Guns N' Roses: Chinese Democracy
Friday, 21 Nov 2008 18:17
Chinese Democracy finally hits the shelves
Black Frog/Geffen, out November 24th.
In a nutshell…
Complex, self-indulgent, nostalgia shocked by the new.
What's it all about?
Their first album for 17 years, Chinese Democracy finally hits the shelves after band break-ups, mental breakdowns, producers and musicians entering and exiting the studio through an apparent revolving door and Dr Pepper making a promise that could now prove very costly. The drinks company, so confident that the album would be delayed yet again, offered a free can of 'fizzy Benylin', as Alan Partridge dubbed it, to everyone in the US should Chinese Democracy receive a 2008 release.
Lo and behold, it's here. Fourteen tracks, five producers, five guitarists, two drummers, and
millions of dollars worth of Geffen and Axl Rose's money - after the label stopped footing the bill in 2004. Was it worth the wait?
Who's it by?
Formed in 1985 in Los Angeles by Axl Rose - born William Bruce Rose Jr in 1962 - Guns N' Roses took their name from the coming together of members of mid-80s Californian rock bands Hollywood Rose and LA Guns.
Their full-length debut Appetite for Destruction sold more than 28 million copies worldwide and remains the 11th biggest-selling album of all time in the US. While later albums G N' R Lies, Use Your Illusion I and II - released simultaneously - and The Spaghetti Incident all charted well, and spawned countless hit singles, drug and alcohol abuse, and Rose's increasingly dictatorial stance changed the group irrevocably. Original drummer Steven Adler quit after battles with cocaine and heroin, legendary guitarist Slash left in 1996 once Rose recruited another guitarist and after the departure of bassist Duff McKagan in 1998, Rose was the only original member left in the band.
And so he has remained, with guitarists Robin Finck, Paul Tobias, Buckethead, Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal and Richard Fortus all playing some part in the making and recording of Chinese Democracy, while drummer Bryan 'Brain' Mantia was brought in to replace every individual drum pattern of John Freese, after he joined A Perfect Circle.
Is Chinese Democracy an Axl Rose solo album created with a variety of session musicians or a real Guns N' Roses album? It's tempting to favour the former definition, especially given that the man himself is more elusive than Marlon Brando and as famously volatile as the current stock markets.
As an example…
"I never thought the love I was looking for/Could be so close to me/You're the only one I've ever loved/And now you've got the best of me." - If The World
"I was the one who gave you everything/The one who took the fall/You were the one who would do anything/The one I would recall." - There Was A Time
"It's harder to live with the truth about you/Than to live with the lies about me." - I.R.S.
"Ask yourself/Why I would choose/To prostitute myself/To live with fortune and shame." - Prostitute
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Like the recently-released Metallica and AC/DC albums before it, critical response is largely irrelevant in the face of adoring fans, and the
huge expense of an album more than 14 years in the making should be recouped pretty swiftly. Moreover, it's an album of such daring, sometimes awe-inspiring proportions that best rock nominations are all but a certainty.
What the others say
"To [Axl], 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." - David Fricke, Rolling Stone
"Imagine if 'Chinese Democracy' had never come to pass. Axl Rose would have retained an air of Machiavellian mystery and we would've remained complicit fall guys for the best joke played on the music industry. Now that this half-cocked hard rock anachronism is here, the only laughs are unintentional. Axl: you blew it." - Dan Silver, Guardian
"American band releases album venomously attacking China... [Part of a Western plot to] "grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn." - Global Times (published by China's ruling Communist Party)
So is it any good?
With a wait this long, it's basically impossible for Chinese Democracy to live up to expectations. When an album takes 17 years and millions upon millions of dollars to make, and contains the work of umpteen musicians and producers all under the supervision of a diminutive dictator with infrequent ginger cornrows, anything less than the greatest album ever made is a disappointment.
And in that sense, Chinese Democracy is certainly underwhelming. It's not the best album of the decade, it's not the best rock album of the year (Death Magnetic taking that title), in fact it's not even the best album of the week (that honour going to Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak).
What it most probably is, is Guns N' Rose's best album since their huge-selling debut Appetite for Destruction.
From the sound of wind blowing against the Great Wall of China on the title track, it's an ambitious, frequently overblown, repeatedly risible but unfailingly exhilarating album.
Given its lengthy genesis, it's not surprising that several songs smack of an old-fashioned structure shrouded in shiny 21st century clothes. There Was A Time, the centrepiece of the album, features spine-tingling guitar work, a wonderfully gothic choral intro and outro and a slow build reminiscent of November Rain but is nearly hampered by its cheap-sounding drum machine backbeat. The laughably-title Riad N' Bedouins (see what they've done there?) nearly outdoes itself with cacophonous drums that remind the listener of the Terminator 2 score. I.R.S includes the
exact same vocal melody as the "we're not the only ones" refrain from November Rain. And the cheesy double act of Street of Dreams and This I Love could both be rejects from Neil Diamond albums – they're mature to the point of being matte.
But in its strongest moments, Chinese Democracy matches up to any current artist, with Axl's vocals as strong as ever, hair-raising Queen-like song arrangements that jolt the listener and – bizarrely – at least three songs that will make you think: 'Hey, this sounds like Journey… they were good, weren't they?'
Catcher in the Rye, which begins with the same piano and guitar intro used to maudlin effect elsewhere in the album, seems incredibly ponderous until an anthemic middle eight and a shredding guitar solo conjures the image of Slash kneeling in front of you, fag in hand, head thrown back and mysteriously managing to complete a guitar line in the middle of the desert by a church despite there clearly being no power point in sight.
If the World, a stunningly compact melange of style - including breakbeats, Middle Eastern, funk, and rock - is all-but-unrecognisable as a G N' R song, and all the better for it, while the unique instrument of Axl's voice saves the naff pop-rock drums, Linkin Park guitar and piano of closing track Prostitute (We get the point Axl. Those dastardly record companies trying to make you release an album. Aren't they nasty?).
And Shackler's Revenge, with its uncomfortable melding of a Black Label Society-esque dirty riff, a hair metal melody and dense, dystopian production, is emblematic of the album. There are
terrible moments in the song, but when Axl Rose's soaring scream kicks in on a fist-punching, superbly tuneful chorus, it's as thrilling as the as the first time you heard Iron Maiden's Run to the Hills.
A fitting closer would have been Madagascar, which opens with epic horns and strings deserving of a Michael Bay film, especially when the drum machine kicks in and over a maelstrom of soundbites (including Cool Hand Luke, Braveheart, Seven and two Martin Luther King speeches), sees Axl meditating on his refusal to cow-tow to anyone.
It's an overstuffed, grandiose, oddly-militaristic effort that tries to cram about four genres into five-and-a-half minutes. But it's simultaneously an example of everything great about Guns N' Roses – an otherworldly vocal, classic rock guitar and a living, breathing example of the full-blooded, energetic, glorious stupidity of rock 'n' roll.
Just like the album really.
7/10
Lewis Bazley