The "New Album" Thread . The maybe, possibly, at some point, soon, whenever, wtf Axl thread🤞

[Dean]

On the topic of Going Down, I rank it higher than any other Guns tune that doesn’t feature Axl on lead vocals. It’s a great song that deserved to be released under the GNR banner. While I think Axl doing lead vocals on it would’ve been amazing, I think it most likely didn’t happen. If I recall, the chat was always Beta supposedly claimed he recorded lead vocals for it on Instagram, but there was never any evidence and I think it was someone at the windup making a false claim.

I hope Tommy does get it back. Fuck knows what’s happening with this Cowboys in the Campfire record but hopefully it’ll see the light of day (🤣) soon!

Edited September 22, 2022 by Dean

[The Matinator]

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

Going Down and another song called "Ten %er (which is "Tommy demo #2 on the Village discs) have been registered on ASCAP with Tommy as the only songwriter.

Bummer. Going Down is one of my fav songs & it’s sucks that it’ll probably never be released by GNR.

cool we finally got a name for the other Tommy demo though. Has this been confirmed or is everybody just assuming?

Edited September 23, 2022 by The Matinator

[Stro]

Village Gorilla Head 2 would be pretty rad. 

[ChrisW]

Just a note but I would assume Geffen [whoever owns that company now] has 100% ownership of G'n'R music.  Just from the UYI era, Axl threw expensive parties after every show - Slash, Duff and Metallica quickly stopped attending but the parties continued - there were were the expensive videos, and then another dozen years or so of paying to record Chinese Democracy.

It's never been put out who owns what but my guess is Geffen recouped some of its investment by taking ownership of AfD, Lies, UYI and TSI and maybe the CD sessions as well.  If there was anything to put out which people would think 'that sounds like Guns'n'Roses,' Geffen could probably do just that.

I do think that's why Axl changed his mind on re-hiring Slash and Duff.

[Gordon Comstock]

5 minutes ago, The Matinator said:

cool we finally got a name for the other Tommy demo though. Has this been confirmed or is everybody just assuming?

 

"Ten Percenter" was confirmed months ago by Tommy, someone (maybe Rick?) went to one of his solo shows and asked him about the song.

[ShadowOfTheWave]

16 minutes ago, Dean said:

On the topic of Going Down, I rank it higher than any other Guns tune that doesn’t feature Axl on lead vocals. It’s a great song that deserved to be released under the GNR banner. While I think Axl doing lead vocals on it would’ve been amazing, I think it most likely didn’t happen. If I recall, the chat was always Beta supposedly claimed he recorded lead vocals for it on Instagram, but there was never any evidence and I think it was someone at the windup making a false claim.

I hope Tommy does get it back. Fuck knows what’s happening with this Cowboys in the Campfire record but hopefully it’ll see the light of day (🤣) soon!

Yeah, unlike "complaints, complaints, complaints" there was no evidence of Beta saying anything about Going Down.

[bumcheecksmcghee]

51 minutes ago, The Matinator said:

Bummer. Going Down is one of my fav songs & it’s sucks that it’ll probably never be released by GNR.

cool we finally got a name for the other Tommy demo though. Has this been confirmed or is everybody just assuming?

I just named the other song "save me" when I added it to my ipod hahaha 

I don't want youuuuuu

To saaaaave meeeee!

[Legendador]

2 hours ago, Blackstar said:

You mean they try to upload the actual recordings from the Village discs or cover versions of them like Aien?

Both, th algorythm reads Guns N' Roses - "Something" and it gets indexed.

We are messing with it withou even knowing

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

Thanks. But @Legendadorsaid that people try to upload these songs on the Spotify version for musicians, that's why I asked.

And as soon as they read this is not s copyrighted song (DRM), they take it down.

[JAxlMorrison]

1 hour ago, LandOla said:

New song(s) incoming in a few hours. Hopefully.

You’d have to figure, Hard Skool appeared how long before release? I’d take that example as a reasonable timetable, but I think a surprise drop would be madness. So who knows. But if it’s say a Christmas time release, why get them ready so soon if it isn’t necessary?

[Blackstar]

1 hour ago, ChrisW said:

Just a note but I would assume Geffen [whoever owns that company now] has 100% ownership of G'n'R music.  Just from the UYI era, Axl threw expensive parties after every show - Slash, Duff and Metallica quickly stopped attending but the parties continued - there were were the expensive videos, and then another dozen years or so of paying to record Chinese Democracy.

