Perhaps - New Guns N' Roses Single - Discussion

[DingBat]

1 minute ago, rocknroll41 said:

What makes this all even funnier is that they refer to it as their first new composition together since TSI… Did they forget that TSI is a covers album?

But Slash and Duff don’t have writing credits on those.

Slash and Duff have ASCAP writing credits on both November Rain and Estranged.

Perhaps is credited to Guns N Roses and hasn't been added to ASCAP yet.

[guitarpatch]

3 minutes ago, DingBat said:

Why would it have to be from the 90's?

If they got in a studio together this year and created it from the ground up from only Axl's lyrics and piano (maybe even with Brain in studio) the statement makes some kind of sense.

I mean November Rain and Estranged existed in a stripped down form before Slash and Duff got anywhere near it.

Songwriting credits are different. 
 

The middle 8 and solo section doesn’t really sound like something those 3 would write. If the credits include Stinson, Finck etc… then we’ll know they just threw Slash and Duff a credit 

The way they described it says different though. We know they didn’t write this song in the last 5 years. We’ve also heard that the CD era band were working on a few tunes that originated from the old band 

[lost un the jungle]

We have to wait for the next Duff's interview. Maybe after telling the pancreas story he says something about Perhaps

[gonzalo palmese]

16 minutes ago, rocknroll41 said:

Yeah he said in 2007 that it was his favorite of all the songs Axl had played him and that it has “screaming vocals.”

That's it. I remember something bout that 

[alfierose]

Been too busy this week and in the wrong time zone to keep on top of all this. 

Finally had chance to watch the official video and overall it's nicely done. Few changes to song but it's not radically different and I liked Perhaps anyway so I think it's a grower.

Not sure what all this indicates about an album release. Is the plan for all these singles to go on an album plus other unheard stuff or are they just clearing the vaults and an album will consist of genuinely new material? Who knows? Not me! 

[Gunner55]

Haha. So I tried explaining the folklore and the entire saga of The General to the wife. The blank stare followed by her immediate reaction of "You know there's absolutely no way this lives up to your expectations, right?" 

Don't care. That's a release I'm breaking out the good tequila for and sitting on the couch in front of a soundbar for. Releases somehow while I'm at work? Doing my best to wait till I'm home. I can't have my first stream of this song be on a shitty phone speaker. 

[guitarpatch]

2 minutes ago, alfierose said:

Been too busy this week and in the wrong time zone to keep on top of all this. 

Finally had chance to watch the official video and overall it's nicely done. Few changes to song but it's not radically different and I liked Perhaps anyway so I think it's a grower.

Not sure what all this indicates about an album release. Is the plan for all these singles to go on an album plus other unheard stuff or are they just clearing the vaults and an album will consist of genuinely new material? Who knows? Not me! 

My guess is we get an EP of all the singles together plus another song or two we haven’t gotten yet. Such as Atlas 

After that is anyone’s guess. Does Axl even want to write? 

[rocknroll41]

12 minutes ago, DingBat said:

Slash and Duff have ASCAP writing credits on both November Rain and Estranged.

Perhaps is credited to Guns N Roses and hasn't been added to ASCAP yet.

I stand corrected, in that case.

[Sweersa]

1 hour ago, colonizedmind said:

The CD stuff was always coming out with the current new players of the time (Bumble etc) playing over the old players like Bucket anyway....so it's not a new trend !

Bumble didn't rerecord all of Bucket's parts.

[kever20]

51 minutes ago, colonizedmind said:

When did he say that?

He was posting on the GNR Reddit. I can't figure out how to post the screenshot here...

[Millions]

1 hour ago, Gimpy Hewitt said:

What pisses me off is they left the first note of the guitar solo in there from the 90s demo of this song. It’s just pretty depressing how they’ve been back together for going on 8 years now and we just get a couple Chinese leftovers with slash pasted over top them. It’s negativity but it’s the truth.

I mean - yeah, this is just so fucking weird, eh?

 

I just can't understand what they were thinking. Is it : 

a) a sloppy cut and paste?

b) Do they just think it sounds good?

c) Is it an artistic statement? (Ie, a musical version of : 'right, fuck off Robin, let's bring in Slash'). 

 

1 hour ago, Gimpy Hewitt said:

What pisses me off is they left the first note of the guitar solo in there from the 90s demo of this song. It’s just pretty depressing how they’ve been back together for going on 8 years now and we just get a couple Chinese leftovers with slash pasted over top them. It’s negativity but it’s the truth.

I mean - yeah, this is just so fucking weird, eh?

 

I just can't understand what they were thinking. Is it : 

a) a sloppy cut and paste?

b) Do they just think it sounds good?

c) Is it an artistic statement? (Ie, a musical version of : 'right, fuck off Robin, let's bring in Slash'). 

