Axl Rose mention in Billboard

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Axl and GN'R were mentioned in the latest issue of Billboard magazine. The article is a Q&A with Merck Mercuriadis, worldwide CEO for the Sanctuary Group and manager of GN'R.

 

The Last Word

A Q&A With Merck Mercuriadis

BY ED CHRISTMAN

 

----

 

As an extension of his devotion to music, Mercuriadis is known for his rapport with artists and his fierce protection of their interests. One of Sanctuary's management clients is Guns N' Roses, whom Mercuriadis handles personally. Asked when the band's long-awaited "Chinese Democracy" album will see the light of day, Mercuriadis says, "Axl is one of the most extraordinary artists of all time. When people hear this album, they will realize what [Axl] did in this band, versus what Slash says he did. It will be evident to everyone who the heart, soul and passion of Guns N' Roses is."

[BUTT 0]

Well, he did a good job of dodging the question. But it's been obvious for a while that what he's saying is true. For better or worse, this is an Axl album. If Slash had his way GNR never would have done songs like "November Rain" or Estranged". If people want to hear what Slash's GNR would have sounded like, listen to Slash's Snakepit. I couldn't imagine Slash being big on songs like "The Blues" or "Madagascar".

[GreatWhiteNope 0]

Chinese Democracy is the Smile of our generation.

 

I honestly don't think we'll ever see it.

[Guest Failed Mascot]

This is the biggest joke going around in music right now. Axel is just laughing his ass off at how long he's keeping this rib going.

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Well, he did a good job of dodging the question. But it's been obvious for a while that what he's saying is true. For better or worse, this is an Axl album. If Slash had his way GNR never would have done songs like "November Rain" or Estranged". If people want to hear what Slash's GNR would have sounded like, listen to Slash's Snakepit. I couldn't imagine Slash being big on songs like "The Blues" or "Madagascar".

I think "The Blues" sounds like something off of one of the "Use Your Illusions. On a side note, I just got a DVD of GNR'S Madison Square Garden performance from 2002, the last concert they have performed to date, and the night before the Philly riot I was at. Should be interesting to watch.

[AboveAverage484 0]

It's pretty bad when Guns N' Roses "news" is just the mentioning of their name in a magzine or on a website.

[BUTT 0]

Well, he did a good job of dodging the question.  But it's been obvious for a while that what he's saying is true.  For better or worse, this is an Axl album.  If Slash had his way GNR never would have done songs like "November Rain" or Estranged".  If people want to hear what Slash's GNR would have sounded like, listen to Slash's Snakepit.  I couldn't imagine Slash being big on songs like "The Blues" or "Madagascar".

I think "The Blues" sounds like something off of one of the "Use Your Illusions. On a side note, I just got a DVD of GNR'S Madison Square Garden performance from 2002, the last concert they have performed to date, and the night before the Philly riot I was at. Should be interesting to watch.

Did you pay for that? Some GNR website had those videos up for free download a few months ago. It's a great show, but supposedly Axl decided to cancel the tour after hearing one of Howard Stern's producers say it sucked.

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Yeah, $15. I've seen some of the videos, I just wanted to own it, and probably force some friends to watch it.

 

"Howard had an article about Guns N Roses and how they canceled their shows. Howard said the article was from ''Blender'' magazine. Howard said Axl Rose was upset about a DJ said some stuff about the show not being all that great. According to the article it was Rose tuning into Howard's show and hearing Doug Goodstein from E! badmouthing the show he'd seen the night before that drove him over the edge. That's what they claim caused Axl to cancel the rest of their concerts. Howard said he loved it and thought it was pretty funny. Robin wondered if Doug knows the power he has. Doug called in and said it blew his mind when he heard about that. He said that band was his favorite of all time. He said it can't be because of him. Howard joked that Doug is going to bring down the Rolling Stones next. Howard wondered why Doug wasn't there at work yet. Doug said he only has to be there early sometimes. Doug sounded like he was stunned about the story. He said he couldn't sleep last night because of it. Howard had Doug repeat some of the stuff that he said that day when he bad mouthed the show. Doug said he thought that Axl was running off stage to get oxygen and he was using a teleprompter. Howard spent a couple of minutes on that and then took another break."

[GreatWhiteNope 0]

Here's the Blender article that Stern was talking about:

 

Blender has discovered that Rose sulked and was depressed following the previous night's triumphant return to a sold-out Madison Square Garden in New York City.

 

"After a bravura performance, a giddy Rose stayed up all night in his excitement to read positive reviews the next morning - and then tuned in to 'The Howard Stern Show'.

