Slash says what happened with the GN'R name is a "dead issue" (WSJ interview)

[Bitchisback]

14 hours ago, Nintari said:

Yes, but if that's true, it's proof-positive that GNR as a band are no longer artists. Do you know how many bands still make records? Everyone from AC/DC and the Scorpions, to modern bands like The Lumineers. They're all churning them out. And do you know why? Because for an artist, making art is akin to breathing. So if modern GNR were still artists, and not just businessmen, they would have released one or even two records of brand new music (not old CD stuff) by now. But they haven't... and that pretty says it all. They're sadly here for the paycheck and playing live. That's it.

And that's real fuckin' bummer.

It's easy to name all the bands who put out a decent amount of albums while you ignore the many who are in the same situation as GnR.

 

System or a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Aerosmith.  Not everyone has an endless amount of creativity or passion to keep creating albums unfortunately.   Let's not pretend Axl is the only artist not creating new music tho.

[mystery]

4 hours ago, kiwiguns said:

The music and artistic industry has changed for many different reasons. 

No point in releasing an album when no one buys albums anymore and touring is the main stay for any recording artist. 

Record labels no longer hold the power they once did and don't have the financial resources to sign artists to large record deals as in the past. 

Guns N Roses will never receive a record deal in financial size and scope as the one CD was built on. 

Tour promotors hold all the power and can offer bands more financially to tour locally and around the world.

These guys aren't in the 80s and 90s anymore nor is the music industry. 

The band is operating within the supply and demand for touring and playing live that's is the common factor in the music industry of today and via selling albums. 

Touring,merchandise and other revenue streams filles the hole left due to album sales being poor in today's music industry compared to the past when album sales made an artist money and touring revenue was icing on the cake. 

 

 

 

 

To add to this, I don't think we'll ever see a situation like Chinese Democracy again where the record label gave Axl close to a blank check to work on it for years at huge cost.

They even imposed deadlines that in the end didn't make a difference and only stopped funding the album in 2004. Most labels today wouldn't bother with the headache that Geffen did. I wonder if the lack of funding for the album is what got the band touring again in 2006?

Edited January 31, 2022 by mystery

[DTJ80]

“One of the things Axl wanted to get off his chest was a bunch of material he’d recorded,” Slash says. “So we thought, ‘Well, that’s a good way to wet our feet.’” The coming material might arrive in a piecemeal fashion, before being assembled into an album. Work on an entirely new record hasn’t begun in earnest.

We all know the above is what’s currently happening but it’s a bit more explained here. Definitely feeds into the ‘clearing the decks/helping close the book on the CD-era’ theory…and Slash seems absolutely cool about it. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Edited February 1, 2022 by DTJ80

[GnR*]

Hey Blackstar, thanks to share it, very interesting reading  

[GnR Chris]

23 hours ago, kiwiguns said:

The music and artistic industry has changed for many different reasons. 

No point in releasing an album when no one buys albums anymore and touring is the main stay for any recording artist. 

Record labels no longer hold the power they once did and don't have the financial resources to sign artists to large record deals as in the past. 

Guns N Roses will never receive a record deal in financial size and scope as the one CD was built on. 

Tour promotors hold all the power and can offer bands more financially to tour locally and around the world.

These guys aren't in the 80s and 90s anymore nor is the music industry. 

The band is operating within the supply and demand for touring and playing live that's is the common factor in the music industry of today and via selling albums. 

Touring,merchandise and other revenue streams filles the hole left due to album sales being poor in today's music industry compared to the past when album sales made an artist money and touring revenue was icing on the cake. 

 

 

 

 

Not to be rude, but what the hell does this have to do with the comment you responded to? The industry has changed yet other artists continue to create and release new music.

[oneway23]

21 hours ago, Bitchisback said:

It's easy to name all the bands who put out a decent amount of albums while you ignore the many who are in the same situation as GnR.