It's never been put out who owns what but my guess is Geffen recouped some of its investment by taking ownership of AfD, Lies, UYI and TSI and maybe the CD sessions as well.  If there was anything to put out which people would think 'that sounds like Guns'n'Roses,' Geffen could probably do just that.

I do think that's why Axl changed his mind on re-hiring Slash and Duff.

There are two types of ownership/copyright: ownership of the compositions/music/songs and ownership of the sound recordings (the recorded music).

In the former case (ownership of the compositions) usually the people who wrote the songs own them, unless there is a different arrangement. And GN'R owns them: Slash and Duff still have the copyright of their own shares; Axl shares the copyright of his own share with Universal (because he leased his publishing to Sanctuary for 20 years in 2005, and Sanctuary was subsequently bought out by Universal). Also the three of them (the old partnership) own the rights to the back catalogue of classic GN'R (which means that they can license songs to be used in movies, commercials etc.)

The sound recordings are usually owned by the label (because it paid for them) for a certain amount of years according to the contract with the artist. From what I've understood, if an amount of time is not specified, the label owns the recordings for 35 years and then the ownership is passed on to the artist. So GN'R now fully own at least the recordings of AFD and Lies (Duff had even mentioned that in an interview in 2018, ie. that they were about to take ownership). From the credits on the track lists of the UYI box set it seems that UMG still owns the studio recordings of the UYI albums. However, GN'R owns the live recordings. As for the CD era songs, the label probably owns the recordings from that era. But according to the credits for Absurd and Hard Skool, GN'R owns these new re-recording, which means they financed it themselves. As for the videos, at least most of them are owned by GN'R (if you look at the copyright credits under each official video on the youtube channel, it says "copyright GN'R under exclusive license to Geffen/UMG).

Edited September 23, 2022 by Blackstar

[GoForJMark]

The most GN'R thing that could happen is that the songs may have already been on the database of streaming services and they completely changed their mind of releasing them at all 

[AxlRoseCDII]

9 minutes ago, GoForJMark said:

The most GN'R thing that could happen is that the songs may have already been on the database of streaming services and they completely changed their mind of releasing them at all 

Unironically I think this is what's happened

[Nick85]

7 minutes ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

Unironically I think this is what's happened

Same.

[Blackstar]

The theory that the tracks were submitted by GN'R and then removed is even more far-fetched than anything else that's been speculated on in the last 100 or so pages of this thread

[Gordon Comstock]

3 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

The theory that the tracks were submitted by GN'R and then removed is even more far-fetched than anything else that's been speculated on in the last 100 or so pages of this thread

 

Which is exactly why it makes sense in GNR-world...

 

[slash23579]

Kinda interesting thing to note when spamming linkfire pages like I’m doing is that they got 2 and they’re not compatible with each other 

the one for Hard Skool and Absurd use the full gunsnroses name like gunsnroses.lnk.to/HardSkool

but the UYI box and all their main albums just use gnr like gnr.lnk.to/UYI2022

You can try putting Hard Skool on the second one and it won’t work and vice versa 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by slash23579

[CDRules]

12 minutes ago, slash23579 said:

Kinda interesting thing to note when spamming linkfire pages like I’m doing is that they got 2 and they’re not compatible with each other 

the one for Hard Skool and Absurd use the full gunsnroses name like gunsnroses.lnk.to/HardSkool

but the UYI box and all their main albums just use gnr like gnr.lnk.to/UYI2022

You can try putting Hard Skool on the second one and it won’t work and vice versa 

 

If you try gnr.lnk.to/UYIIV it brings you to the box set but curiously UYIIII doesn't work

EDIT: AFDII and AFDBB brings you to appetite so there's something with that service they use and repeat characters

 

 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by CDRules

[Blackstar]

30 minutes ago, Legendador said:

Both, th algorythm reads Guns N' Roses - "Something" and it gets indexed.

We are messing with it withou even knowing

And as soon as they read this is not s copyrighted song (DRM), they take it down.

Interesting. But that must have been happening since these tracks leaked, so for about three years, correct? So it's still strange that they pop up in the search results now and not earlier. Also "Soul Monster" is not a title of a leaked track - unless the users who might have tried to upload "Me and My Elvis" changed the metadata and added "Soulmonster," but how many would have done that? (The General is not a title of leaked track either, but let's say that people uploaded Evader's "reconstruction" and put GN'R in the title).

[ChrisW]

22 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

There are two types of ownership/copyright: ownership of the compositions/music/songs and ownership of the sound recordings (the recorded music).

