Time for a controversial subject[but who doesn't like a little controversy ]

As a hardcore GNR fan, since 2002 eagerly[obsessively] waiting for Chinese Democracy and getting every leak that came out, i remember when i first heard the bootleg of Madagascar they did in Japan and said wow! Axl has fed up many times, and this isn't Slash, Duff & Matt but man what an epic song filled with passion, great horn section & that Martin Luther king sample. I had faith in Axl again, of course the first sign of CD was Oh My GOD on the End Of Day's soundtrack. Which was a more industrial direction[why he choose to put on that soundtrack randomly is beyond me]

With that said, i heard many CD bootlegs.. some i have as mp3's but can't find on youtube! like the original live version of Madagascar, the 10 minute version of better, the original Industrial instrumental of There Was A Time, Dust In The Wind, The Blues. All great track's i sadly can't even find on youtube anymore

With that said, as a huge fan.... and as someone who waited years to hear this. Some people waited almost 2 decades! it wasn't going to be a masterpiece of course. For what it was it was a damn fine hard rock album to me, first off This I Love is a beautiful track... one of the best Axl ever wrote. Street Of Dreams has some great musicianship/lyrics, Better i had heard circulating around so i already enjoyed it. Chinese Democracy the song was a great hard rock comeback for the band, Madagascar is a great song, but the original live version from Japan is WAY WAY WAY WAY better then this studio version. Although this is basically an Axl Rose solo album.... i mean it's him & 4 new random guys every few months

Yeah, I waited for that one... probably until 2001 and then I gave up... simply stopped caring (of course though I downloaded every leak I could get, but didn't care anymore whether it would ever get properly released). The songs I really. really like are "Madagascar", "Better", "There was a time" and "This I love". Sometimes I like the song "Chinese democracy", but for the rest I do not really care too much... too much electronical noise and shit in the songs, which don't really belong there.

Chinese Democracy is a great album.

The opening trio is like BAM-BAM-BAM, the grungey title track with that Nirvana-ish riff, the awesome Shacklers Revenge with its crazy-ass guitar work courtesy of the ridiculously talented Mr Ron Thal, and then Better which should've been a huge hit.

I also LOVE Catcher In The Rye, there is so much emotion in that track, I love the lyrics and the meaning behind it, stepping inside the mind of a madman, with lyrics about how JD Salinger may have indirectly motivated Mark Chapmans assasination of Lennon. ("You were the instrument / You were the one / How a body took a body, you gave that boy a gun"). That's some brilliant songwriting right there.

I don't think it's fair to call Chinese Democracy an Axl solo album, many of the band members who perform on the songs are also credited as co-writers - some of whom are still in the band to this day (namely Dizzy Reed and Tommy Stinson).

I hope it doesn't take too much longer for Axl to release a follow up. There is much talk of the vast amount of material already completed so why don't they release it??

[Edited 7/24/11 14:36pm]

PatrickS77 said:

Yeah, I waited for that one... probably until 2001 and then I gave up... simply stopped caring (of course though I downloaded every leak I could get, but didn't care anymore whether it would ever get properly released). The songs I really. really like are "Madagascar", "Better", "There was a time" and "This I love". Sometimes I like the song "Chinese democracy", but for the rest I do not really care too much... too much electronical noise and shit in the songs, which don't really belong there.

Th electronical noise work's in some song and others.....

Waiting for this album was a monster and then it undersold...

MattyJam said:

Chinese Democracy is a great album.

The opening trio is like BAM-BAM-BAM, the grungey title track with that Nirvana-ish riff, the awesome Shacklers Revenge with its crazy-ass guitar work courtesy of the ridiculously talented Mr Ron Thal, and then Better which should've been a huge hit.

I also LOVE Catcher In The Rye, there is so much emotion in that track, I love the lyrics and the meaning behind it, stepping inside the mind of a madman, with lyrics about how JD Salinger may have indirectly motivated Mark Chapmans assasination of Lennon. ("You were the instrument / You were the one / How a body took a body, you gave that boy a gun"). That's some brilliant songwriting right there.

