy Stinson, LOL!)
bummer that alice isn't headed back to detroit. i definitely would have gone. still, that's a badass tour! can't wait to hear alice's new material. even without layne, you can't question jerry's songwriting or the band's ability to completely kick ass.
and that photo totally is tommy stinson. it's from that '83 show. i grabbed it from a book on google about the replacements.
#174 Guns N' Roses » alice in chains & guns n' roses » 389 weeks ago
- dalethirsty
- Replies: 6
i recently finished the untold story of alice in chains by david de sola. hell of a read! it's crazy how little information is documented about alice in chains online, in media or print. but this has just about everything... all in a single book.
it's especially bizarre compared to the amount of publicity guns n' roses gets. at least 1/8th of the internet is dedicated to either worshipping or shitting all over axl rose... yet layne staley is a name rarely mentioned. even his death received very little attention from the news outlets. it was eerily quiet. meanwhile, axl can tweet a string of smiley faces and it's viral within minutes.
throughout the book, there's several mentions of guns and members of the band. my favorite of which involves jerry attempting to hand axl a demo tape, back when guns was blowing up and alice was just getting started.
The summer of 1988 was an eventful one for Alice in Chains, for good and bad reasons. On June 1st, Iron Maiden was performing at the Seattle Center Coliseum with Guns N' Roses as the opening act. Jerry went to the show and handed Axl Rose a copy of the band's demo, who immediately threw it away as he as leaving.
06.01.88 - Seattle Center Coliseum, Seattle, WA
notes: A cool homecoming show for Duff. Axl mentions that 'Sweet Child O' Mine' is their new video. Axl recounts playing the Gorilla Gardens a few years ago and they the best pot is in Seattle. He also says that he started writing 'Welcome To The Jungle' while he was in Seattle.'
jerry talks about the incident here, and also talks about being a huge fan of slash:
as i was reading through the book, the amount of parallels between the 2 bands really stared dawning on me.
they both came from nothing, flirted with glam rock, blew up, did shitloads of drugs, went off the rails and imploded... all within a few short years. yet somehow they both survived the 90s and still exist today in some form or another.
the book mentions the metropolis club in seattle, where duff's band ten minute warning opened for the replacements in 1983. years later in 2016, as axl was re-launching new gn'r, duff actually briefly joined alice in chains... to play guitar. now there's some wacky perspective for ya. duff opened for a band whose bass player would later take his spot in his band... only to then briefly join a band who would later open his for band when he reunited with them and took his spot back from the guy he opened for back in the 80s. 
After [Alice in Chains] regrouped in spring 2006, Duff McKagan temporarily joined as a rhythm guitarist. While there was criticism about the band carrying on without Layne, McKagan was unapologetically for it. "These guys had to move on because they still had way too much to offer the rock-and-roll world. In an age of paint-by-numbers corporate rock, we fucking needed Alice in Chains!" he wrote in his memoir.
[To Duff] You jammed with us when we first got going again. You kinda helped us get our thing going. He was the fifth Beatle!" [laughs]
and it's get better. shortly after this, velvet revolved formed and the 2 bands toured together!
as far as axl goes, i'm not sure i've ever heard him mention anything about alice in chains or layne. i wonder if it was an alpha male thing? we know he was a huge fan of nirvana, soundgarden and grunge... but i can't recall him ever saying anything specific about alice. if you listen to the progression of how axl began approaching layering his vocals, i think it's pretty damn clear he's a fan of layne staley. the vocals on "angry chair" still blow me away every time i listen to it.
Layne's vocals on Angry Chair are massive, unusually so compared to anything else on the album or in the Alice in Chains catalog. The reason for this? "On the part where he's signing, 'Sitting on an angry chair... there's sixteen tracks of vocals going on there," engineer Bryan Carlstrom said. "All different harmonies, and multiple layers of harmonies. Maybe there's a harmony part and it's tripled, and another harmony part and it's tripled, and the lead part. It was crazy.
layne, however, just like axl, would run into difficulty with recording his vocals. while axl dealt with his own anxiety by procrastinating and doing stand-up comedy in the booth, layne had his own approach... usually involving drugs. guns, however, weren't the only band to bring in carpenters to augment the studio. layne, wanting total privacy while recording his vocals, had the staff build a soundproof wall in the studio so nobody could see him.
Inside the wall, Layne created a little shrine that, according to Calstrom, consisted of "candles and a picture of the Last Supper, and then a dead puppy in a jar." This is what he was looking at as he was recording his vocals for Dirt. Cosneros confirmed Carlstom's account, saying "It was scary back there. I tried not to go back there."
