OfftheBeatenTrack

14 minutes ago, TheSlashrose said:

Without This I Love? 🤔

We unfortunately don't have any versions of TIL dating back to this March/November 2000 period. If we did, it'd be a guaranteed inclusion on the album.

It DID make my 1995 album Garden City though... Better than nothing, right?

19 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

There are some incorrect stuff in the text regarding Brian May. He didn't play the solo in Perhaps nor The Blues/Street of Dreams. Also, that Axl picture is clearly from the 2002 VMAs, not 2001 Rock in Rio.

Just fixed that. Sorry and thanks for the feedback!

1 hour ago, Sweersa said:

I would have enjoyed that record. I do feel even some of the seemingly completed songs from the Village leaks still needed work. (State Of Grace) sounds pretty rough, though being a great track. Perhaps also has one verse repeated, not sure if this was the intent or not for the final version, or if it was placeholder. It still works for me. 

Yeah, I thought about the inclusion of "State of Grace" for a bit before finally deciding on including it. If it sounds too rough for your ears, you can switch it with "Oh My God" on the tracklist without too much of a difference, as both songs are pretty out there.

And regarding "Perhaps", I always thought that was just the way the song was written, an intentional choice as to how the song sounded. But interesting theory...

3 minutes ago, Axls_Moustache_Rules said:

We have it. It was part of the locker leaks

Yep, all of those songs are on my album. Plus IRS, State of Grace and Hard School from Rough Mixes CD3, and If the World from CD2

2 hours ago, TheSlashrose said:

I love "Eye On You" it's classic

It can be a non-album B-side to a "Perhaps" single, then! :D

Hey there, people! Long time no see!

I've previously posted/discussed both my imaginary 1989 and 1995 GNR albums and other essays of mine over at The Reconstructor, and so following this six year rule, here's my version of a 2001 Chinese Democracy:

GUNS N' ROSES - CHINESE DEMOCRACY (2001)

1. Chinese Democracy (Rough Mixes CD-1)
2. Hard School (Rough Mixes CD-3)
3. Perhaps (Rough Mixes CD-1)
4. Street of Dreams (Rough Mixes CD-1)
5. If the World (Rough Mixes CD-2)
6. There Was a Time (Rough Mixes CD-1)
7. Catcher in the Rye (Rough Mixes CD-1)
8. State of Grace (Rough Mixes CD-3)
9. Rhiad and the Bedouins (Rough Mixes CD-1)
10. Silkworms (Rough Mixes CD-1)
11. I.R.S. (Rough Mixes CD-3)
12. Madagascar (Rough Mixes CD-1)
13. Atlas Shrugged (Rough Mixes CD-1)
14. Prostitute (Rough Mixes CD-1)

Feedback, reactions and general discussion around this topic would be greatly appreciated. What do you people think?

On 24/09/2019 at 12:59 PM, Towelie said:

Better and Shacklers are two of the best uptempos on the album. There's only two real uptempos on the Rough Mixes CD, otherwise it's one midtempo after another.

The album needed some variation in pace and BPM. That's what the 2008 album gave us and I'm thankful for that. 

I mean, considering it's a Rough Mixes CD, we can assume that the track sequence wasn't final, and that all the songs the album would feature aren't on CD1. I mean, the 2000/2001 album would have had at least 12 songs, 10 tunes are way too few for a Gn'R album, Lies notwithstanding. But I agree, the 10-track sequence, despite having some great segues (Madagascar>There Was a Time is fantastic), is missing at least two rockers, and a proper tracklist.

If we take a look at the other 4 CDs, we can take the two most fleshed-out rockers (I.R.S. and Hardschool from Rough Mixes CD3) and add them to the album, and update the track sequence so it looks something like this:

GUNS N' ROSES - CHINESE DEMOCRACY (2001)

Chinese Democracy - the only real contender for this spot, even though I kinda liked Madagascar opening
Madagascar - so I kept it as track 02, as it stays up top and makes for a fantastic 1-2 punch early on
There Was a Time - still following Madagascar, works perfectly
Atlas Shrugged - works pretty well as a change of pace after TWAT
Hardschool - in Perhaps' original spot, to keep side 1 from becoming too slow
Catcher in the Rye - obvious side 1 closer
-
I.R.S. - a hard rocking track to open side 2, not bad at all
Rhiad and the Bedouins - moved from side 1 closer to here, works much better
Perhaps - also moved in from side 1, works best in here as well
Silkworms - despite the dislike for this one, it would obviously be on the album, sorry folks
Street of Dreams - two power ballads to end the record? surprisingly, it works.
Prostitute - the obvious closer, much better in this spot than Silkworms could ever dream to be

