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Fall To Pieces could have been a "Guns Song"


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Nothing against the late Scott Weiland or VR but Fall To Pieces would have been the next G N' R hit.  It was one of the primary riffs Slash was working on before they broke up.

 

Slash recently said he had "riffs" for his personal songs and other riffs for Guns songs.  Fall To Pieces was intended to be a Guns song.  It screams Guns.  

I would love to hear Axl's take on it.  Thoughts?

 

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It had all the ingredients of a GN'R hit; chimey arpeggio verses, reverb drenched blues leads and the three chord power chorus. Blueprint GN'R, almost to the point of being derivative of SCOM.

I wouldn't want to hear Axl sing Fall to Pieces, now, as it is, because it really was a personal statement by Scott.

 

For whatever reason, Slash's selective memory tells the tale that he wrote the song with some friends in 2001. 

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8 minutes ago, appetite4illusions said:

It had all the ingredients of a GN'R hit; chimey arpeggio verses, reverb drenched blues leads and the three chord power chorus. Blueprint GN'R, almost to the point of being derivative of SCOM.

I wouldn't want to hear Axl sing Fall to Pieces, now, as it is, because it really was a personal statement by Scott.

 

For whatever reason, Slash's selective memory tells the tale that he wrote the song with some friends in 2001. 

I think Scott made it unique...and the lyrics totally belong to Scott. 

But I'm pretty sure there's an interview out there somewhere where Slash says that the riffs to Fall To Pieces were actually played to Axl at some point.  I think it was in his book, actually.

 

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1 hour ago, Kasanova King said:

I think Scott made it unique...and the lyrics totally belong to Scott. 

But I'm pretty sure there's an interview out there somewhere where Slash says that the riffs to Fall To Pieces were actually played to Axl at some point.  I think it was in his book, actually.

 

In his book he stated he wrote that song in the early '00.

It's another Axl vs Slash thing that nobody knows what really happened.

Maybe Slash didn't want this song to be associated with Guns since it was about VR at the time. 

Otherwise, Slash must have played it to Axl in 95/96. VR released it 8-9 years later. Slash could have played a different but similar riff to FTP and Axl mistakenly thought it was the same riff after all this years.

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It's easy to see how this could have been the basis of a Guns song. With all the differing reports it's hard to know whether Axl did hear the exact riff or just something similar that later evolved into FTP, either way it's another one for the things that could have been pile. :lol:

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Banzai to you all! Never posted anything anywhere, but been reading the forum for years now, Guns fan since '91...on topic - couldn't it be that Axl mistakenly mixed FTP with Back and Forth Again which we all know was tinkered with by Axl (makin' of Estranged)? Marvelously, btw!

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For me its difficult to imagine Slash not using Fall To Pieces on Ain't Life Grand (released Oct. 10 2000) if it was already composed? Im not a huge fan of the album and the charts seem to agree with me. Wouldn't a veteran producer like Jack Douglas take Slash aside for the dreaded "I dont hear a single" talk and asked to hear what else he had? And if Slash then showed him Fall To Pieces I would think Douglas would insist on including an obvious radio hit?

To me this could mean:

1) It was not written in 95-96, nor in time for ALG, and Axl is mistaken

2) It was written right after work wrapped on ALG (maybe he was trying to write a single and just missed the deadline?) and Slash is accurate on this one

3) It just didnt click when they tried it out with Snakepit 2 lineup, and could have been around in 95-96 (I still think Douglas would have made it work though - that's part of his job)

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6 minutes ago, GNRfanMILO said:

early 2000s.

What exactly is early 2000s? I pretty much stopped listening to new bands around that time. All I remember from that era is nu-metal crap and all those indie rock bands like the Strokes, the Hives, the White Stripes pop up.

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1 hour ago, GNRfanMILO said:

Am I the only one who thinks Fall To Pieces is kind of outdated? The way it was composed, when I hear it now, just screams early 2000s. I guess because of Scott’s voice, but weirdly that doesn’t happen to me on other VR songs.

Yeah, GNR is a lot better than this... lol

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I like it with Scott, I don’t know if I would have liked it with Axl, because I don’t know what Axl would have done with it. He probably would have shelved it like everything else.

I mean, I like Axl on almost everything, but I think this is the perfect combination of what Scott could do with his own style and Slash can do with his awesome riffs. It is a good song and I really enjoyed Contraband.

Edited by Tourettes2400
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Axl said that Slash had played "the key bits" of FTP, iirc. It could have been just a sketch, nothing developed, or an improvisation of the moment, then Slash forgot it and later it somehow came back to him and he developed it. It's still interesting though, because Axl said specifically when Slash supposedly played it (a little before he left), not just vaguely that he played it some time during that period. It's possible that Axl had recorded all the rehearsals from that period (he has alluded to it), so maybe he didn't talk just from memory?

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6 hours ago, jacdaniel said:

Nobody knows what it actually was in the 90s though. It was probably just the chord progression. 

I'm sure Scott added the lyrics and Slash the leads and bridge etc later.

This. 

No one really knows if it would've been a GNR song and/or how different it might have ended up. 

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Slightly off topic, but Slash actually used a similar chord progression as FTP in both SCOM and Patience. 

Listen to the guitar at the very end of Patience. 

Listen to the SCOM chorus right before the main solo. 

It's basically the same piece of music as FTP. It's a D chord with a suspended D added. (Guitar geeks can clarify)

It's probably something he done a lot on guitar and eventually developed it into its own song.

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3 hours ago, GNRfanMILO said:

Am I the only one who thinks Fall To Pieces is kind of outdated? The way it was composed, when I hear it now, just screams early 2000s. I guess because of Scott’s voice, but weirdly that doesn’t happen to me on other VR songs.

The whole Contraband album is like that to me. Listen to "Do it for the Kids" and see if doesn't make you feel like you Marty McFly'd back to 2004.

But yes FTP was a very GNR-ish song (Its basically a rehash of SCOM).

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