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Mantia talks Guns N' Roses


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In his near 30-year career Bryan ‘Brain’ Mantia has had some unusual gigs - from the mad rock of Primus to scoring video games. But, surely none come close to his six-year stint behind the kit for Guns N’ Roses.

Brain’s induction into the band coincided with the band’s return and the start of the post-Slash/Duff/Sorum era. The next six years would see them write, record, but not release Chinese Democracy, the ridiculously delayed full follow-up to the Use Your Illusion albums. Unsurprisingly Brain has some killer stories from his time backing Axl and co. And here they are…

"We did the first show at Rock in Rio. We rehearsed for probably two or three months without Axl. Our first show’s Rock in Rio and I thought, ‘Wait, what’s it going to sound like with Axl? Where is Axl? Oh here’s his helicopter coming in.’

"The first time I ever played a real show with him was in front of 250,000 people! I was thinking, ‘How’s this song supposed to start again?’ Because some he was supposed to cue but we never had a verbal conversation on whether he would or I would.

"You look to your left and there was the Foo Fighters, Oasis and Sting standing side stage. We were headlining that day and everybody was anxious to see what we were going to do because Axl had put this motley group of people together"

"They had recorded a bunch of stuff and Josh Freese had recorded a lot of stuff. I think he recorded 90% of the drumming on the 25-30 tunes that were floating around.

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"When I came it was right when they got [producer] Roy Thomas Baker. He 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.

"We literally drove in his green Rolls Royce around LA and we picked up from every drum company probably every famous drum and tried out every drum. We had them ship it to The Village in LA where we were recording.

"We set up all the drums and I said, ‘This is the Guns N' Roses album, we need a vibe’ and there was a temple upstairs that people used to do their speeches in. We went up there and it was a mini auditorium.

"As soon as I put drums up there and hit them I said, ‘Oh s***, this is the vibe’. They ran cords up there and eventually [then Guns guitarist] Bucket[head] set his chicken coop up there and that’s where he recorded. Bucket and I would look at each other and he’d been in the chicken coop with the wire and he brought in hay. We were up there for three years recording."

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"Axl is a perfectionist. Josh [Freese], who is one of my favourite drummers, had already recorded some beautiful tracks but they didn’t have the sound.

"They were very digital sounding, there wasn’t a lot of air moving, they were electronic sounding. Axl liked some of the parts so he asked if I could play what Josh did but in my feel. He wanted me to replay it note for note.

"So I thought if they want that somebody’s going to have to transcribe this. I made some calls and went over to Sony I went over there and dropped off a handful of CDs and they transcribed it. They set it up on a teleprompter, I learned it and recorded it note for note. After that Axl was like, ‘Now do it your way!’ I think what came out on the album was a hybrid of a little of Josh and what I did."

"There was another room with literally 30 snare drums lined up, 15 kick drums, cymbals stacked up like a music store and it’d literally be, ‘This one looks cool, let’s try it with this’. We’d just play some beats and see how it sounded.

"There were no time constraints, there was nothing. I don’t think anybody was keeping track of it. I was going, ‘I don’t know who’s paying for this, or what’s going on but I don’t really care because I get to come here and f*** off in one of the best studios in the world with some of the best drums and some of the best recording gear, everybody talks s*** about Axl and Guns N' Roses but this is killer for me!’

"Towards the end we probably came up with one kit that sounded pretty solid and we’d just change out the snare. ‘I’m Sorry’ was more the Pink Floyd thing so I think I used a bigger kick, a 24" or a 26", on ‘There Was A Time’ we used a 22", we were just experimenting. We were having a ball, me and my drum tech. We would try something, record it and send the CD to Axl. He’d check it out and saying, Yeah that’s cool’, or sometimes he’d come in but his hours are pretty crazy so he’d come in at four in the morning and listen."

http://www.musicradar.com/rhythm/brain-mantia-talks-guns-n-roses-556166

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6 minutes ago, maynard said:

Certainly a fascinating period. Too bad all we got were 3 good songs and a dozen of shitty messy Stephanie Seymour ballads.

Brain was smart to leave the 'band' so soon.

What are your 3 good songs from CD Maynard?

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8 minutes ago, RONIN said:

If you liked OMG, I'm guessing you were actually on board for the industrial album and the '01/02 lineup? 

Say what you will about Nu Guns, but Bucket and brain are a killer combo in any band. Throw Robin Finck into that mix and you have a very compelling band.

 

Oh yes. Absolutely. I'd take even Silkworms over many of the melodramatic shitty CD songs. An Axl industrial solo album with people like BH, Brain, Finck, Beaven... I'm sure it would be good.