I don't think it's fair to call Chinese Democracy an Axl solo album, many of the band members who perform on the songs are also credited as co-writers - some of whom are still in the band to this day (namely Dizzy Reed and Tommy Stinson).

I hope it doesn't take too much longer for Axl to release a follow up. There is much talk of the vast amount of material already completed so why don't they release it??

[Edited 7/24/11 14:36pm]

The opening trio is pretty amazing! and some of the best on the album. As for why they don't release.. it..... it's the man known as Axl or to some asshole rose

You know he like's to take his time giving music.

MattyJam said:

I hope it doesn't take too much longer for Axl to release a follow up. There is much talk of the vast amount of material already completed so why don't they release it??

[Edited 7/24/11 14:36pm]

I honestly expected a new album to be released by now. Maybe it was naive but I thought that once the Chinese Democracy monkey was finally off of Axl's back that he would have another new album out in a year or two. I also thought that there would have been a deluxe reissue by now. I did not obsessively follow the many leaks over the years but there has got to be a ton of outtakes from this album.

It's funny, I waited about a year and a half to finally buy the album, listened to it once and haven't touched it since. It wasn't that I hated it but it didn't compel me to revisit it. I'll have to dig it out and try to give it multiple spins over the next week.

The first two industrial metal songs I could really do without, but the rest is some of the greatest melodic rock Axl has out down on wax/disc. Cather In The Rye is great and the lyrics especially the ending stanzas are very poetic and emotional. Fuck a November Rain. The thing that gets me is that the sound sounds just like the guitar is being played by Slash himself. Makes me wonder how proiminent Axl was in the studio with the orignal lineup and how he helped mold their sound. There Was A Time is just epic . The ending is such a guitar rave up. Prosittute is a nice hard scream to a whisper ending to all the madness of the cd. Sorry, Riad, If The World et.al have great melodies, guitar work, awesome drum patterns. This is a cecent follow up but it should have come out in the 90's. Axl put his foot in it on CD. I dont get why the fans disliked it. Of course 15 years span any group is oging to have a serious drop off. Hell, a new Van Halen release isnt going to probably be heralded as the next coming if they ever get it finished, but these songs are good, especially in this era. The sound is not that drastic a change. Its production yes is quite clean and the playing isnt sloppy sounding GNR of old..maybe thats what it is but again a perfect release for this era as a rock n roll record imho.

.

[Edited 7/24/11 17:06pm]

Good album, and I was waiting for it since I discovered GN'R as a college freshman in 2002. Really, after such a ridiculously long wait time, there's no way it could've lived up to the epicness that I'd built up for it in my head. And as I noted in the UYI thread, somehow it doesn't quite achieve the same epic sprawl that those two albums did.

That being said, Chinese Democracy is home to a few of my favorite GN'R songs ever, including:

There Was a Time

Sorry

Madagascar

Prostitute

The guitar solos in There Was a Time are simply stunners all around. And those explosive orchestral moments in Prostitute? Sublime.

The main thing about the album that bugs me is Street of Dreams, mainly because one of the earlier live versions (2002) was a masterpiece, but the final version just felt wrong (vocals way too scratchy, way too many guitars squirreling around in the background) and lacked the charm of those earlier renditions.

Overall though, I still think CD is an often startlingly good piece of work, and I'm still curious about what else Axl and co. were working on all those years.

[Edited 7/24/11 23:56pm]

Risico said:

Good album, and I was waiting for it since I discovered GN'R as a college freshman in 2002. Really, after such a ridiculously long wait time, there's no way it could've lived up to the epicness that I'd built up for it in my head. And as I noted in the UYI thread, somehow it doesn't quite achieve the same epic sprawl that those two albums did.

