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#361 Re: 2001 » 2001: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
Show Me the Money
"'One of the things that Interscope wanted me to do was have a look at the budget,' [Zutaut] says, 'and try to figure out where all this money was going. So you know, it took me about a month.'" (Tom Zutaut, Classic Rock, 04/08)
"[A year earlier,] they were paying enormous rental bills and they were paying people to sit around the studio waiting for Axl to show up and it was just a disaster." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
This was when Guns were still at Rumbo, the Appetite studio. Early into the job, Ezrin had moved them into a costlier studio.
"One internal cost analysis [by Zutaut, no doubt] from the period pegs the operation's monthly tab at a staggering $244,000. It included more than $50,000 in studio time at the Village, a more modern studio where [A&R Man Bob Ezrin] had moved the band.
[...] [Zutaut's calculations] included a combined payroll for seven band members that exceeded $62,000, with the star players earning roughly $11,000 each. Guitar technicians earned about $6,000 per month, while the album's main engineer was paid $14,000 per month and a recording software engineer was paid $25,000 a month, the document stated." (New York Times, 03/06/05)" (New York Times, 03/06/05)
"One area where there was an astronomical amount of money being spent was in rented gear. [...] My recollection is that we were able to shave around $75,000 a month off the budget..." (Tom Zutaut, Classic Rock, 04/08)
With
$62,000 for the band members,
$50,000 on studio time,
$25,000 for Pro Tools engineer Eric Caudieux,
$18,000 for three guitar technicians,
$14,000 for main engineer Caram Costanzo,
equals
$169,000 per month.
Add in $75,000 for unnecessary gear rental and you'll end up with the numbers Zutaut found.
"The crew rented one piece of specialized equipment, for example, for more than two years - at a cost well into six figures - and used it for perhaps 30 days, according to one person involved with the production." (New York Times, 03/06/05)
"It's a bit of a luxury to have a '59 Les Paul at however many thousands dollar a month when it isn't even being used. Maybe one day three years ago they needed this piece of gear, but now the track it was used on isn't even being considered, the gear is still sitting there and the rental company is still making the money. We'd paid enough in rental for it that we could have bought it!'" (Tom Zutaut, Classic Rock, 04/08)
#362 Re: 2001 » 2001: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
Made glorious summer
Ever since 01/08/01, a week after the Vegas show and a week before the Rio performance, GNR had added European dates for the June tour itinerary.
"[The album] will be released in June or July. They already have 48 songs." (Beta Lebeis, Brazilian Journal, 03/12/01)
"95% of Zutaut's job was to listen to all the songs. 'There were probably 50 or 60 songs on four or five CDs with 12-15 songs a piece.'" (Classic Rock, 04/08)
Apparently, Axl was making him look into both the A- and B-list songs from the Beavan era.
"The record company is selecting the material." (Beta Lebeis, Brazilian Journal, 03/12/01)
"'I had to go through those songs and then sit with Axl and work with him directly to pick and choose which songs would be worth finishing...' A nocturnal worker, Axl's irregular time-keeping was also causing its own problems... 'He'd come to the studio once or twice a week,' says Zutaut, 'and then we might be there for two weeks because he stays to work on stuff.'" (Classic Rock, 04/08)
"Robin Finck shed some light on the groups (GnR's) upcoming plans. He stated that the new album, 'Chinese Democracy', is looking for a June release through Interscope... with a single hitting radio earlier in the Spring... while the band will be doing a European tour in May and June." (Finck Tank, 03/03/01)
Finck also confirmed that the plan was to continue from Europe to the US in the next month.
"When the band returns to North America in July, they plan to embark on 'a 2 month U.S. stadium tour and yes, I will be on tour with GnR. I have not left NIN and I hope to tour with them again. I am looking forward to bringing the new GnR lineup to stage.'" (Finck Tank, 03/03/01)
"'Yeah, I miss playing gigs,' Brain says. 'What I miss about playing live these days is just the interaction, I mean, I did play one of the biggest shows of my life, Rock in Rio, with this new situation, and it was awesome. It was one of the best things I've ever experienced. It was so huge and such a great experience that when I came back I was kind of depressed for a while, because I was kind of like, 'Wow! What's next?' I went to the tenth floor.'" (Brain, 2001)
#363 Re: 2001 » 2001: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
Brain Surgery, pt 2
"So about a month later [the transcriber] calls me and I get back, I go and pick it up at Sony Studios I get like, it must have been like that thick (holds hands about a foot apart) of sheet music and it was every song written out note for note and these were some seven minute songs."