 

"Stern's associate, Doug Goodstein, gave a thumbs down to the MSG show, mocking the singer's braider hair, claiming that Rose needed oxygen between songs and was lip-synching and comparing him to Michael Jackson.

 

"With a helicopter waiting on the rooftop of his hotel to take him on a brief 40-minute flight to Philadelphia for that night's show at the First Union Center, a dispirited Rose refused to budge.

 

"Venue representatives boosted security to avoid a repeat of the riot that occurred when GN'R failed to turn up for their opening-night show in Vancouver on November 7.

 

"Promoter Clear Channel and venue managers Comcast-Spectator set a firm deadline of 10:45pm for Rose to say whether or not he would show up to play. Rose's longtime manager, Doug Goldstein, reached at Rose's New York hotel room, glumly reported 'He's not coming.'

 

"At 11:15, the 15,000 strong audience was told the show was not going to happen 'due to illness in the band.' Fans were asked not to take their anger out on the staff or the facility. Some of them threw chairs and attacked the lighting, sound, and video crews, but no arrests or injuries were reported.

 

" '(The GUNS N' ROSES tour) probably will go down as one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Not just because the band didn't always show up, but because most of the audience didn't,' says Gary Bongiovanni, the ed

 

"Attendance at other venues was underwhelming according to figures reported to Pollstar, ticket sales for the tour's first 10 dates averaged 7,344 a night for arenas that hold between 15,000 and 20,000.

[The Man in Blak 0]

When Buckethead leaves your band for greener pastures, I think it's time to call it a career.

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From the The International Herald Tribune

 

WEST HOLLYWOOD, California In the faint red light of the Rainbow Bar and Grill, Tom Zutaut sips at his drink and spills a bit of regret. It has been 19 years since he signed the then-unknown rock band Guns N' Roses to a contract with Geffen Records, where they turned into multiplatinum superstars. Back in those days, the Rainbow was their hangout of choice.

 

Years after he left the label, he returned in 2001 to try to coax Axl Rose, the band's magnetic leader and by then its only original member, into completing one of the most highly anticipated albums in the industry: an opus tentatively titled "Chinese Democracy." The deadline for turning in the album had passed two years earlier.

 

"I really thought I could get him to deliver the record," said Zutaut, who spent nine months trying. "And we got close."

 

He is speaking in relative terms. Zutaut is but one of a long series of executives and producers brought in over the years to try to conjure up the maddeningly elusive album - to cajole the reclusive rock star into composing, singing, recording, just showing up.

 

Like everyone else who had tried, or has tried since, Zutaut came away empty-handed.

 

Rose began work on the album in 1994, recording in fits and starts with an ever-changing roster of musicians, marching through at least three recording studios, four producers and a decade of music business turmoil. The singer, whose management said he could not be reached for comment for this article, went through turmoil of his own during that period, battling lawsuits and personal demons, retreating from the limelight only to be followed by gossip about his rumored interest in plastic surgery and "past-life regression" therapy.

 

Along the way, he has racked up more than $13 million in production costs, according to Geffen documents, ranking the album as probably the most expensive recording never released.

 

As the production has dragged on, it has revealed one of the music industry's basic weaknesses: The more record companies rely on proven stars like Rose, the less it can control them.

 

It's a story that applies to the creation of almost every major album. But in the case of "Chinese Democracy," it has a stark ending: The singer who cast himself as a master of predatory Hollywood in the hit song "Welcome to the Jungle" has come to be known instead as the keeper of the industry's most notorious white elephant.

 

At the stroke of midnight on Sept. 17, 1991, Guns N' Roses was the biggest band in the world. Hundreds of record stores had stayed open late or reopened to cash in on the first sales that night of "Use Your Illusion," Vols. 1 and 2, the band's new twin albums. On the strength of that promotion - and the coattails of the band's blockbuster 1987 debut - the band set a record: For the first time in rock history, two albums from one act opened at Nos. 1 and 2 on Billboard's U.S. album sales chart.

 

But by 1994 their fortunes had changed. After years of drug addiction, lyric controversies, onstage tantrums and occasional fan riots, their members had started to drift away, their lead singer had become bogged down in lawsuits, and their collection of cover versions of classic punk songs titled "The Spaghetti Incident?" had been released to mixed reviews and disappointing sales.

 

The members of the band - what was left of it - reconvened at the Complex, a Los Angeles studio, in a massive soundstage with a pool table and a Guns N' Roses-themed pinball machine, to prepare for their next album, which Geffen executives expected to release some time the following year. But they quickly began suffering from an ailment that has proved fatal to bands from time immemorial: boredom.

