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- Topics: Active | Unanswered
- dalethirsty
- Rep: 20
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
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.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
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 scenario people paint is something like this, don't know if it's true:
The label has one more record on their contract with GNR at the existing rate. Then they have to either renegotiate a new deal (give GNR stuff) or GNR goes solo and releases it's own records on it's terms (Label is left out or only gets distribution or something). So one record left to make some serious money.
Axl: "Hey Guys. My follow up to Chinese is an experimental album that's even more techno in a late 1990s way than the last album. It's got a bunch of randoms on the album. We play mostly thought provoking sounds and poems in other languages interpreted through an etch-a-sketch wired into a diswasher. It will really challenge what GNR means to people but it is GNR as surely as anything ever was"
Label: Are you sure you wouldn't maybe like to reunite with Slash and make Use Your Illusion 3 or AFD2018 ?
Axl: Cool ideal. I will do that some day in the future when I have my own record company. But for now I want the last involvement you guys have to be the Dishwasher record.
Although I think it could also be something simple like:
Fernando: Hello Label. When we release an album in 2019 we will need full marketing support and tour support just like in 1989.
Label: Hmm..we want to release something but the industry has changed, how about some marketing for some tour profits shared?
Fernando: I fuck your asses with a plunger you cheats.
Label: Umm...Axl...fernando is talking about our asses?
Fernando: Dad the labels are dicks.
Axl: Fuck the label with a tyre iron...i'll be playing golf for the next 40 years when you change your mind...
and he's still playing golf.
Work of fiction...but you know....wouldn't surprise me.....
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
I laughed my ass off at the dishwasher record comment. Thanks for that, Monkey.
It could be full on electronica but he also said similar but meaner. That's sellable. Then there's Jackie which sounds UYI III-ish.
Hell, Shacklers is almost a fucking coked out dance party song and "tough guys" pick that out as the standout of the record.
We don't really know.
All I know, is it's a joke.
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
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.
Many years ago I had similar feelings. CD wasn't an album, it was a concept of sorts. It was also a way to wait out a reunion and don't forget we almost got one in the early years of the project. He wanted Izzy back, he was open briefly to Slash coming back, and Duff comes with Slash. That is GNR right there. Something caused the wheels to fall off in 2001-02 and I also believe we almost got one in 2005 as well. Halfin and Weiland weren't blowing smoke up our asses. Unfortunately I don't think they're ever going to tell us what happened behind the scenes. The story is so confusing that they may have forgotten exactly how it went down.n Hell, we had shadow lineups within shadow lineups. Nobody knew exactly what the others were doing. For all we know, one of the temporary shadow lineups was a semi-reunited GNR and it simply blew up in their faces.
I think the project gained more momentum than he was expecting. The unlimited amount of money coming from the record company likely played a huge role in the drawn out saga. How do you think the story goes if we take away Uni's tab?
that's how you end up with hundreds of thousands of world class guitars gathering dust in empty studios.
Yes the 2005 NYT article was a huge eye opener on what the project really was, what it is, and the direction it would always go. We had three more years for the album release and eleven more years for the reunion and it played out exactly as expected. I knew we were never getting CD II, said so back then, and I'm not surprised we still don't have it, label issues or not.
The project was always one and done whether they had ten songs or a thousand songs to work with. Yes the reunion potentially changes things but I'm talking about 1997-2014.
For the record I'm not even blaming him. It is what it is. He accidentally created Frankenstein's monster by blind luck, timing, etc. and it simply got out of control. In an interview years ago he talked about what a nightmare the whole thing was and I believed every word of it.
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
Axl was always mythic. People were afraid of him in the club days because of the vibe he gave off.
The UYI era only solidified things: the late starts, diva behavior, stage dives, arrests, supermodel fucking, and the like.
The CD saga functioned as a filter, amplifying what was already there to begin with. The trips to Arizona to get aura readings from a psychic master named Yoda, the recording and re-recording because of band drama, and flair for the dramatic. It was all there, wrapped in a Chinese themed box.