"if that's what he needed to see to get him into the mood of the song, if that's why he had it, I don't know. I don't know why he had thing in a jar sitting there. I didn't talk to him about it."
in 2016, alice in chains got another call to open for a semi-reunited guns for the first 5 shows of the not in this lifetime tour. i was lucky enough to be there for the detroit show at ford field. alice was fucking PHENOMENAL! i thought they were gonna blow guns away for a minute. then axl and slash got on stage and brought the house down. all in all one of the best shows i've been to in my life.
sometime around then, duff and jerry sat down to reflect on their past:
funny how the 2 bands have crossed paths over the years. you'd almost think they would have ran into each other even more. very similar stories in some regards... starkly different in others. one really cool thing about alice is that they managed to actually drop a record when the band was going through absolute hell and hitting rock bottom. alice's self-titled dropped at a time when layne was 3/4ths of the way dead and everyone was ready to kill each other. the result was some of the band's most interesting and exciting material ever. unlike guns, they managed to channel their negativity, self-destruction and hatred into actual music. others have said it before, but i really believe that a '96 guns record would have murdered anything that ever came to fruition in the chinese democracy sessions... but they were too busy with lawsuits, drama and paperwork.
after their bands broke up, both axl and layne turned to exile. when alice broke up, layne doubled-down on his addictions, bought a comfy little condo and played metal gear solid until he eventually obliterated himself with drugs. axl bought the biggest mansion on the biggest hill on the biggest side of down and spent the next 2 decades trying to re-create his childhood like he was michael jackson. layne grew weak, but released a song here and there... almost like he was trying to let everyone know he was still okay. axl packed on the pounds, hibernated and goofed around with a single album. both are very fascinating reactions to your life blowing up in the public spotlight.
whatever the case, guns n' roses and alice in chains are 2 favorite bands in the world.
#175 Re: Guns N' Roses » New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming » 389 weeks ago
has anyone tried playing chinese democracy backwards to see if contains any hidden messages or release dates for the new album?
#176 Re: Guns N' Roses » Dissecting Chinese Democracy: Track 6 - There Was A Time » 389 weeks ago
i honestly think that there was a time and locomotive are the 2 most impressive songs in the band's entire catalog.
i remember hearing the first leaks and being completely blown away. when the version with the extended bucket solo dropped, i was convinced that chinese democracy was going to be the greatest album of all time. i played that song for anyone who would listen. it was burned to a cd with the other leaks and i'd carry it around and throw it in people's cd players when we drove somewhere together. i had my cousin print out the guitar tabs that some dude put together so i could try and learn the solos.
by the way, wasn't axl rumored to have written the first solo in the song? the simple, melodic one with the bends, slides and hammer-ons. i know he actually plays acoustic guitar later in the song.
i love how that solo contrasts with bucket's later in the song. they are on completely opposite end's of the spectrum, but compliment each other very nicely, imo.
bucket's solo on that song is one of his absolute best, damn near the best solo of his entire career.
it's easily up there with nottingham lace, soothsayer and that one time he randomly lost his mind during a performance of whitewash:
#177 Re: Guns N' Roses » New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming » 389 weeks ago
ya know, one thing that does give me hope for new music eventually is that axl is all fucking fired up about the current state of the political world. some of his most inspired stuff in the past has come from that same type of frustration. hell, these days, his twitter has pretty much been relegated to a forum for axl to do armchair politics. one might think an album might be a better way to channel that energy. 
it would also be a hell of a way to really capitalize on gnr's mainstream momentum at the moment. every time axl slams a politician on twitter, it goes viral. if guns came back with a massive single that took aim at the current white house, it'd be like 1987 all over again. all eyes would be right back on gn'r, waiting for their next move.
back in the chinese democracy era, there was a complete lack of inspiration lyrically from axl.
When Zakk Wylde arrived at the Complex, where Axl was rehearsing, he was slightly surprised. "There were never any melodies," Wylde recalls. "There were never any lyrics." The music Wylde heard during a period of several months sounded like "Guns on steroids." Wylde felt sorry for Axl. "The poor fuckin' guy's got every fuckin' cunt trying to sue his ass," Wylde says. "I'd be on the phone with him. He'd be telling me about all these strategic moves his lawyers were making. I was listening to him playing Axis and Allies on the fuckin' phone."
i've always felt that was the inspiration to the uninspired i.r.s.
