Is it worth it for GNR to release new music?

[EvanG]

27 minutes ago, AncientEvil80 said:

I didn't say they're too old for music. I meant without a combination of different factors (youth, hunger, anger etc), the creativity lacks quality. Usually. 

Sometimes, not always. You can be angry or hungry at any given age. And without those factors you can still make good music, I think. Also in this genre of music.

[Live Like a Suicide]

At this point, i hope they trial some new songs in South America and come back on the last NA leg with them. I know it's too optimistic for Guns, but i'm sick of seeing fashion shit, lol. Give us something good.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Live Like a Suicide

[Towelie]

3 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

GN'R are now a deluxe clothing range disguised as a rock band.

Is it even disguised anymore?

I think mygnrforum.com should close the site and put up this message and only consider reopening it once the band release some music. Name and shame the fuckers - call em out for exactly what they are - corporate whores who couldn't be any further removed from the spirit of AFD if they tried.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Towelie

[Gnrcane]

2 hours ago, Live Like a Suicide said:

At this point, i hope they trial some new songs in South America and come back on the last NA leg with them. I know it's too optimistic for Guns, but i'm sick of seeing fashion shit, lol. Give us something good.

In the YouTube era, I don't think it is wise to perform new songs before release. The limited sellability of recorded music would be hurt even more.

[ironmt]

5 hours ago, default_ said:

If GNR plan on keepin the stadiums full they better release some before it gets to the point of playin fuckin weddings again. Cause it may take 5 or 6 years but the buzz of a reunion will be over.
After that whats going to be their secret weapons to fill the stadiums again? Izzy "Who?" Stradlin? As much as important the guy is, Izzy doesnt help filling stadiums. 

And about music... It depends on the artist or band, AC/DC and Black Sabbath for exemple, their last efforts were great and fans gave em a warm welcome. 

They could fill stadiums In Europe and arena's In the U.S. for the rest of their lives without ever releasing another thing, IMO.

Edited August 19, 2017 by ironmt

[default_]

1 minute ago, ironmt said:

They could fill stadiums In Europe and arena's In the U.S. for the rest of their lives without ever releasing another thing, IMO.

Yeah, just like Axl was doing before the reunion. lol

[EvanG]

5 minutes ago, Gnrcane said:

In the YouTube era, I don't think it is wise to perform new songs before release. The limited sellability of recorded music would be hurt even more.

The Foo Fighters have been performing half of their upcoming album for months now and I don't think it's gonna make them sell less copies. 

Personally I wouldn't have done it because once it comes out the novelty has already worn off of half of the record, but I don't think it's gonna make them sell less copies, maybe the opposite because there's a buzz around the new album since they debuted the first song.

[SoundOfAGun]

Men with that amount of disposable income can set up a studio in their mansion with top gear for less than what they earned for 1 show. They don't need a record company, their management could arrange distribution of the record. The only other investment would be time. 

[Ratam]

57 minutes ago, Gnrcane said:

In the YouTube era, I don't think it is wise to perform new songs before release. The limited sellability of recorded music would be hurt even more.

Agree 

[Apollo]

5 hours ago, Free Bird said:

Music is what every band should do

 

That post should close the topic. 

Free Bird nailed it with one sentence. 

[tonsco]

A couple of personal thoughts here:

1. There is MORE than 1 good 'GNR' albums worth of material when you look across the solo catalogue of Slash/Duff alone and that's before the songs got the Axl / Clink touch.

2. The less you write/record/release music the quicker the quality drops of it. 

You gotta make a bad record every now and again to unlock a great one.... but you have to be MAKING records to do that.

[DieselDaisy]

1 minute ago, tonsco said:

A couple of personal thoughts here:

1. There is MORE than 1 good 'GNR' albums worth of material when you look across the solo catalogue of Slash/Duff alone and that's before the songs got the Axl / Clink touch.

2. The less you write/record/release music the quicker the quality drops of it. 

You gotta make a bad record every now and again to unlock a great one.... but you have to be MAKING records to do that.

I completely agree.

[Len Cnut]

9 minutes ago, tonsco said:

A couple of personal thoughts here:

1. There is MORE than 1 good 'GNR' albums worth of material when you look across the solo catalogue of Slash/Duff alone and that's before the songs got the Axl / Clink touch.

