Bryan “Brain” Mantia Talks Chinese Democracy
Brain gets asked to do a lot of interesting things these days, like playing time on a wagon wheel while recording with Tom Waits in an abandoned country church, or keeping a drumkit set up for six years in a haunted Masonic hall while working on Guns N’ Roses’ long-awaited latest album, Chinese Democracy. “Those situations are kind of opposite, but in a sense they’re the same,” the drummer suggests. “They’re different scenarios, but they’re both overblown. Somehow I feel comfortable in those situations. I don’t do too many studio sessions where I just show up with my set and read a chart. I’m used to getting involved and being part of the production and the ridiculousness of whatever it is. I just gravitate more toward that.”
Mantia was born in 1964, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area town of Cupertino, and was first alerted to the skins by stickmen like John Bonham and the drummers of James Brown. He got serious in high school and cemented some chops at PIT in Hollywood, and in the late 1980s he played in the popular San Francisco party band Limbomaniacs. In the ’90s he hooked up with producer Bill Laswell for several interesting projects and did a stint with his longtime pal Les Claypool in Primus. Brain now lives in the Oakland hills with his wife and two-year-old daughter, near his recording space at Studio 880, where he spends time on turntables and traps.
Today Brain is developing a new funk project called SociaLibrium, and he hopes to be on the road this summer with Guns N’ Roses in support of Chinese Democracy.
MD: I’ve never heard anything quite like Tom Waits’ Real Gone album.
Brain: Yeah, it was Mark Ribot, me, Larry Taylor, and Tom. We recorded in this old…it was kind of a cross between a church and a barn. Tom says, “Show up at this place, this is where we’re going to do it.” I’m like, “Okay, is there a studio there? Should I call the studio owner?” He says, “Aw, no, nobody’s really there, there’s no phone service.” “Okay, is there a bathroom? A kitchen? Anything?”
Basically he just brought the studio in there. The producer kind of set it all up and made it pretty comfortable. We sat around and just started jamming. He’d come in with an idea and go, “Okay, so maybe it goes like….” He basically told me, “Don’t bring a drumset, don’t bring anything that you can buy at Guitar Center.” So I went to some pawnshops and some junkyards, grabbed whatever sounded cool, and brought it. And he has his own stuff. We’d make a drumkit out of, like, a manhole, a carburetor, maybe a traditional cymbal that was broken, a 1930s Ludwig 26" kick drum…. The snares were old, vintage, whatever was lying around. The other thing was, he asked me to bring hard leather-soled shoes. There was a bathroom that had a really nice-sounding ambience, and the tile on the floor sounded really good when you stomped on it. Most of the backbeats on that album were done by stomping on the bathroom floor.
MD: It definitely doesn’t sound like a traditional kit on Real Gone.
Brain: Tom had given me a cassette of him making all of these percussion sounds in his bathroom at like four in the morning. I took the cassette, blew it into Peak, which is a two-track editor, chopped it all up, and exported the WAV files. I have this program called MPC Maker, which allows you to create the programs on your Mac to put onto your MPC 3000. And so I just grabbed them, dragged and dropped them, threw them on the zip drive, and put them in my MPC. So when you hear [makes beatbox sounds] and all those weird vocal sounds, that was Tom. Next to the kit—which could have been me playing a log with a piece of metal in one hand and a mallet in the other—I also had the MPC 3000 with all those sounds set up. So that hip-hop-based beat stuff was me playing the MPC live—no programming—just live on the pads with his voice cut up from the cassette.
MD: It must have been quite a switch going from doing two takes per song with Tom, to the Guns N’ Roses album, which took about ten years to make.
Brain: [laughs] I think I have the record for my drums being set up for the longest time in any studio. I think they were set up at Village Recorders in Santa Monica for six years. Six years. That was another process entirely.
MD: How did you get into that situation, and what was that process like?
Brain: The Guns album was in the works for fifteen years. Matt Sorum started it, thenJosh Freese did it for four or five years, and then Josh quit. Then [guitarist] Bucketheadgot in there, and he and I have been friends forever. He told me that Josh had quit and said, “Axl’s an awesome dude. You should come check it out.” So I went in there, and I didn’t hear back from them for a while. And then one day I remember Axl calling me and saying, “You know, if you want the gig you can have it, and you can still be on other stuff. You can still do Primus or whatever you want to do.”
