Did you really feel "welcomed" to the jungle by axl rose, or do you think that was sort of just insincere, halfhearted graciousness?

what's weird to me about Axl is that he's this strange bipolar hermit who somehow tours nonstop. He gives one interview every five years and he refuses to release new material out of perfectionist fear, but he's happy to jet off to Buenos Aires or Prague to huff and puff his way through Nightrain again. I guess he must just love touring.

the man might also have substantial expenses/debts as well

he probably gets bored hanging out in his mansion

That's what I was thinking after seeing him at Bridge. I think out of everything he really just kind of wants/needs the applause and validation, but it's never to the degreee that he used to get it so he runs off and holes up on terror island in his laboratory hoping to wow the world with his giant death ray or whatever, and every time it's like THOSE FOOLS! THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT POWERS i HAVE. I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!

yeah he barely toured at all for like a decade, the difference between now and the '90s might be how much $ from the glory days he's sitting on.

btw is there any Bridge School video that hasn't been taken down out there, i still haven't seen it

i mean, the amount of money wasted in high priced studios on the recording of chinese democracy alone...boggles the mind

the credits on Chinese Democracy are pretty eye-opening in a O_o kind of way

i mean, the amount of money wasted in high priced studios on the recording of chinese democracy alone...boggles the mind

― terrell sug (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 9:43 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the label paid for all that tho

all of it? wow...long leash if so...these credits from chinese democracy blow my mind:

Roy Thomas Baker – Initial album production

Paul Buckmaster – Orchestra conductor, Orchestral arrangement on track 14, Initial Symphonic arrangements on tracks 4, 6, 12

i hope someday there's some kind of sprawling investigative report on the inner workings of post-UYI Guns/Axl like that Vanity Fair piece on Scientology

I think the label's final bill was 14 million.

the use of the word "initial" is pretty amazing, it's like those big hollywood movies where they have to give a screenplay credit to the guy who did the first draft before 8 different script doctors who gradually changed every single word

which somehow they managed to recoup in the best buy deal xp

i hope someday there's some kind of sprawling investigative report on the inner workings of post-UYI Guns/Axl like that Vanity Fair piece on Scientology

― my mansplain songz (some dude), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 4:48 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god yeah, i wonder if there's anyone who was close enough to it that could do it....

at least i hope tommy stinson got his house paid off through all of this

i hope someday there's some kind of sprawling investigative report on the inner workings of post-UYI Guns/Axl like that Vanity Fair piece on Scientology

― my mansplain songz (some dude), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 9:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is pretty good but doesn't have the dirt we want

http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/top-posts/the-chinese-democracy-years-1994-2008/

lol who even keeps track of shit to the detail??

Caram Costanzo – digital editing on all tracks; arrangements on tracks 2, 6 and 8; drum arrangements on tracks 3, 6 and 14; sub drums on track 13; production; mixing; engineering; initial production on track 8

the best stories we have are almost all related to Buckethead:

- requesting and getting a giant chicken coop to play guitar in

- watching porn nonstop in said chicken coop until Axl asked him to stop

- becoming very upset when a KFC franchise was shown in flames on the news in the aftermath of 9/11

- allowing a dog's crap to sit in the coop until it stunk up the whole studio

this was one of the best things about the 06 shows: Bumblefoot and Finck doing Aguilera's 'Beautiful'
(start at the 4 min mark)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd5gUn_yj0M&t=4m

axl is such a weird character. more than almost any other rock star on his level, i get the sense that he's a genuinely fucked-up, troubled guy who can't totally control what he does or what he says. if you read his interviews they basically consist of therapy session psychobabble, like, 'i'm really under a lot of pressure right now, i'm struggling just to keep everything under control,' etc. etc. listening to 'AFD' the other day for the first time in a while it struck me how many of axl's lyrics are basically just long strings of tough-guy cliches or lines that sound so hackneyed and artificial they might as well be cliches -- 'take that one to heart,' 'you learn to live like an animal,' 'i'm ready to crash and burn.' yet there's this really genuine sense of rage, resentment, and self-loathing radiating through most of it.

"Rose said that Freese was one of the easiest drummers to work with -- and friendliest. When Spinner spoke to Freese, he took the time to return the compliment. "Everyone always baits me to give them a crazy Axl story," he admits. "I don't really have any. I spent two years in a studio with him (and) I never saw any mood swings. He was never not cool to me. So, I am always quick to defend the guy, even though I know his reality is different than mine. Then again, everyone has a different reality."

that matrix joke might be more truth than joke!

axl is doing jimmy kimmel's show on wednesday

awesome link matt; awesome post j.d.

