13 years later, Guns N’ Roses ‘Chinese Democracy’ can be streamed in its entirety on myspace.
Guns N’ Roses began to write and record new music in 1994. Ex-bassist Duff McKagan is quoted as saying, “The band was so splintered at that point that nothing got started”. Slash has criticized Rose for making the band seem “like a dictatorship”. Slash quit the band in 1996; drummer Matt Sorum and McKagan left soon afterwards.
Chinese Democracy is a collaboration of artists who include:
* Axl Rose – lead vocals, backing vocals
* Robin Finck – lead guitar, backing vocals
* Bumblefoot – lead guitar
* Richard Fortus – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
* Tommy Stinson – bass guitar, backing vocals
* Dizzy Reed – keyboard, piano, percussion, backing vocals
* Bryan Mantia – drums, percussion
* Frank Ferrer – drums, percussion
* Chris Pitman – synthesizer, programming
Former members who are featured
* Buckethead – lead guitar
* Paul Tobias – rhythm guitar
Additional musicians
* Sebastian Bach – backing vocals (uncredited)
* Patti Hood – harp
* Marco Beltrami – orchestral arrangement
* Paul Buckmaster – orchestral arrangement
The Cost Of The Record: According to a March 2005 New York Times article, production costs for the album have reached $13 million
Frank Ferrer is a hell of a drummer.
He’s no Steven Adler.
His voice is shot. Should have released this a decade ago. I’ve heard that Best Buy might order 3 million at $6 apiece to help make up for the 13 mil…but even so, it won’t sell 3 million copies. He should tour and give away an album with each ticket ala Prince. That would inflate the units shipped figure. That’s what counts anyway. Maybe will music will be like the DOW…worst in years, but poised for a historic comeback.
knew their would be a hater, Axle’s voice sounds better today. Some classics on this record! the song SORRY is GREAT! Street of Dreams is AMAZING!
Steve Adler cannot play anymore, the heroin messed the dude up.
“Street Of Dreams” is what I’ve been waiting 18 years to hear! (Once titled The Blues) Granted it’s not the magic of the Illusions, but I won’t complain!
>>He should tour and give away an album with each ticket ala Prince.
Axl is notorious for canceling gigs. No one in his camp is dumb enough to rely on that. Plus that whole model is just shady. The diehard fans are going to buy it when it comes out. And you don’t want to charge them twice for it. And you don’t want to hold it back so that they won’t be familiar with the songs at the show. The bulk of their fanbase has no idea the record is streaming at myspace. It’s only practical when an artists’ fanbase is a lot younger.
>> Maybe will music will be like the DOW…worst in years, but poised for a historic comeback.
The DOW won’t experience a historic comeback. This recession is a necessary process… it’s weeding out the speculative wealth. Houses will eventually adjust to their true value & the folks who were working the system are going to be out what they’re out (aside from the $700b out of our pocket, of course), but that’s just the nature of investing… there’s inherent risk involve, even if they swear to god that the loan is rated AAA & that you’re leveraged. I feel like the DOW is close to bottoming out, & then we’ll be ready to adjust to the amount of real wealth in the country. A “historic comeback” is just a codeword for another bubble that will inevitably burst & leave us further behind than we are now.
Best commentary I’ve read on the album, from the Chuck Klosterman review…
>> On the aforementioned “Sorry,” Rose suddenly sings
>> an otherwise innocuous line (“But I don’t want to do
>> it”) in some bizarre, quasi-Transylvanian accent,
>> and I cannot begin to speculate as to why. I mean,
>> one has to assume Axl thought about all of these
>> individual choices a minimum of a thousand times
>> over the past 15 years. Somewhere in Los Angles,
>> there’s gotta be 400 hours of DAT tape with nothing
>> on it except multiple versions of the “Sorry” vocal.
>> So why is this the one we finally hear? What finally
>> made him decide, “You know, I’ve weighed all my
>> options and all their potential consequences, and
>> I’m going with the Mexican vampire accent. This is
>> the vision I will embrace. But only on that one
>> line! The rest of it will just be sung like a non-
>> dead human.” Often, I don’t even care if his choices
>> work or if they fail. I just want to know what Rose
>> hoped they would do.
To me the whole record is like that… there’s no soul. There’s no performance. It’s entirely premeditated, calculated to the point that it comes across as cold & even bizarre at many points. And even Appetite was a calculated record… but only 8 weeks calculated. There’s still plenty of soul on that record. With Chinese Democracy everything is just hammered & hammered & hammered until it’s mechanical. Fuck that.
*hedged, not leveraged.
And the Klosterman review (even though I scoff @ his A/A- ratings)…
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews
Im just 100% not interested in this album… at all.
Jared, if your not interested in this album then you must HATE rock n roll, because some brilliant songs exist on this album. These songs will decimate the songs that you hear today from new rock artists or artists from the last decade.
“Here are the simple things about Chinese Democracy: Three of the songs are astonishing. Four or five others are very good. The vocals are brilliantly recorded, and the guitar playing is (generally) more interesting than the guitar playing on the Use Your Illusion albums. Axl Rose made some curious (and absolutely unnecessary) decisions throughout the assembly of this project, but that works to his advantage as often as it detracts from the larger experience. So: Chinese Democracy is good. Under any halfway normal circumstance, I would give it an A.”
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews
and jon..it seems you took the worst out of the Klosterman review and made it your gospel. Klosterman himself said that some songs on the album are down right amazing.
It’s not that the record doesn’t have soul, maybe it’s you that doesn’t have a soul. Me thinks Axl song SORRY is quite fitting for all the haters including you jon
“You talk too much
You say I do
Difference is nobody cares about you”
Sorry For You
Not Sorry For Me
I don’t think Klosterman thinks the vampire voice is a bad thing, I get the idea that he’s intrigued by all of the random bullshit. But I love the way he pointed it out, & the way he comments on all of the premeditation.
I noted that I scoff at his rating.
I don’t think there’s a song on this record that’s half as good as Slither by Velvet Revolver. And I don’t think I’ve ever even listened to that record all the way through.
Slither? Really? You have got to be kidding…talk about soulless and flat. VR is a mere echo of what any of those musicians are….Slash’s Snakepit stuff was WAY better, Duff’s solo album was better and he is embarrassed about it…VR is just awful. CD is a great cd…multi-layered, textural and rocking with a touch of introspection and softness. It’s something that you don’t see anymore with cookie cutter, no effort music that everyone gets bombarded with these days. Sure it’s not a perfect album…but still I would rate it an 8 out of 10.
I am thankful today…
Chinese Democracy may not be as good as the classic GNR record, but its still better than most of the new music I have heard in a long while. For that, I am thankful.
Chinese Democracy tops Use Your Illusion. I never thought Rose could top his previous work. We all loved 87 appetite era.
Songs like Better, Catcher in Rye, sorry, Shackles Revenge, This I Love, Street of Dreams are simply amazing.
This whole record is growing me. Its a record I will be listening too a loooong time.
BTW- did you hear axl making fun of the chinese in the beginning of the record. Listen closely and you will hear – ching chong ching chong!