mystery

5 minutes ago, Slugworth said:

 

"What I heard was something that he had painted over too many times."

"So, by the time I heard it, the original content was lost and it was just a highly produced piece of something."

 

Bob Ezrin: 'Axl, we are not ready to mix this record. This record isn’t ready to be mixed. There are two great songs on it and I know that you’re capable of more, that’s the reason why I’m here. You’re such a great talent and I would do you a disservice if I didn’t tell you the truth, which is that most of the songs aren’t great. But I‘m very happy to help you get there and I believe that it’s possible, if you would like to continue to work on the record, to make it better.'  Axl: 'I don’t agree with that. We are ready to mix.' Bob Ezrin: 'You have my number, if you change your mind let me know, but I have a dinner party at home now and I had to go.'  I left and I haven’t heard from him since." 

 

(Bob Ezrin, HitChannel, 04/12/12)

 

Other than only two great songs...

 

 

 

 

He was being a bit harsh there but at the same time he was an A&R guy for the record label that was desperate to recoup the cost they put into the album. He was most likely looking for a SCOM or November Rain type hit with Slash's trademark style and couldn't find it.

With the state of rock music circa 2000-01 I feel like Chinese Democracy still could have fared well enough but Interscope/Geffen needed a big hit to make it worthwhile.

1 hour ago, Slugworth said:

You never heard the demos? How's that even possible? They've been circulating for decades and as the guy above mentioned, were released on the box set.

 

If he was someone like Roger Waters working on Wish You Were Here and eventually some of the material gets rearranged and recorded later on for the next album (Animals), I might be a bit more trusting and confident in his approach.

 

All he does is continually paste new people into the exact same already overcooked 20 year old songs making a mess out of it.

 

The demos are superior. Mainly because the songs can breathe and they've yet reached the point where everyone and their grandma has to contribute.

 

The next song doesn't need Miss Piggy on a tuba buried in the mix.

 

He claimed it was ready in 2001-2. I believed him.

Bob Ezrin basically said this when he worked with the band to get Chinese Democracy released over 20 years ago. He said that the songs had been painted over too many times. Its interesting to think that he most likely heard Perhaps in 2000.

Never forget that on Jay-Z's 2002 song Guns & Roses, Lenny Kravitz rhymes Guns and Roses to Friends and foes is.

I have to say after watching a few videos from this current run that Axl really cares. He looks great, is putting in as much as he can vocally, seems into it onstage,  and is singing stuff we thought was either stuck in the past or would never be performed live. Perhaps sounds better than I thought it would live and has an interesting vibe to it.

We're living in what feels like an alternate timeline where these Chinese Democracy session songs are actually being played live which felt like a pipedream circa 2009-14.

1 minute ago, BassistSeb said:

Seems to be a lot more buzz in regular circles than after the last two releases. If The General's as epic as well hope then it'll be interesting to see people's reactions to that. 

From Sebastian Bach's description it seems to be a slow, sludge metal sounding song with high, piercing Axl vocals. Also from the interviews posted on A-4-D, the track existed in 2002 if not earlier. Marco Beltrami worked on it and put orchestration to it but noted that the song didn't have vocals.

1 minute ago, jacdaniel said:

People only like it because it's called "The General" and someone said it was epic. 

This one is really built up for a big fall. Like Atlas.

I actually like Atlas Shrugged even though the leak of it clearly sounds like a work in progress. It is interesting that they're just dumping it as a B-side though as if to keep expectations in check.

16 minutes ago, ShadowOfTheWave said:

This track was already at legendary status when I first became a fan in 2010. Surreal to think it's actually coming out soon.

Out of all the unreleased songs we had information of, Atlas Shrugged and the General were the two I was most interested in and it will soon be reality to have at least one of them released officially. 

39 minutes ago, Dacroix said:

Listening to the leak, I'd say I prefer the old leak.

 

(Why do we always have to talk about LEAKS?)

Reminder that this song was recorded around 1999-2000 and the band is making its release in 2023 way more convoluted than it should be. 

Josh Freese has posted pictures previously of that period which makes me wonder if he ever took any of Axl?

From what's been said of this period, the band members were left on their own a lot of time with Axl only showing up a few times a week a lot of times in the early morning hours.

3 hours ago, Amir said:

Why the heck is this rehearsal on setlist.fm??? https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/guns-n-roses/2009/los-angeles-sports-arena-los-angeles-ca-5bbdbf0c.html

No Axl + no audience = not a GNR gig.

Basically a rehearsal with a small audience like it says and probably shouldn't be listed there though its an interesting footnote. 2008-09 is such an interesting and unexplored period with the release of ChiDem, new band members, and Axl disappearing publicly from late summer 2007-December 2009.

It ultimately doesn't matter because they're currently hugely successful but it was a massive missed opportunity that they didn't have full promotion for Chinese Democracy or a tour in late 2008-early 2009.

On 6/3/2023 at 7:36 AM, cspalding22 said:

It wasn't too long after the Montreal incident and they just weren't good. The fill in guitar player for James was brutal. Lars threatened to leave and crowd agreed.  They came back for a few more songs, then left for good.