Come on, this album is literally a final mix, mastering and an album cover away from being a finished product. Considering the Rough Mixes CD is from November 2000, they could easily release this by Summer 2001 with ease, to coincide with the tour. At 56 minutes, it's a great and much less overwrought album, at least to these eyes

On 02/08/2018 at 10:53 AM, papashaun said:

I've always looked at it...with any musical artist....I know at one time period, record labels had to make their money, but you shouldn't really rush anyone in to new recordings. If you want good quality music, don't put a deadline to rush something out....When I was a teenager in the 90s, I can think of a lot of artists that had good debut albums, but then the sophomore album was a flop, often due to being rushed.

In this day in time of downloadable music, we're at the point where a full album isn't required as much...I think if an artist has 4-5 songs they like and want to put out an EP, that's fine...or if it's even a new single only, they want to share with everyone, that's fine.....As long as we get a good quality effort.

Yeah, agreed. Both possibilities are interesting, but I can't really complain about how stuff turned out

Top 10 Favourites:

Breakdown

You Could Be Mine

The Garden

Rocket Queen

Locomotive

Used to Love Her

Nightrain

Civil War

Mr. Brownstone

Pretty Tied Up

I'll leave the rest to your imaginations

4 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

The band wanted to release the follow-up sooner. When Appetite blew up and the band did their support touring in 1988, they did mention in many interviews that they hoped to have a follow-up ready in not too long, hopefully by the summer or spring or summer or fall of 1989. They were just going to finish the tour and then head into studio. Enough material was more or less ready, already by the end of 1988:

Slash: There's just a lot of material. I can't really say... I mean, there's tons and tons of stuff. And we'll just do whatever we really like and you know. I think there's at least gonna be two songs that are slow on the album [MTV, October 1988].

Axl: [...] we've got about enough stuff planned for a double album and we don't know exactly what we're gonna put out on the next one, we're looking forward to being able to get out there again next year, and give the people even more of a show in a headlining position, so that they can, you know, see more of what we're about [KJJO 104, August 1988].

Duff, though, expressed some reservation regarding the future of a follow-up, saying in October 1988 that he "hoped" they would release a new record, quickly corrected by Slash who insisted they would [MTV, October 1988]. This indicates that not all was well in the band at this time. Axl himself would echo this sentiment in December 1988 when he implied they might only have one more shot at releasing music so they'd best get out so much material as possible:

Axl: I hope to do as much material as possible, maybe a double album. So if anything happens to the band, it'll still live on for a while [Musician, December 1988].

So what was happening to the band in 1988 that made a follow-up not a guaranteed event? It started out well enough but as the touring dragged on, the band was worn down. Slash's heroin addiction got so bad management sent him on a detox tour to Hawaii in June 1988 and later assigned a man to follow him on tour to prevent him from hurting himself. Despite this, on July 18, 1988, when in New York, he shot up with Todd Crew, leading to Todd's fatal OD. Steven OD-ed on heroin for the first time in August or September 1988. As the rest of the band lived out their dream of excesses, Axl started to alienate himself:

Raz Cue, talking about the band in August 1988: Since injuring his voice earlier in the year, and his future's uncertainty while recuperating, Axl was all business. No "champagne and cocaine" rock star lifestyle, at least while I was around. Wahhhhhhh! […] Whatever the reason, Axl was attempting to live as healthy a lifestyle as the road would permit, all the while valiantly attempting to get adequate rest between performances [Raz Cue, "The Days of Guns, & Raz's", 2015, p. 258-259].  

Slash: You gotta understand that with this bunch, excess is best an' all that shit. Axl knows he has to keep from smoking or drinking or doing drugs to maintain his voice. He doesn't hang out that much because the atmosphere that's created by the other four members of this band is pretty, uh... [Sounds Magazine, August 1988].

Izzy: Finishing Slash's sentence: Conducive to deterioration [Sounds Magazine, August 1988].

