GOOD SIR IS THIS WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR? COURTESY OF GNREVOLUTION IT IS A VERY GOOD READ AND MAKES YOU REALIZE JUST HOW MUCH AXL LIED
November 8th 1999
Loder: What have you been doing for the last six and a half years, since the last tour ended?
Rose: Trying to figure out how to make a record.
Loder: Who are the musicians who have re-recorded "Appetite?"
Rose: Josh Freese on drums, Tommy Stinson on bass, Paul Tobias on guitar -- you guys know him as Paul Huge, that's how it's been written everywhere. It's Paul Tobias on guitar, and Robin Finck was on lead guitar, but that... that will stay on some of it. Robin's guitar will stay on some, but not all. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, exactly, when I would be putting that out. But you know, it has a lot of energy. Learning the old Guns songs and getting them up, you know, putting them on tape, really forced everybody to get them up to the quality that they needed to be at. Once the energy was figured out by the new guys, how much energy was needed to get the songs right, then it really helped in the writing and recording process of the new record.
Loder: How much stuff have you got for this new album? You've been working on this for a long time. Is there just tons of material?
Rose: We've been working on,
I don't know, 70 songsRose:
The record will be about, anywhere from 16 to 18 songs,
but we recorded at least two albums' worth of material that is solidly recorded. But we are working on a lot more songs than that at the same time... in that way, what we're doing is exploring so, you know, you get a good idea, you save it, and then maybe you come back to it later, or maybe you get a good idea and you go, "That's really cool, but that's not what we're looking for. Okay, let's try something new." You know, basically taking the advance money for the record and actually spending it on the record.
Loder: [Laughs] Not always the case, obviously.
Rose: No, and I don't want to be in a situation again where I have to depend on other people and have [to] start all over.
So we have material that we think is too advanced for old Guns fans to hear right now and they would completely hate, because we were exploring the use of computers [along with] everybody really playing their ass off and combining that, but trying to push the envelope a bit. It's like, "Hmm, I have to push the envelope a little too far. We'll wait on that." So we got a list of things.
Loder:
How's your guitar playing coming along now?
Rose: It's all right. I just wanted to be good enough to be able to contribute what was needed to this main album. It took working on the majority of these things and at least the couple albums' [worth] of material to figure out what should be on the first official Guns album. I wouldn't say it's like, you know, that we recorded a double album, or that we have all of our scraps to be the second one. There is a distinct difference in sound. The second leans probably a little more to aggressive electronica with full guitars, where the first one is definitely more guitar-based.
Loder: Are you thinking now about a stage show? Is it close enough to be thinking how you're gonna present this live, or is that still pretty much still in the future?
Rose: In ways. What we're doing is we're rehearsing with different guitar players, and we're still recording. I'm doing the vocals. I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and it's a very difficult process for me.
I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it. That's kind of tough. It's like you got to go in against these new guys who kicked ass. You finally got the song musically where you wanted to, and then you have to figure out how to go in and kick its ass and be one person competing against this wall of sound.
Rose: [Laughs] I just, you know, I pretty much work on this record and, and that's about it. It takes a lot of time. I'm not a computer-savvy or technical type of person, yet I'm involved with it everyday, so it takes me a while.
Loder: You're going to call this album "Chinese Democracy." What is the meaning of that, since there is no Chinese democracy, of course?
Rose: Well, there's a lot of Chinese democracy movements, and it's something that there's a lot of talk about, and it's something that will be nice to see. It could also just be like an ironic statement. I don't know, I just like the sound of it.
Loder: When do you think we will actually see this album? Is it possible to say early next year?
Rose: We're hoping. Yes, definitely, everything seems to be going well. Robin's departure was abrupt, sudden, you know, not expected...
Loder: He just wanted to get back to Nine Inch Nails, right?
Rose: [continuing] ... but at the same time, it's turned out to be a good thing. We've been able to push some of the guitar parts a step farther, that had he been here, it's not something that would have been considered, and I wouldn't have been rude enough to attempt to do that. Robin did a great job, but we've been able to up the ante a little bit. Dave came in and did something great on "Oh My God," and we've had a few other people come in, so that was a setback for a while, but then it's turned out to be a good thing.