 

"They had enough money that they didn't have to do anything," said a longtime observer of the band, one of the 30 people involved with the album who spoke for this article. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, as did many others who had signed a confidentiality agreement while working with Rose. "You couldn't get everyone in the room at the same time."

 

Rose had appointed himself the leader of the project, but he didn't seem to know where to lead. As Slash, the band's longtime guitarist, said recently, in reference to the singer's songwriting style: "It seemed like a dictatorship. We didn't spend a lot of time collaborating. He'd sit back in the chair, watching. There'd be a riff here, a riff there. But I didn't know where it was going."

 

Geffen Records was riding toward an uncertain destiny as well; its founder, David Geffen, retired, and its corporate parent, MCA, was sold to the liquor giant Seagram, led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. With all those changes swirling, and with old Guns N' Roses material still ringing up millions in new sales, executives decided to leave the band alone to write and record.

 

A cover of the Rolling Stones hit "Sympathy for the Devil," however, which was released as part of a movie soundtrack, would be the last addition to the original band's catalogue. Slash quit the band in 1996; the drummer Matt Sorum and the bassist Duff McKagan were the next to go. Of the founding members, that left just Rose.

 

But instead of starting something new, he chose to keep the band's name and repopulate it with new musicians. Geffen Records wasn't in much of a position to deny him. The label was on a cold streak and wagered that fans would still flock to the singer, even if a band had to be rebuilt around him.

 

The label wasn't in much of a position to prod him forward, either. In 1997 Todd Sullivan, who was then a talent executive for the company, sent Rose a sampling of CDs produced by different people and encouraged him to choose one to work on "Chinese Democracy." Sullivan says he received a call informing him that Rose had run over the albums with a car.

 

The singer had encouraged everyone in the band's camp to record their ideas for riffs and jams, hours and hours of song fragments that he hoped to process into full compositions.

 

"Most of the stuff he had played me was just sketches," Sullivan recalled. "I said, 'Look, Axl, this is some really great, promising stuff here. Why don't you consider just bearing down and completing some of these songs?' He goes, 'Hmm, bear down and complete some of these songs?' Next day I get a call from Eddie" - Eddie Rosenblatt, the Geffen chairman - "saying I was off the project."

 

Around the start of 1998 Rose moved the band that he had assembled to Rumbo Recorders, a three-room studio deep in the San Fernando Valley where Guns N' Roses had recorded parts for its blockbuster debut, "Appetite for Destruction." The crew turned the studio into a rock star's playground: tapestries, green and yellow lights, state-of-the-art computer equipment and as many as 60 guitars at the ready, according to people involved in the production. But Rose wasn't there for fun and games. "What Axl wanted to do," one recording expert who was there recalls, "was to make the best record that had ever been made."

 

As time and dollars flew by, pressure mounted at Geffen. The label's dry spell lingered, making it more dependent than ever on new music from heavy hitters. The label paid Rose $1 million to press on with the album, with the unusual promise of another $1 million if he delivered "Chinese Democracy" by March 1 of the following year. Geffen also offered one of the producers Rose had hired extra royalties if the recording came in before that.

 

He never collected. The producer, who goes by the name Youth (his real name is Martin Glover), started visiting the singer in the pool room of his secluded Malibu estate, to try to help him focus on composing. But that collaboration didn't go any better than his predecessors' had. "He kind of pulled out, said 'I'm not ready,"' Youth said. "He was quite isolated. There weren't very many people I think he could trust. It was very difficult to penetrate the walls he'd built up."

 

Youth's replacement was Sean Beavan - a producer who had worked with industrial-rock acts like Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails - and under his care the riffs and song fragments that the band had recorded slowly began to take shape. But costs were spiraling out of control. The crew rented one piece of specialized equipment, for example, for more than two years - at a cost well into six figures - and used it for perhaps 30 days, according to a person involved with the production.

 

Rose appeared sporadically, some weeks just one or two days, some weeks not at all. "It was unorganized chaos," the same person said. "There was never a system to this. And in between, there were always parties to go to, different computers Axl was trying out or buying. There were times when we didn't record things for weeks."

 

So the studio technicians burned as many as five CDs a week with various mixes of different songs, which were driven to Malibu for Rose to study. The band's archive of recorded material swelled to include more than 1,000 digital audio tapes and other media, according to people who were there at the time, all elaborately labeled to chart the progress of songs. "It was like the Library of Congress in there," said one production expert who spent time on the album there.