Finck’s part was wiped and Jane’s Addiction/Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro was invited to add guitar parts. “There’s no story,” Navarro said later. “They just called me up, and I went down to the studio. I spent about an hour and a half there. I played a guitar solo, and that’s it. There really wasn’t much direction to give me. I think that that’s why they called me.” (Navarro later said that Axl called the studio while he was playing and from the speakerphone had told him to “play with more feeling”.)

*dying*

so many truthbombs itt

(In 1995 Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet asked the guitarist why just about everyone in the band had made a solo record except Axl. “Axl thinks that Guns is his solo project,” said Slash.)

Is it just me or does it seem like this whole thing started because Axl & Duff were butthurt that Slash had written so many songs without them.

i don't think there was anything anyone else in the band could've done that wouldn't have ultimately resulted in this mess, aside from MAYBE if the other guys had stopped Axl from retaining ownership of the band name

Duff?

what should axl have otherwise done with his time though?

come up with a cure for fucking cancer wtih that kinda money and time, at least

"welcome to the jungle, baby, you're going into FULL REMISSSION!"?

xgau on Chinese Democracy is a masterpiece of condescension

Chinese Democracy [Geffen, 2008]
Hopeless eccentric spends most of his adult life and a large chunk of his ill-gotten fortune trying to make the perfect album. Succeeds, kind of, on his own totally irrelevant terms. Nobody cares. Since he's no longer capable of leading young white males astray, this effort isn't just pleasurable artistically. It's touching on a human level. Noble, even. I didn't think he had it in him. B+

haha i think that's one of the most otm reviews of the album that's been published actually

nice

Buckethead is a goldmine of weird

Richard Fortus, a friend of Tommy Stinson was also considered before Axl settled on Brian Carroll, aka avant-garde shredder Buckethead. Axl invited Bucket over on Christmas Day. The guitarist was upset that no-one had given him a certain hard-to-find Leatherface doll he’d been coveting as a gift. As Buckethead later put it: “Got invited to Axl’s on Christmas night; never met him before. Sad about not getting the doll but it is OK, but still sad. Get to Axl’s, he presents this box wrapped up. The Michael Myers version has been out for a while, knew it was the same box. Figured it was Michael Myers and opened it up. There was Leatherface.”

To Buckethead it was a sign that Axl understood him – he was in. Another year had passed.

yeah that xgau review is really something

aero next time you have to fill out a job description in travel papers or a tax form can you please write 'leading young white males astray'

Man that acoustic Welcome to the Jungle is like Little Martha never happened. So painfully bad

oh man

Izzy told Classic Rock about how he’d stopped off at Axl’s house around that time. Axl was friendly and then “probably a month later, one night he calls me [and] we got into the issue of me leaving Guns N’ Roses. I told him how it was on my side. Told him exactly how I felt about it and why I left… But, I mean he had a fucking notepad. I could hear him [turning the pages] going, ‘Well, ah, you said in 1982… blah, blah, blah…’ And I’m like, ‘What the fuck – 1982?’. He was bringing up a lot of really weird old shit. I’m like, whatever, man. But that’s the last time I talked to him.”

Izzy actually wrote a couple songs with nuGNR, one of them is a finished song according to Axl

yeah the paragraph right before that says that Izzy and Duff made a bunch of demos for the band in '95

Izzy has toured with nuGnR in recent years

well yeah the Classic Rock article is a few years old

In the fall, a new A&R man was hired to help bring the project into completion. He was someone who specialised in providing the ‘final push’ for albums nearing completion: legendary Alice Cooper/Lou Reed/Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin. As Alice Cooper told it later,”To this day, really good songwriters that are ready to finish an album call me up and go, ‘Do you have Bob Ezrin’s number?’…Bob’s not going to be a yes man. He’s going to go in there and tell you how many (decent) songs you actually have… He did it with Guns N’Roses.

“I know Axl called him up and said, ‘I want you to listen to Chinese Democracy and tell me what I’ve got [that’s good].’ Bob listened to it and said, ‘Three songs.’ This is after seven years [of songwriting].”
In mid-September, retailers were notified that Chinese Democracy was projected to be released in November, which does seem to support the notion that the record was essentially done, and – prior to his negative assessment – Ezrin was merely called in for some final pre-release tweaks.

haha so Ezrin was really the guy who spooked the groundhog for 8 more years of winter

after which point there were STILL only three songs on the final album

three songs that Ezrin liked

and that guy made Music from "The Elder", so his word is bond

those were axl's pained cries on 'the kids'

the thing that stands out is how everyone involved from early on til the end said how good the material they heard was.

they wanted to believe