The big "Fuck Bob Ezrin" thread

[RONIN]

1 hour ago, StrangerInThisTown said:

In essence, Axl not only fucked the band, but rather himself with having Slash and Duff sign over the name to him. He should have went solo with this material and he wouldn't have had this problem at all. I wonder how Bob would have reacted to this exact same material, knowing it was supposed to be Axls solo record? Probably not as negative about it as he listened to it thinking this is supposed to be Guns N Roses (even if it's just Axl with backing musicians at that point). 2000 Intentions should have been Axls solo debut

Agreed. But I think 2000 intentions released as a solo record may have under-performed under Axl's name in '99/2000 regardless of how solid the material was. Imho, the window for an Axl solo record probably passed in the mid-90's. Not that it would have been an easy road even in 1994-96 since the press loathed him by then. Had the album been great though, much would have been forgiven no doubt.

Axl had been a hermit for years by the late 90's which makes prognosticating the success of a solo album murky. As a teen in high school around that time, I didn't know who Axl was and neither did my friends - but the Guns N' Roses name was known (albeit none of us listened to or cared about them).  Acts like Manson, NIN, Korn (ugh), and Limp Bizkit (shudder) were huge with teens of the late 90's. It's possible that the Beavan produced material could have been relevant to the fans of those bands. But who knows? I loved Oh My God and still think it's the strongest rocker Axl ever put out with the Nu band but that single was a massive failure. It probably didn't help that it was released towards the tail end of the industrial rock fad. The guy was just late to the party each and every time. Even Illusions had the same problem - probably released a year too late which no doubt affected sales. A 1990 UYI would have likely had a bigger pop culture impact.

I suspect he already knew a solo record in '99 wouldn't fly and figured (as Niven once stated) that he could score a massive advance and help his commercial prospects by simply releasing his solo stuff via the GnR brand and leveraging the global fanbase. That, and in his mind, he was GnR so it was all easily justifiable. Either way, it's a missed opportunity because, as you mentioned, had he just put out a solo record, it would have been much better received than CD. Especially in the late 90's when all of the negative PR surrounding him had turned into fascination and mystique in the media. 

Edited September 26, 2019 by RONIN

[Gambit83]

1 hour ago, StrangerInThisTown said:

Maybe @Gambit83 can try to contact Bob and get him on the show in light of the recent situation and have him listen to these recent leaks aswell and give his story/opinion and he could also answer that question for us.

Haven’t had a response 

[Azifwekare]

15 minutes ago, Gambit83 said:

Haven’t had a response 

If you get him on the show, make sure you let all of us be co-hosts so we can all take turns to say "Fuck you, Bob".

[Axl Rose aka God]

I feel like I understand the point of rejecting some of the music. While I find it all fantastic, there is some Mickey Mouse voice on a lot of it, so I feel like it wouldn't have been well received as the comeback album in 2000. But, saying it's all bad is absolutely bananas. Chinese Democracy, The Blues, Madagascar, Prostitute, Atlas, Hardschool, Catcher, TWAT, I.R.S. were all ready in 2001. 

Edited September 26, 2019 by Axl Rose aka God

[UsedYourIllusion]

So I feel like, as someone who likes but doesn't love CD, it seems like 2 things can be true.

The tracks Ezrin said we're not good, are definitely not bad-they just sound so goddamn dated. I'm not sure what the evolution of Eye on you could be, without a major transformation of the song, that would make it sound modern or timeless... CD in it's album release sounds more modern to my ears, but the issue is obviously how buried the tracks are in overdubs and corrections. The issue is, and I've noticed this with all of the GN'R members; without strong members that can push tracks in the right direction and bounce ideas off of each other, the tracks get saturated with too much input from one person.

 

That's how I feel about Izzy's solo stuff, Slash's, Duff's, Chinese Democracy...

People keep trying to blame CD on other folks.. this is Axls perfectionism at work. Same thing with Live Era being shit with rerecorded vocals.. that wasn't some studio exec.. it was Axl.. Axl could have stood Pat and released the earlier versions of the CD tracks in 2008. Listening to the CD tracks last night live, the influx of Slash's playing just makes the track sound better, similar to the early version. If Axl would have sat down with Paul, or Buckethead, or Robin and had the album be a more collaborative effort, rather than just using these world class guitarists to paste amazing solos on these tracks, CD could have been amazing. 

[Russel Nash]

FUCK YOU BOB , AND THOSE FUCKIN RECORD EXECUTIVES, YOU TOO JIMMY IOVINE, I HOPE YOU GET FUCKED IN THE EAR.

[SlashisGOD]

There was no way in hell Bob Ezrin was ever going to get through to Axl about anything. At that point he thought "I'm GNR and can do whatever I want." Him telling Axl he had 2 good songs isn't really accurate in my view but isn't far off the mark either. Out of all these leaks, and including the CD album, I'd say he had about 12 good songs. Some of the leaks are pure trash. Eye On You, for example starts off good and then devolves into some senseless MacDaddy bullshit. That was never going to sell records and had the album released been the industrial rock album you can bet there would have been a lot of disappointed fans, which in turn would bring attention back to the other guys (Slash, etc) and possibly a different history all together. If I'm being honest, CD should have been the title track, Atlas, Catcher, The Blues, Hard School, Me and My Elvis (with vocals), Prostitute, TWAT, Better, Madagascar, Oklahoma (with vocals), and IRS.

Now that the reunion has happened I'm convinced that the only person in this universe who could have gotten Axl to release the songs was Slash, but the only problem was their split was still too fresh for Axl to give him a call. You know Slash would have rejoined in a heartbeat, which probably means Duff comes back as well. Slash would add his input to the songs and boom, new GNR album is out in 2001. It's obvious to me and other fans that all this time, all Axl wanted was his friends back by his side. I don't give a shit what anyone says. Axl now compared to Axl in 2012-2014 is a completely different person. 