With, at the end, Josh doing soloing. Actually, like 'Ba-budda-bah-pssh-budda-bash'. Like every note was written out and he had like the exact solo of the end of 'There Was A Time', maybe that was like literally, I dunno, like 2 minutes of the vamp at the end of Josh just going crazy. All written out!" (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"Supposedly, they hired a guy to transcribe all the drums parts, including the 'shut up and play your guitar' drum parts." (Josh Freese, 04/13)
"When I opened the charts, there were like one page, two page, three, four, fi... like six pages! [...] So each song we had up, like, we had this like this huge like banner made where we could have the whole chart across. So I would look at it from here all the way to like almost 90 degrees (Points high left side and swings arm around to high right side). I would just see this huge chart. And I learned every song for, I dunno, maybe 2 weeks." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"We listened to some prerecorded tracks that Josh had already played on." (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
"I like to listen to the song as long as I can. If I can I'll ask for songs a week in advance or two weeks in advance, I'll live with them, and listen to the lyrics. Sometimes I'll write them down. Sometimes I'll think about it and go, 'Okay, what kind of energy do I want to bring to this?'" (Brain, 2001)
"I was never the studio session kinda guy. Maybe I just never had the talent to pull it off or whatever, but there'd have to be more. I could never just go in, and read a chart and play something. I wanna know what are we playing, what are we making, what are we saying with this that we're making. I couldn't just go, I just need to get my paycheck and play. " (Brain, I'd Hit That, 02/15)
"[We recorded drums for Madagascar] the first time we had the drums set up in that theater, and it just sounded really Bonham-esque... The loop at the beginning I just created from the MPC. Then we went into the main parts where Axl comes in, and that’s when we added the drums, played live...
"It was like, 'Okay, here’s ‘Madagascar.’ This DW 13” tom – a Timeless Timber model that my drum tech had – sounds huge. And it sounds really great with this Gretsch floor tom. And this aluminum DW snare sounds great with this particular setup….” (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
"I have to play to where their guitars are, or where their bass is. I still try to just play my feel and lay it back, but sometimes there are just conflicts. If it's a super busy part, it might be like, 'You can't lay back there, Brain. Check it out. It's flamming all over the place.'" (Brain, 2001)
"In the spoken-word section we took away the baffles and had it completely opened up because we wanted it bigger." (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
"[The spoken-word section samples] Martin Luther King's famous 'I have a dream' speech - a sample for which they didn't have clearance during Zutaut's time on the album.
'Axl feels that particular speech is at the core of the message that he is putting across at that song,' says Zutaut, 'and he told me that if the Martin Luther King estate would not give permission for that to come out on the final record, that track would not be on it without it.'" (Classic Rock, 04/08)
"The sound became a little bigger, a little sloppier. And that became more of what the album is now." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"I got the album then. I started getting what the drums should sound like. Josh’s drums were kind of tight and precise, and we loosened it up." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"That’s totally my style and the way I like to play; I was just biting off Bonham the whole time on that track... the big long fills. " (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
Brain took two weeks to rehearse each of the pre-existing songs at the Masonic Attic, followed two days' recording. He'd eventually record a total of some 16-18 of Josh's drum tracks, aka the '99 album.
"Learned all the parts, I sat there and got it down like it was orchestrated. I just practiced until I got it... Roy didn't want me to do it in sections... Its like, 'No, you gotta play it as one piece.'" (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"[Doing multiple varying takes] was hard at first. That's why I say, 'Look, you get three takes and then I'm done.' I usually shoot for that first one, where I'm fresh. I've practiced the song in my brain and physically 30 or 40 times, and I come in and go, 'This is it. I'm going to play this. I'm going to give everything I've got for this first take.'" (Brain, 2001)
"We'd try to record [every track] for 2 days until I got the 'perfect' take." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"I always pretend that the band is right there,' Brain says. 'I haven't noticed a difference in my playing. The only thing I miss is the band isn't playing to my feel, so I have to convert to something that's already there." (Brain, 2001)
"I'm upstairs practicing and I would call downstairs and be like, 'Yeah man, I think I got it, so maybe we should try it. Two weeks have gone by I think I got it'... and everybody down at the $2,000 a day studio would just be sitting there, like watching cartoons or The Exorcist or something." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"The first task set to [Zutaut] by [Axl] was to help with the drum sound for [the Chinese Democrary track, written by Freese]. Axl had told the studio guys that he wanted the same drum sound as Dave Grohl on Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. The production crew would claim they had it, but Axl wouldn't be satisfied.
