RONIN

Does anyone have a theory for why Axl's voice sounds so thin and clean in all of these 1999 era songs? He sounds so powerful on Sympathy for the Devil (some of his greatest vocals ever imho) in 1994. TSI and Sympathy sound like classic Axl. By '99, it's like his voice has changed completely. Did that happen from lack of singing? I remember one of the interviews with Youth or Moby saying Axl hadn't sung in years and iirc he only starts laying vocals in '99. A 5 year break from singing essentially.

Was there trouble with his voice even by 1994? The performance at the Elton John rock n roll hall of fame induction seemed a bit .... erm...odd?

In case people haven't had a chance to check this out, it's worth it, particularly for Dizzy's input around 35:07 which is hilarious and ultra-sycophantic. Duff and Slash also comment on the 2002 riot.

Another minor interview of note from that time:

3 hours ago, Martin Riggs said:

 I agree most of that blame is Axl’s fault. What did the new GNR members think of him personally and/or his writing abilities? 

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

20 minutes 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.

What do you make of Dave and his time in the band?

The big takeaway for me was how he was really drawn to the incredible lineup of talent Axl had assembled with nu guns. That he thought the music coming out of those sessions was really cool and interesting. I recall reading an interview with Chris Vrenna that essentially said the same. Remember these quotes?

"The Robin Finck/Josh Freese/Tommy Stinson/Billy Howerdel/Dizzy Reed version of the album that existed in 1998 was pretty incredible. It still sounded like GNR but there were elements of Zeppelin, Nine Inch Nails and Pink Floyd mixed in." (James Barber, Poptones, 10/16/05)

"There's nothing out there right now that has that kind of scope. Axl hasn't spent the last several years struggling to write Use Your Illusion over again. [...] An artist [like Axl], who's had as much success with Guns N' Roses as he has, gets to a point in his career where he can settle into one sound and do it over and over again, usually with diminishing returns. Axl is determined not to do that. There's a sort of ruthlessness about pushing Guns N' Roses to grow, and to find some depth in their music, and to evolve." (James Barber, Rolling Stone, 05/11/00)

"The record just needed a lead vocal and a mix. [...] If Axl had recorded vocals, it would have been an absolutely contemporary record in 1999." (James Barber, Poptones, 10/16/05)

The other thing of note is just how deep into the new age psychic aura stuff Axl was. It seems like he was neck deep in the Yoda lunacy during that time. The meltdown he had when Dave decided to quit was rather revealing of how fragile Axl's mental state was.

59 minutes ago, Cosmo said:

We don't really know how much of that was Axl helping his buddy out, though. I have no idea if Paul was trully the asshole Slash made him out to be, or if it's all the circumstances of the time that made Slash hate him so much. Maybe Paul was kind of Axl's strawman and Slash's negative feelings about Axl and his behaviour kinda were targeted at the dude Axl put there without anyone's consent. 

Duff and Matt back up Slash's take on Paul. Duff back in the day was a relatively level headed guy so his perspective holds a little more weight with me. From what we have heard about Paul from various different sources, he kinda comes off as "Axl's boy". Like there's a bit of unearned entitlement he had purely through his association with Axl. He was in a room with arguably some of the top rock talent of the era (Slash, Duff, Bucket, Matt, Finck, Freese, etc). Imagine these guys listening to Paul's "suggestions" and having to put up with him in a band. A guy who was there purely because he was Axl's friend.

43 minutes ago, rebeldhipi said:

What was it?

10 hours ago, DK6 said:

Paul Tobias sure was involved in the writing of a lot of GnR songs for someone who supposedly didn't have the chops.

Yes but what exactly were those contributions is the million dollar question. Was Axl generous with crediting him or was Tobias a legit co-songwriting team with Axl like how Izzy used to be? Also does he ever get more than 20% credit on a song in CD? I don't think he does. Tobias is associated with 3 tracks I love: Catcher, Oh My God, and Prostitute. From what I remember, Axl is the primary writer of all three, particularly prostitute. I'm inclined to believe that the other Tobias credited songs are primarily Axl compositions.