In the former case (ownership of the compositions) usually the people who wrote the songs own them, unless there is a different arrangement. And GN'R owns them: Slash and Duff still have the copyright of their own shares; Axl shares the copyright of his own share with Universal (because he leased his publishing to Sanctuary for 20 years in 2005, and Sanctuary was subsequently bought out by Universal).

The sound recordings are usually owned by the label (because it paid for them) for a certain amount of years according to the contract with the artist. From what I've understood, if an amount of time is not specified, the label owns the recordings for 35 years and then the ownership is passed on to the artist. So GN'R now fully own at least the recordings of AFD and Lies (Duff had even mentioned that in an interview in 2018, ie. that they were about to take ownership). From the credits on the track lists of the UYI box set it seems that UMG still owns the studio recordings of the UYI albums. However, GN'R owns the live recordings. As for the CD era songs, the label probably owns the recordings from that era. But according to the credits for Absurd and Hard Skool, GN'R owns these new re-recording, which means they financed it themselves. As for the videos, at least most of them are owned by GN'R (if you look at the copyright credits under each official video on the youtube channel, it says "copyright GN'R under exclusive license to Geffen/UMG).

I know it gets very complicated very quickly and different bands can do different things in different places.  As an example, when Sammy Hagar joined Van Halen, he brought his industry experience and got the band much better contracts, but David Lee Roth wasn't included, so he was still paid like a new guy for his share of the biggest VH hits.

But we don't know what has been changed since Axl became sole owner of GNR, or what changed when he re-hired Slash and Duff.  Since GNR doesn't produce new music, all there is to negotiate on is what already exists, and maybe money from ticket sales.  That's why I thought Axl's 2005 deal with Sanctuary was a sham, they paid tons of money for twenty years and have almost nothing to show for it.

I definitely think Geffen (and related companies) are able to demand as much ownership as possible just based on how much money Axl owed them.  Negotiations can be done with Slash and Duff, all sorts of other options that we never hear of, but since there's no new music, I'd bet on the companies having everything.

[AxlRoseCDII]

3 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

Interesting. But that must have been happening since these tracks leaked, so for about three years, correct? So it's still strange that they pop up in the search results now and not earlier. Also "Soul Monster" is not a title of a leaked track - unless the users who might have tried to upload "Me and My Elvis" changed the metadata and added "Soulmonster," but how many would have done that? (The General is not a title of leaked track either, but let's say that people uploaded Evader's "reconstruction" and put GN'R in the title).

I struggle to see this as possible because it would mean GNR is the only band that has that phenomenon. I researched over dozens of circulating demos of other artists earlier and this type of thing simply doesn't happen with other bands.

[Blackstar]

40 minutes ago, ChrisW said:

I know it gets very complicated very quickly and different bands can do different things in different places.  As an example, when Sammy Hagar joined Van Halen, he brought his industry experience and got the band much better contracts, but David Lee Roth wasn't included, so he was still paid like a new guy for his share of the biggest VH hits.

But we don't know what has been changed since Axl became sole owner of GNR, or what changed when he re-hired Slash and Duff.  Since GNR doesn't produce new music, all there is to negotiate on is what already exists, and maybe money from ticket sales.  That's why I thought Axl's 2005 deal with Sanctuary was a sham, they paid tons of money for twenty years and have almost nothing to show for it.

I definitely think Geffen (and related companies) are able to demand as much ownership as possible just based on how much money Axl owed them.  Negotiations can be done with Slash and Duff, all sorts of other options that we never hear of, but since there's no new music, I'd bet on the companies having everything.

But, like I said, it's clear from the credits that GN'R owns Absurd and Hard Skool. And the credits on everything else give certain clues about who owns what.

Also, although there is little information about the current legal/business status of the band, it doesn't seem that Axl "re-hired" Slash and Duff.

Edit to add: I don't think the label paid for Axl's theme parties or any other expenses of the UYI tour. All these, including the film crew that followed them during the whole tour, were paid by GN'R and that's why GN'R owns the footage.

As for CD, by various accounts it seems that the label got its money with the Best Buy deal. The deal with Sanctuary doesn't have anything to do with that. Sanctuary paid Axl some money in exchange for future exploitation of Axl's share in the back catalogue (which is where most of the royalties come from) as well as of his share in future releases, so it was a beneficiary deal for both parties at that time. Then, like I said earlier, Sanctuary was bought out by UMG (that was in 2007, so Sanctuary didn't "pay tones of money for twenty years"). And if anything, UMG as the temporary co-owner of Axl's publishing share (after it got it from Sanctuary) naturally would have more interest in milking the back catalogue that sells more than in releasing new music.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Blackstar

[veon]

48 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

There are two types of ownership/copyright: ownership of the compositions/music/songs and ownership of the sound recordings (the recorded music).