MD: What were some of the more memorable things you recall about that session?
Brain: [Producer] Roy Thomas Baker drove us around L.A. in his Rolls Royce to try to find the exact drums that we wanted for the recording. We went to every company, and it wound up being a mash-up of all the best drums we could find around L.A. We pretty much gathered the most ridiculous kit you could ever have, to rerecord Josh’s parts. Josh had come up with some pretty good parts for the album. Axl was like, “Hey, I like what Josh did, so could we start out by you doing his parts, but with your feel? Because your feel’s different.” So I went over to Sony Music and found the dude who did their orchestrations for films and asked if he could transcribe the drums on the thirty songs. He’s like, “All right, yeah, I’ll let you know when they’re done.” He would do about six a month—literally these six-page drum transcriptions of what Josh had played.
So we brought all those drums into the main studio at Village, where Fleetwood Macrecorded Tusk. I set up and started playing, and I was like, “Wait a second, man. We’re doing Guns N’ Roses here.”
I talked to Jeff Greenberg, the owner, and said, “Jeff, man, we gotta have something better than this. I mean the room sounds great and this is cool, but you just had, like,Kenny G in here. We gotta get a vibe.”
He tells me there’s an old haunted Masonic temple upstairs where the Masons would give their speeches, and nobody ever goes up there. It was a theater. So we go up, he opens the door, and I’m thinking, We’ve got to set up here. We found the sweet spot and I set up the drums there…and that’s where they stayed for six years.
This was a Guns N’ Roses album—it had to be overblown.
I wasn't going to just sit in the studio. I was kind of coming from the school of Tom Waits. One of the best studios I ever recorded in was Bill Laswell’s Geenpoint Studio, just an open cement building, and the only baffling that he had were these little foam pillars, and it sounded amazing. We recorded the first Praxis album there, with Bernie Worrell, Bootsy Collins. Bucket, and Ali from The Jungle Brothers, and it was the best -the drums sounded killer. I was using Steve Jordan's Yamahas, and they just sounded incredible. It sounded so much better than the studios I had worked in, which were built for acoustics. So going into the Guns thing, it just felt like we had to do something better that what you'd normally get in a studio that's built to sound good. All of a sudden them was a vibe, and it clicked. I got the album then. I started getting what the drums should sound like. Josh's drums were kind of tight and precise, and we loosened it up. The sound became a little bigger, a little sloppier. And that became more of what the album is now.
MD: What were you guys listening to while you recorded your stuff?
Brain: We listened to some prerecorded tracks that Josh had already played on. Sometimes we did some stuff all together, but most of it was done when there were already bass and guitar tracks. And whatever feel that we put on it, maybe they'd go back and re-record to that. I took one song at a time, learned each as an orchestra piece literally note for note, every fill, every crazy thing. I replayed it with my feel and the new sound in the new building. And that process happened for a few songs, so it took a while. After that was done Axl said, “Okay, that was cool, now do your thing.” So I went in, forgot all of what I'd just done, and did my thing, and I think it became a combination of both. In the end I redid it again by kind or doing half my thing and some of what I remembered from Josh's original drum parts. We were also writing as a new band with me and Bucket. We had some songs that we started from scratch, where I just recorded myself without charts.
MD: It sounds like some different kits were used on Chinese Democracy
Brain: It was a constant sound thing. Each song started from scratch, so it was like. "Okay. here's 'Madagascar.' This DW 13” tom, a Timeless Timber model that my drum tech had - sounds huge. And it sounds really great with this Gretsch floor tom. And this aluminum DW snare sounds great with this particular setup...." Then, next song… “Okay, this is a tighter kick drum, let's use this one.” And every cymbal would change. That was fun. Like I said, I’m kind of a studio tweaker, and it was fun to be able to do that. We had the budget, so I was like, lets just do this. When am I ever going to get a chance to do this again?