Slash: He just hangs out by himself. He takes it all pretty seriously. I couldn't do it. He's doing well to maintain a certain sanity level seeing as he can't go out cos of his position in the band. If he was doing what we were doing he wouldn't be able to sing at all! [Sounds Magazine, August 1988].

This separation from the rest of the band, although it might make sense for Axl to prepare for shows and stay in top form, eventually led to less communication and more bitterness, from both sides. While not struggling with drugs at the time, Axl had his own problems. His unpredictable behavior resulted in him being fired from the band in early 1988. Press at the time regularly reported that the band was breaking up. It is said his volatile behavior resulted in cancelled tours (with David Lee Roth, AC/DC, and the first one with Iron Maiden). Slash would defend his bandmate and friend:

Slash: Hey. I don’t think it’s fair to dump everything on Axl. We ended up getting the Aero­smith tour, so we probably got the best tour for us of the four. There were some problems with Roth because his people got wind of those rumors about Axl and that the band was breaking up. They really never bothered to confirm what they heard. If they had, I think we would have been able to patch everything up [Hit Parader, October 1988].

Axl himself expressed concern about his behavior: Doug Goldstein, the tour manager at the time, would recall that toward the end of the Aerosmith tour in September 1988, Axl approached him and was concerned that others felt he'd become a prima donna. "I haven't changed, have I, Doug?" Axl inquired. "Of course not," Goldstein replied affectionately. "You've always been a prick" [Musician, December 1988].

Slash: Axl's a real temperamental guy. He's hard to get along with. [...] He does a lot of weird shit no one understands, but I love the guy. I mean he's a real sweetheart [Rolling Stone, November 1988].

Izzy: If it wasn't for the band, I just hate to think what he might've done. [...] He can still be a tyrant, but then he can turn around and be the nicest guy in the world [Rolling Stone, November 1988].

So when the tour ended, the band was frayed with drugs and emotional problems. And they had gone from being locally famous to be global rock superstars. A lot of time was spent getting houses in L.A., getting in order, adapting to their new lives, and for some of them getting deeper into addictions. This also meant they spent less time together. Rehearsals had to be planned. Music writing sessions had to be added to calendars. Hanging out had to be arranged over telephones. They all had separate lives, separate friends and separate lifestyles. Of course, Slash and Duff hang out much together, and occasionally with Steven. Axl and Izzy were more absent. Slash was the one struggling most with addiction, Duff and Izzy made attempts to clean up:

Steven: Somehow I had it in my head that not shooting [heroin] gave me some moral high ground to shake my head and feel that Slash was out of control with the shit. Even though I had dabbled with needles, I had backed off a bit and was a little freaked by Slash's behavior. Not long after that first day of scoring together [after they had both moved to houses near each other], Slash started to really lose it. We had been partying for a few days, and as the sun was peeking up, I couldn't find Slash in the house. I went out back, and he was sitting by the pool. He was so out of it, just blindly jabbing a syringe into his arm, over and over [Steven's biography, "My Appetite for Destruction", 2010, page 186].

Duff: I would hang out with Slash from time to time, but things were getting dark up there at his house in Laurel Canyon. One day he pulled out a stack of Polaroid pictures he had taken around his house. "Duff, look at these," he said. "It's some of those Martian bugs I was telling you about. They're infiltrating my house and watching me all the time." There was of course nothing on those Polaroids. But he kept flipping through the stack and pointing [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 155].

With his bandmates losing control, Axl started to take an even stronger control of the band, to the annoyance of his bandmates:

Duff: Word was getting back to me that people were whispering in Axl's ear, saying all the ass-kissing cliches: "You're the guy, you're the basis of the band's success". That's cancer for any band [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 148].

Slash got frustrated with the new situation, and wanted a band where they all hung out together, so he started to play with Dave Mustaine, creating rumors that he was about to start a new band.

Duff: Slash just wanted Guns to get back to being a gang of dudes who hung out together all the time. As equals. With no bullshit. But there was no communication [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 148].