In the former case (ownership of the compositions) usually the people who wrote the songs own them, unless there is a different arrangement. And GN'R owns them: Slash and Duff still have the copyright of their own shares; Axl shares the copyright of his own share with Universal (because he leased his publishing to Sanctuary for 20 years in 2005, and Sanctuary was subsequently bought out by Universal). Also the three of them (the old partnership) own the rights to the back catalogue of classic GN'R (which means that they can license songs to be used in movies, commercials etc.)

The sound recordings are usually owned by the label (because it paid for them) for a certain amount of years according to the contract with the artist. From what I've understood, if an amount of time is not specified, the label owns the recordings for 35 years and then the ownership is passed on to the artist. So GN'R now fully own at least the recordings of AFD and Lies (Duff had even mentioned that in an interview in 2018, ie. that they were about to take ownership). From the credits on the track lists of the UYI box set it seems that UMG still owns the studio recordings of the UYI albums. However, GN'R owns the live recordings. As for the CD era songs, the label probably owns the recordings from that era. But according to the credits for Absurd and Hard Skool, GN'R owns these new re-recording, which means they financed it themselves. As for the videos, at least most of them are owned by GN'R (if you look at the copyright credits under each official video on the youtube channel, it says "copyright GN'R under exclusive license to Geffen/UMG).

I have wondered if the label owning the CD recordings has anything to do with why they’ve changed the song titles? Maybe an end-around tactic to maintain control of ‘new’ recordings by copyrighting them under different names.  Could explain why Hard Skool’s spelling changed and Silkworms was dropped. Or I’m just sleep deprived. 

[Blackstar]

1 minute ago, veon said:

I have wondered if the label owning the CD recordings has anything to do with why they’ve changed the song titles? Maybe an end-around tactic to maintain control of ‘new’ recordings by copyrighting them under different names.  Could explain why Hard Skool’s spelling changed and Silkworms was dropped. Or I’m just sleep deprived. 

No, I don't think the different titles of the songs have anything to do with that. The copyright is on the composition and the recording, not the name. That GN'R owns the recordings of Absurd and Hard Skool simply means that they paid for these specific (re)recordings - and it doesn't seem that the cost was big, since probably Slash and Duff recorded them in their own studios and Axl mixed them with Caram in his own home studio.

[Caedo]

42 minutes ago, AxlRoseCDII said:

Unironically I think this is what's happened

I’d say this is very unlikely. Stuff is just showing up in the last couple days in Australia so is clearly just being uploaded over the past week. More songs are still showing up, this hasn’t petered out

[ChrisW]

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

But, like I said, it's clear from the credits that GN'R owns Absurd and Hard Skool. And the credits on everything else give certain clues about who owns what.

Also, although there is little information about the current legal/business status of the band, it doesn't seem that Axl "re-hired" Slash and Duff.

Edit to add: I don't think the label paid for Axl's theme parties or any other expenses of the UYI tour. All these, including the film crew that followed them during the whole tour, were paid by GN'R and that's why GN'R owns the footage.

As for CD, by various accounts it seems that the label got its money with the Best Buy deal. The deal with Sanctuary doesn't have anything to do with that. Sanctuary paid Axl some money in exchange for future exploitation of Axl's share in the back catalogue (which is where most of the royalties come from) as well as of his share in future releases, so it was a beneficiary deal for both parties at that time. Then, like I said earlier, Sanctuary was bought out by UMG (that was in 2007, so Sanctuary didn't "pay tones of money for twenty years"). And if anything, UMG as the temporary co-owner of Axl's publishing share (after it got it from Sanctuary) naturally would have more interest in milking the back catalogue that sells more than in releasing new music.

At this point, I'm not sure we can even trust the credits.  I'd be skeptical if Slash or Duff flat-out explained what they do or don't own of G'n'R at this point, and until it's confirmed that Axl is no longer the sole owner, I'll assume he is.  Slash and Duff are highly-paid employees.

Axl was probably personally responsible for the expenses on the UYI tour and whatnot, but he wouldn't remotely have the money to pay for all that.  Rock stars are famous for spending way more money than they have, especially the first several years (when they have their biggest hits.)  What options would he have to pay for all of this?

Bands like Queen could exit contracts with companies and just give the old company a percentage of their income with the new company but they kept producing new work which showed them continuing what they had always done.  You can't get a percentage of income from Axl's new music because there is none.