At one point I probably had four snares lined up on the ground...twenty different kick drums…cymbals just thrown all over the place - it was insane. But then I’ve got pictures of the Tom Waits thing, and it's the same thing, but it's just junk. All of the great albums that I’ve been lucky enough to play on have always had that kind of overblown type of tweaking. I feel comfortable and at home when it's like that. I was a chameleon or every song, just like on the Tom Waits stuff. Every song I was like, Okay, now I'm this, now we're in this situation.
MD: And like you said, by nature a Guns N’ Roses recording has to be over the top.
Brain: Yeah, it's that rock 'n' roll thing, which I guess everybody wants to live at one point. I figured that was my chance to live it. But I'm studio geek, so I had to live it in the studio. I'm not really a rock star in that way, you know. l'm not going to go pose in front of a plane – I’m just going to tweak on fifty different snares.
MD: You must have recorded to a click with Guns N’ Roses.
Brain: Oh, yeah, we definitely used a click, and even live on some of the new songs I'll play to a click. We don't really have any backing tracks - though if there's something that we can't re-create they might add that. "Riad N' the Bedouins” and “Madagascar”
are done with clicks Iive because they start with loops. In the studio I think everything was done to a click.
Now, with Tom Waits, if you ever mention that, I dont think he'd be in the room. There's no such thing, ever. And if they‘re going to splice something together, it's done with a razor blade. I don't think Pro Tools is allowed with him.
MD: You always manage to make a groove swing, even on a driving rock tune like “Shackler's Revenge” off Chinese Democracy.
Brain: Yeah, I’ve always been a fan of Mitch Mitchell and John Bonham. Then there’sBernhard Purdie, I’d listen to a lot of R&B, a lot of Stax recordings. My dad was heavy intoCurtis Mayfield and Shuggie Otis when I was growing up, and he'd play those records all the time. He took me to the Keystone Korner to see Tony Williams when I was really young, and I think I gravitated toward that kind of swing and groove. I think [Josh] Freeseis the precise, technically proficient, perfect kind of punk drummer - I saw him with Nine Inch Nails recently and it was incredible. He was killing it. But my style is a little looser, and I've always had that kind of swing to my feel, even if it's rock. I just hear music that way. I think that’s what Axl heard and thought. Okay, Brain puts the pocket in a different slot, a different place.
“Shackler’s” was a song that Bucket and I wrote a Iong time ago, just jamming. Axl asked if anybody had any songs or grooves, so we brought that in. It was a riff that we'd been jamming on since the Praxis days with Bill and Bootsy and Bernie. Axl loved it and put some lyrics to it, and it became “Shackler's.” That one might have more of a swing because it came more from me.
MD: The tune “Better,” and several others, list you and Frank Ferrer as the drummers. How did it come about that you now share the drum chair in Guns N' Roses?
Brain: I was having a baby girl at the beginning of a tour in ’06, and l told them before I started that I would have to leave early. I got Frank Ferrer, who had played with [Gunsguitarist and bassist] Richard Fortus and Tommy Stinson, to fill in, and that was cool. When I got home, I was kind of diggin’ being home. The album wasn't out yet, and Frankwas doing a great job and I was getting a lot of production gigs just staying home. I'm really into computers and music, and I have my own studio. I rent a room at Studio 880,and I built this MIDI studio with all these MPCs and outboard gear, and I just started doing production - commercials for TV, that kind of stuff. And I kept getting more and more gigs and making almost as much money doing that as I was from touring and being a drummer. I also started taking theory lessons, piano lessons, ear training, computer and music lesson, going that route.
When I left I was only supposed to be gone for two weeks, and then that turned into a month, and then that turned into three months, because I was getting a lot of studio work. "Hey, can you do this Gatorade commercial?” “Hey, we’ve got this Best Buy commercial." Write the music or make the beat for this...." I do a lot of work with Bootsy Collins on that side of things, the commercials and stuff. “Hey Brain, can you put a beat to this?” We're working on a Gatorade commercial right now. I’ve been a Bootsy fan for years, so I'm just honored to be working with him on any level. Anyway,
I started doing more of that, so I was like, “Hey Frank, I’m kind of doing this and they're digging your playing. Would you mind hanging out and staying?”
