QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

apex-twin

"Robin's departure was abrupt, sudden, you know, not expected [...] but at the same time, it's turned out to be a good thing. We've been able to push some of the guitar parts a step farther, that had he been here, it's not something that would have been considered, and I wouldn't have been rude enough to attempt to do that. [...] Robin's guitar will stay on some [of the re-recorded AFD tracks], but not all." (Axl, MTV, 11/08/99)

"Axl was feeling he that was in a difficult place, because the guitarist he'd been working with on this new album, [...] that'd done most of the tracks, had departed and Axl had a real emotional attachment to what he'd done, and yet [...] he didn't really want him to stay on the album because he'd disappeared, you know." (Brian May, Radio One Rock Show, 05/10/00)

- here

Eversince Izzy left, Axl's had an uneven relationship with guitar parts by people not there anymore. Slash was the same, as were Robin and Bucket. There's obviously a lot of emotion there on Ax's part, and the way I read it, to him, listening to those takes would be like watching pictures of your ex-girlfriend. You may still love the person, but at the same time, it pains you to know that ship has sailed.

Mikkamakka

Yet he still plays the ex-girlfriends' songs every night, and he kept some of BH's work on CD. So I think he has mixed emotions on the subject.

monkeychow

apex-twin wrote:

the way I read it, to him, listening to those takes would be like watching pictures of your ex-girlfriend. You may still love the person, but at the same time, it pains you to know that ship has sailed.

great analogy...i think it makes a lot of sense..there's a lot of emotion tied up in all that music.

Another thing is that I think with some of these parts they'd been there so long....and I think that's why some of bucket's stuff survived..it had always been there as the accepted solo to Axl...so to re-do it just because he was gone could seem like re-inventing the wheel on those songs.

I think in general he likes to have the new people on the record as much as possible, but given how many people have come and gone I guess it made sense to keep parts that were pretty much nailed at some stage.

Axlin16

russtcb wrote:

Ron's Catcher solo is the highlight of the song for me. The rest of it is a mess.

Ron's solo is the highlight of his work in the studio version.... but it doesn't even come close to touching the '99 demo.

The guitar work in the studio version, outside of the solo - sucks. Disjointed, no feel, no direction.

The irony is, of such a great song like Catcher, it's the only song on the entire album, with maybe the exception of I.R.S. where the guitar work was so incredibly poor.

I didn't even notice it that much until I remixed the album last summer and brought the guitar up in it - eek.

Neemo

Axlin08 wrote:

Ron's solo is the highlight of his work in the studio version.... but it doesn't even come close to touching the '99 demo.
The guitar work in the studio version, outside of the solo - sucks. Disjointed, no feel, no direction.

so says the impartial Queen fanatic

apex-twin

Axlin08 wrote:

The guitar work in the studio version, outside of the solo - sucks. Disjointed, no feel, no direction.
The irony is, of such a great song like Catcher, it's the only song on the entire album, with maybe the exception of I.R.S. where the guitar work was so incredibly poor.

What he said.

Try listening to some of Catcher's isolated guitar tracks. There's some absolutely horrendous stuff in there. Some of it is obviously Robin's handiwork, but before anyone gets excited, let me say it's comped to death while someone tried to squeeze the umpteenth take into it. What we ended up with is Robin's guitar, love it or leave it, stitched together in Pro Tools.

IRS is pretty unredeemable, as well.

dave-gnfnr

You should also check out the isolated track of scrapped esp the the last solo.
Its all cut and pasted together as well.

As for CITR< i have been saying for years the album version does not compare with the CD version.

CD is a huge disjointed mess, and all you have to do is listen to othe guitar versions of the songs.

What Axl should have done is after he cut and pasted all the guitar work together is have the band play that version of the song to make it flow better.

You can even tell by his scrapped vocals that they rae just copy and pasted together, hell even sentences are copied and pasted together, where you can tell it was two or more takes spliced together FOR ONE LINE OF LYRIC.

tejastech08

Axlin08 wrote:

I didn't even notice it that much until I remixed the album last summer and brought the guitar up in it - eek.

Speaking of which, forum member "Evads" mixed May's solo into the studio version:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/wVX-G2xJ/04_Catcher.html

I'm glad he did this, but I have one small complaint. The May solo is a little too low in the mix for my liking. Can you or someone else here remix it to feature May's solo more prominently like it was in the demo? Maybe just lower the volume a bit on the background guitars. Thanks.

monkeychow

dave-gnfnr wrote:

You should also check out the isolated track of scrapped esp the the last solo.
Its all cut and pasted together as well.

Thanks for the tip..I'd never gone that far listening to the isolated tracks...but just did and it was pretty interesting...that ending solo sounds like 3 different people playing in 4 different takes or something....

dave-gnfnr wrote:

What Axl should have done is after he cut and pasted all the guitar work together is have the band play that version of the song to make it flow better.

That's an interesting idea actually...like clearly that outro was constructed from ideas used in a few different sessions ..so yeah I guess like if that had been presented to Ron or someone as a part to lean then he could have copied it into a 4th take that flowed without so many kind of tonal jumps. But then i guess maybe Axl wanted the shifts.

To me its almost like choice anxiety. Like someone listened back to like 10 sessions each of 4 guys playing over the ending. So they've got 40 to choose from and just plain couldn't decide. So you end up saying "I love that arpegio from that jazzy clean bucket take, but really dig the little bouncing thing robin did on his pass, while overall we want that ending run Ron does, but then the version we had from the take with the buzzy amp was kinda cool..." and so they just construct a version with all of them.

It is cool too, but i think it's a bit of a nighrmare of choice to me. To be honest I dont envy Axl or whoever it is that picks the final guitar parts - trying to construct a "perfect" version of something with dozens of creative ideas, tens of tones, and probaly hundreded of takes overall...sounds like it would drive me nuts.

But I take your point. It's one reason why I think musically the CD songs like scrapped flow a bit better live. They still use the constructed melody, and have 3 guitars all at once and stuff, but they have a continuity of amp tone, and session mood when played live that makes it flow a little better than when it's a cut and paste job.

I think the cutting works on the vocals though as with Axl's vocals it's about the way every single word is delivered I think, and the exact choice of words - so i think it suits his style.

monkeychow

This is going to sound like a fucked fanboy post...but I was just thinking about it and listening to these songs isolated makes me think that Axl is sort of composing like you would for an orchestra now. In that like you have dozens of instruments (in Axl's case aside from the obvious instruments, you can think of every amp setting as another guy)

So then if you think of a symphony, you've got like violin parts and often have like 3 of them and then the trumpets, drums, oboe flutes and whatever and in isolation some of the parts sound wierd - but it's often cos there's a spiked note or something that mirrors what someone else does at that moment or something. It's about how it all fits together....mayeb GNR needs a conductor at gigs wink

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

Re: QUEEN Guitarist: 'People Think Of AXL ROSE As Difficult But He Was Alw

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