With the impending release of Chinese Democracy mere hours away, one thing I've been enjoying much more than the actual album are the reviews. It seems every rock critic on the planet has been winding up and giving this one their best shot. Some take vitriolic pot shots at GNR ringleader Axl W. Rose, while others survey the release with detached humor and bewilderment.
Tis true that Rose has given the rock journalism community much to work with here. First off, you have an album that cost over $13 million dollars to record and sounds like it was cut in somebody's bedroom ProTools studio. Secondly, said album took over fifteen years to complete, yet it sounds like it could have been cut in three weeks and, truth be told, doing so might give it the cohesiveness it is sorely misses.
See, when you have this many band members and producers and engineers work on a project over a decade-and-a-half, the less it's going to sound like a unified piece of work. No GNR album will ever escape comparison to "Appetite For Destruction". What "Chinese Democracy" does so well, though, is reveal the strengths of the band's debut effort. It was recorded quickly by five guys with a united goal and vision, each hungry (both literally and figuratively) to break free of their current surroundings and have their music be heard by a world that does not yet know they exist. In that respect, "Chinese Democracy" could not be more different from that album, and the current GNR could not be more different from the band that recorded "Paradise City".
Yet there are endless die-hard fans who've been waiting breathlessly lo these many years, each convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Axl was and is the true driving force of the band. That he has taken fifteen years to finally "unleash the fucking fury" (to borrow a phrase from fellow metal diva Yngwie Malmsteen) would seem to indicate quite strongly otherwise, but not to them. In their mind, it just makes Axl greater. Of course, Axl must have come to realize this. By never actually releasing "Chinese Democracy", the folklore grew and grew while expectations ebbed and flowed like the Pacific Ocean a stone's throw from Axl's Malibu spread.
But, as was bound to happen, Axl's label, Geffen Records, finally stopped cutting checks for the project. Enter legendary manager/record exec Irving Azoff, who stroked Axl's ego enough to get the reclusive gunner to sign off on the project. Next thing we knew, there was a rumored deal with Best Buy and *GASP!* a release date.
Having known people who'd taken part in the sessions over the years, I'd been privy to supposedly finished masters of the album from as far back as 1998. What I heard when I gave the actual finished masters a listen wasn't that much different from what I heard back then. Aside from a slightly updated track listing, very little has been changed, making the additional millions spent on this project seem completely unwarranted.
And therein lies the rub. This project is probably the last of the old school records; cut in big-name studios, with big-name producers, and an endless revolving door of well-paid sidemen. The way things used to work when this album began are no longer the way things work now and my hunch is that nobody is more shocked by that fact than Axl Rose. I'm sure he may have been aware that other acts and labels were running a leaner, meaner machine, but that such things would never apply to him because, well, he's Axl mother-bleeping Rose, the sole owner of the Guns & Roses brand. Nobody knows better than this guy what it feels like to not leave your home for weeks at a time and still make millions in the process.
That "Chinese Democracy" ever saw the light of day was the result of a label finally saying "enough's enough" and an artist knowing the only way to see another dime was to finally let it go, whether he was happy with the final result or not.
Axl's relatively new alliance with Irving Azoff, of course, does come with some very noticeable strings attached. The diminutive manager has long walked tall and carried a big stick, being instrumental in the reformation of Eagles (who swore that hell would freeze over before they'd even consider getting back together, but then Azoff wrote a number with a crap-load of zeroes on a slip of paper, slid it across the table to each one of them, and voila, it was reunion time!) and no doubt bent on the same such reunion idea with new clients Morrissey and Axl Rose.
Thus, the sooner "Chinese Democracy" is released and recouped (if such a thing is possible), the sooner a GNR reunion can begin taking shape.
A concert industry friend of mine says feels have already been put out for a GNR reunion tour for summer of 2009. This is the same friend who told me of Van Halen's testing of the waters regarding a David Lee Roth-tour a year prior, while they were out with Sammy Hagar.
My only curiosity is whether any real effort will be made to promote "Chinese Democracy". Will the "Hired Guns & Roses" even tour at this point? My hunch is that this album will come and go rather quietly, the less said the better.
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