Welcome To The Bungled Jungle

[Zephyrus]

Welcome to the bungled jungle

Why Guns N' Roses' irrelevance hasn't hurt their legacy

Woo hoo hoo! ElleGirl magazine thinks I'm the coolest old person! I'm never going to release Chinese Democracy! Woo hoo!

Joshua Ostroff, CanWest News Service

Published: Friday, November 17, 2006

Axl Rose may not want to hear it, but fans and haters alike have long wondered how lost one must be to need nine years and $13 million to record a comeback album.

Yesterday, a day after the band's performance at the Air Canada Centre, news was released that the band's record label had no indication of Chinese Democracy being released in 2006. This comes after Rose and managment had gotten fans' hopes up with strong indication that this would, in fact, be the year. No dice.

Though a few tracks have leaked over the years -- the sprawling epic Madagascar first surfaced in 2002 -- the actual release of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy seemed about as likely as, well, Chinese democracy.

Nearly every year since 1999 -- when the radically revamped GN'R, with Axl as its lone original member, sold its industrial track Oh My God to Arnold Schwarzenegger's End of Days soundtrack -- there have been promises made, but no records delivered.

As Axl became a Howard Hughes-like recluse, running through hired guns and record producers while obsessively rewriting his alleged opus, it became rock 'n' roll's greatest running joke.

This past spring, Spin magazine ran a lengthy review of Chinese Democracy. Was Axl's long-awaited album at hand? After all, pirates had recently loosed three studio songs -- IRS, Better and There Was a Time -- into the wilds of the Internet. But after giggling over the review -- "If you purchased a kitten on the day that Use Your Illusion I & II arrived in stores, it's probably dead by now" -- astute readers noticed the dateline: April 1. Nuts.

But Gunner news kept coming. Radio stations played the leaked demos, Axl sued Slash over royalties, feuded with Scott Weiland (the singer now fronting Axl's former bandmates in the exceedingly bland Velvet Revolver) and even performed concerts, starting in New York, before headlining Euro festivals and eventually embarking on the North American tour.

But since the ageing Axl is essentially fronting a GN'R cover band -- admittedly staffed with top-notch talent from Nine Inch Nails, the Replacements and Psychedelic Furs --why does anyone still give a damn?

Of course, better questions might be: Why did readers of ElleGirl magazine vote Axl the "coolest old person"? Or why is YouTube flooded with homemade music videos of those Chinese Democracy demos? Or why do teens wear Guns N' Roses T-shirts without irony when most weren't even born when Appetite For Destruction first rocked the charts?

See, the original Guns N' Roses represent the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll myth better than any band since, and their early recordings remain electrifyingly vital. Two decades later, Axl's sneering threat to bring you to your "n-n-n-n-knees" still sounds bloody dangerous, especially compared to modern rockers like The Killers.

Sure, GN'R didn't have the "cool" cachet of Nirvana -- in fact, Kurt Cobain publicly mocked Axl -- but Guns did just as much to end hair metal by so resoundingly out-rocking the likes of Poison and Whitesnake.

GN'R took metal and made it heavy again, but with a bluesy swagger and barrels of grit and sleaze and slam-danceable ugliness.

As Appetite became the biggest-selling debut album ever and was joined on the charts by their quickie EP GN'R Lies, the band became inescapable. There was that unforgettable riff on Sweet Child O' Mine, the whistling intro to Patience, the stories of trashed hotel rooms and trampled concertgoers and charges of drug abuse, racism, homophobia and misogyny.

Years of indulgence manifested in the bombast of their over-ambitious 1991 double-shot Use Your Illusion I and II, which debuted on Billboard's top two spots and included hard-rockers like You Could Be Mine alongside blissfully bloated epics like November Rain.

They launched an equally epic 28-month tour, and I waited in line all night to get tickets for the Vancouver show. Unfortunately, this proved my first opportunity to be disappointed by Axl's antics when the infamous Montreal riot delayed the concert.

Instead of Metallica opening, we got ex-Queen guitarist Brian May.

Still, it was a pivotal moment of my teen years. Too young to drink or drive, we put on our finest ripped jeans and hired a limo from the suburbs to the Coliseum so we could down Budweisers en route. It could have been the beer buzz, but GN'R put on the most fiery stadium show I've ever seen.

Chinese Democracy may actually come out some day, and even prove to be great. Axl appears slimmed-down and energized, and this tour has been getting better reviews than their last outing. Still, it doesn't really matter what Axl or even Velvet Revolver do nowadays.

Guns N' Roses' legacy is sound, because all these years later it remains absolutely physically impossible to hear Welcome to the Jungle without turning it up to 11.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/ar...517&k=41921

[Kissable Kate]

An excellent and terrible review!

But GN'R are still getting the worship they deserve, amid the doubts of Axl himself being able to follow through on his promises..

All hail Guns N' Roses!

KK x

[bluesy]

Good read, although the bastard didn't have some facts straight. When the hell did Axl feud with twiggy? Also, Madagascar wasn't leaked, it was bootlegged.

[AxlisOld]

I think Axl said something in an underhanded way directed at scott or something, maybe slash, i dont recall, and scott released a statement on vr's site calling axl a fat washed-up wig wearing botoxed something or other

[Deniro]

We've been played again... No album.