4 minutes ago, bucketfoot said:

I love the fact that Axl didn't even rehearse with the band for Rock In Rio. :D He didn't give a fuck. :lol:

And then he shows up all fat, unable to keep the pace in many songs and sounding like shit all around in his big return :lol:

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12 minutes ago, bucketfoot said:

I love the fact that Axl didn't even rehearse with the band for Rock In Rio. :D He didn't give a fuck. :lol:

Which makes it even more bizarre because he apparently cared so much about proving to the world (and Duff/Slash) that he was the genius behind GnR's success and the nu band he had assembled was going to demolish the old one.

Dude didn't even give that band a fighting chance to succeed. It's like he just decided to fold even before the Nu Guns train left the station. Tragic really.

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Just now, RONIN said:

Which makes it even more bizarre because he apparently cared so much about proving to the world (and Duff/Slash) that he was the genius behind GnR's success and the nu band he had assembled was going to demolish the old one.

Dude didn't even give that band a fighting chance to succeed. It's like he just decided to fold even before the Nu Guns train left the station. Tragic really.

Axl: I'm GNR

Matt: You're not

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14 minutes ago, maynard said:

 

And then he shows up all fat, unable to keep the pace in many songs and sounding like shit all around in his big return :lol:

There was definitely a car crash feel to the whole thing. :lol: Still entertaining though.

9 minutes ago, RONIN said:

Which makes it even more bizarre because he apparently cared so much about proving to the world (and Duff/Slash) that he was the genius behind GnR's success and the nu band he had assembled was going to demolish the old one.

Dude didn't even give that band a fighting chance to succeed. It's like he just decided to fold even before the Nu Guns train left the station. Tragic really.

Axl's a walking contradiction if nothing else.

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2 hours ago, bucketfoot said:

There was definitely a car crash feel to the whole thing. :lol: Still entertaining though.

Axl's a walking contradiction if nothing else.

the car crash feel seems to have been entirely Axl. If they'd rehearsed and played like a normal band they would have avoided much of the subsequent criticism, most of which is unfair on the individuals involved.

I am still very much in the camp that hopes the beaven cd gets a rarities release one day.

Edited by ToonGuns
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1 hour ago, xBrownstonex said:

Brain has a very funny way of telling stories. I loled at this part:

'Wait, what’s it going to sound like with Axl? Where is Axl? Oh here’s his helicopter coming in.’

lol! He hadn't yet learned to ask: is Axl in his helicopter? 

 

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13 minutes ago, ToonGuns said:

the car crash feel seems to have been entirely Axl. If they'd rehearsed and played like a normal band they would have avoided much of the subsequent criticism, most of which is unfair on the individuals involved.

I am still very much in the camp that hopes the beaven cd gets a rarities release one day.

Agree, that 'band' definitely had something. A lot of promise that went unfulfilled in the end.

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As crazy as all of that sounds, whatever happened to just having a few guys in a room writing together and coming up with something cool?

 

Same with recording, get a rhythm section in their live to do the tracks and do some overdubs with solos and whatnot afterwords.  This is what killed the CD songs, over tinkering and over thinking.  I guarantee if you had a drummer and guitarists tracking the basic rhythm tracks live to feed off of their playing with each other songs like Scraped would have a ton of more balls to them as opposed to the sterile over-produced mess it came out to be

Edited by WhazUp
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2 hours ago, WhazUp said:

As crazy as all of that sounds, whatever happened to just having a few guys in a room writing together and coming up with something cool?

 

Same with recording, get a rhythm section in their live to do the tracks and do some overdubs with solos and whatnot afterwords.  This is what killed the CD songs, over tinkering and over thinking.  I guarantee if you had a drummer and guitarists tracking the basic rhythm tracks live to feed off of their playing with each other songs like Scraped would have a ton of more balls to them as opposed to the sterile over-produced mess it came out to be

Thats pretty much how they wrote everything from 97-2000. Robin and Josh both said how they'd work on songs to death, but nothing came of it during those years. Tommy was mainly in charge of arrangement for these sessions.

 

However, someone who was proposed to work on the album (may have been after thise initial sessions) also said that the producers/engineers would go through hours of material, find a single part they liked, and then start the process all over again. I think thats how at least Scraped came to be, as Axl himself said that Scraped was at its core a copy n paste job.

 

But for the original sessions, they were all probably written as a band, at least the non Axl written tracks (meaning the songs that didn't start out as piano compositions). Thats my speculation anyway.

But obviously Axl wasnt directly involved. Brain said that theyd record stuff and that theyd (probably management) would just send CDs to his house, which oddly enough is exactly how Axl mixed the UYIs.

I guess some things never change...

Edited by Mendez
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10 hours ago, auad said:

"There were no time constraints, there was nothing. I don’t think anybody was keeping track of it. I was going, ‘I don’t know who’s paying for this, or what’s going on but I don’t really care because I get to come here and f*** off in one of the best studios in the world with some of the best drums and some of the best recording gear, everybody talks s*** about Axl and Guns N' Roses but this is killer for me!’

This is must be every NuGuns hirelings honest feel. Can't blame them.

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