He was thrilled - "Oh, man, this is the greatest gig in the world. I’m so happy, this is awesome." And nobody else in the band was complaining, though they were like, "Well, are you ever coming back?" I told them, “Well, yeah, we’ll see what’s going on, but right now letFrank do it" Frank is more rock. He's more like the original Guns N' Roses drummer [Steven Adler], which is more like straight-up rock, open hi-hat bashing, hitting as hard as you can.
So I think Axl wins like, “Hey. Frank plays this way, let him play the chorus to 'Better,’ because that's supposed to be open. Let’s see what it sounds like.” So I think it's me playing all the way up to the chorus, then it's Frank in the chorus, and then it goes back to me. We never actually played together. It was all done after the fact. I asked the engineer how much Frank is on it, and he said, “It’s mainly you, with Frank playing a chorus here or a bridge there.” So that’s why I'm listed first on those tracks.
MD: I like the way it goes to the toms on the chorus.
Brain: That song was brought in after Josh and was written by the band. It was Robin Finck's song. We jammed it for a couple weeks, and then went into the studio and recorded it. So that tom part was kind of written by me more than Frank, but it could beFrank playing it because he plays more bombastic. Or … oh, who knows.
MD: The tune "Scraped” is a vicious groove, and it sounds like you’re playing of the guitar a lot as well as staying with the bass.
Brain: That's another Buckethead song, I was keying off the guitar riff- we've been playing that style for years, so when he came in with the riff I knew what to do. Bucket and I have been playing for twenty years now. Before I was even in Primus, Joe Gore, the editor ofGuitar Player, turned me on to him. We've been playing together since Bill Laswell andPraxis. So to get into that song was so simple - right away I hear his style, and I know what to play and what to feel.
MD: I love the groove where you're playing quarter notes with your right hand and there's other stuff going on with your other limbs. It feels slow, but fast at the same time.
Brain: Yeah, that’s based off some Zeppelin-type licks. I noticed with Bonham that he’ll play something straight up top and then it'll be kind of busy underneath. But that straight thing in the hi-hat kind of keeps it together, holds it back and makes it bigger sounding than it really is. From the beginning, the reason I played music was from watching [the Led Zeppelin concert movie] The Song Remains the Same, and that Bonham style was one of my first influences. And that song in particular and that feel are kind of based on that.
MD: "Madagascar" is another tune with some great grooves.
Brain: Yeah, it’s got that Bonham thing too, the big long fills. The loop at the beginning I just created from the MPC. Then we went into the main parts where Axl comes in, and that's when we added the drums, played live. It was the first we we had the drums set up in that theater, and it just sounded really Bonham-esque. In the spoken-word section we took away the baffles and had it completely opened up because we wanted it bigger. That’s totally my style and the way I like to play. I was just biting off Bonham the whole time on that track.
MD: You've brought Guns N' Roses up to the minute with these drum tracks, like the break-beat intro before the big grooves come in.
Brain: Axl is really interested in having everybody bring what they do into the picture. I just did a remix of "Shackler’s,” - made it kind of more club. And I think he wants to put out a remx album of some of the other songs we did. The great thing is he lets you do what you do. He still has the final say and wants it to work as a Guns N’ Roses cut. But he definitely will let you stretch it out in that way, and I think that’s where my influenes come in. I listen to a lot hip-hop and R&B. I listen to all of Questlove's productions. Every time aRoots album comes out I'm in line at the store, I’m still a fan that way.
MD: I’ve never seen three people credited for a drum arrangement before on an album.
Brain: I think Axl really went back and thought about who added what where, and gave people credit for it. It's incredible. He wants me to add what I know about modem music and what I'm into. I’m not just a rock dude. Somehow I get the rock gigs, but I really listen to every style, and I'm on top of of whatever's happening in hip-hop and R&B.
MD: That leads to me the topic of your new funk band. SociaLibrium, with Bernie Worrell, T.M Stevens, and Blackbyrd McKnight.
