mystery

1 hour ago, F*ck Fear said:

That will be the nail in the coffin for me & this band.

I signed out of the forum and was gone for 6 months before the release of Perhaps brought me back. If they fuck this up, I will 100% be completely done.

I feel you in that this band can never do things in a straightforward and easy manner. There always has to be some bullshit and a cloud of uncertainty to the things they do. 

This is semi-related to Perhaps as this relates to the same general time period. I was reading this Dave Dominguez interview from a few years back and he noted that he didn't recognize much of the music from Chinese Democracy from the time he was there.

One of the notable exceptions was Better which is a song that had music for it way earlier than most people thought and could have existed in some form as early as 1998. 

Does anyone have information on the time-frame the General would have been recorded? It wasn't part of the Rough Mixes so it was post-2000 at least.

2 hours ago, ©GnrPersia said:

Was it the night when Axl had revealed the CD cover art? If yes, was it exactly the same artwork?

I think the CD artwork reveal might've been summer 2002 just before the VMA performance. Someone more knowledgeable probably has the exact date. Pretty sure it was described as the same bike with the band's name written on the wall.

54 minutes ago, Arnuld said:

I was at The Joint in 01 with the original Nu-GNR lineup. That was a pretty wild moment. They still had the same stage setup as HOB 2001 and Rio 2001. The whole thing was really surreal and cool in a weird way. I actually would have seen every version of Nu-GNR had they not cancelled the second half of the 2002 tour. Really the best moment of the era wasn’t a moment. It was that Axl was in the tail end of his prime and could still really sing almost like he could in the late 80s early 90s. 

You got to see the holy grail of concerts where all we got are cool pictures, the last performance of Oh My God, and the last performance of Silkworms for almost 20 years until it became Absurd in summer 2021.

When Jimmy Kimmel directly asked Axl about his cornrows and Axl later talking about his Halloween tree in the same interview 

The band feels much more comfortable showing actual footage of themselves this year rocking out and having fun.

I'm a wrestling fan and was watching this interview with Chris Jericho who's a wrestler and part of the rock band Fozzy. In addition he was part of the Eddie Trunk interview with Axl in 2006, had Slash on his podcast to talk about dinosaurs, and has a good knowledge of rock and metal in general.

He's interviewed by fellow wrestler Swerve Strickland for his podcast and at 15:00, co-host Monteasy makes a point about stealth album drops while mentioning Michael Jackson and Slash.

Chris Jericho starts talking about Chinese Democracy's release and the lack of promotion which caught my attention. It's mostly accurate and I feel like he's talking in good faith as he's actually a fan of the band.

6 hours ago, allwaystired said:

Oh absolutely. 

I saw Nu-GNR once and was in a bar near to the Arena and a girl came to the bar next to me with a GNR shirt on so I said "looking forward to the gig?". 

She said "which gig?" and I told her well, the GNR gig, at the Arena. She said "oh, right, yeah....they're a band aren't they? I just bought the shirt."

I'd say it's more common than not these days for people wearing band shirts to know nothing about the band. 

Things have changed a lot! Used to be if you saw someone in a band shirt they'd be a massive fan. 

I think the reason for this is band shirts being much more available than back in the day in places like Walmart, Kohl's, Target, Old Navy, H&M etc., back in the day you'd most likely have to go to a show or order a shirt through a catalog. 

Band shirts and logos are meant to be fashionable and eye-catching and I imagine most bands are cool either way since its advertising and they're likely making money off it.

I'm wondering what other worthwhile unreleased songs they have when the General comes out and if they'll continue to be drip fed like the recent singles?

Is Atlas Shrugged next? It's a song that continued to be worked on after the Rough Mixes and was allegedly almost included on Chinese Democracy according to Bumblefoot.

The rough mixes version sounded like a work in progress lyrically so it'd be interesting to hear what a final version is like.

8 hours ago, rumandraisin said:

Rewatching Bridge School 2012, why did we slate Axls vocals here? 

Listening to You're Crazy, Jungle... He is killing it. Still had that rasp that's completely gone now and just sounds painful and forced when he does try. 

Okay he messed up Jungle and forgets the lyrics but we didn't know how good we had it back then. Same with the 2014 shows. 

People couldn't really look into the future to compare a 2012 performance to present. It may be better than his present performances but this was 2 years after 2010 where he had a ton of rasp in the early part of the year.

The hard part to believe is this was less than 4 years from the NITL tour which feels way further spaced from 2009-14 than it actually is.

It's always really interesting to see just how much Axl changed his singing for Chinese Democracy when you listen to a song like Perhaps.

The recording of it would have been within the same 10 year period UYI and TSI were recorded 1990-93-1999-2000 but its such a dramatically different approach.

I actually like it and it fits the raw, biographical vibe of a lot of the Chinese Democracy songs better than high octane rasp but it took a bit to get used to.

14 minutes ago, NachoLZ said:

Why the fuck does he use falseto

There definitely seems to be more use of it during the verses that aren't there in the studio version 

On 8/27/2023 at 3:36 PM, We love Axl Rose said:

The funny thing is they could have released Perhaps during that era and that kind of works as a back cover to a physical single.

3 hours ago, RONIN said:

Seems like the only guy on record who actually likes Paul Tobias is Pitman and possibly Dizzy.

Weren't they basically a shadow group that worked together? Checks out, Dizzy would also probably have more sympathy for Paul as an outsider coming into this massively successful band.