After hearing the [CD recording] for himself, Zutaut agreed with Axl. He took a break and went to the local Tower Records, where he bought a copy of Nevermind. Back in the studio, [Zutaut, Baker and the studio engineer Caram Costanzo] compared [Smells Like Teens Spirit and CD] and set to work making the GNR drummer sound exactly like Grohl." (Classic Rock, 04/08)
"Everything would be dropped off to [Axl on CD]... There'd be a runner ready to go right when we were done at midnight, to bring it to his house in Malibu.'" (Brain, I'd Hit That, 02/15)
"[The discs could have ] 16 or more takes of a musician performing his part of a single song." (New York Times, 03/06/05)
"[Axl] would call Zutaut or RTB and go through what he liked and what he didn't like." (Classic Rock, 04/08)
"We'd wait about 35-40 minutes until it got there and get the call. 'Yeah, this is cool', or, 'No, we gotta change something or whatever.'" (Brain, I'd Hit That, 02/15)
"Axl: 'I've been only asking that for, like, six fucking months!" (Classic Rock, 04/08)
"We were working on [an unreleased] track... We'd been doing that for about 2,5 weeks on this song, let's say. Finally, [Axl] loved what we were doing, but we had to change something with the drums.
So, I remember replaying the part, but, on the beginning of the second half of the intro, there's a kick drum that I had missed on the final take. We had already figured out all the parts and everything was going great, and producer Roy Thomas Baker was like, 'That was the take.'
"They sent the finished thing over to Axl." (Classic Rock, 04/08)
"[On the unreleased track,] I had noticed that I'd missed one kick drum. One kick drum on the one, on the second half of the intro, OK? We send it there, and I'm not shitting you, [Axl calls and says,]
Axl: 'Everything sounds great, except I think Brain missed a kick drum on the one.'
...I was like, 'Wow. He caught that." (Brain, I'd Hit That, 02/15)
#364 Re: 2001 » 2001: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
Brain Surgery
"Josh Freese was the drummer before and he had basically played drums on about 30 songs and when he had left Axl really liked my 'feel', so he was like 'Well, I really liked what Josh played, but I want your 'feel'." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"Brain is a great groove drummer, whereas Josh is a very linear, straight-ahead punk rock session player. Josh is known for going in there, listening to a song, memorizing it immediately, and nailing straight to click. Brain is more of a hip-hop feel creative weird guy." (Gersh, GNR drum tech, 2001)
"I would not have wanted to be in Brain's shoes. Basically we were saying to him; 'We have got a brilliant performance of this and now we need you to recreate it.'" (Tom Zutaut, Classic Rock, 04/08)
"What surprised me is that they supposedly had Brain re-do my drums note for note." (Josh Freese, Podocast, 04/13)
"Roy [Thomas Baker] was the producer at that time and he's like, 'Well, basically what you are gonna have to do is play exactly what Josh played. Exactly note for note." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"[Baker] was coming from Queen, The Cars, Journey, more the rock thing. He said we had to go re-record the drums because they sounded very industrial." (Brain, MusicRadar, 10/22/12)
"[Producer] Roy Thomas Baker drove us around L.A. in his Rolls Royce to try to find the exact drums that we wanted for the recording... We went to every company, and it wound up being a mash-up of all the best drums we could find around L.A." (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
"Ironically, [Brain] settled for a fairly standard five-piece setup. But that was only his starting point." (Brain, 2001)
"We pretty much gathered the most ridiculous kit you could ever have, to rerecord Josh’s parts." (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
"At any time Brain can choose from an enormous selection of drums that he keeps on hand in the studio at all times. He alters his setup for every new track he records, customizing his kit to suit each song. Why does he do it? For the same reason that dogs lick their genitals - because they can!" (Brain, 2001)
"So we brought all those drums into the main studio at Village, where Fleetwood Mac recorded Tusk. I set up and started playing, and I was like, 'Wait a second, man. We’re doing Guns N’ Roses here.' .. Going into the Guns thing, it just felt like we had to do something better that what you’d normally get in a studio that’s built to sound good... I was kind of coming from the school of Tom Waits...