There's a short pro-shot clip of Metallica from this concert where you can see James's arm bandaged up; it was an odd period where he couldn't play guitar and didn't know quite what to do onstage without one in his hands.

This was also the beginning of the decline in James's barking voice from the classic era. He was singing more lyrics in a cleaner style and continued with it for years after.

People get on Axl for losing his voice but the decline in good Metallica live vocals started way earlier.

5 hours ago, cineater said:

Social media is a tricky thing for celebrities.  The less said the better.

Axl used to be more active on Twitter including being political during the Trump administration. Since 2020 he's scaled back his use so you'll occasionally get birthday messages, condolences, or funny posts like this. 

Since they started playing Anything Goes, I checked to see how often they've played Out Ta Get Me. Its an interesting song in that its never fully been a mainstay but it managed to be played at least a few times on almost every tour from 2001-2017.

I watched the official live video they have from 2016 in Houston and I was surprised just how full of rasp Axl is on that song. It was the perfect amount of it that he lost in years after and makes it a genuinely good modern performance of that song.

9 minutes ago, jamillos said:

Holy shit, you Spanish guys. Shadow, Twat, Locomotive, AND Yesterdays? 

Now THIS is what I was talking about when I said shuffle the fucking playlist. 

This is what they did at the beginning of 2016. Fuck yeah.

They have plenty of good songs to make these tours fresh without new music and this current tour is proving that. There's a bunch of old songs that hadn't been done justice in a long time that are cool to hear. The current setlist is a perfect mix of appealing to hardcore fans and the general audience.

11 hours ago, MaskingApathy said:

That's how a lot of bands operate.

I think Guns N  Roses are unusual for how long they've been around combined with how small their catalog is. KISS is the ultimate businesslike band but they managed to consistently record and release music throughout their career.

29 minutes ago, rumandraisin said:

It's sad, when I joined this forum and discovered Guns in 2011, thinking a new album was imminent... I was still on lots of forums for all my favourite bands. Endless long discussions, debates, threads for each gig etc. Especially for Adam Ant and Prince, two of my other favourites. All those forums have disappeared and now it's just twitter comments and FB groups where most comments are under 5 words.

He did make an appearance not too long after in 2000 at Gilbys show. Prior to that we had the 98 mugshot but in those early internet days very few must've seen those pictures. 

That was basically an impromptu thing though. Axl went out then so he wasn't a complete shut-in but they had OMG, new music thought to be coming, and Live Era out in November 1999. It would have definitely helped to show up in person when even Michael Jackson was doing sit down interviews with MTV at the time.

A week or 2 after he had the Rolling Stone interview where they described what he looked like but there were zero pictures taken. You get the sense that he didn't want to be seen on camera which is the opposite now where they're posting social media pics and the band is touring every year.

I've heard audio of it but on the A-4-D site I watched video of Axl's 1999 interview with Kurt Loder and its so odd. Its Kurt Loder in the studio by himself while they put a 1992 picture of Axl on a screen because he didn't bother to show up in person.

Its a prime example that he didn't want to be seen publicly those years because how hard would it have been to fly to New York real quick at a time when no touring or other promotion was being done?

59 minutes ago, Skamos66 said:

All this setlist hype is good and all, but I still think GNR should pull a Metallica and do a weekly premiere of a past pro-shot concert on youtube, it would build the band's hype more online and make people want to buy tickets.

Metallica had a cool thing where they let the fans choose songs to play live which led them to play Frayed Ends of Sanity for the first time in its entirety in 2014. Guns could do something similar for certain shows since there's still rarities or never performed stuff that could sound good.

Really like that they reached into the catalog a bit especially for Bad Obsession and PTU as those are relative deep cuts compared to November Rain, Live and Let Die, and KOHD.

Over the course of 7 years they've played Coma which previously was a rarity, Dead Horse, Locomotive, Pretty Tied Up, and Bad Obsession. All songs that hadn't been played in decades. The UYI albums in general are underrepresented past the hits so its nice to see these songs aren't forgotten.

Axl genuinely sounds pretty close to the album version of Bad Obsession from the video I watched. Songs like that show he can sing in in that vocal range but his standard raspy style awesome as it was just isn't sustainable over decades of touring. 

That setlist is like they skimmed this forum and were like alright already. Bringing back songs from 30 plus years is pretty cool, especially Anything Goes. They've now performed almost all of Appetite for Destruction with the exception of Think About You which hasn't been played since 2006.

49 minutes ago, Trin9498 said:

Wow. The video quality is way better than I expected. Good stuff. 

Don't they have almost all the UYI tour in this quality? People have wanted shows like this for years and they kind of obliged with the Ritz but there's tons of shows that were pro-shot and vaulted.

Went from listening to Scott Joplin ragtime to wondering how Axl took up piano and found this radio interview I never heard. The story is interesting but his voice is also the deepest I've heard it.

When Axl's not mad at you, just disappointed.