Things you think Axl would do differently if he could? 😀🤔

[Karice]

I think Axl wouldn't have jumped into the crowd and then leave a little early at the infamous Riverport Concert. Even a couple of months after the Riverport Concert Riot, Axl was like,"I REALLY shouldn't have jumped into the crowd!" LMAO! 🤣🤭  So maybe he would have said something like," I'm going to stop performing until this Asshole in the fourth row in the fifth seat wearing a red plaid shirt and black pants stops illegally filming this Concert." And just stops and stares awkwardly at the filmer. I think that would get the Filmer to stop illegally filming the Concert and then the show would go on with no Riot. 😀

[jacdaniel]

I doubt he'll ever admit it, but I do wonder if he ever looks back and thinks maybe Guns should have just took a break in the 90s. 

Slash could have done Snakepit and Axl could have done all the industrial, grunge, piano stuff that he wanted and released it as a solo album. 

 

[DSTK]

Sing the chorus of Slither , like he does during pretty tied up 

[Karice]

Piggybacking off of what Jacdaniel said, I think Axl would have released Chinese Democracy as a Solo Axl Rose album and not a Guns N'Roses album if he could do things differently. 😀🤔

[Sweersa]

7 minutes ago, Karice said:

Piggybacking off of what Jacdaniel said, I think Axl would have released Chinese Democracy as a Solo Axl Rose album and not a Guns N'Roses album if he could do things differently. 😀🤔

Axl talked about this during the forum chats several years ago. He said Chinese was the work of the band, not just himself. 

[lame ass security]

He probably wouldn't have released OIAM.

[Karice]

15 minutes ago, lame ass security said:

He probably wouldn't have released OIAM.

Or maybe he would have changed the lyrics. OIAM is a good song musically, the lyrics are shit. When I saw the title, I thought,"Oh, this is going to be a love ballad like Sweet Child Of Mine and November Rain. " 😀 When I heard the song lyrics, my face was like, 😳🥶😫😱😵‍💫🫨😩☹️🤨🧐😞🫤🤐😶‍🌫️🫥😑😐😶🤯😵😖🤢🤮🥴🫣😤😮‍💨🙄🥶😷🤕😡🤬🤬👀👎🏃🧟🤦‍♀️✋(stop hand signal, not high five) 🛑🙄😒🤬😡🖕 I think I covered EVERY negative emoji there is to convert how awful the OIAM lyrics really are!

Spoiler

I REALLY HATE the lyrics of OIAM!

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Karice

[pbj_jam]

Lose weight 

[Gnrcane]

15 hours ago, Karice said:

Or maybe he would have changed the lyrics. OIAM is a good song musically, the lyrics are shit. When I saw the title, I thought,"Oh, this is going to be a love ballad like Sweet Child Of Mine and November Rain. " 😀 When I heard the song lyrics, my face was like, 😳🥶😫😱😵‍💫🫨😩☹️🤨🧐😞🫤🤐😶‍🌫️🫥😑😐😶🤯😵😖🤢🤮🥴🫣😤😮‍💨🙄🥶😷🤕😡🤬🤬👀👎🏃🧟🤦‍♀️✋(stop hand signal, not high five) 🛑🙄😒🤬😡🖕 I think I covered EVERY negative emoji there is to convert how awful the OIAM lyrics really are!

  Reveal hidden contents

I REALLY HATE the lyrics of OIAM!

 

The lyrics to OIAM are offensive but that doesn't make them awful from an artistic point of view.  They portrayed the thoughts of a "small town white boy" going to a big city in the late 1970s/early 1980s.  I don't know where you are from or how old you are but, somebody growing up in a small town in rural Indiana in the 1960s and 1970s would not have come into contact with very many people, if any, who weren't straight and white.  There wasn't any internet so the only exposure to other cultures that somebody would get is maybe a little from watching TV shows, depending on the shows they watched.  

"Artists" use those offensive words in various works all the time and don't get criticized the way Axl did.  The "n word" appears in many works of fiction from the 70s and 80s.  It is for sure in Stephen King's "The Stand" being spoken by white characters.  IIRC correctly, Daryl's racist brother in "The Walking Dead" used the word on TV in the first season and that was over 20 years after the release of OIAM.

What I'm trying to say is that, from the standpoint of telling as story and portraying the thoughts of the character to the listener, the lyrics of OIAM are excellent.  That doesn't mean that I think racial slurs are appropriate to use in songs but their use doesn't automatically make me hate the song.  I mean, if Axl would have found different words to describe black men hassling and intimidating people in inner city bus stops would it really have made a difference.  As far as the "gay F word," that was a pretty common term used back then and wasn't looked at in the way it is now.  It was used as an insult all the time by other kids when I was in the 10-15 year old range back in the 80s.

[Original]

22 hours ago, Karice said:

Piggybacking off of what Jacdaniel said, I think Axl would have released Chinese Democracy as a Solo Axl Rose album and not a Guns N'Roses album if he could do things differently. 😀🤔

Everyone knows that CD is basically an Axl solo project.  