Tobias' contributions to the band were also not respected by either Duff, Matt, or Slash. So his "chops" are in question. There are some old quotes from Tommy where he may have taken a shot at Tobias as well. So, imho, at best he's a mixed bag. Would love to get a more objective take on him from some of the people who were associated with the CD era. There's a recent-ish Dave Abruzzese interview on youtube where he tells a quick story about Tobias. Paul comes off as a bit of a douche in the story.

@BlackstarWasn't Fall to Pieces one of the final songs Slash demoed for Axl during the trial period in '96? I think he said in that '99 or 2000 rolling stone interview how as soon as he showed interest in a few of Slash's songs it was pulled from him. So presumably, Slash left the band with (some) of his material including FTP.

So the question is what 3 songs Axl would have wanted Slash on for the Sean Beavan album around 2000-2001. The old gnr-esque tracks from CD imho: Catcher in the Rye and This I Love. The Blues was also a more vintage GnR track.

As for the Jackie Chan song, Duff pretty clearly told Howard Stern that they were working on a song for an upcoming Jackie Chan movie. What could have been the movie in question? Jackie Chan's First Strike, Mr. Nice Guy, and Rush Hour fall within the time frame. Rush Hour would have been his first actual american release as First Strike and Mr. Nice Guy were hong kong films. I imagine the record company was just trying to get the band working again by giving them another movie soundtrack offer like Sympathy for the Devil. GnR's next release after Sympathy was another movie soundtrack with End of Days. It appears that the Jackie Chan offer fell through because they couldn't get it together. Then, "This I Love" was rejected for What Dreams May Come in '98. So I guess, there was some sporadic band activity even during '96-98.

I could see like a one-off when they're close to retirement - maybe like a Madison Square Garden show or a big festival like Coachella. One last big payday to collect. These guys are motivated solely by money these days and if someone thinks reuniting AFD 5 is worth it, they will pay for it. Unlikely perhaps, but there's a chance.

16 minutes ago, Gunner Gilby said:

I don't know if it was toxic or not. But the Guns of 85-94 was a bunch of friends who got together naturally. Dizzy wasn't an original member but knew the band from their early club days. Gilby said Izzy was his first friend when he moved to LA. So it was kinda fitting he ended up replacing his friend. From the late 90s to 09 it was Axl hand picking musicians who were talented enough but had nothing really in common.

And most of these guys did not like or even respect GnR and were upfront about it - a lot of them felt GnR was beneath them like Tommy and Freese. Gilby and Matt actually loved the sound of GnR and wanted to play in a band like that - huge difference in attitude and mentality right there. Tommy is the very definition of a paycheck warrior. Wasn't he working as a call center rep before getting the call to audition in GnR? You're a punk rock guy, GnR doesn't interest you, but you still take the job and stick around for 15 years to collect the paycheck. The other talent didn't need to do that. I respect Finck, Bucket, Freese, Billy Howerdell and the rest of the talent that walked when it was apparent Axl was going nowhere with this project.

I was listening to an interview with Dave Abruzzese (the drummer for Pearl Jam) and while he likes Axl, it seems to me like he didn't really respect GnR's body of work all that much. I think the draw for most of these guys was the talented artists Axl had assembled and the promise of doing something contemporary with those players. A frankenstein band basically that has nothing to do with GnR. He doesn't outright say it but it seems he was turned off by Axl doing a solo project under the GnR name and compromising himself just to stay within the confines of the brand. And why did Axl do that? Well...the multimillion dollar advance for the next GnR album ofcourse. You didn't get million dollar paydays when you're the Axl Rose band. He didn't want to start from the bottom again like Duff and Slash who coincidentally were dropped by Geffen around that time.