I talked to Jeff Greenberg, the owner.
Brain: 'Jeff, man, we gotta have something better than this. I mean, the room sounds great and this is cool, but you just had, like, Kenny G in here. I can’t have my shit sounding the same as a Kenny G album.'
Jeff Greenberg: 'Well, what are you saying? Is it the drums? We can have any drum put in here.'
Brain: 'No, it’s not the drums. The drums sound good and the room sounds good. But we gotta get a vibe.'" (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
Jeff Greenberg: 'Well, we have an auditorium that used to be a Masonic Temple upstairs.' (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"There’s an old haunted Masonic temple upstairs where the Masons would give their speeches, and nobody ever goes up there. It was a theater. So we go up, [Jeff] opens the door, and it just felt like, Okay, now we’re talking." (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
"it's all cold up there, it's like ya'know just... really eerie feeling... and, and I'm like, 'This is it, this is where we, I'm recording all the drums...' All of a sudden there was a vibe, and it clicked." (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
""I’m thinking, We’ve got to set up here. We found the sweet spot in the room and I set up the drums there... and that’s were they stayed for six years." (Brain, Modern Drummer, 05/09)
"We basically ran everything up to the top of this, of this Village Recorders and we set up the drums in this auditorium, and so it really just had a huge kinda Bonham-esque sound. (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
"Roy would try every Marshall guitar amp in a five-state area to find just the right guitar tone. And he wanted to do that for every single part on the album..." (Tommy, Bass Player, 04/09)
"'I have an idea of what I want when I go in [with a new track],' [Brain] says. 'And since there are 50 snare drums and 40 kick drums, or whatever, you know it's kind of like, 'Well, this song would be great if we start with a 26" kick, 14", 16", 18" toms, because it's a huge sound - a very slow, huge, grunge-type of sound. Let's get some big hi-hats in there. Where's that really deep snare? Let's get a 7" or an 8". Let's try it.' It usually works right away." (Brain, 2001)
"In my opinion, [Baker] wasted many years and many millions of dollars trying to get us better sounds that we could have addressed in the mixing stage." (Tommy, Bass Player, 04/09)
"Per Baker's request, engineer Caram Costanzo has close to 30 mics on the drums alone - using four on the snare and two on each tom." (EQ Magazine, 2001)
"I’m not a proponent of his style of producing. I think Iovine put Roy Thomas Baker in the producer seat because he didn’t think the raw sounds were good enough." (Tommy, Bass Player, 04/09)
"But also, it didn't really surprise me, meaning sometimes, what people do in the studio if they're procrastinating is, you can do stuff also that makes it look like you're busy..." (Josh Freese, Podocast, 04/13)
"[Baker] sometimes spent as long as eight hours on a few bars of music..." (New York Times, 03/06/05)
"Musicians, engineers, Pro Tools guys, assistant engineers - in all honesty, these fucking people are getting paid shitloads of money and they're sitting on their arse doing nothing because Axl's not coming to the studio and they can't get him on the phone... they're inventing ways to stay busy." (Tom Zutaut, Classic Rock, 04/08)
"[Brain had] to do a massive amount of studying and learning and recording different feels with the same song structure. He really [had] to put his fingerprint on this thing and it would be a lot of work." (Gersh, GNR drum tech, 2001)
"So I'm like, 'So, I'm gonna have to transcribe every like 30 something songs?!' and I'm like, 'Pfft, oh man, I'm not getting paid enough for this.' So I'm like, 'I don't mind doing that but you're gonna have to get someone else to transcribe it', so I went to the head transcriber at Sony Studios and I brought him 2 CD's worth of like 30 songs and I said, 'Dude, I want, note for note, for you to transcribe everything that's on this drum-wise!'" (Brain, EQTV, 10/08)
#365 Re: 2001 » 2001: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
Zoot 'em up
After Axl got back to LA, little over three months after Bob Ezrin was officially named the new A&R Man, a replacement was sought, implying an abrupt end in his working relationship with the band.