Hell, Brain talking about thinking Axl was back at his house with a girl on each arm really gives you a peak behind the curtain. No one knew what the fuck was going on. Crazy. Of course, Axl knew what was going on. You don't get a bedpan and Uncle Axl animated video at Rio if the guy wasn't keenly aware of how he was perceived. I think he got off on it and it's why he likes Bucket. He likes playing the puppet master.
I've interpreted the saga as Axl's Great Rock N' Roll Swindle. It kept him solvent, crew paid, and turned us onto some great musicians. But I think the truth is far less romantic in that Axl was just really afraid: of old demons returning, of old creditors and enemies out to get him, of the public reaction, of being exposed as some sort of fraud. But I think he wanted to release stuff. It would take a sociopathic devotion to the con to hire, fire, or otherwise alienate that many people.
I don't think the learning guitar and whatever else was just Axl doing something to pass the time. I think he was trying to prove to other people and himself that he wasn't just a glorified child star or something. That he had depth and talent to him. There's something deeper going on under the surface there, not sure what. And as Dale points out, healing himself.
And in view of the music industry $14m is quite decadent but in view of say, the movie industry, it's really just a drop in the bucket. It just became a scapegoat: of the music industry at large, of Axl, of America, of this and of that. I do think it's absurd but after awhile it became just a cheap hacky joke.
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
I think he got off on it
Absolutely. At least in the early stages before it morphed into pop culture joke. It was megalomania off the rails.
He held all the cards...until he didn't. He painted himself into a corner in the second half of the saga and the only person who could get him out was a guy who wears a top hat and smokes Marlboros.
I said it years ago. Move on from CD. It became an albatross. The project prevented him from a killer second act. He missed out on appearances with Billy Joel, fronting a different band or supergroup, or simply going solo temporarily. His discog is way too small for someone with his level of talent. His discog is the size of someone who dies young.
Now he's in his third and final act. I know hardcore fans are frustrated at not getting CD II but he is approaching his third act the way he should've approached his second. He has multiple options on the table, he has the media on his side even though he's not really engaging with them, and a large fan base that welcomed him back with open arms.
After a massively successful GNR tour, he's going with option 2. It doesn't really warrant criticism IMO. Hell, I wanted him to front some sort of supergroup ten years ago. I'm not gonna criticize now that he's actually doing it.
I would just like new material. I don't care if its GNR, AC/DC, or the Spice Girls.
Axl was just really afraid:
He needed someone on his level in new GNR. Some fans forget that in 1987-93, the other members did most of the heavy lifting when it came to the media and promotion. He lost that when it became new GNR. The closest he ever got to someone on his level was Stinson.
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
I said it somewhere he replaced GN'R the band but not GN'R the business.
Tommy is Duff without the kids and exploded pancreas and ensuing come to Jesus type revelations.
The new guitarists were in Axl's own image, about the art, press shy, and iconoclastic.
In a perfect world, he would've abandoned (or released) CD, but whatever legal albatross that was still would've been. Advance money doesn't grow on trees.
But he's also under pressure just like he was in 97-99 - rebuilding and reinventing GN'R or embracing the nostalgia circuit.
- dalethirsty
- Rep: 20
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
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.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
The trips to Arizona to get aura readings from a psychic master named Yoda,
I used to think this was a bit wacky, but given we subsequently found out Niven and Izzy were experimenting with JuJu and curses and stuff it makes you wonder.
Add in that there's a lot of folks in the music industry that dabbled in occult stuff too - Led Zep, Motley Crue, Megadeth.....whole thing is rather strange. I thought it was something right wing fundamentalist christians said about Rock to cause panic - but then you read their autobiographies and a bunch of stars start saying they were fooling with magic and stuff.
In a way it sure sounds crazy but when people you have issues with people who are into weird stuff themselves I can see how you could get mixed up in some psychic defence.
- dalethirsty
- Rep: 20
Re: New Slash solo album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators incoming
has anyone tried playing chinese democracy backwards to see if contains any hidden messages or release dates for the new album?