Axl wore cornrows because of all the shitty nu metal bands he loved at the time like Korn and Limp Bizkit. Hip Hop was the #1 genre at the time, this was the era of Slim Shady. He thought the corn rows would modernize him and make him hip. This is in line with the post-93 period. The fixation on following trends. It was a tragic mistake. He actually looked really cool (mostly) at the House of Blues and Rio in 2001.

As for Izzy, I am starting to agree with the people who said this band is very fan-unfriendly and that goes for Izzy as well. I used to think it was just Axl who was that way but I think it's the whole band really. They see the fanbase as just an ATM and a means to an end. I'm sure Izzy wanted to show solidarity with Axl by not showing up for the rock n roll Hall of Fame, but he should have been there for the fans. Throw the long suffering GnR fans a few scraps man. Yes, ofcourse he left with his integrity intact - he was associated with the best era of GnR and left before it became uncool. That said, it does seem that all of these guys are exceptionally greedy and do not understand the meaning of fan service.

3 hours ago, Coma16 said:

Is this the song that sounds like elevator music?

That's Atlas Shrugged.

I think Nothing has potential.

19 minutes ago, Mikey Whipwreck said:

Better wasn't a hit though. It should have been. It probably would have been if the band and label made any effort to promote it. But the title track charted significantly higher even though they didn't bother chopping the intro in the version they sent to radio. I don't see how spending seven years and many millions more waiting for a song that wasn't even promoted was the right move. 

An album released in 2001 with CD and Street of Dreams as the main singles probably sells more than the 2008 album. Then they could have had follow up in 2004 or 2005 using Better as the lead single and they would have collectively sold millions more, established the new band as a viable creative entity and kept Robin and Bucket around longer instead of having to replace them with lesser talents. It never would have been as big as any lineup featuring Slash. But at least it could have been seen as more than a glorified cover band 

The reunion would have happened eventually no matter what, but the 1998-2004 iterations of the band should have accomplished a lot more

Oh no doubt, 100% in agreement. I think in retrospect, all of us (including Interscope) wish the album had just been released in 2001. Wasn't Better from the RTB sessions? Or did it come later? I always assumed the song was from the RTB era.

CD would definitely have been a bigger hit in 2001 than in 2008. But I don't necessary disagree with Bob Ezrin and Iovine that the material wasn't really there to bring back GnR in a major way if they had released that Sean Beavan album in 2001. Yes it would have done reasonably well but I don't think it really puts nu guns on the map nor justifies Axl breaking up the old band. I think they had a number of marketing problems with CD. A new lineup, a controversial frontman out of the limelight for a decade, and a new untested sound. And the material is iffy as well - where are the singles? It may have been a bridge too far for the label. Either they release the album as is - a solid if unremarkable effort - or roll the dice again. In an abundance of caution, they figured they'd send Axl back to the studio to touch it up and then release it the following year. So in theory, I think it was an understandable decision on their part. He didn't have a hit single, period. That said, I suppose it was incredibly naive given how long and labored the process had already been. It would be interesting to get Jimmy Iovine's thoughts on what went down there.

Some great insight shared by everyone. My thoughts on this thread:

1. As Riggs pointed out, I don't think they had a viable single when Beavan was attached. As much as I enjoy the Beavan demos and feel his work was the strongest, I think Jimmy Iovine made the right call. There's a reason he's Jimmy Iovine and Axl is well...Axl. WIthout "Better", I don't think they have a marketable album. CD has no hit singles outside of Better.

2. I imagine they made the switch from Beavan to RTB because the gestation process had taken so long that Industrial music had already had its moment and music was going in a different direction from NIN and Marilyn Manson. It makes sense why they brought RTB in - to reshape this quasi-industrial sound into a classic sound. What we should be asking is why there was no producer who could get Axl to deliver work on time for Chinese Democracy. They went through something like 7 producers and each one left due to Axl's work ethic starting with Youth and Moby.