Duff and Axl discussed the problems with the escalating drug problems and what they should do:

Duff: "What are we going to do?" [Axl] asked. I had no answer. We talked, but all we could do was hope they would find it in themselves to pull back and get into the swing of things as far as the band was concerned. We never thought of rehab or interventions back then [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 148]

So in late 1988 and early 1989, when they were supposed to write and record, time were spent on other things. To kickstart writing, and get away from the toxic environment of L.A., they decided to meet in Chicago in March 1989. This was Axl's idea. He wanted Slash away from his dealers in L.A. Slash and the rest of the band probably thought it was a good idea to get Axl away from his friends in L.A. and into a situation where they would hang out more frequently, allowing them opportunities to reacquiant and discuss the direction of the band. According to Duff, Axl also wanted to be closer to Indiana. As we know, this attempt was disastrous, when Axl and Izzy showed up late. Especially Steven was angry at Axl for leaving them hanging. Steven was angry with them all at the time and felt ostracized from the rest of the band.

Duff: Up to then I had not wavered in how I perceived us-as a band and a family and a gang. But this trip solidified some of the flimsy walls that had begun to go up between various parties in our unit. [...] Steven was fully strung out and babbling incoherently much of the time. Slash had one foot out of the band as a result of feeling betrayed. Izzy had all but checked out. [...] The damage was done and all forward progress stopped for quite some time [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 155]

Despite this, by May 1989, Slash would claim they now had the songs:

Slash: I don't have to worry about us being able to make this next record even better than the first one. We've already gotten all the songs written, and Axl's come up with some incredible lyrics. Being able to tour the world and experience all we have during the past 18 months has given us an incredible amount of energy to draw from. Appetite for Destruction was only the beginning of what this band is going to do. This next record will kick-ass just as hard, but it'll be different, too.[...] The material actually came together a little easier this time. We knew what we wanted to do, so every time we had a break from the road we'd all get together in an L.A. rehearsal hall and try to get some new songs together. The four musicians in the band would work on some basic song structures while Axl would be off working on his lyrics. Then we'd get together and see what fit together. It was amazing how even if we didn't know what the other guy was doing how the words and music just naturally fit together [Hit Parader, May 1989].

Despite this positive note, 1989 was a mess of infighting and drugs. It all topped in October 1989 when the band was opening for Rolling Stones. Originally, they were asked to open up for the Stones on their tour:

Alan Niven: From a fiscal point of view, I was dubious about that, because at that point Guns could clearly sell out arenas on their own, which would more than double that take. The other aspect was I didn’t consider the band to be in any condition, whatsoever, to be able to take on a tour of that length and magnitude. Izzy had gone through a really, really bad cocaine period and was just getting out of it. Slash was using too much [heroin]. Steven was using too much. Duff loved his cocaine and his vodka. They were in no condition to take on a venture like that. Much to the bemusement of the band’s agent, I passed. Think about that for a moment. Can you think of anybody who’d been offered to open for the Rolling Stones and said, ‘No, thank you?’ How fucked up in particular is that? […] I was like, ‘The Stones are touring again? F—ing hell! They always sell tickets, but as far as I was concerned, my boys were now the standard bearers of excessive glories of rock ‘n’ roll. Why should they open for a bunch of landed gentry and English financiers? So, conceptually, for me, it didn’t sit very well [Yahoo Music, April 2016].

Eventually they agreed that Guns would open on four dates at L.A. Coliseum.

Niven was right, the band wasn't fit for the shows.

Duff: Despite the work we needed to do to prepare for the Stones shows, Slash and Steven showed no signs of pulling out of their drug habits, and Izzy slipped back into heroin use, too. Sometimes those guys put their drug use in front of band practise. One or the other often showed up late or left early from rehearsal-if they showed up at all [Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 156].

Steven: We were to do five shows with the Stones in late September and then go back to a place called Mates Rehearsal in North Hollywood to rehearse for the Use Your Illusion tracks. [...] Axl had a limo pick him up from home and take him to the shows. [...] I would walk over to Slash's room to hang out and party. Unfortunately, every dealer on the West Coast was buzzing around for the concert, and I fell to temptation again. At this point, Slash hadn't let up at all and was getting sucked deeper into hard drugs. Heroin came packaged in rubber balloons, and that night after we checked in, I bought six of those balloons and went to Slash's room. I walked in and I saw Slash in the bathroom, and he had like twenty of these same balloons lying around, already opened and used. he was just sitting on the toilet, staring down at the tiles, all stoned out. He was going to be no fun, so I just spun around and left [Steven's biography, "My Appetite for Destruction", 2010, page 198-199].