 

[UYI4]

You know if they did some press and someone asked the 3 of them

 so A,S,D what’s the origins of these 3 songs?  Are any from the mid 90’s before the hiatus?

[GoodOlJohnnyK]

Spent the morning with the officially released single, and listened to it immediately after also listening to the Village Leaks version. 

Overall, of course, my opinion is unchanged on this song. It's just not for me. I think it's a boring dirge - maybe a good idea, but not fleshed out enough to be a full song. There are some upsides though:

THE GOOD

1. The recording does sound better, for the most part. The Village Leak version is way too busy, for such a simple song. At first I thought I'd miss the lead riff throughout the verses, but I don't. They just distracted from the verse melody. Similarly, the band was wise to remove the high lead line on the "I want to know how it feels..." section. It was needless and a little annoying. The new version with the backing vocals singing a simple ascending "oooh" line with the chord changes is much more effective and actually builds the song with a touch of subtlety, which is nice once in a while from this band. It's also the most 'natural' sounding of the three released singles. Absurd was cool, but it sounded like Slash threw a fresh coat of paint on an old song. Hard Skool is my favorite of the bunch, but in that case it sounds like they shoehorned Axl's old vocals onto a modern track. This song is 20 years old, but if I didn't know that, I likely wouldn't be able to tell. That's a good thing.

2. Slash and Duff, like on Absurd and Hard Skool, simply make this song better. I just won't accept any "the NuGuns fit the song better" bullshit. The NuGuns version sounds like everything else from that era - a bunch of very talented virtuosos playing over each other rather than with each other. This is better than that, and it's because of Slash and Duff. Their parts are slapped on to an existing track, yet somehow still sound more organic and 'fit' the song better than the original tracks did. Slash's verse riff is down in the mix in a good way - the type of riffing we saw a lot on the Illusions, where you have to actually listen for it rather than having it knock you on the head. Duff's bass is prominent, if maybe a *shade* too high in the mix, but I'm not gonna pick that nit. It's a good bassline and it gives the track a bit more swing.

3. TouchTunes fiasco aside, it is nice to see them release something, whether I like it or not. More importantly, they even went so far as to release an actual music video. Live/backstage footage or not, it's refreshing and encouraging to see something resembling effort and a real release from a band of this magnitude. I don't know what it means for the future, and I refuse to get my hopes up, but for one day it feels like something actually happened, and I'll take that.

THE BAD

1. Not *all* of the mixing decisions were good. I personally find the drums way too low in the mix - there are moments where the snare in particular gets totally lost or just sounds weak. 

Furthermore, I thought the addition of the low vocal was a nice touch...but they mixed it too high and at the expense of the *vastly* superior high octave. That scratchy high octave vocal was the best part of the song! Pumping the lower octave up in the mix lessens its impact. Also - that's not the 'demon' voice from Shackler's Revenge, as others have stated. It's just Axl doing a lower octave in the style of Brownstone or Bad Obsession. The demon voice is something different (and likely wouldn't fit this song anyway).

2. Slash's solo is not as bad as everyone says it is, and Robin's wasn't anything special. But it is kind of aimless. There are a few issues with the solo, and one of them isn't Slash's fault: starting the solo a beat early is part of the issue with the transition. It starts on the 8 beat, or on the "4-and," and it's jarring. It sounds like a minor squibble, but it's not - it causes the transition to sound clunky. They actually do the same thing on the demo, but it's not as emphasized due to the mix, and Robin's high bend sort of covers for it. Furthermore, the solo starts good and then just meanders and ends. I think the issue is that the solo section is too short. Slash underplays it at first, which is fine, but then it's never given time to build. Given that these things are often comped together, I'd be curious to hear what Axl and Caram left on the cutting room floor, because something tells me the solo could have been quite good if they'd doubled the amount of bars and actually let it build to something. But they didn't, so it's just there until it's not.

3. The song itself still doesn't have enough going on. It's the bones of the song that are too brittle for me. The verse melody isn't captivating at all, and the "heys" and "mmmmmmaaaaaahhhh"'s and other vocalizations only further accentuate that there's simply not enough substance there. The decision to put two verses back to back to start the song is also a major mistake - that first chorus takes *way* too long to get to. I don't know what else they would have done, but I think that's the point - there's no section of the existing song that would have worked as a transition or bridge, and so they should have written one. This song is undercooked. There's the foundation of a song here, but they didn't see it through, as evidenced by the lyric. They didn't finish it. It's just two verses, a chorus, a solo, a verse, and a chorus. Which would be fine, if it were something catchier and punchier, but it's not - it's plodding and stilted and it just simply needs something else.

4. The lyrics are also half-baked. I don't know what happened to the razor sharp wit and silver tongued lyricist who wrote Locomotive, Breakdown, Dead Horse, and Coma, but he's not here. There's vague and then there's lazy. This is the latter.