3. There was a great post on this topic of nu guns band dynamics by a forum member years ago that had some insider insight into what may have happened. From what I remember, the gist of it was, the Axl hangers-on like Del, Beta, and Paul Tobias would interfere with the band's affairs and try to establish dominance, particularly Del and Tobias. And each member of nu-guns would be fighting for Axl's attention and approval to secure their own position in this band where the leader/frontman is MIA 99% of the time. So Tommy was the main guy who was able to get Axl's attention and ingratiate himself to the hangers-on. Axl became close to Buckethead and recognized what a great talent he was. This apparently was perceived as a threat by guys like Del and Tommy who were jockeying for Axl's attention. So from there, Bucket becomes more alienated from the band and Tommy/Richard/Del/Finck become a clique. When Finck comes back to the band, he finds Buckethead in his lead guitar spot and resents it. Axl tries to placate him by having Finck as still the main guitarist but sharing some of his leads with Bucket. This is grudgingly accepted by Finck. Once Buckethead gets tired of this high school bullshit and Axl missing deadline after deadline to release the album, he quits. Ron Thal unfortunately gets thrust into Bucket's old role as "the stunt guitarist". Basically this entire saga is simply about getting Rose's attention because he's never around or actually working on anything while these guys are mindlessly jamming in some obscenely expensive studio night after night with no direction for years on end.

4. I do not subscribe to the blame game of the record label, jimmy iovine, RTB, etc delaying CD. It is obviously Axl Rose who cannot deliver anything on time. He couldn't even be bothered to show up to his own rehearsals. It's all in Duff's book - he wasn't showing up, money was getting wasted in recording studios for 2.5 years, there were no vocals, no lyrics, nada.  He could not deliver Use Your Illusion on time either. It was pulled from him by the efforts of Geffen, Niven, and (presumably) Slash. When has Rose taken responsibility and accountability for his screw ups?

5. About everyone in nu guns saying nice things about Axl - we can take it at face value. Let's also not forget that they are all under heavy gag orders and have signed NDAs. Axl is obsessed with litigation. There's a very good reason so little actual facts are known about Chinese Democracy's development and the inner workings of that era - all we have is mostly rumors and hearsay. None of these guys want to get sued by GnR.

I'll end with the below quotes from Duff McKagan that in a nutshell portend what nu guns was going to be dealing with : A frontman who is paralyzed with self doubt, losing touch with reality, and zero work ethic or even really an idea of what he wanted. Hence....14 years and 13 million in wasted cash for an album with 4-6 good tracks (imho).
 

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After you left Guns N' Roses you joined Steve Jones to set up Neurotic Outsiders. How did the idea build up?

I was still in Guns when the idea started to take shape, but we were idle. I used to go to our practice place, me and Matt would play for a while, but no one else used to show up. Slash was having trouble with Axl and, well, you know the story already. Axl would finally show up like at 4 a.m., oh well, fuck it! I realized I didn't want to wait until 4 in the morning to practice anymore. My life had changed. I'm not going to talk shit about anyone. Everybody does things for their own reasons. I've grown more reasonable, and I think I've always been, but now I do stick to it. I do as I say, and say as I think. I was not going to go "Ok, it's fine man, I'll swallow it again". No. I faced it and said no way, this is not fair. if it happens three more times I'm out.

 

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So far, when you were working on the new stuff, how did it sound like?

There was no sound. There was no nothing. We didn't play. We tried. Matt and I did play. It was cool when Slash joined for a week. Even when Zakk Wylde and Slash played together, there were a couple of songs in which there was a natural progression and they were very rocking. You can imagine, they were really hard songs. As hard as I like them, yeah! But I can't tell you what they sounded like, there was not a definite sound.

 

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Axl is like today's Greta Garbo. There's a lot of mystery around him, no one has seen a picture of him in years, except for that mugshot when we was arrested in Phoenix. No one knows anything about the music he's doing and there's a lot of mystery around his persona. What's your take on this?