 

By one count, the band kept roughly 20 songs it considered on the A list and an additional 40 or so in various stages of completion on the B list.

 

All that material, however, didn't do much to reassure the label. "In 1998 and 1999 you start getting a little bit nervous," Rosenblatt, the executive who led the outfit after David Geffen's departure, said delicately.

 

In January 1999 Seagram restructured its music division, firing 110 Geffen employees, including Rosenblatt, and folding the unit into the corporation's bigger Interscope Records division.

 

When Rose missed a March 1999 deadline, however, he set a pattern that would repeat itself for years to come: a flurry of energetic activity, followed by creative chaos and a withdrawal from the studio.

 

If Rose appeared more remote, his vision of the project became more grandiose, people involved with the band said. He now spoke of releasing not merely one album but a trilogy. And he planned one very big surprise.

 

At MTV's annual awards show in 2002, publicists buzzed through the audience whispering about a big finale. And with just minutes to go in the broadcast, a screen lifted away to reveal the band and Rose, in cornrows and a sports jersey, looking strikingly young. The musicians burst into "Welcome to the Jungle," one of the original band's biggest hits, and the crowd went wild. But on television Rose quickly seemed out of breath and out of tune. He ended the performance, which included the new song "Madagascar" and the original band's hit "Paradise City," in a messianic stance, raising his arms and closing his eyes. He left the audience with a cryptic but tantalizing message: "Round one."

 

Round two never came.

 

Rose is reportedly working on the album even now. "The 'Chinese Democracy' album is very close to being completed," Merck Mercuriadis, chief executive officer of Sanctuary Group, which manages Rose, wrote in a statement. He added that other artists, including Peter Gabriel and Stevie Wonder, "have throughout their careers consistently taken similar periods of time without undeserved scrutiny as the world respects that this is what it can sometimes take to make great art." But of course, rumors of the album's imminent release have circulated since almost the very beginning of the tale, more than a decade ago.

 

At the center of that tale, now as then, is the confounding figure of Axl Rose himself. A magnetic talent, a moody unpredictable artist, a man of enormous ideas and confused follow-through, he has proved himself to be an uncontrollable variable in any business plan.

 

His involvement on "Chinese Democracy" has outlasted countless executives, producers and fellow musicians - even the corporate structure that first brought the band to worldwide celebrity. Even, in fact, the recognizable configuration of the recording industry as a whole, which since the band first went into the studio in 1994 has consolidated to four major corporations from six and staggered amid an epidemic of piracy, leaving it more focused than ever on the bottom line, and on reliable musicians with a proven track record of consistent performance.

 

The sort of rock stars that the original members of Guns N' Roses, who recently submitted a claim seeking $6 million in what were called unpaid royalties from its catalogue, used to be, but which Rose, with his mood swings, erratic work habits and long dark stretches, no longer is.

 

He hasn't disappeared entirely. His voice can be heard on the latest edition in the "Grand Theft Auto" video game series, in the character of a grizzled '70s-style rock D.J. "Remember," he advises the radio station's audience, "we're not outdated, and neither is our music."

 

Interscope has taken "Chinese Democracy" off its schedule. Rose hasn't been seen there since last year, when he was spotted leaving the parking area beneath Interscope's offices, where witnesses reported that a small traffic jam had congealed when attendants halted other cars to clear a path for his silver Ferrari. Rose punched the gas and cruised into the day.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Axl is currently living out my dream life. Leaving millions hanging perpetually while living quite luxuriously and catering to your own whims.

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There's going to be an article about "Chinese Democracy" in the NY Times tomorrow, but it might just be this same article.

 

Anyways, this is one of my favorite articles on Axl I have ever read. "Hmmm, finish the songs? You're fired."

 

I'm about to post another one of my favorites.

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The story is told of a birthday party that took place two Februarys ago at a Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica. A few long-haired musicians mingled with some concert promoters in suits, eating mediocre guacamole and drinking Cuervo margaritas. The gifts piled up and the crowd of about forty sampled birthday cake, but the guest of honor, Axl Rose, who was turning thirty-seven, never showed up. Axl's manager, Doug Goldstein, quieted the room. "Axl's not going to be coming, " Goldstein said. "But order whatever you want and have a good time."

 

This story is told not because it is considered an example of eccentric or rude behaviour on Rose's part. Rather, it is considered emblematic of the way the singer conducts his life - just another night in the off-kilter existence of a man who used to be one of the biggest rock stars in the world. "Not the least bit unusual," says a friend who was at the restaurant,laughing in there-he-goes-again style. "Typical Axl."