Brain: Blackbyrd is the closest thing to Jimi Hendrix that you're going to run into. AndBernie is the Jimi Hendrix of the keyboards. I don't know who's heavier than Bernie as musician, or anybody that I could pick right now, other than Prince that I'd like to play with. We did a gig in San Francisco and we were learning some old songs and revamping them. Everybody brought in some jams that they had played before, some Praxis ones that Bernie and I had played, T.M. brought in some, Blackbyrd brought in some of his stuff. We listened to it very quickly and decided: Let's make this a band. Don't copy... don't learn "Super Stupid" or “Red Hot Mama" the same way they were played on the albums. It would be more about, which way would you play it, what is your favorite beat right now, or what are you listening to? Just play a beat.
So we just made up new grooves, and then those started morphing into more jamiming, almost like the band-jam thing, but more Miles-y. I love the’70s miles stuff. Agharta - I’m a huge fan of that. Al Foster. I love the open hi-hat rawness, and the fact that it’s these jazz people trying to play rock and twisting it in a weird way. So anyway, it started to get more into that, and I can't tell you how awesome it's been. Musically, I’ve been so happy … I hope we can make an album and continue it. Because I really see this thing stretching into that Miles side, and that's my favorite stuff.
MD: You’re also into selling your own beats these days.
Brain: I started the web site BrainBeatz.com and before that I made a beat DVD with Big Fish Audio, Pro-tools 24-bit. I just went to a studio, played all my grooves, and did a deal just selling it for producers, people who just want to have the tempo. Now with time stretching and stuff it can pretty much he any tempo, but back when I made it I had specific tempos and specific grooves. Now, I am trying to do that on my own through my site, just because I have a whole HD Pro-tools rig in the studio and a place to play the drums. So every time I get bored I just make a new beat. I flip it, do some weird stuff to it, and then try to sell it. I'll probably make another DVD set. hopefully through Big Fish and try to sell that to producers and stuff. I'm really trying to get more into the production side.
My heroes in drumming have been the John Bonhams, the Keith Moons. the Tony Williamses. But in terms of longevity and having a career it's been more about Stewart Copeland and Narada Michael Walden, the people that have gone from drumming into production...and into doing soundtracks and writing songs. So during that whole Chineseperiod I was studying up on technology, reading evert music magazine that I could get my hands on that had to do with Iogic, taking private lessons, and just learning everything I could about that stuff.
I'm just starting to do what Questlove is doing, but I really enjoy that. I enjoy tweaking on a kick drum for six hours, playing with sounds and synths and learning how synthesis works. After taking the two years off front play ing live since my kid was born, I kind of miss playing now. The SociaLibrium thing was kind of like, "Man! -- you know, getting that rush, that kind of Zen feeling of being on stage and just being comfortable in what you're doing. I don't know if I just want to be a road dog for the rest of my life. Doing a little bit of both is where I'm trying to head.
By Robin Tolleson
Source: moderndrummer.com
Ex-Guns N’ Roses Drummer Defends Axl Rose
Nearly 10 years after leaving Guns N' Rosesto become a founding member of A Perfect Circle, drummer Josh Freese is still involved in the maelstrom with Axl Rose. And, as Freese tells it, that's a good thing.
During an extensive Spinner Q&A, 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."
Freese auditioned for the Axl-centric Guns in 1997, albeit a little reluctantly. "I was pretty busy at the time, so I didn't really need the job necessarily," he says. "Then I decided that I should go down there because I wanted to meet him. At the time, no one had seen him for a couple of years and there were all these rumors. He had become the Howard Hughes of rock 'n' roll and I wanted to see it. I went down and I liked him. He wasn't the monster that was painted of him."
The two spent the next two years in the studio, working up new songs including the Rose/Freese composition that became the 'Chinese Democracy' title track. "That's a wacky feather in my cap," Freese says with a laugh. "After 10 years I was ready to see [the song] have eight different writers on it, but it didn't get convoluted and f---ed up."
In fact, for all the reports of Rose's endless tweaking, Freese says the song is very close to the original. "I think they made the intro longer," he says. "I'd have 'em cut right into the thing. It's a simple bonehead rock song with a big riff that I'm assuming will be perfect for 'Guitar Hero' one day."