Weird things happen when you become famous. There's no school to teach you how to be famous. It happens and people are affected in different ways. I don't have an answer for you. I've got a lot of opinions and I know a lot of things about this matter, but I'm not explaining them. I will not. He's there to answer. If he puts out a record and it is good, he's gonna be alright. He's very scared about this. I believe in this situation you have to leave home a bit to see what's happening. Go away, live. Or do what you have to do, but be sure about it. That's how I think. If you keep fooling yourself and keep doing the same things, you're going to be fucked. Guns were never like that. We did what we had to do, and we didn't have a name for it. It's only rock'n'roll, let's go! Let others put you in a category.

 

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Everybody was trying to persuade me to stay in the band for money. I didn't want to stay the band. It was not good as it used be. It won't go well. Only three guys, not five. And AXL wanted to do something else. He didn't know what he was doing.

Even if I went to rehearsal at nine at night, AXL shows up at four or five in the next morning for about two years. I could not keep up with the schedule. There was no respect for me. That's enough, so I quit. I went to dinner with AXL and his manager. He was a manager of GN'R and still AXL's. I said "AXL, We had very fun together, but it's your own band now. I'm not interested in you as a dictator. I didn't come here to talk about the money advanced for next record. You can have it. See Ya." That's it. 

 

Didn't Tommy bully Buckethead and Bumblefoot ? Seems like the nu guns lineup was cliquey and some of these guys were treated like outsiders. I've noticed from interviews that Buckethead gets either dismissed outright (Tommy) or backhanded praise (Fortus, Finck). And Bucket was the towering talent of that band.

I also get the impression from old interviews that Axl and Tommy were really tight in the early days of the band and the relationship ran its course after CD came out. Some of those interviews from 2011 onwards sound like a guy just punching a clock to check in for work - like the passion was long gone for Tommy. By the final few tours it doesn't seem like nu guns was much of a band really - just session players and Axl showing up for a gig. As Hetfield aptly put it, "GnR is a guy and some other guys".

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

If we believe Sebastian Bach, Axl still had a trilogy in mind as late as 2007. He probably abandoned the idea after the release of CD, but he continued talking about the "second half" of it.

Do we know what the official reason was that the 2nd album was shelved? Did the record company not find the quality up to par or was it the disappointing sales of CD that gave them cold feet? I always figured it might be because Azoff and Interscope were trying to force Axl into a reunion by killing CD 2's release.

Maybe the "trilogy" could have just been CD 1 and 2 + the remix album?

I want to hear whatever they were working on during the Youth and Moby era. The genesis of nu guns.

10 hours ago, Old_school_gnr_fan said:

If Slash hadn’t returned to Guns N’ Roses in 2016, Axl and his band would be playing at 2,000 seat venues, or maybe not playing anywhere at all. 

I’m pretty sure Axl had an epiphany sometime during the Las Vegas residency, and asked himself how it had gotten to that point. From the world’s biggest band in 1991 to a Las Vegas residency.

You only hurt yourself by hearing leaked demos performed by musicians for hire that were never meant to be heard unless it was an official release. Slash never was a shredder, and Guns N’ Roses was never meant to be a band consisting of quirky, offbeat musicians like Buckethead and Robin Finck. It’s strange enough that Fortus was once in The Psychedelic Furs.
 

 

Great post. Nu Guns had their shot - 1997 to 2014. The band as it stood in 2014 was truly an embarrassment.