 

Except for a couple of interviews last winter, timed to the release of a Guns N' Roses live album, and a 1998 Phoenix arrest, Rose has remained out of public view since 1994, when G N' R coughed and spat to a halt. For six years he has been working on the next G N' R record, tentatively titled Chinese Democracy. None of the original band members plays on it. Most of them hardly speak with Rose anymore. Rose spends most of his time in Los Angeles recording studios behind the gate of his secluded estate atop a hill in the Latigo Canyon section of Malibu. His housekeeper, Beta Lebeis, does most of the shopping and driving. Axl reads, works out, kickboxes, plays pinball, teaches himself guitar and computers and tries to write lyrics.

 

Meanwhile, GN'R's debut record, Appetite For Destruction, released in 1987, marches on. The second biggest debut album in rock history (15 million copies at the last count), Appetite thirteen years later still sells a remarkable 5,000 to 6,000 copies per week - more than 200,000 units annually. G N' R caught a feeling in 1987, a raw vibe of anger and authenticity, somewhere between metal and punk, that still appeals to rock music fans today. Even in the new millennium, Appetite probably cranks inside more turbocharged Chevys than any rock record ever made.

 

One can divide the public Axl into two separate periods: before 1993, when the original band was together and post-1993 after the group's final recording, The Spaghetti Incident?, an unremarkable collection of mostly punk covers. Wherever he went during those years of his fame, Axl left frustrated, angry people behind. He became buried in litigation. Shelves in the clerks' offices as Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles and in Santa Monica bow under the weight of thousands of pages of legal papers concerning G N' R and Axl that have accumulated over the years, actions involving claims totalling millions of dollars. This is not to mention band- or Rose-related legal matters in Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, New York, Spain, England and Canada.

 

The documents tell part of the story of how G N' R succeeded and failed, and they give a picture of Axl himself. The image that emerges is one of a complicated man who can be sensitive and funny but who is also controlling and obsessive and troubled, a man changed by fame and wracked by childhood trauma who faces a lonely future surrounded by a small circle of family members and childhood friends. "His world is very insular," says Doug Goldstein. "He doesn't like very many people."

 

Axl is a man struggling with demons and taking radical measures to overcome them. He became deeply involved with past-life regression, a brand of psychotherapy that exists on the new age fringe. "Axl," a friend says, "is looking for anything that'll give him happiness."

 

As successful and wealthy as he became, friends contend, Axl still feels like a victim, unfulfilled, somewhat lost. "He seemed emotionally reserved and a little bit suspicious," says the techno whiz Moby, who spent some time with Axl in California in 1997. "He seemed a little bit like a beaten dog." And Rose, according to those who know him, remains hung up on one old girlfriend: the model Stephanie Seymour, now married to the polo-playing financier Peter Brant. Seymour and Axl's ex-wife, Erin Everly, have both accused Axl of beating them, a charge he denies.

 

Whether Axl's emotional and legal troubles contributed to the demise of the original GN'R is open to interpretation. There is little dispute, however, about one thing they did cause: a massive delay in finishing Chinese Democracy, which is in reality an Axl Rose solo record. This work has been six years, a roomful of studio musicians and a rumoured $6 million worth of Interscope/Geffen's money in the making. It is still not finished and probably won't be anytime soon. "So many times, I have come down to the studio, and I had no idea that I was going to be able to," Rose told Rolling Stone last November as he played twelve new tracks. "If you are working with issues that depressed the crap out of you, how do you know you can express it?"

 

People who have heard the new music say it sounds fantastic. "The tracks reminded me of the best moments of Seventies Pink Floyd or later Led Zeppelin", says Jim Barber, a former Geffen A&R executive who worked on the project. "There's nothing out there right now that has that kind of scope. Axl hasn't spent the last several years struggling to write Use Your Illusion over again." In the estimation of guitarist Zakk Wylde, who sat in with the new band a few times, "Axl is one fucking smart guy."

 

In recent months, though, guitarist Robin Finck and drummer Josh Freese both left the project, as did computer engineer Billy Howerdel. Queen guitarist Brian May spent a week recording with Axl and returned to England. Avant guitarist Bckethead, known for wearing an upside-down Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his noggin, came on the scene. But as of now, it seems, there is no "new" GN'R.