‘Guns N’ Roses’ VMA’s 2002 – Behind the Scenes
A behind the scenes from the 2002 VMA's, where GN'R made a surprise appearance at very end of the show.
Guns N’ Roses name DJ Ashba as band’s newest axeman
Guns N' Roses is proud to announce that guitarist n' songwriter Dj Ashba has joined the band for an upcoming tour.
Ashba, who officially replaces current NIN guitarist Robin Finck, is best known as co-founder of hard rock bands Sixx AM and Beautiful Creatures.
"Dj's a gifted, energetic guitarist that Guns N' Roses is proud to have on board!!" exclaims Axl Rose. "We're very excited to have the opportunity to work together. Guns' radar has silently been aware of Dj's presence for quite some time! He brings a fresh approach to our particular brand of mayhem expanding the tapestry of Guns N' Roses live. Once Dj's name was in the hat, the hat disappeared!!"
"It's an honor to have the opportunity to be a part of a band that I have always loved and respected," said Dj Ashba.
"I'm looking forward to working with Axl, who is not only one of the few great front men of our generation, but a true artist."
Dj Ashba co-wrote and co-produced Motley Crue's latest album "Saints of Los Angeles," which garnered a 2008 GRAMMY nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance, as well as co-wrote and co-produced the Sixx AM album "Heroin Diaries."
Robin continues to be part of GN'R, by virtue of Guns' history and his involvement in Chinese Democracy.
Now, one step closer to the abyss, Ashba joins a band who's all time roster is nearly as long as it's founder Axl
Rose's rap sheet!
from:
Here Today Gone To Hell
http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com
Axl photo credit: George Chin
Dj photo credit: Bjorn Opsahl
Revamped “Behind The Music” To Feature Axl?
Lil Wayne, Kanye West Lined Up for Revamped 'Behind the Music'
Two renown rappers will up the ante for the return of VH1's "Behind the Music" that ceased from airing back in 2006. Executives for the music channel announced yesterday that the semi-documentary program will come back for a second round and it turns out that they have had a line of names that focus more on the current than the veterans.
In separate episodes, Lil Wayne and Kanye West will be featured in a bid to have more contemporary artists who are "on top of their game". Executive Vice President of the show, Rick Krim explained on the changing of the format, "We had to rethink a little bit and look at these current artists that are really big stars now, and maybe it isn't the classic rise and fall. ...And also, just because their big stars now doesn't mean they necessarily have a great 'Behind the Music' kind of story."
Signed for the first two episodes are Lil Wayne and Scott Weiland respectively. "From our research, (Lil Wayne) certainly does," Krim reasoned on the choice. "From the fact that when he was a kid he accidentally shot himself and almost died at age 12 while playing with a gun, he went through Katrina, he has (a possible stint in) jail pending. He has all the requisite drama in his life, which I think ultimately makes for the great story. The fact that he's one of the biggest stars out there makes it the right combination that we're looking for."
The show is slated to arrive in July although Lil Wayne's date is not yet revealed. VH1 also mentioned other names such as Britney Spears, Axl Rose, Julio Iglesias, M.I.A., Coldplay, Radiohead and Depeche Mode.
Guns N’ Roses bassist Tommy Stinson talks ‘Chinese Democracy’
Here are a couple of excerpts fromt the Bass Player magazine interview:
Bass Player: How did you get the gig with GUNS N' ROSES?
Stinson: My friend Josh Freese was playing drums with the band. I ran into him in a Hollywood rehearsal hall, and he mentioned that Duff[McKagan] had quit, then he asked if I knew any bass players. We just kind or laughed about it, because it sounded like a funny thing for me to go audition for GUNS N' ROSES. GUNS N' ROSES were never my thing when the band first came out — they just weren't my style. I thought at least it would be fun to play with Josh. But I learned five or six songs for the audition. We basically just jammed, and it was pretty fun. They seriously needed a bass player, so they asked if I'd do it.
Bass Player: Why do you think you were the right guy for this gig?