Axl was so frustrated with the situation and his bandmates that he decided to not go to the venue for the first show. Niven claims he sent police to pick Axl up and forcily bring him to the Coliseum. We all know what then happened. Axl decided to confront his band mates from the stage, telling the world this would be their last gig together.

The next evening, before their second scheduled show, Niven went to Axl to "talk some sense into him":

Alan Niven: I brought a very big bag of donuts with me, and as I sat and listened and listened and listened, and as he complained about everybody and everything, I just kept feeding him donuts. Eventually, he started to get a little bit of a sugar rush, and in the throes of the sugar rush, he conceded that if I could get Slash to humiliate himself by apologizing to him live onstage, then maybe he might possibly think about doing that night’s show. So I got on the phone with Slash and said, ‘Whatever you have to do, do it. You’re gonna have to grovel. You’re going to have to bite the bullet. Just do what he says – that’s the only way we’re going to get him onstage.’ And obviously, reluctant Slash agreed to do it and, bless him, he took a bullet for everybody, and was publically humiliated onstage and apologized to Axl live onstage that night [Yahoo Music, April 2016].

Slash did as required, he apologized before the show from the stage. Axl then came on and apologized for what he had said the day before. The band was humiliated. The press had a field day. The internal frustration and anger in the band just increased. 

Axl: I was watching my band mentally and physically fall apart. It was a harsh move [talking about it] onstage, but we had tried everything else, and nobody would stop. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse. [...] I remember bumping into [Geffen Records head] David Geffen when I walked onstage and he was all excited about us playing with the Stones and all the people there. I just looked at him and said, 'Well, then enjoy (the show) because it's the last (damn) one' [Run N' Gun, Los Angeles Times, July 1991].

Despite this, the band did sober more up in late 1989 and early 1990. Izzy kicked the heroin and cocaine habits altogether. Slash managed to control it more. Steven, on the other hand spiralled further and further down into his black hole. Izzy sobriety meant he refused to hang out with the band, instead sending in ideas on tape and spent very little time in the studio. When it came to recording, Steven didn't cut it. The band spent long time trying to help him perform, put him on  a contract, threatened him with auditioning replacement drummers, and eventually fired him in, formally, in July 1990. They then had to find a replacement for Steven, which took some time, and Matt had to learn all the songs and record.

In addition to Izzy distancing himself from the writing and recording, and all issues with trying to help Steven into shape to record and eventually having to replace him, Axl was also delaying the recording process with his extreme perfectionism, a personality flaw he would readily admit:

Axl: I'm too much of a perfectionist, I know that. I'm a perfectionist so much, that I don't get a lot of things done. [...] My main motivation for all of this, and it could never be anything but, is the music, the songs. I look at it like I'm a painter or something, and that's my motivation, just to be able to get the material out the way I want it. I'm not driven for financial things, those are a bit more than secondary. It's like, I can get as excited about making money as the next person in that I'm gonna be able to buy this and that, but if the song doesn't come out the way I really wanted it to then I'm more disappointed, and the money doesn't really mean anything to me then. I now that's hard for a lot of people to believe, but that's something that we've kinda stuck by the whole time, as much as possible [Rock Scene, April 1988].

So all of this explain why it took some time to get the UYIs out. It was an ordeal, to put it mildly. And it not only changed the people involved, it also changed their relationship. In many ways, GN'R was over. Steven had been fired, the band members lives separate lives, they were angry at each other. Izzy had all but left the band already. Axl didn't want to tour. Despite this, they set out on monster tour together, which would further break the band apart. They weren't really fit to tour. Just as they weren't really fit to make a record together. Just as they weren't really fit to tour after AFD. It is almost a miracle that they still did all this. And survived. Although the remaining of the lineup would unravel in the years after the UYI touring, basically just completing a process that started many years earlier.

 

Thanks for all that info! It makes a lot more sense, now, with all the pieces of the puzzle in here.

24 minutes ago, shotsfired cro said:

serrrrrriously....how casual of a fan one must be to open up such topic on GNR forum?

Hm, I think my topic is really valid, don't see the issue. And I've been a fan for quite a while, actually, so uhhh

Also, did I miss any of those earlier songs? What else was available?

17 minutes ago, RussTCB said:

Well GNR is known for their timeliness in all manners, so yeah, it's a mystery what took them so long to follow up AFD 

They were almost British, in that sense

4 minutes ago, EvanG said:

Lies was just something in between, it were three new songs that had probably been lying around already. It wasn't the same as recording a new album with everyone's ideas on it.

