denin

19 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

reality and inner band dynamics/relationships are more complicated than the provisions in a contract. So, although probably Slash and Duff weren't keen on the idea of making videos as expensive as November Rain, they didn't vocally oppose to it.

Yup.

Duff's book has a telling passage, in which he has a dream about having a word with Axl in the UYI days. IIRC, he felt seriously anxious about confronting Axl, a notorious hair-trigger with his ego stroked to high heaven by their financial success. At that point, Axl often behaved pretty horribly to those close to him, determined to have his way. The substance abuse of the others obviously  made level-headed communication even harder.

They're all partners again, but some partners are more equal than others.

Ax went to see the Deontay Wilder vs Tyson Fury fight with Mickey, then. Dec 1st 2018 in LA. Still mates, it seems.

Mickey reminisces on the filmmaker Elia Kazan (ON THE WATERFRONT), and his Hollywood blackballing due to Kazan's testimony in 1952 against supposed Communist sympathizers. Tyson places this in the "McCartney era". :D

On 19/03/2017 at 7:28 PM, RussTCB said:

Hull was a Red Wing at the time, right? In any case, the Hull and Wallace jerseys seem to be whatever was laying around for Axl to wear because they're Detroit lol

On 19/03/2017 at 9:28 PM, Modano09 said:

He was, it was just a stacked team and when you think of the Red Wings you don't think Brett Hull. Seemed like a random choice. Axl in hockey jerseys is odd anyway because I know throwbacks and jerseys were trendy at the time, but hockey jerseys never really were.

Makes you think how it was on the backstages in 2002.

Every venue, pre-show, Merck/Beta pops the question.

"Got any hometown jerseys lying around... y'know, baggy?"

Somebody was called fat yesteryear and took to heart.

Sad news, but glad to see the INFERNO theme vid opening this thread.

It's real.

Chopaway,com used to be an Izzy-endorsed fansite.

Slash admitted that he and Axl Rose hadn't spoken for "a long time," but that most of their old tensions had eased. "We don't have all those issues anymore," he said.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/6560914/guns-n-roses-slash-reunion-axl-rose-interview

They're all a bunch of snidey cunts.

Well said! Great musicians, but fame hungry, moral free guttersnipes that would sell their grandmothers for another minute in the sun.

Pretty much. A slight too self-important chaps who are cushioned to adulation, all of which is coming from people with bigger problems than a multi-million-dollar income.

They should go down incognito to witness how their hair-metal peers (Cinderella et al) are doing nowadays. Might be insightful in regards to how privileged they really are.

Slash didn't look like a douche.

If one takes Axl's account as gospel, Slash looked like a douche by showing up at his door and berating his fellow VR members.

I believe it all happened - only I have trouble admitting that Slash would've said all those things right off the bat. A more plausible explanation, to me, is that Beta baited him somewhat. Slash was under the influence, so he was game. Wasn't he also on Vicodin at the time?

So Slash shows up in the dead of night, he's three sheets to the wind and he babbles something he may or may not have meant because the situation is emotionally charged. Beta hears whatever she hears and repeats it to Axl, for whom the situation is also emotionally charged, and it gets distorted more.

Ding, ding. We have a winner here. It's easy to imagine all these people detached from their emotions when it's all put to literary form. Plus, the context gets mired easily.

At the time, Weiland was pushing the concept album approach on Libertad. What Slash might've insinuated is that "Scott's a fraud" (because of that dingbat idea - Slash wanted to make a straight-up rock album with zero pretensions), he "hates Matt Sorum" (for siding with Scott in discussions over the concept album idea), and that "Duff is spineless" (for allowing Scott and Matt go on with it, instead of putting his foot down to say, he'd prefer Slash's approach).

The bit about the war in which Axl proved to be stronger is a bit trickier. As Ax said in 2012, "I'm surviving this war, not the one who created this war." To me, that whole choice of words plays out as something Axl might say. Beta might've broached the subject of a "war" between Axl and Slash, about them being at odds for years and Axl trying to outlive Slash in Guns. Slash could've admitted that Axl is "stronger" in keeping with it, for better or for worse.

Of course, if you take away the context, Slash looks like a real douche. Which was intentional, obviously. Put enough truth to it to back him into a corner. The "real story" would mean more dirty laundry, a lose-lose situation for Slash.

And instead of just saying "go home, you're drunk, Slash" and writing it off, it blows up into a press release. Meanwhile everyone has their own version of what they think was said and they believe that 100%.

In all fairness, there were six months between the visit and the press release. Axl kept quiet about it until Slash & Duff filed another lawsuit on him.

Btw Beta talked to Slash face to face or it was through Intercom?

Great.

Now I have a mental image of a drunk Slash trying to feed a note to the Intercom.

Amorphis are a cautionary tale about making a living in music. They essentially wrote a piss-poor contract way too early in the game to know how the biz worked. That meant a decade's worth of work on a bad deal. Less than ideal to get lousy royalties when your sophomore album sells like hot cakes, and it seriously hampered their career prospects. Props for sticking through it, tho.

I saw them live some years back, with Joutsen. Was entertained.

Better?

I think there's a greater infraction and thats, if you subscribe to the requisite notions, an ethical hypocrisy, the charlatanism of it.

I get that, and agree with you, but...

At that point, we're in our glass house, throwing rocks at people.

It's called the global financial system and all of us who use money are affiliated, by proxy, to the negative things it causes.

It'd be nice to think Lydon sticks it up to the Man.

Chances are, he's doing it on his terms.

Maybe, the world would run better if more people did the same.

Horrific. I am not even a fan of the man in any big shape or form but I still feel let down, or rather like the Rotten of 201X is letting down the Rotten of 1976. Fuck, if he is that desperate for money I would lend him a fiver - jesus, butter adverts!