"It's February 2001, and, somewhere in New York city, Tom Zutaut's phone is ringing. On the line is Jimmy Iovine, founder of Interscope and head of Geffen and A&M Records and he's asking Tom - a man that Geffen sacked two years previously [likely during the Seagram merger in January '99] - the most unlikeliest of questions: if he'll come back to work. For Guns N' Roses. [...] 'No-one can wrangle a fucking record out of 'em but you! Would you do it?...'"
[Axl] had a vision and wanted to make the best record that had ever been made. And we talked.
Axl: 'I go to the studio, I tell 'em what I want, and they tell me that they've got what I want and then, when I listen to it, I'm bummed out... Nobody seems to understand my language.'" (Classic Rock, 04/08)
"'[In studio work,] there's definitely a need for people skills and figuring out what they want to hear,' [Freese] says. 'Someone might try to explain something and even though he's not explaining it well, just by knowing his music and by talking to him I can kind of tell what he wants.'" (Josh Freese, 2001)
#366 Re: 2001 » 2001: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
Inauguration of a live band
Starting at 3.35am on 01/01/01 at the House of Blues, Las Vegas, Guns N' Roses played their first official live show since 07/17/93 and the wrap-up of the Use Your Illusion world tour. New songs from the CD sessions included Chinese Democracy, The Blues, Rhiad and the Bedouins and Silk Worms, along side the '99 single, Oh My God.
"'I have traversed a treacherous sea of horrors to be with you here tonight,' Mr. Rose told the crowd, which received him with roars of approval. Warm reviews followed." (New York Times, 03/06/05)
On 01/15/01, GNR played a late-night set in front of an audience of 190,000 in Rock in Rio 3, Brazil. The 140-minute set included an animated intro, guitar solos, Axl's trademark rants, and all the new songs played in Vegas, along with an exclusive number, Madagascar.
"We'll be here next summer with a whole bunch of new songs." (Axl, Rock in Rio 3, 01/15/01)
"With 18 songs, the group's next album [...] which will be released in June [...] is a collection of songs, which, in Axl's opinion, are as good as 'November Rain'. Among them 'Madagascar', included in the show on Sunday. The CD will include a tribute to John Lennon [Catcher in the Rye], and another [song] about child abuse." (O Globo, 01/16/01)
"The day after Rock In Rio 2001 Axl and I were at the pool and he mentioned that there was a possibility that Slash could have played on a few tracks for Chinese Democracy if he were willing to apologize in the press for the things that he said about Axl publicly. Axl was cracking the door open and saying to me, 'If Slash apologizes publicly for the things he said about me in the press I have three songs that he could play on the new album'." (Marc Canter, Legendary Rock Interviews, 04/22/12)
"Hopefully we will put out a new single [...] sometime this spring, and then the record [is] gonna be done in June or shortly thereafter." (Axl, Radio Rock And Pop Chile, 01/01)
From Rio De Janeiro, Axl continued to Buenos Aires, Argentina on 01/20 and from there to Santiago, Chile on 01/22. A brief tour had been planned to take off at RIR3.
"The idea was, I wanted to play Buenos Aires and Santiago. [...] For some reasons that did not work out right now." (Axl, Radio Rock And Pop Chile, 01/01)
"Although the possibility existed that [GNR] would play at the Buenos Aires Hot Festival [on January 16th-18th, 2001], [Axl] preferred to wait for the band to be more "oiled". Also transcended that the group requested a high price to play (in Rio, the organizers paid them more than a half million dollars)." (Clarin, 02/01)
"It's very possible that we will play [in South America] in [...] November this year or January of next year." (Axl, Radio Rock And Pop Chile, 01/01)
"Guns N' Roses [...] will arrive in Buenos Aires in November [2001] to play a concert at the second [annual] edition of the Buenos Aires Hot Festival." (Clarin, 02/01)
"We wanted to play in Buenos Aires and Chile but we won't really be on tour until in five months, because this is very new for us." (Axl, Radio Rock & Pop FM, 01/22/01)
#367 2001 » 2001: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
- sic.
- Replies: 14
#368 2004 » Alice Cooper interview (GNR/Bob Ezrin mention), 10/15/04 » 927 weeks ago
- sic.