You have to look at the bigger picture. They basically went from almost homeless to being famous rockstars with a lot of money. Even the most stable person in the world would have a hard time dealing with that contrast, let alone these guys. Then you have three members with a serious heroin addiction after the tour. One almost dies a couple of times, the other urinates on a plane and gets problems with the law, and the drummer can't stay awake during rehearsals and becomes more and more of a problem. Then you have a singer dealing with a lot of emotional issues and marriage problems. And on top of all of that, they have to find a way to reinvent the band. Appetite almost wrote itself, they were all living together and were probably writing songs constantly. Now they are writing songs separately and everyone wants their ideas on the new record, no matter how different they are. So it's kinda normal that it took a couple of years after they were done touring for Appetite.

Well, that makes sense, really. Although them doing such a thing as I mentioned would be pretty darn cool, and even feasible, it's perfectly understandable that they took quite a while to record a follow up.

And about the songs being "lying around", all tunes I mentioned were already finished, as far as I know, and with a great deal of input from everyone in the band, so it makes that just a bit easier.

Just clarifying some stuff here.

The 89-90 period was indeed a mess, but that's not the period I meant. I was going more with a mid-88 timeframe, with the classic "recording the followup during stops on the tour" trope. Think Led Zeppelin II, or something like that.

That'd take their free spots, that were Febuary to April, June to July, and October 1988. It'd also avoid the "distancing" issue, and drug use was a bit more "controlled" than that same period a year later. So in that while, that would be entirely possible, although really hard, considering that hectic schedule.

And I'm not advocating for anything, just asking for some clarification from you lot

Just now, Propaganda said:

I can't agree on Bad Obsession or Used To Love Her. I can agree on the rest of them, but still say that in my mind 4 rockers wouldn't do.

It's different when you have a full acoustic album, you're expecting accoustic only, you're expecting a slow paced album. A normal GNR album, in my mind I'm expecting at least  8 Rockers out of 12 songs

I still tend to think they would have re-done Used to Love Her's arrangement, as I said. Something more like "Brown Sugar", other than "Dead Flowers", so that makes it five.

And yeah, I agree it would be a bit of a shock initially, but most probably people would get used to it, over time

3 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

your premise is wrong

they did NOT take 3 years to "even start working" on UIY

they toured non-stop for two years 1987-1988 (and found time to record and release Lies and a lot of promo videos while doing that)

they went back touring in May 1991

so you have 1989 and 1990 (and lets add a 1/3 of 1991) as free time to 'start working' on the album

apparently not much happened in 1989 but (if i am not mistaken) Chicago Sessions are from 1989, right?

Also something that goes overlooked a lot is that Izzy mentioned that they booked studios and TRIED TO RECORD the album on at least TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS before the actual Illusion sessions

That must have happened in 1989-1990 (and may include the Chicago sessions as one of these times)

then there was the steven thing, they dont talk much about it but it is known that they tried out a few drummers before matt...

And the actual Illusion sessions happened in the second half of 1990, right?

(I mean the 4-weeks when everyone laid the basic tracks)

then you had like nine months (?) (end of 1990 plus first half of 1991?) for axl to add vocals (and record my world!) and for slash to record solos, overdubs, erase izzy guitar and ruin the record!

is that it?

(I am really not sure about the timeline)

i mean they surely wasted time and surely sat on their asses for a while

but of course axl would help to redefine the meaning of "delay" and "sitting on your ass" a few years later!

I agree with all you said, and didn't know that they had tried on two other occasions. Strange, really

And I didn't talk about that '89-'91 period, more like an "in between the touring commitments" throughout 1988 thing, just like Lies

Just now, Propaganda said:

Yes, but then you had You Could Be Mine, Right Next Door to Hell, Double Talkin Jive, Bad Apples, Coma, Don't Damn me, Dead Horse, The Garden, Shotgun Blues, Get in the Ring, Civil War, Garden of Eden, Locomotive. 13 Rockers!

Thing is, this "album" has:

6 rockers (You Could Be Mine, Perfect Crime, Bad Obsession, Used to Love Her, Back off Bitch, Yesterdays)

4 midtempo songs (The Garden, Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Patience, One in a Million)

2 slow songs (November Rain, Don't Cry)

So it isn't as extreme as it looks,

2 minutes ago, EvanG said:

Drug addictions? Egos? Legal problems?

