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Re: Robin vs. DJ Ashba
Olorin wrote:Is Slash a shit guitarist? He had how many years working on the next GNR album, was it 3? What about Buckethead, is he a shit guitarist?
Ridiculous reasoning there D.
Ask yourself this question:
How many years did it take Slash Izzy and Duff to write all the music for Appetite? 1 year if that?
how long did it take Slash to write NR and Estranged solos?
Slash has an undeniable pedigree that has afforded him the right to take as long as he wants now. If he never struck another chord on the guitar, his legacy is safe.
Robin doesn't have that pedigree. He has essentially had his entire life to write/workout riffs/songs.
Writing credits are also misleading ESPECIALLY when u factor in CD is a very underwhelming guitar driven album.
If u take Axl off CD and just listened to it instrumentally, u would turn it off in about 5mins.
Ask yourself this question did Axl have more of a dictatorship when it comes to CD era and did he have more free reign to take as much time as he possibly wanted(not needed) to get thinsg right, not only one time, but mutilpe time? Hell the guy had Brian May record a perfect solo for CITR and he decided to leave it off the record.
You could say it took Robin however many years to write one "great" song but I could easily say it took Axl 13 years to write and reciord an average/boring album. Sad considering CD was his baby.
I think the real issue is Axl. He had such an amaizng group of talenetd musicians and he still coudlnt' get an album made because he coudln't settle on one thing. There's no doubt in my mind all the guys in the band likely delivered undreds of amazing smaples and Axl just couldn't stop tinkering.
I'm glad we got DJ now but now way in hell am I ever gonna blame Robin for the delay in CD wahtsoever. nor woudl I balme any of the talenetd musicians for the quality of music we got because at the end of the day Axl had final say on what did and didn't make the cut and at the end of the day Axl direcetd the whole fucking thing so.....
Re: Robin vs. DJ Ashba
See, u guys keep going on and on and on and on and on about how he had such an amazing group of musicians to work with and that is complete fallacy and bullshit.
What the fuck makes them "GREAT" at anything. Show me what they have done?????? show me some type of masterpiece all time great song they have written that will stand the test of time?
I give a fuck how fast somebody moves their fingers.
Axl had a band of UNPROVEN *outside of Tommy* band members who proved unable to write anything all time great. Take Axl off that album and it is mediocre musically.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Robin vs. DJ Ashba
I still hold BIG TIME to my theory that CD took so long to come out largely on the fact the material just wasn't up to Axl's high GNR standards. If CD,Maddy,The Blues were in fact THEBIG GUNS which i am pretty sure they were, my theory certainly holds water.
I sort of agree...although in the context of a person who loves the final album we got.
However, I think it's undeniable that a large part of the wait was because of the time needed to push things to the place they needed to be. It's been said Axl's muse comes and goes, and that's pretty common amongst artistic people. I look at it like this - in UYI he took ages to do the vocals and that's when it was ALL he had to do - now he has to oversea every musical nuiance - from the drums, to the harp. to the other 100 tracks on there.
Also, if you look at Axl's tranditional methods. It looks to me like he occasionally writes a masterpiece on his own, which tend to be the ballad type stuff - November Rain etc....but that much of the other work had it's origin in a Slash riff, or an Izzy Track or somewhere else. To me he seems like he almost needs musical-foreplay...he'll hear something that sparks his tallent - then he'll build on it, change it, add his parts...revolutionise it and it comes out bad fucking ass melodically, lyrically and vocally and psychologicly.
In additon - he was also experimenting and learning about stuff to go in the industrial direction. I'm sure that's why there's a lot of half finished ideas...then add in bucket who never sticks in one structure for even a full song...and I can see it taking so long to do.
- killingvector
- Rep: 21
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Robin vs. DJ Ashba
I think you're both sort of right.
I can see D's point from a songwriting perspective - in that historically there were sort of unproven...because..
The inital writers are who?
Paul - friend of Axl's with (to the best of my knowledge) no significant prior writing credits. Turned out he wrote some great songs that really inspired Axl - but if you rewind a decade or so...I'd say the phrase "unproven" fits.
Robin - seemed that most of his background was in peformance or in music that is not primarily guitar driven..he adds a lot of value - but it's not like you'd expect him to necessarily be able to compose 14 songs from start to finish within a year (contrast to a slash/izzy who we know can do this).
Bucket - D seems to underrate that he has freak talent. But I will agree that in terms of songwriting for GNR - who knows how that would go? The guy is an absolute virtutoso musican - but then almost nothing he composes could be defined as compatiable with a classic rock structure in the way of AFD, Lies, UYI 1+2 - he's hardly a songwriter pumping out hits to play on the radio for a general public that was anticipating the next GNR classic after "Novermber Rain" - he's mostly an instrumental player and his instrumentals are heavily advant guard and bizzare in places. He's kickass and adds a ton of value to the band don't get me wrong - but in terms of writing a GNR record that you can play on the radio - yeah...unproven....