Stinson: The only thing I could grasp at is that I have the kind of punk-rock attack that Duff did. He wasn't really a metal guy — he had punk roots. On the other hand. he's got sensibilities that are different from mine. I couldn't place exactly what they are — they're unique to each one of us.
Bass Player: Do you and Duff know each other?
Stinson: I met him a few years back, and he seemed like a really sweet guy. He didn't seem to have any issues with me — I don't think he wanted the gig anymore.
Bass Player: Describe the writing process for "Chinese Democracy".
Stinson: I came in around '98 when the band was still writing the record. It was Paul Tobias and Robin Finck on guitar, Dizzy Reed andChris Pitman on keys, Josh on drums and me. Everybody was just slowly starting to bring in ideas. We were set up at Rumbo Recorders, a big studio out in the middle of nowhere. A funny thing — Captain & Tennilleown it. The whole thing looks like a boat. Anyway, we all just started hammering ideas out. Essentially it was eight guys collaborating. To be thrown into that kind of environment — eight guys from very different walks of life — was very crazy, I'd never worked in that way, but it was cool. There were guys who'd never ever made a record putting out their ideas. At first, those of us who'd actually made records thought their ideas sucked, but there were also some good ones.
Bass Player: How did you work out your ideas in a civil way?
Stinson: We each had to give reasons for liking or disliking something — you couldn't just be bull-headed. We had to function as a democracy or we'd end up hating each other. Collaborating was good for that. I think every one of us learned a lot from it.
Bass Player: "Street of Dreams" stands out for having a lot of cool, counter melodic bass work.
Stinson: That's definitely one of the places where I tried to play melodically. Axl (Rose) had the majority of that song written, and I brought in the bridge bass line and progression.
Bass Player: It has a few licks that seem to reference Duff's playing. Was that intentional?
Stinson: When I started hammering out those GUNS N' ROSES songs, I started to really dig into what Duff was doing — I really liked the stuff he played. I'd be lying if I said his playing didn't seep into my subconscious — like the way he uses grace notes. And I wouldn't be afraid to say I stole some of his stuff.
Bass Player: Josh Freese left GUNS N' ROSES in 2000, and was replaced by Brain Mantia. What did that mean for the tracks you recorded with Josh?
Stinson: I had to redo them. I probably ended up completely re-recording each part five or six times over the years. It was tough. What really happened was the record company stood back and left Axl to his own devices. Axl had all these ideas, and he needed somebody to help interpret what he wanted. He had to basically produce himself, and that's not what he went into this wanting to do. There are a lot of reasons the album took so long to make, but I think the record company really dropped the ball on this one.
Bass Player: What do you see as the root cause for that?
Stinson: I think everything changed when Geffen merged withInterscope. When that happened, Axl was told that [A&R executive]Jimmy Iovine would play more of a role in making the album happen. What Jimmy did instead was throw other people into the mix who weren't very capable.
Bass Player: What happened when producer Roy Thomas Baker was brought in?
Stinson: He wanted to re-record everything, because he felt he could get better tones. In my opinion, he wasted many years and many millions of dollars trying to get us better sounds that we could have addressed in the mixing stage. I'm not a proponent of his style of producing. I think Iovineput Roy Thomas Baker in the producer seat because he didn't think the raw sounds were good enough. Then Roy came in and would try everyMarshall guitar amp in a five-state area to find just the right guitar tone. And he wanted to do that for every single part on the album.
source: blabbermouth.net
Guns N’ Roses – My Michelle live @ Donnington 2006 feat. Sebastian Bach
Guns N' Roses playing My Michelle live at the Donnington 2006 featuring Sebastian Bach
Guns N’ Roses – Better live @ KROQ Inland Invasion
Guns N' Roses performing Better live @ KROQ Inland Invasion in 2006
Axl Rose and Michael Monroe – Death, Jail or Rock and Roll
Axl Rose guest appearing on Michael Monroe's music video in 1989. Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy reformed Hanoi Rocks in 2002. As you can hear, the video doesn't have audio track from the actual live show, instead you can find the whole song with Axl elsewhere as someone posted it on Youtube.