It's like Axl had an identity crisis. He wanted to turn GnR into an experimental band with a lineup of underground players (a really cool idea) to reflect his eclectic taste in music. It didn't work because Axl wasn't real with who he was. He wasn't Perry Farrell or Trent Reznor. He was a rock god trying to rebrand himself into an auteur/producer...unsuccessfully. I'm listening currently to U2's Passengers album which apparently Axl was obsessed with in '97 according to Chris Vrenna. It's a cool little album of film score-esque tracks. I don't know how this kind of material was going to ever be integrated into GnR with Duff and Slash. One can only imagine their bewilderment as he used Passengers and Nine Inch Nails as a reference point for the next GnR album. He was moving away from guitar driven music to ambient - almost mood music soundscapes. Again, a really cool idea....but I think he just kind of bit off more than he could chew or he was so confined by what GnR's brand was that he couldn't escape that gilded cage to do the kind of experimental stuff he really wanted. The GnR name became his prison I guess. It would have been really fascinating if Axl could have composed moody pieces like "Plot 180" from the Passengers album as a background texture for Bucket and Finck to play around in. I think what I'm trying to say is, I wish the dude just went solo. He probably could have come up with a sick experimental album. But with his work ethic and creative inertia - who knows if it would have gone anywhere. That and the obsession with chasing whatever new trend was happening at the moment probably would have doomed the whole thing. Supposedly, Axl and the band worked on a number of more experimental tracks too advanced for the mullet head contingent of the GnR fanbase. This so called "experimental" material might have included the rumored moby influenced prodigy-esque tracks. Who knows if this stuff actually exists in some cohesive format?

Some people on GnR evo think that the band is burying the Chi Dem Era to promote the classic lineup. One can only hope that there is a boxset put out of the CD era. IF it's too embarrassing to reveal to the world that he doesn't have more than a handful of vocal tracks completed after 14+ years for that project (it's starting to appear that way) - just give us the alternate version tracks completed with each producer they had. That would be what, a 7 cd set minimum to cover the different producers + a cd that culls the best live material from that era + another cd of demos/outtakes?  That would be of primo value to many fans. Naturally, it won't happen.

I wish GnR wasn't a revolving door of session players. Just pick a good drummer and stick with them. There were something like 10 drummers associated with the Chinese Democracy era. Josh Freese, Brain, Vrenna, the drummer from Pearl Jam, etc. Any of these guys would be better than Frank. If Brain is the studio drummer for whatever they do next, that would be superb.

13 minutes ago, Tom2112 said:

It's not the most amazing piece of music I've heard, but it certainly is just as good and better than the worst end of UYI you mentioned, I think your perspective is a bit blurred because that's a classic album vs Chinese era which you're clearly not a great fan of.

Actually, I loved the original CD era (up till Bucket left). I was all in on Axl doing an experimental album for GnR and evolving the sound instead of the generic stuff Slash was putting out in his solo albums. There was a great mystique and mystery with that time. And there is enough great material from the Beavan era demos and a few from RTB era to cobble together a near classic album imho. I think there's a group of us here that got jaded by Buckethead leaving, the lineup getting watered down with b-listers, and then the album coming out in 08 and sounding worse than the demos. The 2002 botched tour really hurt as well because we didn't get to see the full potential of that original nu guns lineup. As for Perhaps, I think it is a bit boring unfortunately and Slash's solo feels underwhelming but to each their own.

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It's head and shoulders above HardSkool and Absurd, that should be the celebration here.

For sure and I can absolutely get behind that.

The star talent from the Chinese Democracy era like Finck, Bucket, Freese, etc continued to create and release their art for the past two decades so I sincerely doubt they care about some random instrumental jam they recorded with Dizzy Reed at 2 AM in 1998 while waiting for Axl to show up for rehearsal.

5 hours ago, Nintari said:

I think as far as "rockers" go, Oh My God was better than anything released on CD or since... yet it wasn't included. So who knows? To borrow a favorite line from the AVGN, it's easier taking a dump while doing a handstand than it is trying to decode Axl Rose.

Oh My God is a GnR classic and as you said, the strongest rocker from the Chinese Democracy era.

There was a newer cleaned up version with Bumblefoot? that Axl somehow managed to nerf completely. About as bad of a revamp as what he did to the Brian May version of Catcher. So perhaps OMG is better left as a demo and not re-released again.