Would you have preferred him to finance PiL via crowfunding?

That'd be doable, but usually with crowdfunding, one pledges to cater the investors in various ways.

Doing the advert and the corporate money is much less time-consuming. It's a day's work for Lydon.

After that, laugh all the way to the bank and get cracking on your schedule on new music.

I get where you're coming from and fair enough, the adverts exist to make profit for the butter company shareholders.

By proxy, Lydon is therefore affiliated in their money-making schemes.

The Sex Pistols are on iTunes. By proxy, Lydon is therefore affiliated with the shady Oriental sweatshops where iThings are made.

I guess Lydon sees the butter adverts as mutual exploitation between him and the butter company shareholders.

He spends (in his words) the monies to benefit PiL and gets to goof around in the telly to maintain his, well, Public Image, Ltd.

Joke's in the name, eh?

Was Iggy really broke when he did those adverts?

"Now I'm older and I need all the dough I can get."

- Iggy

I recommend reading his keynote speech, there, as he talks in-depth about the realities of the industry as he's seen them, as well as the conflict of art and money from his perspective.

Should you disagree with him, fine. But since you brought up the guy, you might consider hearing him out

"Brian Wilson presents Smile" fits the bill.

The Smile sessions, with original studio recordings from the 60's, was released some years later.

Funny enough, Smile gets mentioned a lot next to CD. Only it's considered a vastly superior work as what it is.

 

They're not those members but they are some of the longest serving members, at least with Lu Edmonds in there. i think part of the idea of 'we're a communications company, not a band' was that...a company can work with anyone right? But no, when Johnnys solo it's clear it's him solo i.e. the album Psychos Path that he released under his own name, this band are very much PiL and not a case of just being the Johnny roadshow. Lu Edmonds was with The Damned early on but he's just a crazy multi-instrumentalist guy.

 

Yeah, it's more or less the Happy? album lineup from '86. What saddens me is that John McGeoch is no longer among us. An absolutely wicked guitarist, who served with PiL from the mid-80's all the way to Lydon disbanding it in '92. McGeoch had by then already done excellent work with bands like Magazine and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and his output is definitely worth tracking down.

It's cool that Lydon is still genuinely trying with PiL, as he apparently sees it as his legacy more than the Sex Pistols. It's easy to understand why. The Pistols were ultimately a lightning in the bottle, the band element oft overshadowed by all the brouhaha and Malcolm McLaren. PiL is more a serious endeavour for Lydon and much more of a musical journey, given their decades of activity.

One caveat for me. With McGeoch gone, why not call Keef Levene? He's still active as a solo musician and would prolly be happy enough to be there. It'd be real interesting to see where he'd go with John after all these years - besides the courthouse, that is.

The Metal Box is a great album and Rise is a good single. Overall, I find PiL discography uneven, but Lydon's entertaining.

Here's an infamous 1980 performance, where PiL simply refuses to adhere to the strict stipulations of the show. The players goof around with their instruments, underlining the fact that the music is playback. Lydon strides around the stage, occupies the hosts podium (a big no-no at the time) - violating it with his mic - and involves the audience in his own special way.

Vintage Rotten, it is

Axl Rose started out screeching about being “just an urchin livin’ under the street,” but in the thirteen years he’s been working on the oft-delayed album Chinese Democracy (at a price that’s exceeded $13 million), he’s had time to reflect on heavy-metal posturing. “We thought we were so badass,” he said in the greenroom at the VMAs. “Then N.W.A. came out rapping about this world where you walk out of your house and you get shot. It was just so clear what stupid little white-boy poseurs we were. It was like, ‘All right, we can give up the act.’ If you’re talking about which lifestyle is more hard-core, the one where you get shot always wins.”

http://www.mygnrforum.com/index.php?/topic/78886-exwhite-boy-poseur/

That's the General intro, right? Who'd had guessed we're still to hear the whole thing.

2006 was great, tho. It was a real treat to see the band live, they were stonking.

 

It's been nine years since GnR rocked the UK in 2006.

Here's the whole Nottingham show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5YRxYkfNYc

An energetic Axl sprints around the stage and gives a passionate performance. No hiding behind an ultrawide bandana, hats or coats here! At this time, his band included players such as Bumblefoot and Robin Finck.

 

WTF happened?

Axl had a good run on the '09/10 tour. His diet and exercise regime had obviously taken a beating since the last they toured in Japan two years prior. It had been a bit shocking, to be honest. Sure, he's been prone to transform in less than a year (NYE '02 in Vegas vs Summer '02 is one of his quickest), but come on. He was set to reclaim the rock world in his '06-07 season. I bet a lot of people were waiting on that Axl to jump the stage. What happened in between was CD. Cue beating on diet and exercise regime. At hindisight, it was still passable and he improved as he went.

So, 2011. Rock in Rio for the umpteenth time. Whenever Guns hit the stage at RIR, they'd delivered. We were bound to see him step up his game some more after the promise shown recently. Right? When I saw that show, I went, 'Uh oh. I used to think 2010 was a slight disappointment.' A beating on diet and exercise regime in comparison to the previous year would be putting it mildly. People said he was fat at RIR3 in 2001. Ten years later, he was. His voice was shot. He fumbled on the lyrics and humiliated Beta on stage in a surreal moment (no love lost, Beta, but that's a long way from RIR3).

Something went down with Axl during that year, which completely discouraged him and made him let go of himself. We may argue whether he's been working on getting back to it since, but I wonder what caused it. He did settle with Azoff during the summer, could that have been the reason he suddenly felt prepping for tours is a waste of time as people only come in for nostalgia, or whatever?