 

System or a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Aerosmith.  Not everyone has an endless amount of creativity or passion to keep creating albums unfortunately.   Let's not pretend Axl is the only artist not creating new music tho.

You have a point with Rage & System.  Two other bands with small discographies who continue to pry money from nostalgic fans' hands, with little to justify their existence beyond touring on past glories.

Mentioning Aerosmith, on the other hand, is a bit unfair.  They'd already released twice as many albums by the end of the 70's than GN'R has in three decades, and they continued to regularly release albums well into the 21st century, before relying strictly on touring only over the past decade.

By & large, IMO, it really becomes increasingly difficult to consider a band a viable if they aren't an actively creative entity.

Edited February 1, 2022 by oneway23

[SoulMonster]

26 minutes ago, oneway23 said:

By & large, IMO, it really becomes increasingly difficult to consider a band a viable if they aren't an actively creative entity.

They are obviously not viable as an actively creative entity but as an actively touring entity. 

[Bitchisback]

36 minutes ago, oneway23 said:

Mentioning Aerosmith, on the other hand, is a bit unfair.  They'd already released twice as many albums by the end of the 70's than GN'R has in three decades, and they continued to regularly release albums well into the 21st century, before relying strictly on touring only over the past decade.

 Well my point with Aerosmith is since 2001 they have put out one album of original material (and a covers album). And they are not much older than Axl and Slash (about 10 years each I believe). So their creativity and passion to create disappeared during their later years too.  This is not unusual or an issue that exclusively plagues Axl.  

 

The difference between GnR and Aerosmith is Aerosmith had a really high creative output when they were younger than Axl who basically disappeared at 35 years old

[oneway23]

38 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

They are obviously not viable as an actively creative entity but as an actively touring entity. 

They are undoubtedly an active touring entity though, that wasn't the issue at the heart of the post I responded to.

Again, in my opinion, if you are a band not actively creating new material, you are essentially a zombie entity, just going through motions, play-acting at being a fully-functioning band, rotely regurgitating past glories, so that your aging fans can fondly remember the backseat they got laid in.

There's clearly a market for that.  Fair play to them.

By the way, in my view, that doesn't even have to necessarily mean getting in the studio for three to six months.  If you have no interest in writing a new record, do something!

Put out an acoustic show, play with an orchestra, re-contextualize the material for your fans...Something, anything, to revitalize yourselves.

The good news is that they've at least released the two songs.  Let's hope for more.

Edited February 1, 2022 by oneway23

[oneway23]

11 minutes ago, Bitchisback said:

 Well my point with Aerosmith is since 2001 they have put out one album of original material (and a covers album). And they are not much older than Axl and Slash (about 10 years each I believe). So their creativity and passion to create disappeared during their later years too.  This is not unusual or an issue that exclusively plagues Axl.  

 

The difference between GnR and Aerosmith is Aerosmith had a really high creative output when they were younger than Axl who basically disappeared at 35 years old

That's a fair outlook.  You're right.  All this does is once again highlight just how much crucial time was casually tossed away...sad

Edited February 1, 2022 by oneway23

[SoulMonster]

25 minutes ago, oneway23 said:

They are undoubtedly an active touring entity though, that wasn't the issue at the heart of the post I responded to.

Again, in my opinion, if you are a band not actively creating new material, you are essentially a zombie entity, just going through motions, play-acting at being a fully-functioning band, rotely regurgitating past glories, so that your aging fans can fondly remember the backseat they got laid in.

Christ man, that doesn't even have to mean getting in the studio for three to six months.  If you have no interest in writing a new record, do something!

Put out an acoustic show, play with an orchestra, re-contextualize the material for your fans...Something, anything, to revitalize yourselves.

The good news is that they've at least released the two songs.  Let's hope for more.

I don't reserve the term 'band' solely for creative entities. Even a purely nostalgia act that tours off past successes, just doing the same shows over and over, is a 'band' to me. 