When I first heard Perhaps in 2019 it sounded like a Chinese Democracy song with Use Your Illusion style keyboards.  Even if that's off the mark it makes a whole lot more sense than comparing a musical to a 90's funk band.

1 minute ago, Blackstar said:

Review of sorts:

https://metalinsider.net/reviews/track-review-perhaps-latest-from-long-time-rockers-guns-n-roses

"This piano-laden midtempo song gives off a Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Jamiroquai-type vibe, with lyrics that take the listener on a trip down a hole of self-doubt, regret, and self-reflection. "

What the hell

I can't think of any more random comparison than this. 

18 hours ago, Gordon Comstock said:

 

I don't think Axl would sound good on it nowadays... Black Leather and Raw Power (as a duet with Duff) would be awesome though.

Since I Don't Have You seems like it could fit mostly into Axl's current vocal range. It's interesting they haven't done it live as they made a video for it and released it as a single but it seems like a song that was fun for a cover at the time and kind of left for history.

It could fill the same spot Wichita Lineman used to fill. One thing I notice about the setlist is they greatly reduced the covers to stuff they recorded themselves or related bands like VR.

One of the criticisms for the longest time was the amount of covers that's been switched with actual GNR songs like PTU, Perhaps, Hard Skool, Bad Obsession, and Anything Goes among others. People are getting a mostly Guns N' Roses show at this point where a quarter of it isn't covers.

11 minutes ago, Mikey Whipwreck said:

It's hard to say but they had no problem working on Shadow or Back Off Bitch which predated Guns. 

Paul's just a convenient scapegoat. What destroyed the band was Axl and Slash refusing to work on each other's songs and without Izzy there as the bridge between them they couldn't work together.

All they had to do was say, Axl, Paul and Dizzy go off and do your piano ballads and industrial songs, Slash, Duff and Matt go do your crunchy blues rock songs. Each "subgroup" comes back with their best 5 or 6 songs, everyone helps flesh them out and that's the album. Really no different than UYI. 

A few years ago I went back and re-read a bunch of the 1994-1997 articles and interviews and it's remarkable going through all of it at once how simple and stupid most of the issues were. Most of it boiled down to, Axl and Slash had creative differences and refused to compromise or work on each other's stuff.

Paul Tobias was just the cherry on top of a band with lots of tension and a clearly deteriorating working relationship. He's not completely blameless but things were going south before he joined.

So much of what happened from 1994-97 was lack of communication and understanding between members. I lay the majority of it on Axl because its clear he didn't want to do anything for a few years but he also didn't want to put the band on hiatus. They weren't seeing each other for months at a time and Axl seemed to be a fleeting presence at sessions he booked while contributing minimal contributions if he did anything at all.

The fact that Velvet Revolver was able to release a hit debut album with 3 of the guys from that period proves that they weren't blocking progress. It's just very hard to do anything when the leader of the band doesn't actually know what they want and has other issues going on.

1 hour ago, ZoSoRose said:

Paul’s involvement, departure, and disappearance is one of the stranger pieces of GNR lore

I remember something from Paul himself saying something to the effect that no one will know the true story but he was keeping quiet about it. In an age where almost no one is mysterious and we know what they ate for dinner, I respect that he's managed to live his life anonymously despite being part of one of the world's biggest bands.

4 hours ago, Blackstar said:

Thanks for this. Abbruzzese did two other interviews on the same podcast in 2020 and talked about GN'R quite a bit

https://www.a-4-d.com/t5240-2020-10-18-12-09-2020-d-podcast-interviews-with-david-abbruzzese

but I missed this recent one.

Dave Abbruzzese has ironically become the Slash of Pearl Jam in that any performance posted of early 90's Pearl Jam are about how people prefer him to Matt Cameron and how he gave the band more energy.

Also regarding the Chinese Democracy sessions, the biggest revelation from the leaks outside Atlas Shrugged was 3 Dollar Pyramid which showed the basic music for Better was written in 2000.

Better has always felt like a song that happened much later which it kind of did with vocals but the basis of it was around much earlier than most people would think.

1 minute ago, lost un the jungle said:

This! only hardcore fans know Steven and Izzy. At this point they wouldn't make a difference audience wise

Axl wasn't hounded for years by Izzy and Steven questions and chants like he was with Slash. I do think its a shame that they likely will never play live again but its remarkable that all 5 members of the classic lineup are still alive.

1 hour ago, Gordon Comstock said:

No, and I'm surprised some people still think an AFD5 tour is some kind of ace up their sleeve.

The reunion that the general public cared about was always just Axl and Slash. Bringing back more classic members wouldn't make much of a difference in a stadium setting.

It would never, ever recapture what they did 30+ years ago. They wouldn't be doing the legacy justice, it would be their most blatant cash-grab attempt. I would probably actually lose respect for Izzy and Steven if they came back now. And there's a very good chance that Richard, Dizzy and Melissa would remain in the band anyway.

The NITL tour is effectively the reunion for a lot of people because let's face it, for them Guns N' Roses has always been Axl and Slash.

It would generate some buzz but I feel like it would have only been huge after the initial few years of the NITL tour and not after 7 years of seeing Axl, Slash, and to a lesser extent Duff.

If they marketed a limited tour where they played Appetite for Destruction in its entirety along with UYI songs I could see it hooking older fans who could care less about Chinese Democracy.