 

"I'll punch your lights out right here and right now. I don't give a fuck who you are. You are all little people on a power trip." These are not lyrics to a bitter new GN'R track about lawyers, perhaps reminiscent of Axl's old rants on CD and from the stage against reporters and photographers and anybody else who failed to do his precise bidding. These words, the Phoenix Police Department reports, are what Axl shouted at security personnel at Sky Harbor International Airport in February 1998 after a screener asked to search his hand luggage. Threatened with arrest, Axl, travelling in jeans, a red sweat shirt and a gray stocking cap, rejoined, "I don't give a fuck. Just put me in fuckin' jail." He spent a couple of hours behind bars. The matter was resolved on February 18th 19999 when Rose, via telephone, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanour charge of disturbing the peace and paid a $500 fine.

 

Lost in the minor hoopla over the arrest was the matter of what, exactly, Axl was doing at the Phoenix airport. Was Axl coming back from a place where he often goes - Sedona, the New Age bastion in the red-rock canyons 115 miles north of Phoenix, where he sees one of the most important people in his world, a psychic known derisively in the GN'R camp as Yoda?

 

Though nobody knows precisely how he got involved, people who know him say Axl started visiting Sedona in the early nineties, sometimes travelling with Beta, his housekeeper, or Earl, his bodyguard. Many believers in past lives, channelling, UFOs and the predictive power of crystals pass through Sedona. The town is so tuned in, vibewise that certain canyons are understood to be vortexes for masculine energy and others for feminine forces. In the produce aisles of Sedona supermarkets, shoppers dangle crystals over the pints of strawberries.

 

For close to a decade, Rose has been a powerful, almost evangelical believer in homeopathic medicine. The world, in Axl's view, is a perilous place, populated by greedy doctors affiliated with the American Medical Association who prescribed dangerous synthetic medicines. When GN'R toured, homeopathic elixirs for Axl's throat were always on hand. He introduced Echinacea and protein shakes to a GN'R more accustomed to vodka and heroin.

 

Axl's childhood woes are well documented; he does not come, as Axl himself might say, from a healthy place. In 1992, in this magazine, Axl talked about learning at the age of seventeen that the man he thought was his real father was in fact his stepfather. Axl's biological father, William Rose, abandoned the family when Axl was two and is believed to be dead. Through therapy, Axl said, he recovered memories of being beaten and sexually abused as a child. It is these traumas, primarily, that Axl wrestles with, and it is these experiences that may, in part, be blamed for his hostile attitude toward women and his consuming need for control. A friend says "All that baggage, as he was being constructed, it all comes to bear. It's not an external issue. It's really core to his makeup."

 

Yoda's real name is Sharon Maynard. A rather plain Asian woman of middle age, Maynard stands about five feet five and has a medium build and dark, curly hair. Since 1978 she has run a not-for-profit business in Sedona called Arcos Cielos Corp., which loosely translated from the Spanish means "sky arcs." The company, with assets of $241,602 in 1998, lists itself as an "educational" enterprise. Aricos Cielos operates out of Maynard's rural home in Sedona, which she shares with her husband, Elliott, a gently gray-haired man. "Dr. Elliott and Sharon Maynard" are both thanked in the Use Your Illusion liner notes.

 

Sharon Maynards keeps a low profile in town. "She is way under, low-key," says a local business man with ties to the psychic community. None of the New Age booksellers or silversmiths I talked to knew her, and she wasn't listed in the phone book or with the Center for the New Age, where a tick three-ring binder full of psychics and past-life therapists is available for perusal - and many of those listed are available for immediate consultation in booths upstairs. This is not surprising. Much of the more high-end psychic work in Sedona is done b quiet figures like Yoda who work out of private homes.

 

While it is customary for tour employees to submit a photograph for a laminated pass, with Axl other things seemed to come into play. Doug Goldstein is said to gather photos at the singer's instruction for psychic assessment. In Sedona, some think, Yoda would examine these photos. What does so-and-so want out of Axl? Does this person have his best interests in mind? What kind of energy do they emit?

 

Submitting a photo to Axl for evaluation by Yoda, some say, coincided with employment in the GN'R world. Band members, crew members, record-company executives - everybody did it. The procedure still goes on. Recalls one current employee, "I sent my picture in. Everybody gets a photo made for a pass. People made jokes about auras being read. What's this for? Nobody really knew. But I don't know anybody who got canned for anything other than not doing a good job." On occasion, according to a music-industry figure Axl recently worked with, Yoda even requests photographs of the sons and daughters of people in Axl's world.

 

In February 1998 in Arizona, Axl was carrying some presents he'd recently received - "going to the psychic for review," in the words of one knowledgeable source. One item in Axl's bag was a large hand-blown glass sphere. Axl was apparently worried that the security personnel at the airport might break it, and that led to his outburst and arrest.