That's a little bit later down the road, no?

In the period I mentioned I don't think they were as fucked up as that. I mean, if they managed to record those four acoustic tunes, they also could've stretched those sessions out by a couple of months and record some others. That's what I'm asking, why they took their time that much.

Just now, Propaganda said:

That would have been a "Chinese Democracy", and the band would have lost their momentum. Too much slow songs on the album.

I mean, the Illusions had the same quota of slow tunes, if I'm not mistaken. So I don't think so. And I tried to "sandwich" those slower songs in between the rockier ones, to try to make it flow better. Give it a listen, you'll get what I mean

For reference, here's an album they could've put out back then:

GUNS N' ROSES - GN'R LIES (ALBUM, 1989)
Side One:
01 You Could Be Mine - written in early 1987, recorded as it is
02 The Garden - written in 1985, Axl on lead in the bridge instead of Alice Cooper
03 Perfect Crime - written in early 1987, recorded as it is
04 Don't Cry - written in 1985, Izzy/Duff on backing vocals instead of Shannon Hoon
05 Bad Obsession - written in 1985, lead guitar instead of harmonica
06 Knockin' on Heaven's Door - covered since 1987, no choir on the "slow" part
Side Two:
07 Used to Love Her - more "electrified" version, like they used to play live
08 Patience - most probably as it was recorded back then
09 Back Off Bitch - written in 1982, slightly faster tempo
10 November Rain - written in 1983, stripped down, as they used to play live
11 Yesterdays - written in 1985, as it is on the album
12 One in a Million - slightly more "electrified" version, as with Used to Love Her

Non-album b-side: Ain't Going Down

The arrangement bits are just my guesses on what they would have done back then. Also, the fact they had Popcorn still functioning and playing some fantastic stuff, as well as Izzy being proiminent in the mix on Lies, would finally make the Illusion critics shut up

With five songs that could easily be lead singles, they would have no problem equaling Appetite's success, as well as making the transition to the more "complicated" material they started writing in mid-1989 (such as Civil War) much smoother. Imagine releasing that in April '89, just before they opened for the Stones.

Oh, what a dream...

It took 3 years for them to even start working on the followup record to it, and released it 4 years after Appetite. Today, that might not seem like much, but back then that was quite a lot, and the Illusions records were hyped up as a result. Why didn't they record a second LP in, say, late '88/early '89? Have there ever been any explanations regarding that?

I mean, they had a lot of material (something like 40% of UYI was already written, and most of the best songs), and despite touring a lot, had enough free time on their schedule to record a new record, if it was done in the same time as AFD. Recording the album instead of the Lies EP, with the original lineup, would have been great. A shame they didn't do it

4 hours ago, Sosso said:

I'm doing the same thing with the original line-up from 1985 right now. I love those "what could've been" scenarios. 

Same,

My latest project is a what-if album from 1988 with all the songs that were written by then, shaping up nicely, ahaha

GUNS N' ROSES - GN'R LIES (1989)
Side One:
01 You Could Be Mine - written in late '86
02 The Garden - written in 1985
03 Perfect Crime - played live in 1987
04 Don't Cry - written in 1985
05 Back Off Bitch - written in 1982
06 Knockin' on Heaven's Door - covered since 1987
Side Two:
07 Used to Love Her - written in 1987
08 Patience - written in 1987
09 Bad Obsession - written in 1984
10 November Rain - written in 1985
11 Yesterdays - written in 1984
12 One in a Million - written in 1987

21 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Izzy and Duff were working on some demos also. I think this was in April 1995. 

Unfortunately, they haven't leaked until now. If they did, that'd be a good reference point, as well.

1 minute ago, Uncle Bob said:

So you bassically think a Gn'R album in 1995 would have been "It's Five o' Clock Somewhere"

What other option do I have?

Hey there folks!

So, a while ago (before I was even registered to this forum, actually, ha), I looked into their 94-96 rehearsals and tried to see if I could figure out what might have been on a sixth studio album of theirs, and ended up with this as a result.

Now I'd like to ask your opinions on the issue, if you agree with my assumptions, and so forth. Thanks a lot!

18 minutes ago, MikeD said:

...butt so fine is an excellent song...

A bonus track it'll be, then