For some reason, in March of 2008, Dr. Pepper announced they would give “everyone in America” a free drink if Guns N’ Roses managed to release their long-awaited album ‘Chinese Democracy’ at any point during 2008. This marketing ploy came at a time when, like everyone else on the planet, Dr. Pepper thought a new album by G N’ R was as likely as a new album by all four Beatles. But, lo and behold, the album came out in late November. So Dr. Pepper tried to make good on their promise by putting a coupon on their site, which would be available to download for a full 24 hours. So many people tried to download this coupon that the site crashed, and people were pissed.
And apparently, some people were pissed at the band. People love to blame Axl Rose for everything, and they didn’t disappoint. According to G N’ R’s lawyer, responses on the blog blame Axl for the whole ordeal. Which is where the lawyer comes in. The band has gone public saying they’re not involved in the promotion and want to fix the mess. Dr. Pepper decided to post the coupon for 42 hours, and also set up phone lines for requests. But Guns N’ Roses still wants an apology, and until such time as they receive one, “the door to a lawsuit being filed is always open.” Read more…
Here’s a great inside look at what really happened at the infamous 1992 MTV music video awards. Nirvana vs. Guns n Roses feuds, instrument smashing, song choice pranks, head injuries… this night had it all! See below for a video of the actual Nirvana performance.
Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic:
Seeing as this is the one-year anniversary of my column for SeattleWeekly.com, I thought I’d do something different this week and tell the whole story behind the 1992 MTV Music Video Awards when my bass came crashing down on my head.
Nirvana showed up for the production of the awards show early in the day at UCLA, west of Hollywood. The show was in the sports arena, and there were mobile houses set up for the performers off an athletic field.
We settled into our trailer. In the music world, you show up on time only to wait around a lot. Why not have a beer to take the edge off? Instead of a cold, sudsy treat, I found cans of warm cheap beer. Arg! Might as well let it cool down in the mini-fridge for a while.
I walked around and checked out the stage area. Other bands were showing up. I said hello to the fellows in Pearl Jam and the Black Crowes. Sammy Hagar said hi. There was Howard Stern in a suit made to let his bare buttocks hang out.
I eventually made it to the food service area, where Kurt and Courtney were at a table with their newborn daughter, Frances. They told me that Axl Rose had walked by and Courtney started teasing him. She yelled, “Axl, Axl—you’re the godfather!” Upon hearing this, Axl apparently got very annoyed, walked over to Kurt, and demanded that he keep his woman in line. Kurt turned to Courtney and sarcastically asked his woman to keep in line and left it at that. Axl then split. Of course, Kurt and Courtney were musing over Axl’s response in the context of society’s patriarchal tendencies. My thought was that Rose shouldn’t have gotten bent out of shape. He should have walked over and asked to kiss the baby or something!
At the same time, Kurt wanted to play the tune “Rape Me” and was adamant about it. The MTV people were upset. We were being asked from all corners not to. I thought we should play something off Nevermind, do the gig, and leave. Easy, right? No. Kurt was very stubborn and refused to play another tune. There was quite a swirl around this issue.
I went back to the trailer and had a still-warm beer. Yuk, but I drank it anyway. To resolve the song controversy, we said we were going to do “Lithium,” but we decided among the band to pull a prank and play a few chords of “Rape Me” at the beginning. Even though the issue was resolved, the back and forth between their people, our people, us and them, or whoever—it was draining.
I was walking toward the stage and came across my now-friend and colleague, Duff McKagan. I think Duff was also under the influence. He must have heard something from Rose and had a terse word for me. I was already a little bent out of shape and instantly replied with the same sentiment. The production people grabbed me and we continued toward the stage.
I was now even more shook up. One should take the stage in a good frame of mind, but I wasn’t there. Nirvana gets introduced, and we start playing our prank, then switch into “Lithium.” I’m plugged into some awful bass rig that’s distorting terribly. I can barely hear what I’m playing, and the tone deteriorates into an inaudible mess. Fuck it—time for the bass-toss schtick. Up it goes!!!!! I always try to get good air—I bet I hit over 25 feet, easy! But no matter how high it went, I was not on my game— the only time I’ve ever dropped it was then in front of 300 million people. Ouch! I was fine, but I faked like I was knocked out, perhaps expressing my inner torment over a taxing evening. (Maybe I was just embarrassed.)
