2008 HETFIELD quote on GNR

[izzydoezit]

"(Guns N Roses) are a different type of band - and I use the word 'band' loosely. It's a guy and some other guys."

If some people claim that this band is not GNR, then threads get moved to ATTITUDE and discussions are pretty much banned. Hetfield, a man leading one of the most successful bands of the last decades claims the same thing. And he pretty much covers 99% of the public consensus on the current state of GNR.

[gunsfanoldie]

That'll never change. This will always be the public consensus, and it will especially be the consensus of artists that used to play and know the band during their initial period. Also, as much as I like the people in the new band, Hetfield is right and they will always be "some other guys".

[wasted]

Quite a few bands have leaders. Megadeth and QOTSA, NIN, ACDC. Axl is special case hes had three different line ups under one name. You can hate or admire that.

[Guest NGOG]

What's the difference between one guy and some other guys and two guys and some other guys? It's only with hindsight that Duff and Izzy have gotten any acclaim.

[abpagain]

Quite a few bands have leaders. Megadeth and QOTSA, NIN, ACDC. Axl is special case hes had three different line ups under one name. You can hate or admire that.

Trent Reznor is NIN. He himself says it. Trent deliberately differentiates between NIN and NIN live band, not pretending there is no difference.

[Estranged Reality]

"(Guns N Roses) are a different type of band - and I use the word 'band' loosely. It's a guy and some other guys."

If some people claim that this band is not GNR, then threads get moved to ATTITUDE and discussions are pretty much banned. Hetfield, a man leading one of the most successful bands of the last decades claims the same thing. And he pretty much covers 99% of the public consensus on the current state of GNR.

Give me a break, dude. "Discussions are pretty much banned" - no.

Here's what currently happens (and we are still working on restructuring the forum, so that may change in the near future): we keep GN'R Discussion and News for people who do still like the new band, who want to treat it like a band, who don't just view it as Axl and "some guys." (Or, if they do, they at least like those guys.) Those people do exist, and this section is for them. Is criticism allowed? Yeah, of course: you don't have to agree or enjoy everything GN'R does. Constructive criticism is fine. But unfortunately that's not what tends to happen here. We get the fat Axl jokes, the instigation from both sides about Axl vs Slash, the trolling of threads about bandmembers deriding them and their involvement in the band.

If you have an active dislike of current GN'R, if your sole interest is in the old band and a reunion, then we don't want every single thread getting derailed to ruin the experience for people who do like the band, because ultimately this is a fan forum, and it started as a fan forum for the current lineup (or, at least, post-breakup lineup) so it's not like people who registered here were under any false impressions.

Even so, we provide the Reunion/Old Band sections for discussion about that stuff for people who hold different opinions, who want to complain about what has happened to GN'R over the years and want to belittle Axl and his actions over the years, because we don't want to ignore the original fans, which, in my humble opinion, I think differentiates us from perhaps a few other venues out there.

Attitude was created as a place where the people who enjoy hating on Axl and his new band could spout off and unleash their passionate opinions with less moderation, but it seems at times like it sort of backfired for the very people we created it for, because to be entirely honest with you - and I think they'd even admit it - a lot of the guys who have been "trolling" GN'R News regularly for years to rile people up do enjoy the attention their threads get, and now (instead of their topics being locked or deleted here) their topics tend to get moved to another section, and they feel like we're censoring them. No, and that was never the intention. The thing is, those threads would have never been allowed in the first place in the past. We've tried to make compromises and keep everyone happy -- old fans, new fans, people who are in between -- but people still whine at the end of the day and like to cry foul about censorship, party passes, Beta controlling the forum (all nonsense, for the record, for the hundred thousandth time).

James Hetfield is entitled to his opinion. If he posted here we would totally be cool with him posting in GN'R News and voicing his opinions. But if every single thread, every single post, he made was about how "this isn't GN'R, this isn't a band," then we'd probably politely ask him to start containing his posts to Attitude or the Old Band sections since it's clear he has no intention other than to ruffle feathers and disrupt the order here. Again, it's not about censorship or reducing visibility of opinions. It's just trying to keep the "fan forum" angle the #1 priority (as it always has been), without festering too positive or negative of a community, so that people of all opinions -- preferably constructive ones -- can have an intelligent discourse. And frankly a lot of the people who always whine about being censored and stuff, if their posts weren't so trollish and deliberately designed to instigate shit, if they were capable of expressing their opinions in a more mature manner, if they could raise valid criticisms of Axl instead of calling him a "fat piece of shit" or whatever else is commonplace these days... just the fact that their opinions of the band may be negative wouldn't matter. It's the substance of the post, not the angle it's coming from, that usually matters.

Hope that long, rambling explanation helps explain things a little better and may possibly reduce the number of censorship accusations for the next hour at least.