 

How important is Yoda to Axl? One associate says Yoda's influence, while important, is tempered by the force of Axl's personality; "He wasn't turning his life over to somebody with a candle and a crystal. I say that with every confidence. It's just not consistent with who he is. He makes his own decisions."

 

Still, Yoda showed up on tour. "She came with some of her pals," a crew member recalls. "Funny dudes: Southwestern people with funny shoes. Their look didn't fit in: they were like aliens."

 

During a 1992 GN'R swing through the US with Metallica, Yoda apparently became concerned about energy fields around Minneapolis and ordered that a date contemplated for the city not be booked. It was later rescheduled for a different Minneapolis venue. "Axl had trouble," a tour regular says, "in areas of the country that had a strong magnetic field concentration."

 

Before some dates in Japan, presumably at Yoda's urging, information about atomic power sources in the country and power sources for the Tokyo dome had to be collected. A source involved in this mission says he never understood precisely what this data was used for. "It was something about the magnetic forces that exist in the universe and where those things are in comparison to where Axl would be spending his time."

 

Axl also sometimes took a psychotherapist from Los Angeles, a Victoria Principal look-alike named Suzzy London on the road. London maintained an area backstage for herself and Axl. He cast her as his therapist, wearing a black miniskirt, in the video for "Don't Cry."

 

Members of the band and its entourage took different views of Axl's various counsellors. Some showed them healthy respect. Others scorned them. "They had to accompany him to Japan to make sure that the bad-energy waves didn't capture him there," a former employee recalls. "If it was any exotic, wonderful place around the world, the advisers generally had to be flown in at some point. But if it was Kansas City, everything was really fine. I mean it was St. Louis where the riot happened." Were they with him in St. Louis? Angry at a fan with a camera at a July 2nd 1992 show at the Riverport Amphitheatre, Rose launched himself into the crowd, touching off a riot that injured more than fifty people and caused more than $200,000 in damage.

 

Axl has spoken in the past about his experiences with past-life-regression therapy. A typical past life regression sessions begins with hypnosis. During traditional psychotherapy, a patient placed in a trance may be able to recall traumatic events that have been repressed and that may lie at the root of current emotional problems. Freudian theory holds that recognizing and understanding such traumas, which often occur in childhood, can promote healing.

 

Under hypnosis by a past-life expert, the playing field expands. A patient may be able to remember back even further, to a life or lives that were lived hundreds if not thousands of years ago, and discover traumas that occurred then. Some patients may speak in the voice or the language of that long-dead being, whether it be a Roman ruler or a Southern plantation slave.

 

Past-life adherents tend to believe that one lives one's life with different incarnations of the same group of people. Axl, according to a confidant, believes he and Stephanie Seymour were together in fifteen or sixteen past lives.

 

After a shouting match with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love backstage at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards at UCLA's Pauley Pavillion, Axl told a friend that Love was trying to possess him. "He believes people are always trying to find a window through to control his energy," a friend says. How does Axl combat this? "By controlling the people who have access to him."

 

After he and Seymour broke up, in 1992, the model began dating Peter Brant. Axl, according to one friend, ordered subordinates to obtain a photograph of Brant's wife, Sandra. Axl intended to take it to Yoda for a specific purpose, according to a former Geffen employee: "Axl wanted to cast a spell around Sandra to protect her from Peter, because he felt that she, too, had been cuckolded as he had been, and he had a great deal of sympathy for her." Seymour, then 26, and Brant, 48, married in Paris in 1995.

 

Even by loose New Age standards, Axl has received some bizarre advice over the years. After Axl's ex-wife, Erin Everly, the daughter of singer Don Everly, and the inspiration for the GN'R hit "Sweet Child o'Mine" sued Axl in 1994, charging assault and sexual battery, Everly sat for a deposition. She testified that Axl believed that she and Seymour were sisters in a past life and were "trying to kill him." As far as her own relationship with Axl went, Everly said, "Axl had told met that in a past life we were Indians and that I killed our children, and that's why he was so mean to me in this life."

 

Everly was asked, "Had Axl ever told you that he was possessed?

 

"Yes," she said.

 

"What did he say he was possessed by?"

 

"John Bonham."

 

Bonham, the rambunctious Led Zeppelin drummer died in his sleep after a bender in 1980. Rose denies ever saying he was possessed by Bonham.