I stumbled offstage toward the green room with my hands on my forehead. I walked straight into the bathroom and looked at a bloody forehead in the mirror. I washed my face off and put a paper towel to my head. Paramedics came in and put a little bandage on, then handed me a long medical release form to sign. Standing behind them was Brian May, the guitarist of Queen, with a glass of chilled champagne. I signed the release just to get the medics away from me so I could take a sip of Mr. May’s wonderful medicine. Ahh, yes!!! Moments later Dave Grohl burst in. He’d been looking all over for me, only to find me enjoying a calm glass of bubbly with Mr. May. It was a relief for all!
I met Duff properly in the late 1990’s. And it was a nice exchange—considering we had met quite improperly in 1992. I’ve had a great year here at the Weekly. One of my best days was when I unexpectedly came across Duff’s new column—what a pleasant surprise!
I hope you like the story of that infamous moment in rock music. I still have that bass guitar, too. I don’t play it much. The neck is a little bent!!!
I must say that I like this song much more than the first single. At the very least I’m very curious to hear the rest of the Chinese Democracy. Check out second single “Better”:
4 stars? Really? I don’t know, I’m gonna have to wait and listen to this one for myself before I believe RS. It just seems a little too insane, even for them. Anyways, here’s the review:
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 on Chinese 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 Days soundtrack — 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 a band, 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 with Chinese 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 the Illusion 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.
Here’s a great list and I only disagree with one entry( the Gallagher brothers because they’ve both actually taken beatings over the years!)
Check the list out at Spike.com
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I can’t believe this is finally being released!
Guns N’ Roses premiered a new commercial teaser for Chinese Democracy during Saturday Night Live over the weekend. The 30 spot features the recently released title track and information about the album pre-sale. The teaser will run again tonight during Monday Night Football which airs on ESPN at 815PM EST.
14 years later… BAM, a new Guns ‘n’ Roses single. The song is the title track from the long awaited Chinese Democracy and it has actually been officially released by Axl’s camp.
One of the most highly anticipated albums in rock history, the long-awaited Chinese Democracy (Black Frog/Geffen Records) will be available globally on November 23 on CD and vinyl (accompanied by a free digital download of the tracks), and as a separate digital album.
Produced by Axl Rose and Caram Costanzo, Chinese Democracy includes 14 tracks. The title track and first single from the album, “Chinese Democracy”, was released to radio at 5:00AM eastern time today. Two of the recordings have been recently released–“Shackler’s Revenge” debuted September 14 in the “Rock Band 2” videogame and “If The World” debuted October 11 in the film Body Of Lies.
“The release of Chinese Democracy marks a historic moment in rock ‘n’ roll,” said Irving Azoff and Andy Gould, Guns N’ Roses’ co-managers, “and we’re launching with a monumental campaign that matches the groundbreaking sound of the album itself. Guns N’ Roses fans have every reason to celebrate, for this is only the beginning.”
Apparently the wheels are in motion for Chinese Democracy to be released exclusively at one retail location. At this point does anybody care anymore? I guess at least it means it must be coming out soon? Read more from Reuters:
The June leak of nine allegedly “mastered, finished” tracks from Guns N’ Roses’ long-delayed “Chinese Democracy” spurred a renewed round of speculation about whether the Axl Rose-led band will finally release the 14-years-in-the-making album.
But some concrete signs are finally emerging that the album’s release could be imminent. That’s because, according to sources, negotiations are under way for “Chinese Democracy” to come out as an exclusive at one of the big-box retailers — either Wal-Mart or Best Buy.
Negotiations are also ongoing for conventional record company distribution, another source said.
Guns N’ Roses is now managed by Irving Azoff’s Front Line Management, and Azoff is a well-known proponent of issuing albums exclusively through retailers. He released the Eagles’ “Long Road Out of Eden” through Wal-Mart, much to the chagrin of other merchants.
It’s unclear who initiated the Guns N’ Roses exclusive negotiations — Front Line or Interscope, the band’s label.
Representatives at Front Line and Interscope with knowledge of the situation couldn’t be reached for comment. A Wal-Mart representative said the chain couldn’t confirm this fall’s exclusive album offerings. Best Buy representatives couldn’t be reached for comment.
I’m not even gonna write anything about this… Stereogum has more info, but here are 3 of the albums tracks:
PLAY