2. The less you write/record/release music the quicker the quality drops of it. 

You gotta make a bad record every now and again to unlock a great one.... but you have to be MAKING records to do that.

Exactly, just fuckin' crack on with it, see what comes out.  But then you have the 'gotta make a bad to unlock a great' mentality and thats like the furthest pole possible from the 'perfectionist' thing that some 'artists' have, whether it's Axl Rose or Dr Dre or whoever, which to me really is more to do with some kind of insecurity and being overly concerned with how others perceive you or this fuckin' stupid quixotic notion of 'it's not like it sounds in my head maaaan', it's just fuckin' bollocks, you're either compelled to make and perform music or you're a twat who likes to spend long nights in front of a mixing desk twiddling with your fuckin' knobs for years on end.  Don't get me wrong, take 6 months, take a fuckin' year if you like...but fuckin' release something at least, you ain't fuckin' Wagner, you ain't Dante Alighieri, it's pop music.  Axl waited so long the fuckin' industry died

And predictably you have these long waits from your Dre's and Axls and what comes out the other end when they finally do pull the trigger?  A bag of shite.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Len Cnut

[DieselDaisy]

Neil Young probably has as many average albums - and a few stinkers - as great albums now, but it is never uninteresting following his career, and there is always something to look forward to. If Neil releases an average-poor album, you merely wait a year and there will be another one out that may be much better. It may even be a masterpiece like Le Noise. That was just 2010.   

His last album was terrible haha. Peace Trail. Crikey!

[Len Cnut]

1 minute ago, DieselDaisy said:

Neil Young probably has as many average albums - and a few stinkers - as great albums now, but it is never uninteresting following his career, and there is always something to look forward to. If Neil releases an average-poor album, you merely wait a year and there will be another one out that may be much better. It may even be a masterpiece like Le Noise. That was just 2010.   

His last album was terrible haha. Peace Trail. Crikey!

Also, albums don't live and die based on how they are received at the time, there's plenty of albums out there that don't get their dues for 30 plus fuckin' years after their release.  But then if you're looking to make money or whatever that ain't gonna be music to your ears.  Which i why i was putting 'artists' in brackets earlier.

[DieselDaisy]

Just now, Len Cnut said:

Also, albums don't live and die based on how they are received at the time, there's plenty of albums out there that don't get their dues for 30 plus fuckin' years after their release.  But then if you're looking to make money or whatever that ain't gonna be music to your ears.  Which i why i was putting 'artists' in brackets earlier.

I do not believe Peace Trail will be rehabilitated in thirty years somehow!

[Len Cnut]

Just now, DieselDaisy said:

I do not believe Peace Trail will be rehabilitated in thirty years somehow!

But albums like Raw Power by The Stooges which was in Bargain Bins 3 months after release it bombed so bad...and now it gets the fuckin' remaster and boxset treatment and documentaries made about it and that.

[rocknroll41]

I think at this point it's worth releasing new music just to fill up their catalogue a little more before it's too late.

[RONIN]

Look, here's the deal - I don't subscribe to the theory that more is more. The Slash style stream of consciousness - jam out whatever is in my head in 2 weeks, rinse and repeat with no filter - is not at all interesting to me. There is no craftsmanship in that. Being prolific for the sake of being prolific is not something to aspire to imho. Yeah, you might have a few gems in a pile of manure but that's a given. We still have to sift through a mound of dung to find the proverbial gold. 

On the flip side, Axl's MO of crafting something - sitting on it for awhile until his muse returns - then proceeding to overhaul what was already a strong rough draft into something out of left field - then sitting on it for another year - then tinker with it and add more layers, bells and whistles that dilute the original draft - then sit on it and come back to airbrush the thing to the point that it doesn't even have any semblance of spontaneity or organic feel to it....that's not ideal either. 

Ideally, a happy medium exists where we can have Axl's ability to craft music with Slash's spur of the moment spontaneity. AFD and some of Illusions have that aspect. 

Sometimes LESS IS MORE. Meaning, if you have an artistic statement to make - your statement isn't going to be any stronger by releasing more content necessarily. Bands like Nirvana and GnR made strong statements with minimal output. The jury is out whether they could have maintained their impact with more content. For example, Prince is brilliant. He released an unbelievable amount of mediocre crap though. It's difficult to sift through his later catalogue to find work that really resonates. MJ compares favorably to Prince for that reason alone - even if he wasn't half the artist Prince was - he was a more effective craftsman.

