Artist: Guns N' Roses
Label: Geffen Records
Release: 2008
Length: 71:18
Rating: 3.5/5
Guns N’ Roses, once the rightful heirs to the wild Rolling Stones and the debauched Aerosmith, finally dropped the long-awaited Chinese Democracy in 2008, after more than fourteen years. The record, which counts as one of the most expensive but not one of the most successful in music history, went through a whole lot during its making. First came the Axl-Slash feud, still unexplained to this day, which led to the band nearly falling apart, since the only original member left was singer Rose. With all those changes behind them, the freshly updated lineup finally got down to work in 1998. During the prep, according to singer Rose, they also re-recorded the debut Appetite For Destruction, which is still sitting in the singer’s archives. The original recording sessions wrapped in 1999, and the album was supposed to come out in the new millennium. But the arrival of producer Roy Thomas Baker convinced the band that the version they had could be better. After burning through thirteen million American greenbacks, yet more lineup shake-ups and another eight years, the long-awaited record finally came out in 2008.
The record, which you could also call Axl’s solo album (released under the Guns N’ Roses brand), is an interesting progressive experiment that has lost some of its relevance thanks to the long wait. Shot through with industrial and progressive rock elements, which also make up its common thread, it has a very special place in the band’s catalog, because it’s totally different from the rest, which were made in another time. Chinese Democracy is, after all, the only one that took a staggering fifteen years, countless lineup changes and an insane amount of money to make. And it’s precisely this difference that proves the Guns aren’t just a band that ruled the stages in the era of long-haired rock, but a group that can survive change and surprise us again and again with its uniqueness. This fourteen-track release proves exactly that: members can come and go, but as long as singer Rose’s lyrical genius is in the band, you can’t write the Guns off.
The huge dose of adrenaline fired off at the start calms down a bit as the album goes on, with singer Rose showing off his gentler side in the tracks that follow. “Street of Dreams,” marked by Elton John influences, announces that Axl’s thirst for experimenting hasn’t gone anywhere and that the journey into the world of musical experimentation is only just getting started. The stylistic variety carries on through the somewhat Bond-flavored “If the World” and “There Was a Time,” with its Chinese melodies, which slowly starts to convince us that maybe the years of waiting weren’t in vain after all. The book-inspired “Catcher in the Rye,” born out of Rose’s obsession with the novel, also carries a special dedication. A trained eye will spot a metaphorical description of the day Mark Chapman killed Axl’s idol John Lennon in its closing section. The record then creeps toward its peak without any big surprises, through Scraped and Riad N’ the Bedouins. The peak is announced by a sort of stylistic merger of the psychedelic sounds of Pink Floyd and the early metal of Black Sabbath. The six-minute “Sorry” once again vindicates Rose’s status as an excellent lyricist. It’s been the subject of countless interpretations, but the singer has been successfully dodging any reveal of its meaning. In his view, the very multitude of interpretations is the magic of music: everyone will read the words their own way, though he’ll still be curious what the author meant by them. The slightly unlucky “I.R.S” delays the album’s big finale a little, but that only makes the ending that much sweeter. The mighty intro to “Madagascar” signals that something big is coming, something not just anyone can write, something that takes genius. A blend of symphonic stuff, hard rock and sound clips from countless film classics, it’s without a doubt the next “November Rain” or “Estranged,” except this one isn’t built on unhappy love. The lyrics talk about loneliness and how we’ve all been in that situation when everything important comes crashing down. In its own way, the song is Axl’s reckoning with the many enemies who insulted him over the years, telling them plainly that their chatter doesn’t interest him and that he’s his own man. The big moment ends with the heart-wrenching ballad “This I Love,” which came out of Axl’s emotional outpouring after a failed relationship with the love of his life, Stephanie Seymour. This deeply emotional ballad is devoted entirely to telling how their love isn’t dead for him, and that even though she rejects all of it, he still loves her.
This is an album with some of the best lyrics singer Rose has ever written. In many ways it’s more than the band ever pulled off, and it also heads into uncharted territory that the old lineup surely couldn’t have reached. I think that with this record Axl and his musicians managed to create something worth waiting for. It has everything from the aggression we catch in the opening to the tenderness we witness at the close. I also understand why Axl needed so much time for it – over all those years he turned the record into a masterpiece. The only sad thing is that plenty of people hate it because it doesn’t have the sound of the “classic Guns.”
Lineup
W. Axl Rose – vocals, piano (“Catcher in the Rye”, “This I Love” and “Prostitute”), keyboards (“Chinese Democracy”, “There Was a Time” and “This I Love”), rhythm guitar (“There Was a Time” and “Madagascar”), backing vocals (“Catcher in the Rye”), digital editing on all tracks
Dizzy Reed – keyboards, piano, synthesizer, backing vocals
Tommy Stinson – bass, backing vocals
Chris Pitman – keyboards, backing vocals, bass (“There Was a Time” and “Madagascar”), 12-string guitar (“If the World”)
Richard Fortus – rhythm guitar (Chinese Democracy”, “Better”, “Street of Dreams”, “There Was A Time” and “Prostitute”)
Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal – lead and rhythm guitar
Frank Ferrer – drums (“Chinese Democracy”, “Better”, “If the World”, “There Was a Time” and “I.R.S.”)
Former members
Buckethead – lead guitar, acoustic guitar (“If the World”)
Robin Finck – lead guitar, acoustic guitar (“Sorry”), keyboards (“Better” and “If the World”)
Paul Tobias – rhythm guitar, piano (“There Was a Time”)
Bryan Mantia – drums
Session musicians
Sebastian Bach – backing vocals (“Sorry”)
Pete Scaturro – keyboards (“Sorry”)
Suzy Katayama – French horns (“Madagascar”«
Patti Hood – harp (“This I Love”)
Production
Axl Rose and Caram Costanzo
Tracklist
- Chinese Democracy
- Shackler’s Revenge
- Better
- Street of Dreams
- If the World
- There Was a Time
- Catcher in the Rye
- Scraped
- Riad N’ the Bedouins
- Sorry
- I.R.S.
- Madagascar
- This I Love
- Prostitute