[DoMw94]

59 minutes ago, Original said:

Everyone knows that CD is basically an Axl solo project.  

Everyone?

No, it's definitely a band project, just not the band many wanted.

A solo project wouldn't have had band members bringing songs and ideas to Axl

[Blackstar]

27 minutes ago, DoMw94 said:

Everyone?

No, it's definitely a band project, just not the band many wanted.

A solo project wouldn't have had band members bringing songs and ideas to Axl

It's what one (Axl, in this case) wants to call it, really. Ozzy is a solo artist but recruits other musicians to write songs for him. On the other hand, NIN is just a band moniker for Trent Reznor who writes all the songs. I think the main criterion that distinguishes a band from a solo project is who makes the decisions, who has a say and who owns what others contribute.

[DoMw94]

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

I think the main criterion that distinguishes a band from a solo project is who makes the decisions, who has a say and who owns what others contribute.

Many bands have 'a leader' when it comes to decision-making though, so I wouldn't say that was a factor.

Chinese Democracy was marketed as a Guns N' Roses record, and people who were in the band at the time brought songs and ideas to the table – that's pretty much the definition of a band, regardless of who owns it. That's only paperwork.

It 100% wasn't a solo record, it was just made by a group, or band, that many didn't regard as the 'real' Guns N' Roses

[Blackstar]

37 minutes ago, DoMw94 said:

Many bands have 'a leader' when it comes to decision-making though, so I wouldn't say that was a factor.

Chinese Democracy was marketed as a Guns N' Roses record, and people who were in the band at the time brought songs and ideas to the table – that's pretty much the definition of a band, regardless of who owns it. That's only paperwork.

It 100% wasn't a solo record, it was just made by a group, or band, that many didn't regard as the 'real' Guns N' Roses

I think it was all on Axl. He decided to call it a band and market it as such. If he had decided to call it a solo project or a solo band (e.g. "Axl Rose and [insert name of backing band]), it would have been regarded as such, no matter whether the musicians he worked with brought in ideas or not.

How about Snakepit? Was it a band or Slash's solo project? (at the time Slash said it was a band).

Edited September 22, 2023 by Blackstar

[Karice]

2 hours ago, Blackstar said:

I think it was all on Axl. He decided to call it a band and market it as such. If he had decided to call it a solo project or a solo band (e.g. "Axl Rose and [insert name of backing band]), it would have been regarded as such, no matter whether the musicians he worked with brought in ideas or not.

How about Snakepit? Was it a band or Slash's solo project? (at the time Slash said it was a band).

I wonder what would have happened if he had released Chinese Democracy under a controversial anagram of his name, Oral Sex. 🤣 

[DannyVinyard]

If Axl could go back, he wouldn't have no-showed in Phili, which cost him the tour and Buckethead, and forced him back into hiding until 2006. 

[DoMw94]

12 hours ago, Blackstar said:

How about Snakepit? Was it a band or Slash's solo project? (at the time Slash said it was a band).

If he describes it as a band, then I would as well – a band led by Slash. At the end of the day, he was there and I wasn't. He knows best about the dynamic between those people. There's writing contributions from other members on the first record, and collective credit on the second as well which sort of backs up that thinking too, although I'll admit it's not a deal-breaker. I've never really regarded Snakepit as solo. I don't regard the Conspirators as solo either – and neither does Slash.

It's all different to Axl/Chinese Democracy though. The only reason people call Chinese Democracy a solo record is because it sounds so different to the other Guns N' Roses records and it features other people. I guarantee if it was written recorded in exactly the same way, with the same share of workload and credit, but Slash and Duff featured on it, nobody would want to call it a solo record. We see it now with Absurd, Hard Skool, or Perhaps – Nobody's calling them Axl solo songs, yet they're from the same time and the same sessions as the other Chinese Democracy tracks, just with contributions from two others that happened to be in Guns N' Roses in the past.

The Chinese=solo argument has never been about what it was, it has always been about peoples' reaction to it. At the end of the day, it was produced by a band, and that band happened to be called Guns N' Roses.

[Tom2112]

I don't think he'd do much differently career wise. He is who he is and he probably accepts that. 

I think the changes would be in his personal life if anything.

I think he'd like to have more music out, and I think he would have loved if the core of gnr never broke up but yeah I think he feels he was right in most of the actions he took in the 90s in relation to the business of gnr

[Rovim]

I think that sometimes it's best to make a move than to do nothing and wait for a more ideal time to make it happen. I don't have any idea what Axl thinks about shit he never talked about, but it seems like he wanted the Gn'R catalog to be bigger and he never wanted Slash (and Duff) to quit so maybe he would have tried a different approach with them before it all went to shit, but I don't think it was all on Axl anyway so maybe it wouldn't have helped and also who knows what Axl tried to say and do to get Slash to stay in Gn'R.