Loder: Have you actually brought in any hip-hop guys to sort of, like, examine the roots of the rhythm now? Has Dr. Dre stopped by or anything?
Rose: No, we haven't done anything like that. It's been thought of, but it's kind of [like] we would really be wasting somebody else's time, as we're trying to figure out how to develop this ourselves. Maybe if it were to get closer to, say, mastering or mixing, maybe there could be something someone else could add to it.
Loder: So we'll see you some time this new year, right? You will be around?
Rose: Yeah, we'll be around. I'm not working on all this to keep it buried. We plan on getting out there and doing it right. The new guys are a lot of fun, and like I say, we will be continuing to look for and or decide who the official new guitar player will be, but it's not that important to the band at this time, as that person's not really needed. There's not a whole lot for them to do at this time in regards to recording, as we've recorded [a] majority of material.
Loder: But you continue to audition, right?
Rose: Yes, we do. Yes, we do, and there's some people who have done a really great job. It's just not something we're prepared to make a complete decision on at this time.
January 2000
It is 2AM in dimly lit recording studio deep in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. Sitting back on a couch in the control room is a once omnipresent rock figure who has been out of the public view for most of the last decade. The music he's been playing on this long night has been the focus of his obsessive perfectionism since 1991, when Guns N Roses last released an album of new material.
But in late November, Axl Rose plays nearly a dozen tracks from the long in the works Guns N` Roses album for Rolling Stone and gave his first substantial interview in more than six years.
He was only an hour late to do so. Occasionally getting up to whisper details about what still must be done to complete the tracks- ''I gotta put some guitar here!'' - Rose comes across as intense but hardly humorless as he speaks at length about his music and the fate of his former band mates.
He's dressed tonight in Abercrombie & Fitch, with his reddish hair intact and cut to a Prince Valiant-ish mid-length. Having failed to deliver a new album by the end of the twentieth century, is Rose ready to commit to releasing a record sometime during the twenty-first?
''Yes, I think that would definitely be the right time,'' he answers, a slight grin coming to his face.
The new Guns N Roses album is tentatively titled Chinese Democracy and loosely scheduled for summer 2000.
''As far as I can tell,'' says GnR's manager Doug Goldstein, ''we are now 99% musically done and 80% vocals done. I see the record being done Feb or March for a summer release.''But time is of little consequence in the world of Axl Rose.
From time to time, Rose gets up to pace the studio where he has spent the last year recording and re-recording material (his workday tends to start around midnight and run through the early daylight hours). ''What we're trying to do is build Guns N` Roses back into something,'' Rose explains quietly as he stands in front of a sunken isolation booth.
Furthermore, because the new material has been composed collaboratively with the new players, he insists, ''It's not an Axl Rose album, even if it's what I wanted it to be. Everybody is putting everything they've got into singing and building. Maybe I'm helping steer it to what it should be built like.''
Throughout the night, Rose seems anxious to finally have his say but wishes he could wait until the new album is released and can ''speak for itself.''
According to Rose, part of the delay in building the new model of Guns N` Roses has been ''educating myself'' about the technology that's come to define rock in the nineties: ''It's like from scratch, learning how to work with something and not wanting it just to be something you did on a computer.''
Imagine Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti remixed by Beck and Trent Reznor, and you'll have some sense of Axl's new sound.
Song after song combines the edgy hard rock force and pop smarts of vintage Guns N Roses with surprisingly modern and ambitious music textures. In addition to the album's almost grungy title track, tentative song titles include ''Catcher in the Rye,'' ''I.R.S,'' ''The Blues'' and ''TWAT,'' which he says stands for ''there was a time.''
Another song, called ''Oklahoma'' - heard tonight only as an instrumental - was inspired by a court date with ex-wife Erin Everly. ''I was sitting in my litigation with my ex-wife, and it was the day after the bombing,'' Rose remembers with a wince. ''We had a break, and I'm sitting with my attorneys with a sort of smile on my face, more like a nervous thing - it was like, 'Forgive me, people, I'm having trouble taking this seriously.' It's just ironic that we're sitting there and this person is spewing all kinds of things and 168 people just got killed. And this person I'm sitting there with, she don't care. Obliterating me is their goal.''
Rose repeatedly speaks of ''building something''.