This gives me deja vu, btw. Fans here have been complaining about the band since... well, as long as I can remember. At the very least the band is releasing music now and is actively working on songs. That is pretty good. The period 2010-2016 was worse. But we got through that too

[oneway23]

3 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

I don't reserve the term 'band' solely for creative entities. Even a purely nostalgia act that tours off past successes, just doing the same shows over and over, is a 'band' to me. 

This gives me deja vu, btw. Fans here have been complaining about the band since... well, as long as I can remember. At the very least the band is releasing music now and is actively working on songs. That is pretty good. The period 2010-2016 was worse. But we got through that too

Yep...slight difference of opinion, but, we both hope for more.

[SoulMonster]

Just now, oneway23 said:

Yep...slight difference of opinion, but, we both hope for more.

Always

[GnR Chris]

5 hours ago, oneway23 said:

Again, in my opinion, if you are a band not actively creating new material, you are essentially a zombie entity, just going through motions, play-acting at being a fully-functioning band, rotely regurgitating past glories, so that your aging fans can fondly remember the backseat they got laid in.

Disagree with you here. They're still a band and they're still artists.

Performing is an art unto itself. Creating is an art as well.

GNR (see: Axl) choose only to perform. It's whatever. As a GNR fan, it fuckin' sucks.

Slash and Duff perform and actively write and record.

Edited February 2, 2022 by GnR Chris

[oneway23]

1 hour ago, GnR Chris said:

Disagree with you here. They're still a band and they're still artists.

Performing is an art unto itself. Creating is an art as well.

GNR (see: Axl) choose only to perform. It's whatever. As a GNR fan, it fuckin' sucks.

Slash and Duff perform and actively write and record.

I never insulted anyone to the point where I said they weren't artists.

Slash & Duff actively recording and creating in their own solo careers is largely irrelevant to my opinion, since they aren't actively writing new material in the context of GN'R, at least as of yet.

As I said, they've managed to release a couple of "new songs" over the past year, and I look forward to seeing what's next.

There is an art to performing, of course, but, we'll just have to agree to disagree here.

Edited February 2, 2022 by oneway23

[Bitchisback]

7 hours ago, oneway23 said:

That's a fair outlook.  You're right.  All this does is once again highlight just how much crucial time was casually tossed away...sad

it is sad.  Honestly with Axl i think what happened is it took so much effort and trouble getting the relaunched GnR off the ground that he spent a good amount of time writing and clearly wrote a lot in a short period of time (the late 90s/early 2000s) and he spent so much time trying to figure shit out and get the album out and hold it together that he just stopped writing.  And when you stop doing something, going back to it years later is never easy.  Like you said, it's sad because he probably had a lot of art to give the world.  I hope for his sake he can get the rest of these recordings out because i'm sure they mean a lot to him.

[Nintari]

On 1/31/2022 at 3:34 PM, Bitchisback said:

It's easy to name all the bands who put out a decent amount of albums while you ignore the many who are in the same situation as GnR.

 

System or a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Aerosmith.  Not everyone has an endless amount of creativity or passion to keep creating albums unfortunately.   Let's not pretend Axl is the only artist not creating new music tho.

I never said Axl was the only one. I just said that he was one. And that sucks, imo, because I really only enjoy artists who create art, and express themselves through it; the types that sit in their bedrooms alone with an acoustic guitar or a piano, and bear their souls in an attempt to make sense of the world and their own lives. That's what This I Love is. That's what Estranged is. That's what Locomotive is.

That is not what GNR is.

Not anymore, anyway.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Nintari

[WhazUp]

10 hours ago, GnR Chris said:

Not to be rude, but what the hell does this have to do with the comment you responded to? The industry has changed yet other artists continue to create and release new music.