- Replies: 0
Puget Sounds: Alice Cooper sees all, and it's really good
2004-10-15
by Claude Flowers
Kings County Journal
Alice Cooper has released the album of his career.
The theatrical vocalist, who rose from Detroit's 1960s garage rock scene to stardom, is currently promoting "The Eyes of Alice Cooper," a supercharged masterpiece that offers all of the qualities that made his repertoire legendary in the first place: great melodies, raw power, tongue in cheek humor, a bit of sleaze and an element of monster movie-style horror. It's a terrific record, simultaneously modern and yet analogous to his vintage work.
Speaking by telephone from Virginia, Cooper said, "I don't listen to the radio a lot, only when I get in my car, but I have an 18-year-old son and a 23-year-old daughter that keep me pretty aware (of modern music). I'll walk by their room and go, 'What's that?' 'Oh, that's Franz Ferdinand.' I'll go, 'That's pretty interesting.' Or I'll walk by and say, 'What are you listening to?' My daughter will go, 'Listen to these guys.' If I hear of a band two or three times in a different context, I'll go, 'OK, let's find out what they're doing.'
"There has been an onslaught of garage bands, starting with The White Stripes, then The Strokes, The Vines, The Hives. Now, I think the best one out there is this Australian band, Jet. I'll listen to it and go, 'Why do I like this so much?' Well, it's because they're doing 1968 garage rock, Detroit style. I felt right at home with that."
White-hot musicians
Keeping this trend in mind, he created "The Eyes of Alice Cooper" with the same haste and spirit that propelled his earliest records. A team of white hot musicians (including current KISS drummer Eric Singer) added magic to the recording sessions.
"I said, 'What I want to do on this thing is put all the emphasis on the band and on the writing. I want everything low-tech.' So, the band goes into a room about the size of a small club, we turn on the amps, we get a great producer/engineer and cut these things, one song at a time. The album was done in 12 days, with no overdubs (i.e. corrections added later)."
The tracks vary in style but complement each other nicely. "I'm So Angry" and "Backyard Brawl" are crazed blurs of punk rock. "Be With You Awhile" is a tender ballad. "Love Should Never Feel Like This," "What Do You Want From Me," and "Novocaine" are energetic anthems.
Cooper said, "When you do songs in a small period of time, you capture a certain style of what the band is (inspired by) right then. That's what gives it a (consistency). If we had done the first song eight months beforehand, put it in the can, then recorded the rest of it, that first song and the last song would have sounded totally different. They wouldn't have belonged together."
Quietest is creepiest
The oddest cut is "This House Is Haunted," which suggests some indistinct, unnamed danger lurking just around the corner. It's the quietest track on the CD, but also the creepiest.
According to Cooper, "I came up with this idea. I said, 'What about a guy that lives in a house that's haunted (by the ghost of) his lover or his wife or his girlfriend, so he doesn't really mind that this person's floating around the house?' We sat down and wrote that in about 10 minutes."
The song profited from the input of veteran producer Bob Ezrin, a longtime associate who masterminded Cooper's 1971 breakthrough disc "Love It to Death" and still serves as an artistic sounding board.
"Bob Ezrin came in, listened to it, and goes, 'Clarinet.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'A clarinet's gonna give it this 1890s kind of feel. A clarinet's got a real lonely sound to it.' We tried it and I said, 'Oh, that's good.' It's almost Dixieland. It had that New Orleans vampire kind of thing to it.
"But that's exactly why I run things by Bob Ezrin. He and I think so much alike that I'll go, 'I know I'm missing something here, Bob. What is it?' We came up at the same time together. He was a classically trained kid from Toronto, and we were this sick, theatrical garage band ... Somehow, the two met, and we found he was as warped as we were. But then he could take all that classical training and plug it into what we were doing...
"I'm not the only one. To this day, really good songwriters that are ready to finish an album call me up and go, 'Do you have Bob Ezrin's number?' He did it with Jane's Addiction. He did it with The Darkness. He did it with Guns 'n' Roses. I know Axl (Rose, the lead vocalist of G 'n' R) called him up and said, 'I want you to listen to (the still-unfinished CD) "Chinese Democracy" and tell me what I've got (that's good).' Bob listened to it and said, 'Three songs.' This is after seven years (of songwriting). Bob's not going to be a yes man. He's going to go in there and tell you how many (decent) songs you actually have... He's basically taught me everything about how to write a song."