[Blackstar]

2 hours ago, DoMw94 said:

It's all different to Axl/Chinese Democracy though. The only reason people call Chinese Democracy a solo record is because it sounds so different to the other Guns N' Roses records and it features other people. I guarantee if it was written recorded in exactly the same way, with the same share of workload and credit, but Slash and Duff featured on it, nobody would want to call it a solo record. We see it now with Absurd, Hard Skool, or Perhaps – Nobody's calling them Axl solo songs, yet they're from the same time and the same sessions as the other Chinese Democracy tracks, just with contributions from two others that happened to be in Guns N' Roses in the past.

The Chinese=solo argument has never been about what it was, it has always been about peoples' reaction to it. At the end of the day, it was produced by a band, and that band happened to be called Guns N' Roses.

For me it's two different questions: 1) Whether NuGnR was a band (regardless of name) or a solo project and 2) Whether it was GN'R.

I only addressed the first question and in my opinion the fact that the songs are co-written by other musicians who are part of a project is not a sufficient condition for that project to be a band. Axl hired musicians to work together or on their own and write songs for him (and also perform with him). He gave them creative freedom at that stage, but the songs were his and he could do what he wanted with them (e.g. chop them and piece them together, etc.).

Edited September 23, 2023 by Blackstar
Added

[D4NNY]

iirc Axl answered this question during the China Exchange interview, he answered something he would do differently would be starting his own label in the early days instead of relying on and being controlled by Geffen. *something* along those lines. If anyone knows specifically then correct me 😊

[Rovim]

6 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

For me it's two different questions: 1) Whether NuGnR was a band (regardless of name) or a solo project and 2) Whether it was GN'R.

I only addressed the first question and in my opinion the fact that the songs are co-written by other musicians who are part of a project is not a sufficient condition for that project to be a band. Axl hired musicians to work together or on their own and write songs for him (and also perform with him) and then he could do what he wanted with those songs (e.g. chop them and piece them together, etc.).

Chinese seems like a weird case of a solo project that tried to capture some of the vibe of a band (Gn'R) 

it makes it more confusing when so many people came and went and it took so long to come out, and then with Axl's tinkering with the material, it feels like he did have more control to shape the music to his liking, how he wanted it to be exactly so again, more like a solo thing. It's just that he didn't have the ability to put it all together by himself so he cherry picked the musicians he thought could be able to get him there, to make his musical vision a reality, or for others to come up with the bricks to build the house.

in general, I think it depends on how you define a band as there are so many types of bands with different approach to the music and to decision making, but Chinese was created and sounds in many ways very different to old Gn'R. Axl's influence on it is too much to call it a band imho.

[KURT19]

Maybe worn an orange coat instead…

[Old_school_gnr_fan]

18 hours ago, DoMw94 said:

Everyone?

No, it's definitely a band project, just not the band many wanted.

A solo project wouldn't have had band members bringing songs and ideas to Axl

There was a revolving door of musicians coming in and out of the "band". Who can you say was an official member of Guns N' Roses in that time frame, besides Axl and Dizzy? Stinson and Fortus, maybe?

There seemed to be a new face on every tour between 2001-2014. When I saw Guns N' Roses in 2006, there was Pitman, Bumblefoot, Finck, and I truly can't remember who was doing the drumming. Buckethead was long gone.

They were all hired hands, with the exception of Fortus and Frank Ferrer. The list of people that played on Chinese Democracy is so long, it's somewhat awkward for anyone to consider it a "band" effort.

I think what Axl learned is that the Guns N' Roses name didn't help sell records if there was no one from the original lineup participating besides himself.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Old_school_gnr_fan

[Blackstar]

1 hour ago, D4NNY said:

iirc Axl answered this question during the China Exchange interview, he answered something he would do differently would be starting his own label in the early days instead of relying on and being controlled by Geffen. *something* along those lines. If anyone knows specifically then correct me 😊

Yes:

Audience: [???] If you could go back in time to speak to your younger self what advice would you give? [???]

Axl: I would have tried to form my own label rather than put a record on- I just think we were too stupid to know how do it. We just didn’t think that big at the time and did not have that type of business education. And I… just think that's what we should have done.

Interviewer: I think you've done quite well.

Axl: We should have formed our own company and figured out how to distribute our own record. Then we could have…

Interviewer: You mean manage yourselves?

Axl: Yeah.

Interviewer: Alright, well, you think that is what is important [???] still very, very small.

Axl: Why, why, why?

Interviewer: Well, because you must have made lots of money, and you are saying that was- you would have done better and made even more money.

Axl: Yeah, but it's not just the money, it be the, the-

Interviewer: more in control.

Axl: Yeah, but not as a control freak. It's just to- because of the success of Appetite and like we were talking in the car, I mean after Appetite David Geffen was, to me, more concerned in selling the company rather than helping things get back in line to what we signed the contract to make an album. [...]

https://www.a-4-d.com/t2686-2016-06-07-china-exchange-an-evening-with-axl-rose