The rebuilding - and ongoing reinvention - of Guns N Roses has been a difficult and, quite obviously, slow and expensive process. Rose does point out that the expense will be less glaring if, as he expects, he gets another record out of the hours and hours of material he's committed to tape, possibly one that's even more industrial and electronica-influence than Chinese Democracy. ''I'd like to take some of the old Guns fans along with me gradually into the twenty-first century,''
Having stayed publicly silent so long, Rose appears to view the album as a final offering-up of his side of all his myriad battles - notably with his estranged band mates and, even more painful, with his one time fiancee, supermodel Stephanie Seymour, with whom he had an ugly split. He speaks of his desire for Seymour's son to someday be able to come across the new record. ''I hope he'll hear it when he grows up, if he ever wants to know the story, to hear the truth,'' Rose says a little quietly. Rather than simply create a work that's negative and vengeful, though, Rose seems anxious to make something ''positive.''
As for his reputation as a recluse locked away mysteriously at his Malibu estate, Rose says, ''The reality is that I'm not clubbing because I don't find it's in my best interest to be out there. I am building something slowly, and it doesn't seem to be much out there as in here, in the studio and in my home. So many times, I have come down here and I had no idea that I was going to be able to. If you are working with issues that depressed the crap out of you, how do you know you can express it? At the time, you are just like, 'Life sucks.' Then you come down and you express 'Life Sucks,' but in this really beautiful way.''
January 2001
Although this, the performance at Rock In Rio was the target of some criticizism from Axl. According to him, his voice was not at his best because of lack of sleep and the band needs to adjust the sound to these great shows. The expectations of the band turns now to the new album, "Chinese Democracy", which will be released in June. The leader guarantees his fans that they will be rewarded for the long wait.
With 18 songs, the group's next album (they haven't released anything since 1993's "The Spaghetti Incident?") is a collection of songs, which in Axl's opinion are as good as "November Rain". Among them "Madagascar", included in the show on Sunday. The CD will include a tribute to John Lennon and another about child abuse
January 2001
DJ: When is it gonna be the new album? Is it possible that we're gonna have a new record from Guns N' Roses?
Axl:
Yes, I've heard. Um, hopefully we will put out a new single umm sometime this spring and then the record gonna be done in June or shortly thereafter.DJ: OK, now we can hear you clearly clearly clearly. Umm, we were talking about the things about the fans expecting the new band and the new record. Are you gonna work with the same people that are playing live with you here in South America?
Axl: Yes, that is who will be on the new record and there may be also a couple of other players.
Brian May from Queen plays on a couple of songs. Umm, the drummer Josh Freese, umm who is in another band now, he plays on a lot of the songs. Umm, and... but mainly you know it will be the new band and the new band to play the songs live.
January 22nd 2001
R&P: We know that Chinese Democracy will be released in June, but we wanted to know what the reasons are for taking so long before releasing the album?
Axl:
We hadn't written songs or recorded for many years. There were band changes and there were many changes in the record company. People in the record company had many opinions and they wanted to make the best possible record. Every time that we thought that we had the correct songs, then somebody thought that we could make it better. We started over, we continued adding songs, continued recording and recording. I think that when we release the album, it's gonna be something that I'm gonna be proud of and confident in. Then, we will also have an extra heap of songs. This band has played only been together for six weeks before Rio. So it is still very new for them to play together as band, with Robin (Finck) and Buckethead. That was a surprise. Obviously, that was the correct decision to make, but it was not originally planned to have three guitarists.
R&P: Is your new material more industrial? We hear that it is not very similar to that of your old band.
Axl:
It is not industrial, the closest thing to that was perhaps Oh My God, but there are some songs that won't be on the album that were this way. There will be all kinds of styles, many influences as blues, mixed in the songs. But not so much inspiration of Aerosmith or AC/DC that was used on Appetite. Buckethead, his first influence and the reason why he grabbed a guitar for the first time was Angus Young of AC/DC. Several of the boys love to play AC/DC. It is only we will play other styles. When we tried writing songs in the old style of Guns N' Roses, they sounded too old, they didn't sound so alive. We could not make that. And I think that that also passed with the old Guns N' Roses. The songs composed by the boys for another album many years ago, everything sounded old. Then we tried to explore to maintain the band alive.
