Rolling Stone: Why “Black Ice” Beat “Chinese Democracy”: The Tale of Wal-Mart Vs. Best Buy
It’s the tale of two retail giants and two highly anticipated albums. While Wal-Mart and their exclusive release, AC/DC’s Black Ice, continue to sell like hotcakes, Best Buy’s investment in Guns n’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy is an industry flop. So what’s to blame for the giant disparity? There’s Best Buy’s lack of promotion or Axl Rose’s reluctance to give interviews, but theWall Street Journal also credits Wal-Mart for superior handling the promotion and executionof their exclusive product.
While Best Buy housed their Democracy in tiny cardboard kiosks, Wal-Mart essentially constructed AC/DC gift shops, selling band merchandise like T-shirts and the group’s Rock Band game, plus an AC/DC bus drove around select cities to build buzz. “Rock N’ Roll Train” debuted with fan interpretations, a music video, a Microsoft Excel video and a spot in the playlist at every sporting event, while “Chinese Democracy” simply hit radio and faded. AC/DC toured, Gn’R didn’t. Angus Young did interviews, Gn’R didn’t. More former members of Guns were willing to talk about Democracy than the band’s current members — even Dr Pepper promotedChinese Democracy more than Axl Rose did.
Still, Universal Records won’t feel the punch of underselling “the most anticipated album in rock history”: As part of the Best Buy deal, the electronics giant agreed to purchase 1.3 millionChinese Democracy copies upfront with a pledge not to return the excess to the label. There is a silver lining, however, as Rose’s epic can expect a huge bump in strip club spins after twoChinese Democracy songs were sent on a music sampler sent to over 2,500 exotic dancing spots.
source: rollingstone.com
Rolling Stone: Did Axl Rose Swindle Guns n’ Roses and Steal Slash’s Song? A Guide to Rose’s Online Rants
Axl Rose & Slash
from rollingstone.com
"Axl Rose didn’t give any magazine or TV interviews to herald the release of Chinese Democracy. But just days after breaking his silence with a pair of Q&As on Guns n’ Roses message boards, Rose has published a 4,594-word post and an additional Q&A on the two fan sites. Those who haven’t been following the Gn’R saga for the past 20 years may be a bit confused by some of his references to age-old beefs with Slash and other bits of Guns jargon. We’ve broken out the juiciest bits and explained them here:
Claim I. I didn’t swindle my bandmates.
Backstory: Slash has alleged that Axl refused to go onstage one night during the Use Your Illusion tour in 1992 unless the band signed away the name rights to the band. “Unfortunately, we signed it,” said Slash. “I didn’t think he’d on stage otherwise.”
Axl’s take: “Never happened, all made up, fallacy and fantasy. Not one single solitary thread of truth to it. Had that been the case I would’ve have been cremated years ago legally, could’ve cleaned me out for the name and damages. It’s called under duress with extenuating circumstances.”
Plausibility: Axl makes a surprisingly strong case. Might Slash not have had the clearest head during that tour?
Claim II. Slash lied in his book.
Backstory: In Slash’s 2007 book the guitarist claims that Guns n’ Roses’ final recording sessions were stalled due to a vast musical direction between himself and Axl.
Axl’s take: “I have the rehearsal tapes. There’s nothing but Slash-based blues rock and he stopped it to both go solo and try to completely take over Guns. I read all this if Axl would’ve put words and melodies on it could’ve… I was specifically told no lyrics, no melodies, no changes to anything and to sing what I was told or fuck off.”
Plausibility: It’s a classic case of he said, Slash said — but again, Slash’s memory of events from the 1990s is always questionable.
Claim III: We won’t reform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Backstory: Fans have been clamoring for a reunion tour from the original lineup when the band is eventually inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Slash has said, “If this comes up, I’d hope we’d be mature enough to get up and do that.”
Axl’s take: “Never thought about that, with the RRHOF. The whole ‘mature enough’ bit was cute. Not to offend anyone but personally I don’t have an interest… It’s a ways away and seems a bit presumptuous to be contemplating being inducted now.”
Plausibility: Axl is now managed by Irving Azoff, a reunion miracle worker who reformed the Eagles and got David Lee Roth back onstage with Van Halen last year. His work is cut out for him this time. If it ever happens, it probably won’t be at the Rock and Roll Fall of Fame in two years.
Claim IV: Velvet Revolver took our song.
Backstory: Velvet Revolver had a hit single in 2004 with “Fall To Pieces.”
Axl’s take: He claims the song originated during the band’s ill-fated final sessions in the mid 1990s. “… Which led to the trial period where Slash played the key bits of ‘Fall to Pieces’ but once I showed some interest that was over.”
Plausibility: Hearing it again today, it’s easy to imagine Axl singing the song — which could have been a classic Gn’R hit if done right. Did Slash play it for Axl, only to pull it when interest was showed? Probably."