So many times, I have come down to the studio, and I had no idea that I was going to be able to," Rose told Rolling Stone last November as he played twelve new tracks. "If you are working with issues that depressed the crap out of you, how do you know you can express it?"
and that's how you wind up taking a decade to write a bunch of rehashed songs about estranged lovers.
in a few years, axl/dc should be dying down. also in a few years, we have the next u.s. presidential election. perhaps the planets will align and gn'r will return with a smash hit single that sends a charged, emphatic message to the incompetent leaders running the country.
or maybe they'll just beat up a pinata again.
#178 Re: Guns N' Roses » New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming » 389 weeks ago
kermit the Trump wrote:A brick wall is reached for reasons unknown to the fan base. You blame Axl....I blame a combination of things. Stinson gave us a peak behind the curtain when it came to label issues with CD. These issues would likely be magnified in the current situation.
Tommy told us the record company was a combination of unhelpful and incompetent, not that they were legally obfuscating the project.
why would a record company not want to release a record? especially considering the longer they waited, the less it would sell. what's their agenda there? fuck with axl?
the label was supportive. axl was too busy being axl.
As time and dollars flew by, pressure mounted at Geffen. The label’s dry spell lingered, making them more dependent than ever on new music from their heavy hitters. “The Hail Mary that’s going to save the game,” the recording expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity explained, “is a Guns N’ Roses record. It keeps not coming and not coming.” The label paid Mr. Rose $1 million to press on with the album, with the unusual promise of another $1 million if he delivered “Chinese Democracy” by March 1 of the following year. Geffen also offered one of the producers Mr. Rose had recently hired extra royalties if the recording came in before that.
looking back at everything, i don't think axl ever truly intended to release music with new gn'r. that whole journey wasn't about releasing an album. it was about axl rebuilding himself. by the late 90s, the dude had lost everything -- slash, izzy, erin, stephanie, his mom, etc. after his whole world blew up, he needed something in his life he could control. something to keep his mind busy. that's how you end up with hundreds of thousands of world class guitars gathering dust in empty studios. or working on the band's "energy" by wasting a bunch of studio time recording a nu-metal version of appetite for destruction and slipping it into big daddy soundtracks. it was all a charade.
like you said earlier in the thread, if axl wanted to release music, he'd find a way.
right now, that way seems to be with angus. i think guns n' roses just carries too much baggage with axl. releasing chinese democracy seemed like it drug him through the depths of hell.
with axl/dc, he's just up there living his childhood dream. all he's gotta do is have fun and sing songs about banging chicks. angus is clearly the dom in this relationship, and if he wants an album, i'm sure axl would oblige. if hulk hogan asked you to be his tag team partner at wrestlemania, would you turn him down? hell no, brother.
i 100% support anything that involves axl rose signing on a record. if we get an axl/dc album, great! i will buy 100 copies and go see the show and buy a shitload of merch.
but once it's done, i think axl needs to take one last look at guns' legacy and realize he needs to cap it off in a proper way. the "reunion" tour was great, but their discography is embarrassing for stars of their nature. chinese democracy isn't a strong enough to be their last album.
it would require 0 effort from axl to have slash and duff re-record the parts on cd 2 and release it. it would sell millions of copies and axl wouldn't have to lift a finger. he's already done all the hard work on his end.
but that would make too much sense.
i just really wish my favorite band wasn't a bunch of dudes cashing in on nostalgia from 30 years ago.
#179 Re: Guns N' Roses » Would you work for GN'R? » 391 weeks ago
as a dude in the tech industry, i would absolutely love the chance to work for gn'r. specifically, i'd like to be in charge of their website and online presence. we'd all agree that gnr is pretty goddamn lacking when it comes to technology, so there's so much room to do some cool shit. i'd expand the fuck of the nightrain gimmick and actually get some content in there other than shitty, overpriced merch.
you could basically make the wwe network of gn'r and charge fans a monthly fee for unlimited streaming. for downloads, they could pay a buck a video or whatever. 20 bucks for a whole show in HD. the hardcore fans alone would be pumping enough money in here to make it worth it. it's not like all that footage is making any money sitting in vaults.
axl chats could become a regular thing to look forward to for subscribers. since it's all paying members, you could weed out out most of the trolls and get better discussions.
maybe gn'r will be hiring in a few years and give me a call. so much wasted potential here!
#180 Re: Guns N' Roses » #metoo » 391 weeks ago
all the bad shit about axl hit the press decades ago. lucky timing for him.
could you imagine if the story leaked today about him making erin shit in a litter box? guns would be dead (again).