That person you replied to, is really honestly a strange one lol.  Like they sort of defend GNR so much that my running theory the past year is they are a secret TB member going undercover here or something

[WhazUp]

On 1/31/2022 at 11:33 AM, kiwiguns said:

 

No point in releasing an album when no one buys albums anymore and touring is the main stay for any recording artist. 

 

 

Other than to, y'know, make art which is why musicians went into making music in the first place. 

[StrangerInThisTown]

5 minutes ago, WhazUp said:

That person you replied to, is really honestly a strange one lol.  Like they sort of defend GNR so much that my running theory the past year is they are a secret TB member going undercover here or something

It's Betas old-woman-yells-at-cloud style rambling account. No one can convince me otherwise, anything else just doesn't make sense lmao.

[Voodoochild]

Well, from a person who's trying to rework some of the music I created more than 20 years ago, I can say it's still art. I didn't have a chance to release it back then, so I'm trying to figure out how to do that today in another form. Sure I'm not an artist, it's more like a hobby, but still, I don't feel like I should scrap ideas and entire songs that I didn't release back then just because it's 20 years old. I'm not kidding, it's really my situation right now. 

And yeah, it may not be a big deal for us who heard the Village leaks or didn't care about it, but Absurd and Hard Skool got released last year and there's more to come. Even though Axl didn't record anything again, to produce the new arrangements with Slash, Duff and Fortus (I'm assuming he also had to record new guitars to match the new approach) is also a form of creative input. 

I'm not trying to justify Axl for not releasing a proper album. I'm only talking about the concept of art itself. I also think he should release those CD era songs AND write new ones. 

[Frankfurt93]

it is not about the age of the material, it is about the quality.

Hell give me another Breakdown, Civil War, YCBM..even if its dated back to 1985.

Nobody wants to hear shit like HS, Absurd...after hearing UYI's, AFD, Lies 30 years ago.

Now to the subject of creativity. Give us the members who were in the band when those records were made and fail with it - nobody will say a word. But give us the band we now  have and songs they are giving us now - of course we will take a piss at them. They are giving us shit music for 'not wanting to share the loot equally'.

[oneway23]

52 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

Well, from a person who's trying to rework some of the music I created more than 20 years ago, I can say it's still art. I didn't have a chance to release it back then, so I'm trying to figure out how to do that today in another form. Sure I'm not an artist, it's more like a hobby, but still, I don't feel like I should scrap ideas and entire songs that I didn't release back then just because it's 20 years old. I'm not kidding, it's really my situation right now. 

And yeah, it may not be a big deal for us who heard the Village leaks or didn't care about it, but Absurd and Hard Skool got released last year and there's more to come. Even though Axl didn't record anything again, to produce the new arrangements with Slash, Duff and Fortus (I'm assuming he also had to record new guitars to match the new approach) is also a form of creative input. 

I'm not trying to justify Axl for not releasing a proper album. I'm only talking about the concept of art itself. I also think he should release those CD era songs AND write new ones. 

Best of luck with your project.  Hope to hear it someday!

[LunsJail]

On 1/30/2022 at 12:59 AM, Blackstar said:

Yes, that could be it. And maybe that Slash would want to include more footage.

In regards to Axl, it's likely that Stephanie Seymour was featured in some scenes, so maybe that was an additional reason it was buried.

As a fan, I think this footage would be fascinating as hell. But it might be very cringe worthy to the band members. Go back and watch Making of the Videos or interviews from that time. Slash, and especially Duff, are obnoxiously wasted at times. Axl had gone completely up his own ass by this point. I could see them watching some of this footage and saying “no way.”

[SoulMonster]

5 hours ago, Frankfurt93 said:

it is not about the age of the material, it is about the quality.

Hell give me another Breakdown, Civil War, YCBM..even if its dated back to 1985.

Nobody wants to hear shit like HS, Absurd...after hearing UYI's, AFD, Lies 30 years ago.

Don't talk for me. In my opinion, Hard Skool is better than both Civil War and Breakdown.