I do feel bad for the hired hands (I refuse to call any of those lineups Guns N' Roses, because they weren't) because all they wanted to do was write and release music. Simple as that. I would have quit too working with all that mess. My hat goes off to guys like Robin and Bumblefoot for sticking it out as long as they did. At least Buckethead saw the writing on the wall early on though.    

Edited September 26, 2019 by SlashisGOD

[TheSeeker]

13 minutes ago, SlashisGOD said:

Now that the reunion has happened I'm convinced that the only person in this universe who could have gotten Axl to release the songs was Slash, but the only problem was their split was still too fresh for Axl to give him a call. You know Slash would have rejoined in a heartbeat, which probably means Duff comes back as well. Slash would add his input to the songs and boom, new GNR album is out in 2001. It's obvious to me and other fans that all this time, all Axl wanted was his friends back by his side. I don't give a shit what anyone says. Axl now compared to Axl in 2012-2014 is a completely different person.   

That reminds me - remember Marc Canter said Axl was leaving 2 or 3 tracks aside for Slash "if he ever wanted to rejoin"?

I wonder what tracks those were

IIRC Axl told that to Marc in 2001, so it's definitely tracks from the locker set

Edited September 26, 2019 by TheSeeker

[SlashisGOD]

6 minutes ago, TheSeeker said:

That reminds me - remember Marc Canter said Axl was leaving 2 or 3 tracks aside for Slash "if he ever wanted to rejoin"?

I wonder what tracks those were

IIRC Axl told that to Marc in 2001, so it's definitely tracks from the locker set

My guess is Hard School and Atlas, with the former even being a riff that Slash may write, and the latter being something Slash could have took even higher with his incredible soloing.

Edited September 26, 2019 by SlashisGOD

[StrangerInThisTown]

4 minutes ago, SlashisGOD said:

My guess is Hard School and Atlas, with the former even being a riff that Slash may write, and the latter being something Slash could have took even higher with his incredible soloing.

Are we sure we have all the tracks from that era on those discs? Maybe there was songs we don't know about? Other than that I too would say Hard School and Atlas are good guesses.

Edited September 26, 2019 by StrangerInThisTown

[SlashisGOD]

Just now, StrangerInThisTown said:

Are we sure we have all the tracks from that era on those discs? Maybe there was songs we don't know about? Other than that I too would say Hard School and Atlas are good guesses

Considering we had never even heard titles like State of Grace, Perhaps, Eye On You, etc, I'd say it's a fair bet that there may be more songs we've never even heard about.

[Blackstar]

I think Marc Canter had said that those songs were based on Slash's ideas.

[BucketFinckFortus]

1 minute ago, SlashisGOD said:

Considering we had never even heard titles like State of Grace, Perhaps, Eye On You, etc, I'd say it's a fair bet that there may be more songs we've never even heard about.

There's still a chance those were working titles and we know them by a different name. Like 3 Dollar Pyramid turned into Better.

[StrangerInThisTown]

Hard School might be a song based off Slashs original idea for all we know. Would explain why they put it so quick in the set anyway

[Bozo]

Bob Erzin produced Music from the Elder by Kiss. I guess that must mean something ...

[Blackstar]

I find it interesting that in 2001 Axl was thinking of using Slash ideas and also called Izzy asking for the 1995 demos.

It seems that after the negative feedback from Ezrin and the lukewarm response from the label, for a while he considered incorporating more classic GnR elements.

[Old_school_gnr_fan]

11 minutes ago, Bozo said:

Bob Erzin produced Music from the Elder by Kiss. I guess that must mean something ...

He first worked with KISS on 'Destroyer', which is widely regarded as their best album.

[Nicklord]

14 minutes ago, Bozo said:

Bob Erzin produced Music from the Elder by Kiss. I guess that must mean something ...

Means that everyone makes mistakes but CD album wasn't one of those 

[MrMojo]

Wonder where the 95 demos are now 

[djones1225]

2 minutes ago, MrMojo said:

Wonder where the 95 demos are now 

Hopefully those leak next. Haha

[Blackstar]

2 minutes ago, MrMojo said:

Wonder where the 95 demos are now 

The Izzy/Duff ones? Axl kept "Down By the Ocean" and 1-2 others. I guess the rest ended up on Izzy's albums.

[djones1225]

1 minute ago, Blackstar said:

The Izzy/Duff ones? Axl kept "Down By the Ocean" and 1-2 others. I guess the rest ended up on Izzy's albums.

One of the rumored other titles was a track called Machine Gun.

[StrangerInThisTown]

6 minutes ago, MrMojo said:

Wonder where the 95 demos are now 

One of the riffs of the '95 sessions with Zakk Wylde ended up as Rose Petalled Garden on BLS 1999 debut album. I'd kill to hear those tapes, Zakk is my favourite player apart from Slash. And Zakks 1994 album with his band Pride & Glory is really, really similar to 5 o clock.

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by StrangerInThisTown

[Tom-Ass]

5 minutes ago, djones1225 said:

Hopefully those leak next. Haha

After Slash left?

[SlashisGOD]

46 minutes ago, StrangerInThisTown said:

Hard School might be a song based off Slashs original idea for all we know. Would explain why they put it so quick in the set anyway

I think this one could definitely have been from the 96 sessions. Gotta be the riff that Fortus mentioned. 

32 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

I find it interesting that in 2001 Axl was thinking of using Slash ideas and also called Izzy asking for the 1995 demos.

It seems that after the negative feedback from Ezrin and the lukewarm response from the label, for a while he considered incorporating more classic GnR elements.

Maybe he also wanted to talk to both about rejoining for all we know.