MJ would have had a flawless track record had he not released HISTORY and Invincible. However even those two albums, as much of a precipitous drop in quality as they were, had a few of his all time greatest songs. I would even say those albums had more artistic merit than anything he released previously aside from Off the Wall and the last 1/2 of Dangerous. Would he have been better off not releasing History and Invincible? Hard to say, but I lean towards YES. Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous would have been a hell of a statement to make as an artist. It would have been concise and kept the quality of his oeuvre exceptionally high. Also, MJ really didn't have all that much vault material. The best stuff was already put out there. He wasn't like Prince or Axl where potentially great work was buried in the vault, never to be released. All this is to say - sure, I want more material, but not if one or two great songs are buried under a heap of mediocre stuff. MJ would have been better off to just release his post- Dangerous output as b-sides or in a massive box set. 

With GnR - there is a different scenario. These clowns have already put together a large collection of riffs IN THEIR PRIME for the 1996 album and the original VR sessions w/Izzy. Potentially, if we are to believe Axl, there are prime era Axl vocals still languishing in the vault on finished Chinese Democracy era tracks. The best possible situation would be to cull the best tracks from the '96 and VR sessions w/ Axl's Chinese backlog and release an album. Release the rest of the stuff in a box set. That would allow GnR to go out on a high and give them a chance to rewrite their legacy and final chapter. Releasing a bunch of crappy albums long after their prime like AC/DC is not the answer here. What should we do with the Buckethead era songs? Simple - keep Bucket and even Finck as "additional musicians" and allow Duff and Slash to modify the songs as they see fit. They have a good sense of curbing Axl's "wanking" and raising his work to a higher level (see "Better"). If the songs don't work with Slash and Duff then just release them in the box set. You see how easy this shit is to figure out? These guys can crank all this out in focused 3-6 month studio sessions.

Music being recorded NOW by this group would not be interesting to me in the slightest. I don't think Axl and Slash have anything left to say artistically, especially Axl. Somewhere around 2010-2011, that fire was extinguished. Nothing they put out now will be worthy of their legacy and if anything, will only serve to dilute it more and give ammunition to critics who thought they were a flash in the pan. I also think Axl post 2006 has exhibited remarkably poor taste musically with his hiring of people like DJ ashba and Bumblefoot. No way would the old Axl have hired those guys as touring musicians, let alone allowing them to contribute to his music. That and his slow slide into Liberace status as well as his odd interest in wanting to record music with AC/DC only proves that he doesn't really have any creative juices left. The guy has gone backwards like Slash has. This isn't someone who is still interested in pushing himself forward artistically. That makes any future output from him significantly less compelling.

Now their prime era tracks? That's a different story. They owe it to themselves and their legacy to get that stuff out there - and if done right - if Axl can keep his obsession with bloating songs with useless shit to a minimum, and if Slash can somehow transcend his love for generic cock rock - and if they rope in Izzy and Mike Clink to add some quality control and keep Axl and Slash from wanking off too much - there is probably a real shot at making an album in the same ballpark as UYI. 

Basically - clear the damn vault. Win/win situation for them and the fans. Easiest possible solution to putting out new material. No need to write new music - that's just an exercise in futility given that this band hasn't written music together in the same room since the 80's and Axl's bizarre need to write lyrics only after stitching together hundreds of different jams and riffs is simply doomed to fail as it has since the 90's.

The real question here though is - is there really an interest from this band to even release anything? Maybe they see it all as a zero sum game. Maybe they think so much time has gone by that they are playing with fire and could potentially damage their lucrative legacy by releasing anything. A poor release will only give more ammo to the critics who thought they were an overhyped, one album band. On the flip side, maybe these guys don't even want to work with each other and are collecting a final massive paycheck whereupon they will fuck off into the sunset. 

What do I think will happen? I think there is a fair chance we will get three things: 1. A greatest hits album with 1 or 2 new songs, 2. A live release from NITL, 3. A potential new release that has chinese era songs with Duff/Slash pasted on top + new material written w/ Fortus. All 3 releases will almost assuredly be underwhelming and feel like too little too late. Then they will do another 2 year farewell tour for one last cash grab and then retire to spend their piles of money.

