Better, As it Began instrumentals

AtariLegend

PaSnow wrote:

2-3 is a stretch.
You've got:
The Blues
CITR
TIL
Prostitute
Better &/or CD
Which, for all intents & purposes, one would likely say are pretty impressive upon first listen of GnR again. If anything, maybe it was 'ballad-heavy', and aside from them lacked a certain style or genre. When you add in Sorry, which I could see someone not believing too much in the rough cut, it coulda been too much of a ballad album, "Where's the rock?"

I forgot This I Love, but Better wasn't finished then it seems. Sorry/if the world may or may not be just an instrumental (claimed they are). Beavan isn't credited for vocals on them.

You have:

Atlas
Perhaps
Chinese Democracy
I.R.S.
The Blues
Madagascar
Catcher
Prostitute
Hardschool
There Was A Time

Ryiad
This I Love

Going Down

Oh My God

At the very least along with these tracks if you want to leave them off or not:

Silkworms
State of Grace
Eye on You

James

Yeah Axl was right. We now know that there was clearly enough songs ready to be mixed, mastered, and wrapped in cellophane. It's a simple fact not even open to debate anymore.

The quality of said album could be debated as music is subjective but there is an album.

jimmythegent

I'd wager those 3 were CD, Prostitute and Catcher.

Notwithstanding Better which is good and the rough of Atlas we have, I think Ezrin was bang on. Sure an album could have been delivered but I think he was more commenting on it being up to the legacy of prior Guns albums.

Very early on, this record was being hyped as the second coming - so clearly he was approaching it with those types of lofty ambitions

AtariLegend

James wrote:

Yeah Axl was right.

For a good laugh, read through this;

http://www.gnrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?id=381

PaSnow

AtariLegend wrote:

James wrote:
Yeah Axl was right.
For a good laugh, read through this;
http://www.gnrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?id=381

lol, the best part is BringBackAdler with -10 karma!!

Wow, the old days. DTJ, Communist China, NYG82, those names sure ring a bell. Wish I could make a post giving myself some life advice & be able to read it 12 years ago big_smile

faldor

PaSnow wrote:

It's ashame. This album needed to be released 99-02. VMA's was the time. BH, hype, fairly favorable buzz about it coming soon, still a bad/unknown time for music.
I'm not one to solely put all the blame on the record company, I'm sure Axl was picky & had his problems in delivering/re-recording everything etc, but the 6 years from 2002-2008 killed it, all the hype, and the chance the record company would do anything except give up on it.
Just listened to As It Begins, would LOVE to hear the lyrics to that.

Crazy to think that if Best Buy didn’t make that exclusive deal with Azoff we may have never heard any of the songs, outside of those original leaks. I guess the leaks helped force the album out too but it definitely wasn’t a smooth ride.

James

AtariLegend wrote:

James wrote:
Yeah Axl was right.
For a good laugh, read through this;
http://www.gnrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?id=381

Those were the days. So many awesome people here back then and I was on so much Oxy back then it was like logging into a circus every day.

Hard to believe that so much time has gone by.

sp1at

Interesting read. Here's a clip of Axl 2009 interview with Billboard about the record company;

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What are your thoughts on how Universal has handled the album?

Unfortunately I have no information for me to believe [that] there was any real involvement or effort from Interscope. I'm not saying there wasn't. But in my opinion, without [Interscope Geffen A&M chairman] Jimmy Iovine's involvement, it doesn't matter who anyone talks to or what they say -- virtually nothing will happen from their end.

I do know [that] I've been asking for a marketing plan for over five years and still haven't got anything. We've asked for a complete breakdown of promotion expenses and efforts from all parties but unfortunately I've received very little information, if anything, so far. On another note, the draft booklet leaking and, I believe, the early shipping of preorders and the inclusion of the early draft booklet for the release was through involvement with Interscope, which was a mess. That's not to say they don't work for other artists and make things happen. I feel they work very hard for whatever it is they truly want to sell, whether it's good or …

I can say how the band feels, and that is that to a man they hate the record company other than Universal International with a passion. And that's with me talking with them about the record company negatively hardly ever, if at all. They're not blind: They hear the talk and see the results. Our involvement with Interscope has been more than frustrating for them. It's not like anyone here wants to have any negative views, impressions or opinions. They don't go around bitching about things all the time and they don't let it get in the way of whatever they're supposed to do here, but it is what it is.

Here's how things worked until they were no longer involved-that is, until recently. Jimmy [Iovine] and whoever would come down to the studio. Things would be good for a month. Then, according to whoever was involved at the time from their side, 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. We get that it's just how business -- and perhaps especially this business -- tends to work, but 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.

[Former Interscope Geffen A&M president] Tom Whalley brought in Roy Thomas Baker to produce and [A&R executive] Mark Williams suggested Marco Beltrami, among others, to play strings on the album. And Jimmy had an idea for low guitar in a track and the EQ on a drum part. That's it as far as I'm aware. They were all good things, but in all sincerity, that's it. Now, what efforts were made to help keep Universal or Vivendi off us for as long as possible could very well have been extensive, and in that regard either would have been or would be most appreciated. I like Jimmy, but I've never understood him in regard to us or this album. Everything's always been, "That's easy," or "We can fix that, no problem," but unfortunately rarely added up to any kind of reality for us until [he found] Bob Ludwig for mastering.
We'd love to have their and Jimmy's support after this. But to continue at this juncture feeling as we do, keeping things so behind the scenes, unfortunately feels like the same 'ol same 'ol for all of us and, at least momentarily, a bit much to digest. Jimmy did point us in the right direction for mastering, and I believe he's sincere in his appreciation of our record but still for whatever reasons gave up pretty early in those areas.

We feel that, unfortunately, we've never been really anything all that much more other than a throw it at the wall, see if it sticks, no real ground work, something to take advantage of, last quarter, cook the books, write-off, fuck this headache, hoping to get lucky scam. And, unfortunately, for all their nice words and assurances, nothing that's happened since the week or so before the release has shown us much of anything to the contrary. So at least in regard to the U.S., for the most part I don't look at it like we have a record company -- I look at it for the most part like we have friendly but otherwise cutthroat loan sharks, and we were lucky to get what we got but feel we could have done more if they were at least, especially with some of their backgrounds, a bit more involved creatively. So in light of pirating and the mess the major labels are in, I have no sympathy for the record companies, based on our experiences in the U.S.

------

And from Tommy Stinson in 2011

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"At first we were in there a lot. We were working on the writing aspect of it, but it just kept going on. We had Jimmy Iovine intervening in a not-so-productive way, and we had other guys coming and going with nutty ideas. My summation of the whole thing is that Interscope, when they took over Geffen, really led Axl to believe that Jimmy Iovine would be involved, and would help get this record done and make it happen. But basically what he did was let it completely fall apart. Then he had this great idea to bring in [producer] Roy Thomas Baker to make it sound better. All he did was re-record everything three or four different times, trying to make it sound like something it didn't need to sound like, and spend $10 million in the process. My two cents on the whole thing is that I really think Jimmy Iovine f*cked the whole thing up."
"It was a bummer. Most of the songs that are on the record now were done 10 f*cking 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. And it ended up coming back down to the same f*cking 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. Those kinds of people, making those kinds of decisions and not really helping the artist."

Sky Dog

Well there you fucking have it from the 2 people in the Chinese Democracy era who are old school music industry warhorses. Tell it like it is Tommy!

And for the record while all you guys guess how many songs are out there, Tommy once said there are 22 other songs recorded that didn't make it on to CD. This plus the 14 on Chinese gives us roughly 36 tracks from the sessions. axl tommy