#369 Re: 2000 » 2000: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
'Three good songs' (or, The Second Corporate Intervention)
In the fall, a new A&R man was hired to help bring the project into completion. He was someone specialized in providing the 'final push' for albums nearing completion. Interscope'd recently relied on him on one of their other top acts, hooking him up with Trent Reznor to provide the 'flow' to the tracklist of the Nine Inch Nails double album, The Fragile.
"To this day, really good songwriters that are ready to finish an album call me up and go, 'Do you have Bob Ezrin's number?' [...] Bob's not going to be a yes man. He's going to go in there and tell you how many (decent) songs you actually have. [...] He did it with Guns N' Roses." (Alice Cooper, King County Journal, 10/15/04)
"It started off when Jimmy Iovine (ed: producer, chairman of Interscope/ Geffen) asked me for a big favour. They were stuck, they were stuck in a studio in North Hollywood for years with Roy Thomas Baker (ed: Queen’s producer), and nothing was happening." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"Here's how things worked [with Interscope since '99]. Jimmy [Iovine] and whoever would come down to the studio. Things would be good for a month. [Then,] someone above Jimmy would start putting pressure regarding us on him, Jimmy would start pressuring others at his label [and they] would begin doing the same with us." (Axl, Billboard, 02/06/09)
"[The band] needed to be closer to the scrutiny of the record company and Jimmy’s team, so there could be at least some measure of control." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"After a month of this the whole thing would get ugly and extensively interfere with getting anything productive done, and near the middle of the third month we'd arrange for Jimmy to come down again. They'd go away happy and the entire process would repeat itself over and over and over." (Axl, Billboard, 02/06/09)
"I agreed to help out if Axl would agree to work with me, which he did. He had the idea that the only person who could finish the album with him was me, based on what I don’t know." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"Bob Ezrin - best known for producing Pink Floyd's The Wall - has signed on as A&R man for the project." (Allstarmag, 10/30/00)
"I came, I listened, I said to [Axl], I will listen and will give you notes we will see together." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"Axl was a definite perfectionist. Almost to the point where you wanted to say, 'At some point, Axl, it's gonna be good enough.'.. You never know if a person is not happy with it or if they're afraid of the material." (Alice Cooper)
"I spent a lot of time listening... " (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"Bob listened to it and said, 'Three songs.'" (Alice Cooper, King County Journal, 10/15/04)
"What I heard was something that he had painted over too many times." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"I'm afraid of [rock] sounding too perfect. I mean, Bob Ezrin recorded Pink Floyd's The Wall three times." (Alice Cooper)
"So, by the time I heard it, the original content was lost and it was just a highly produced piece of something." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"I went to see Jimmy Iovine and I gave him my perception of the situation. They had to get out of Rumbo Studios immediately – not because Rumbo is a bad studio, it’s a wonderful studio... I recommended we move them to the Village Recorder in West Hollywood. So, they did that, and moved everybody there." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
Axl felt the album was there and ready to be mixed. Production had been flourished by Baker and Buckethead had contributed solos. Now, Ezrin had listened the album through and had ordered the production to be moved to Village. Axl had cause to feel nervious.
"[Axl] was nervous about hearing what I had to say... When he sat down, he started saying me that he has finished the record." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"Every time that we thought that we had the correct songs, then somebody [in the record company] thought that we could make it better." (Axl, Rock & Pop FM, 01/22/01)
"It was a bummer. Most of the songs that are on the record now were done 10 fucking years ago. But all the talking heads in the mix were saying, “Make ’em sound better! Make ’em sound better!” So we kept redoing this and that." (Tommy, AV Club, 05/19/11)
Bob Ezrin: 'Axl, we are not ready to mix this record. This record isn’t ready to be mixed. There are two great songs on it and I know that you’re capable of more, that’s the reason why I’m here. You’re such a great talent and I would do you a disservice if I didn’t tell you the truth, which is that most of the songs aren’t great. But I‘m very happy to help you get there and I believe that it’s possible, if you would like to continue to work on the record, to make it better.'
Axl: 'I don’t agree with that. We are ready to mix.'
Bob Ezrin: 'You have my number, if you change your mind let me know, but I have a dinner party at home now and I had to go.'