RollingStone reviews Chinese Democracy (4 stars)
Chinese Democracy
Let's get right to it: The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. In other words, it sounds a lot like the Guns n' Roses you know. At times, it's the clenched-fist five that made 1987's perfect storm, Appetite for Destruction; more often, it's the one sprawled across the maxed-out CDs of 1991's Use Your Illusion I and II, but here compressed into a convulsive single disc of supershred guitars, orchestral fanfares, hip-hop electronics, metallic tabernacle choirs and Axl Rose's still-virile, rusted-siren singing.
If Rose ever had a moment's doubt or repentance over what Chinese Democracy has cost him in time (13 years), money (14 studios are listed in the credits) and body count — including the exit of every other founding member of the band — he left no room for it in these 14 songs. "I bet you think I'm doin' this all for my health," Rose cracks through the saturation-bombing guitars in "I.R.S.," one of several glancing references on the album to what he knows a lot of people think of him: that Rose, now 46, has spent the last third of his life running off the rails, in half-light. But when he snaps, "All things are possible/I am unstoppable," in the thumper "Scraped," that's not loony hubris — just a good old rock & roll "fuck you," the kind that made him and the old band hot and famous in the first place.
Something else Rose broadcasts over and over onChinese Democracy: Restraint is for suckers. There is plenty of familiar guitar firepower — the stabbing-dagger lick that opens the first track, "Chinese Democracy," the sand-devil fuzz in "Riad N' the Bedouins" and the looping squeals over the grand anguish of "Street of Dreams." But what Slash and Izzy Stradlin used to do with two guitars now takes a wall of 'em. On some tracks, Rose has up to five guys — Robin Finck, Buckethead, Paul Tobias, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal and Richard Fortus — riffing and soloing in broad, saw-toothed blurs. And that's no drag. I still think the wild, superstuffed "Oh My God" — the early Chinese Democracy track wasted on the 1999 End of Dayssoundtrack — beats everything on Guns n' Roses' 1993 covers album, The Spaghetti Incident?
Most of these songs also go through multiple U-turns in personality, as if Rose kept trying new approaches to a hook or a bridge and then decided, "What the hell, they're all cool." "Better" starts with what sounds like hip-hop voicemail — severely pinched guitar, drum machine and a near-falsetto Rose ("No one ever told me when/I was alone/They just thought I'd know better") — before blowing up into vintage Sunset Strip wallop. "If the World" has Buckethead plucking acoustic Spanish guitar over a blaxploitation-film groove, while Rose shows that he still holds a long-breath vowel — part torture victim, part screaming jet — like no other rock singer.
And there is so much going on in "There Was a Time" — strings and Mellotron, a full-strength choir and Rose's overdubbed sour-growl harmonies, wah-wah guitar and a false ending (more choir) — that it's easy to believe Rose spent most of the past decade on that arrangement alone. But it is never a mess, more like a loud mass of bad memories and hard lessons. In the first lines, Rose goes back to a beginning much like his own — "Broken glass and cigarettes/ Writin' on the wall/It was a bargain for the summer/An' I thought I had it all" — then piles on the wreckage along with the orchestra and guitars. By the end, it's one big melt of missing and kiss-off ("If I could go back in time . . . But I don't want to know it now"). If this is the Guns n' Roses that Rose kept hearing in his head all this time, it is obvious why two guitars, bass and drums were never going to be enough.
It is plain, too, that he thinks this Guns n' Roses is aband, as much as the one that recorded "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Used to Love Her" and "Civil War." The voluminous credits that come withChinese Democracy certainly give detailed credit where it is due. My favorite: "Initial arrangement suggestions: Youth on 'Madagascar." Rose takes the big one — "Lyrics N' Melodies by Axl Rose" — but shares full-song bylines with other players on all but one track. Bassist Tommy Stinson plays on nearly every song, and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, the only survivor from theIllusion lineup, does the Elton John-style piano honors on "Street of Dreams."
But Rose still sings a lot about the power of sheer, solitary will even when he throws himself into a bigger fight, like "Chinese Democracy." In "Madagascar," which Rose has played live for several years now, he samples both Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech and dialogue from Cool Hand Luke. And at the end of the album, on the bluntly titled "Prostitute," Rose veers from an almost conversational tenor, over a ticking-bomb shuffle, to five-guitar barrage, orchestral lightning and righteous howl: "Ask yourself/Why I would choose/To prostitute myself/To live with fortune and shame." To him, the long march to Chinese Democracy was not about paranoia and control. It was about saying "I won't" when everyone else insisted, "You must." You may debate whether any rock record is worth that extreme self-indulgence. Actually, the most rock & roll thing about Chinese Democracy is he doesn't care if you do.