Once Axl passes, Team Brazil will whore out Axl's vault with remixes and box sets a la the Michael Jackson estate. And just like those guys, TB will still manage to be tone deaf and not give the fans what they really want: rarities, AFD and UYI era documentaries and live shows, etc. The chinese era itself is a goldmine where you could release tracks that were worked on with each producer so that you could see the progression of the material. Instead they'll just probably dump the "final" versions complete with the shitty layers of Bumblefoot and DJ Ashba. Meh.

Edited August 19, 2017 by RONIN

[ironmt]

8 hours ago, default_ said:

Yeah, just like Axl was doing before the reunion. lol

What terrible numbers. Axl should be ashamed. Again, they don't need to release a single thing to continue to be successful and make money. I agree In the sense that we would all like to hear new material, but they will remain successful without It.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Democracy_Tour

Edited August 20, 2017 by ironmt

[Tom2112]

Yeh the majority of bands never manage to compete with their past... But there's always the exception to the rule, Johnny cash is the famous choice for an artist written off BLT to come back with a great album with Rick Rubin.

I'd also argue that artists like Madonna etc. Don't really fall in line with bands like gnr or Metallica or Maiden etc. Because they write albums while Madonna etc write a handful of singles and the rest of the songs are generally there to fill in the gaps.

[EvanG]

6 minutes ago, Tom2112 said:

Yeh the majority of bands never manage to compete with their past...

People often say that, but so many of my favourite bands didn't make their best albums until halfway through their career. Of course it's subjective, but many musicians grow as songwriters and you can hear that on the albums.

[MyPrettyTiedUpMichelle]

1 hour ago, RONIN said:

Music being recorded NOW by this group would not be interesting to me in the slightest.

Basically - clear the damn vault. Win/win situation for them and the fans. Easiest possible solution to putting out new material. No need to write new music - that's just an exercise in futility given that this band hasn't written music together in the same room since the 80's and Axl's bizarre need to write lyrics only after stitching together hundreds of different jams and riffs is simply doomed to fail as it has since the 90's.

Agree with everything else but I'm curious, why would music recorded now not interest you in the slightest? 

100% agree with clearing the vault.  

Don't agree that writing new music would be an exercise in futility.  Why shouldn't they be able to write new music?  It's what at least 2 of them have been doing for a living these past 20 odd years, with a variety of other artists (some of whom they may not have shared any chemistry with) and coping with all that that entails: differing dynamics, personalities, agendas, abilities. 

They could probably knock out at least half-way decent songs in their sleep by now.  Axl is another matter, but he seems to be an inspired man these days, so I'd give him a chance. 

They don't need to be in the same room together.  Again, at least two of them (different two this time) have been making music either by writing their bits in hotel rooms or on the road, and sending the parts over the internet because hectic schedules prevent getting together in the same room, or by assembling bits and pieces to make a song.   No, it's not an organic, or a magical, or romantic process, but it is how many, many musicians make music these days.  And it can be done successfully.  On the other hand, they may even just go old school and get in the same room together.  

Either way, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to write new music, given it is what they do, generally speaking.

 

Edited August 19, 2017 by MyPrettyTiedUpMichelle

[Len Cnut]

Quote

Ideally, a happy medium exists where we can have Axl's ability to craft music with Slash's spur of the moment spontaneity. AFD and some of Illusions have that aspect. 

Ah, that ever elusive chestnut common sense!

[ludurigan]

10 hours ago, Towelie said:

Saw this on an MJ board I visit, and thought you could apply it pretty much word for word to GNR.

What do you reckon?

Original thread: http://mymjjforum.boards.net/thread/114/worth-legendary-artists-release-albums

 

that's UTTER bullshit argument

it shows only that whoever wrote that NONSENSE knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT PRINCE

Prince kept releasing VERY GOOD MUSIC (sometimes GREAT) pretty much till the end of his life

what a load crap argument from someone who doesnt know SHIT

and please dont tell me about "impact" because i couldnt care less about impact. WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT IMPACT? all i care about is axl, izzy, slash, duff and a drummer (hopefully steven) getting together to release NEW MUSIC again. i am pretty sure it will have a HUGE IMPACT ON ME and on everyone that loves GNR, and i couldnt care less if the entire wolrd doesnt notice it!