I think D is a little harsh to use the wait to say that the musicans sucked, as they're amazing players...but I also think that some of the delay was caused by getting the instrumentals to a place where it kicked in Axl's magic.
Part of that is because Axl's assembled an ochestra of bad ass players from different styles and backgrounds, and there's not really a traditional songwriter amongst them.
Re: Robin vs. DJ Ashba
I think you're both sort of right.
I can see D's point from a songwriting perspective - in that historically there were sort of unproven...because..
The inital writers are who?
Paul - friend of Axl's with (to the best of my knowledge) no significant prior writing credits. Turned out he wrote some great songs that really inspired Axl - but if you rewind a decade or so...I'd say the phrase "unproven" fits.
Robin - seemed that most of his background was in peformance or in music that is not primarily guitar driven..he adds a lot of value - but it's not like you'd expect him to necessarily be able to compose 14 songs from start to finish within a year (contrast to a slash/izzy who we know can do this).
Bucket - D seems to underrate that he has freak talent. But I will agree that in terms of songwriting for GNR - who knows how that would go? The guy is an absolute virtutoso musican - but then almost nothing he composes could be defined as compatiable with a classic rock structure in the way of AFD, Lies, UYI 1+2 - he's hardly a songwriter pumping out hits to play on the radio for a general public that was anticipating the next GNR classic after "Novermber Rain" - he's mostly an instrumental player and his instrumentals are heavily advant guard and bizzare in places. He's kickass and adds a ton of value to the band don't get me wrong - but in terms of writing a GNR record that you can play on the radio - yeah...unproven....
I think D is a little harsh to use the wait to say that the musicans sucked, as they're amazing players...but I also think that some of the delay was caused by getting the instrumentals to a place where it kicked in Axl's magic.
Part of that is because Axl's assembled an ochestra of bad ass players from different styles and backgrounds, and there's not really a traditional songwriter amongst them.
I don't think they had the material.
If u listen to all the stuff going on, a lot of people do that to cover up lack of greatness.
Point to me ONE... just ONE all time classic guitar riff on this album
ONE
Axl took above avg material and worked his magic and made it very good. thats a credit to Axl's genius.
Sorry is a great song, Prostitute is a great song.Maddy is a great song, TWAT is a great song
Rest.. Cmon: IRS,Rhiad,Scraped, terrible guitar work on Catcher...
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Robin vs. DJ Ashba
Stealing from Sic.'s amazing Chinese Whisper's work on here.
Here's a few relevant quotes:
"I'd helped write and arrange and recorded enough songs for several records. [...] Honestly, we recorded so many different song ideas and completed so many different types of songs; from quiet, very simple traditional piano songs to 16 stereo tracks of keyboard blur and everything in between. [...] Most of the stronger songs that ended up on A-lists when I was there were huge rock songs, built for the masses, really guitar-driven." (Robin, Wall of Sound, 05/00)
"We wrote and rehearsed and argued and laboriously recorded several records worth of musical material, which to the best of my knowledge Axl is still finishing. But my work was through. We had dozens of finished songs, as far as I was concerned, and we were waiting for Axl to complete the songs." (Robin, 2000)
"It was great for a while, but then it became terribly frustrating not seeing anything completed because no lyrics were finished. [...] No one song was ever completed and I was there for two and a half years." (Robin, Wall of Sound, 05/00)
"I was excited about the material - the band sounded good. But we'd get a song done to an extent and wait for Axl to write a lyric and/or song. I couldn't work on songs with titles like 'Instrumental 34' anymore." (Robin, Kerrang, 12/99)
"I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it. That's kind of tough. It's like you got to go in against these new guys who kicked ass. You finally got the song musically where you wanted to, and then you have to figure out how to go in and kick its ass and be one person competing against this wall of sound." (Axl, MTV, 11/08/99)
"There's a whole album of vocal parts [in late '99]. In fact, there's two albums worth that they've got there, at least." (Brian May, Radio One Rock Show, 05/10/00)
"I'm doing the vocals. I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and it's a very difficult process for me." (Axl, MTV, 11/08/99)
"'As far as I can tell,' says GnR's manager Doug Goldstein, 'we are now 99% musically done and 80% vocals done [in November '99]. I see the record being done Feb or March for a summer release.'" (Rolling Stone, 01/00)
Between his muse, business bullshit, and reworking stuff to make it killer...it took 8 more years....but I love what we got.