THE SURPRISINGLY HAPPY ENDING

I'm actually thrilled that this is out, because I hate the song so fucking much I just wanted it released so we could go on speculating about the *next* release, if there was ever going to be one.

I was actually sad, because I was certain that this would come out and that the next one would be either Atlas Shrugged or State of Grace, two songs I also loathe. I figured that all I had to look forward to was bitching about another bad song. Thankfully, and surprisingly, we got the news today that the next release is The General, which is a song I haven't heard outside of a muffled guitar line that could be slightly made out over a barrage of bar chatter. Now *that's* something newish. That's something I haven't heard. And that's something to be cautiously optimistic about. So on a day where Guns N' Roses released a song I don't like, I'm somehow left with some hope for the rest of the summer as we inch closer to The General's release. And that's something!

[Manfisman]

This is #1 on iTunes  US & UK rock charts:

 

http://www.itunescharts.net/us/charts/songs/rock/

Edited August 18, 2023 by Manfisman

[IrishgunnerII]

I know this is probably faint praise but I like it better than absurd and hard skool and I really like the piano. Some of the vocals are kind of buried and I found heard to hear in the initial listens. 
 

I really like the video they released with the song as it shows the band as a group of people who actually get on which I think is a good thing. I really some of the lyrics even if they are repeated. 

[rebeldhipi]

The solo starts on the 1 but the bar before its a 7/8 so one note is missing. 

Im sure its done on purpose. Its actually not that uncommon in rock music to do these things. 

[Underhardy]

Can anybody link me to that Duff international interview he did in June where he said a new song would be out any week? Thanks..

[UYI4]

I read Fernando’s responses on Reddit.  Some were a bit odd.  My guess is they know people have been clambering about the general for years.  My guess is it will be an as it was track. It would rule if we got atlas in November per what was discussed on Reddit and if they added with another b-side like soul monster or anything really. To me those would be the next other songs I’d really like to hear.  I like Atlas how it is, but would like to hear 2.0 version. Ultimately I’d like to hear a lot more of what was finished during the Chinese years, but I think it has a stopping point.  At some point slash and duff will want original stuff.  Maybe not though.  Whatever their contracts were/are probably drive that bus. I think Atlas will for sure come at some point. Just hope we continue seeing new old music and new new music. Oklahoma given its origins and time frame would rule.

 

general

oklahoma

atlas

soul monster

witchita lineman 

 

then new album current lineup 😄

I know.  Only in dreams right?

Edited August 18, 2023 by UYI4

[guitarpatch]

15 minutes ago, Millions said:

I mean - yeah, this is just so fucking weird, eh?

 

I just can't understand what they were thinking. Is it : 

a) a sloppy cut and paste?

b) Do they just think it sounds good?

c) Is it an artistic statement? (Ie, a musical version of : 'right, fuck off Robin, let's bring in Slash'). 

 

I mean - yeah, this is just so fucking weird, eh?

 

I just can't understand what they were thinking. Is it : 

a) a sloppy cut and paste?

b) Do they just think it sounds good?

c) Is it an artistic statement? (Ie, a musical version of : 'right, fuck off Robin, let's bring in Slash'). 

 

It’s intentional. I just think of it as an ode to that version/era 

[bmus1]

Lol they edited the description of the 7" to remove the bit about Slash/Duff/Axl writing Perhaps together this year.

[rocknroll41]

3 minutes ago, Underhardy said:

Can anybody link me to that Duff international interview he did in June where he said a new song would be out any week? Thanks..

He didn’t say that. He said “there will be GnR news soon. Could even be this week.” I think he was referring to the AFD reissue with the robot rapist cover art. We found about that shortly after.

[Voodoochild]

I was listening to the other recent releases - Shadow, Hard Skool and Absurd - and noticed how Perhaps wasn't as loud as those others. Which is, of course, an excellent thing, as it's not brickwalled.

Mainly I only wish those other songs to be featured in an album if it is to have them remixed/remastered with decent levels. 

4 minutes ago, bmus1 said:

Lol they edited the description of the 7" to remove the bit about Slash/Duff/Axl writing Perhaps together this year.

Its true. It was just the obligatory fuck up 

Ships on October 27, 2023

 

Guns N’ Roses return with a single entitled “Perhaps” out now via Geffen Records. It stands out as the legendary rock band’s first release since 2021. The 7” includes the R-Side, “The General.”

Tracklist:
Side G: Perhaps
Side R: The General

Limit 4 per customer

[ThERoveR]

300k views the YT video in 11 hours…not bad

[bmus1]

I was just listening to it with one headphone on and noticed the fill at 3:08 stick out in the left speaker. It sounds like it's the most obvious Richard playing on all 3 of the reunion singles? It could be Slash too but all of his fills are on the right guitar, unless he did both rhythms.

[diablo9333]

FYI if you would like to get Perhaps in FLAC, it's already available on Qobuz and 7Digital.