That being said, Chinese Democracy is home to a few of my favorite GN'R songs ever, including:

There Was a Time

Sorry

Madagascar

Prostitute

The guitar solos in There Was a Time are simply stunners all around. And those explosive orchestral moments in Prostitute? Sublime.

The main thing about the album that bugs me is Street of Dreams, mainly because one of the earlier live versions (2002) was a masterpiece, but the final version just felt wrong (vocals way too scratchy, way too many guitars squirreling around in the background) and lacked the charm of those earlier renditions.

Overall though, I still think CD is an often startlingly good piece of work, and I'm still curious about what else Axl and co. were working on all those years.

[Edited 7/24/11 23:56pm]

That's how i felt about the original live version of Madagascar it was AMAZING. And well.... luckily i have it on mp3 cause i can find it nowhere on youtube....... it is way superior to the album version which is actually a great track.

Trouble is with Chinese Democracy, so many tracks had leaked in demo form or had been played live years before the album came out, and people got used to hearing those songs that way. So when it finally was released, fans were bitching about how it didn't sound as good as the original versions. That's just the version you fell in love with because it's what you heard first.

I like it and have listened to it a lot.

It's hardly perfect, but to be honest, I don't really care about many of the "classic" GNR songs like "November Rain", "Paradise City" or "Welcome To The Jungle". I'm not sure if you could call Chinese Democracy a very sophisticated record either, but I find the songwriting more to my taste than on the earlier records. It's really the only GNR record I enjoy listening to from start to end.

I like the album. It is less meticulous sounding than I had imagined it might be given the mythology surrounding it. I was expecting a disaster, honestly.

It is not really a G&R album, it is an Axl Rose album, but no matter.

The only issue I have, is it is just tiring to listen to. After about 5-6 songs I feel like I have listened to a double album already. So I am a fan of the first 8 songs or so, and not nearly as familiar with the rest.

I bought it years ago now and still havn't heard it LOL. Dumb I know. I must dig it out. Thanx for reminding me.

NDRU said:

I like the album. It is less meticulous sounding than I had imagined it might be given the mythology surrounding it. I was expecting a disaster, honestly.

It is not really a G&R album, it is an Axl Rose album, but no matter.

The only issue I have, is it is just tiring to listen to. After about 5-6 songs I feel like I have listened to a double album already. So I am a fan of the first 8 songs or so, and not nearly as familiar with the rest.

I have only heard the album twice, once yesterday and once a little over a year ago, but I think I know what you mean. It feels very epic, very much like the longer songs from the Use Your Illusion albums. In fact, there are plenty of "normal" length tracks but it doesn't necessarily feel like it. Obviously I need to give it more spins before I form any solid opinions but I think that most of the songs feel too "big." The album may have benefitted from some simpler songs. Perhaps then the epic tracks on the album would have more impact? As it is it feels like every song is a bit over the top which blunts the impact of the album as a whole. The songs themselves are fine but I think that the selection and pacing may be somewhat flawed.

My first ever concert was Guns N Roses opening for Aerosmith in 1988. This album has nothing in common with that band I saw 20-something yrs ago. On it's own it's an ok record. Nothing impressive. But compared to that first album, it's bullshit.

I love the album, particularly the title track, "Better", and "Shackler's Revenge". I was always perplexed about how after all that work and time, Axl didn't really seem to want to promote it much.

Did the music video for "Better" ever actually get released? I read that it was shot, but I looked for it a few months after the album was out and it seemed that they never released it.

Militant said:

I love the album, particularly the title track, "Better", and "Shackler's Revenge". I was always perplexed about how after all that work and time, Axl didn't really seem to want to promote it much.

Did the music video for "Better" ever actually get released? I read that it was shot, but I looked for it a few months after the album was out and it seemed that they never released it.

Axl went AWOL around the time of the albums release, nobody could contact him or locate his whereabouts for three months.

Only Axl Rose would spend 15 years making an album and then disappear off the face of the planet once it was released.