I left and I haven’t heard from him since." (Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)
"The album has been mastered ONCE in the past. That was around 1999/2000, George Marino, the guy who mastered it confirmed it to me in an email in the past. However, he also said he had no idea about where it stands now." (Gigger, MyGNR, 12/1404)
"We started over, we continued adding songs, continued recording and recording." (Axl, Rock & Pop FM, 01/22/01)
"I think that when we release the album, it's gonna be something that I'm gonna be proud of and confident in. Then, we will also have an extra heap of songs." (Axl, Rock & Pop FM, 01/22/01)
"It ended up coming back down to the same fucking songs that they were 10 years ago, except that now they were a super-dense mishmash of a bunch of instrumentation. That whole era pretty much sums up what happened to the record industry." (Tommy, AV Club, 05/19/11)
In mid-September, retailers were notified that Chinese Democracy was projected to be released in November, which does seem to support the notion that the record was essentially done, and Ezrin was called in for some final pre-release tweaks. Roy Thomas Baker had likely brought the Beavan album a bit more classic feel, but now the songs themselves weren't good enough anymore.
#370 Re: 2000 » 2000: Chinese Whispers » 927 weeks ago
The Phantom and the Ghost
While the album release was still up in the air, Axl did resurface soon enough, with his first public apperance since the Phoenix airport incident in February, 1998.
"The reclusive Axl Rose resurfaced Thursday night [06/22/00] in West Hollywood to sing with his former Guns N' Roses bandmate Gilby Clarke, much to the shock of both Clarke and 250-odd audience members. The event marked Rose's first public performance in seven years. Management for Guns N' Roses confirmed to MTV News that Rose made an appearance at an L.A.-area nightclub after attending a concert by Roger Waters. According to club co-owner and drummer Slim Jim Phantom (of Stray Cats fame), Clarke was heading up a jam session with the pair's sideband, The Starf***ers, at the intimate Cat Club on Sunset Boulevard." (MTV, 06/24/00)
"'I guess he ran into some friends of mine at the Roger Waters show at Universal Amphitheater, and they told him that we were playing down there and he came by,' Clarke later explained to Rolling Stone. 'Maybe he just wanted to have some fun.'" (Rolling Stone, 06/27/00)
"Phantom didn't spot [Axl]. Rose had become so reclusive nobody really knew what he looked like anymore. But the bartender advised his boss that the fellow with the baseball cap leaning on the bar was indeed the legendary hellion. 'I wasn't sure,' Phantom tells Q. 'So I took Gilby over and tapped the guy on the shoulder. He turns round and Gilby says, 'That's not him!' But Axl grins and says, 'Hey, Gilby, how're you doin'?'" (Q Magazine, 05/01)
"Phantom told MTV News that he and Clarke approached Rose at the bar, said hello, and then took the stage. "We did a couple of songs, and then looked at Axl," Phantom recalled, "and he came up. He didn't need any prompting." Rose and Clarke shared a mic for duets of two Rolling Stones songs, "Wild Horses" and "Dead Flowers." The latter was included on Clarke's 1994 solo album, "Pawnshop Guitars," with a vocal and piano track courtesy of Rose." (MTV, 06/24/00)
Somewhat ominously, Dead Flowers and Symphathy for the Devil, another Stones cover, were the two last released studio tracks Axl completed while the old lineup was still together.
"According to Phantom, although Clarke was obviously surprised by the proceedings, he and Rose began talking as if they had just seen each other 'yesterday,' in Phantom's words. 'I left at 3:30 a.m., and they were still talking up a storm,' he noted. Clarke told MTV News that he and Rose mostly discussed Rose's new band and album. 'He was really excited about it,' Clarke said. 'He was explaining it to me. We didn't rehash anything. We had a good time.'" (MTV, 06/24/00)
"[Gilby and Axl] talked until 4am, [...] Clarke hasn't heard a word from him since." (Q Magazine, 05/01)
"'[Axl] was psyched,' recalled one person who worked with the band at Rumbo. 'It seemed like it boosted him again, people still want to hear him.'" (New York Times, 03/06/05)
"He should just go out and play a couple of new songs, then do the family favourites like The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd do. Sometimes you can over-think these things." (Slim Jim Phantom, Q Magazine, 05/01)