 

"They're the ultimate controlled relationships," a friend says of Axl's various therapy sessions. "Starts at a certain time, ends at a certain time, you pay for it, you can stop paying for it and stop going. And as long as you want somebody to listen to you, as long as you want somebody to say the things that you want to hear, you can pay them to do it."

 

Once in a while, in a New Age community that embraces a certain number of charlatans, Axl got taken to the cleaners. During his marriage to Everly, Axl went for an exorcism. The exorcism apparently didn't involved the priests and crosses that viewers of prime-time television have come to expect. "Mainly it involved getting some kind of herbal wrap," Axl testified during the Everly case, some "work on my skin." The man who performed this procedure charged $72,000. Even Axl admitted, "I ended up getting ripped off for a lot of money in the long run."

 

Through a series of hairpin turns and steep grades, Latigo Canyon Road winds a couple of thousand feet up to the top of an arid hill near the Point Dume section of Malibu. The sun skims and slants and shimmers off the Pacific Ocean and the celebrity homes that crowd the beach below. Axl lives in a Mediterranean style compound that was valued last year at $3.8 million, a price tag fairly typical for the neighbourhood. He moved into the canyon in 1992, paying a mortgage of about $15,000 a month. Latigo was going to be the place he and Stephanie Seymour would live together as man and wife and raise their children.

 

Gardeners assiduously tend Axl's four acres, which are hidden from public view by trees and a fence. A lighted star on the side of Axl's house can be seen for miles by drivers on the Pacific Coast Highway. Axl's neighbours on the hill include the beach-volleyball star Gabrielle Reece.

 

The sound of falling water soothes the grounds, which also contain a tennis court and a pool. When Axl throws a party, the court doubles as a parking lot. The house itself is stocked with religious artefacts from Latin America, including Axl's vast collection of crucifixes. Axl plays pinball on the machines in his game room. Since the demise of GN'R he has shared the Latigo Canyon estate with tanks full of snakes and lizards, and with various friends, family members and live-in help. Axl's sister Amy Bailey, who used to run the GN'R fan club, and half-brother Stuart Bailey have stayed in the house at one time or another. Beta, who formerly worked as a nanny for Seymour, taking care of her son Dylan, doubles as chauffeur. She also travels with Axl; it was she by his side during the contretemps at the Phoenix airport in '98. "Beta moms him," a friend says. "She's as close as she's ever had to a real mother."

 

David Lank, a running buddy of Axl's from Indiana and an occasional Guns N' Roses collaborator (he co-write "Don't Damn Me" on Use Your Illusion I), bunked at Axl's place in Latigo Canyon for a while. Sabrina Okamoto, a masseuse, also stayed a time on the property. A striking woman in her early thirties, Okamoto met the members of GN'R during their 1991 tour with Skid Row; she became the GN'R tour masseuse, then worked for Axl after Guns split. "When his friends were in need, he was there to bail them out," a former associate says.

 

Axl throws a costume party every Halloween for friends and their families. Enormous pumpkins ring the swimming pool, and spider webs hang in the trees. Specially built mazes and forts rattle with squealing children. Almost as excited as a child, Axl himself has been known to dash around and toy with every attraction. One past guest gets the impression that Axl is trying to re-create his own childhood, albeit one better than his actually was. The Halloween scene in the past few years hasn't been what it once was. "His parties have been getting smaller and smaller," recalls one recent guest. "The ever-shrinking universe."

 

Last Halloween, Axl appeared outfitted as a pig, scaring a few of the children in attendance. Guests helped themselves to past and barbecued chicken; loud rock 'n' roll making made conversation difficult.

 

Axl usually sleeps during the day and works at night. Beta or her son drives Axl to Rumbo recorders in the San Fernando Valley, where sessions for the GN'R follow-up to Spaghetti Inicident? Have been going on for years. More and more lately, Axl conducts most of his other business over the telephone.

 

Much of Axl's non-music and non-spiritual business concerns legal strategy. Besides his dispute with Everly, other matters have dragged on: he has ended up in court against Seymour; the band's original drummer, Steven Adler; the replacement guitarist Gilby Clarke; and various companies that did business with the band. Lately Axl has been using threats of legal action to limit what people say about him. A few days after I talked with Alan Niven, GN'R's former manager, who was fired in 1991, Doug Goldstein called me, threatening to sue Niven for allegedly breaching a confidentiality agreement. Niven later received a letter from Axl' personal lawyer in Los Angeles, demanding he contact Rolling Stone and attempt to withdraw his comments. Failure to do so, Axl's lawyer warned would result in "swift and sure legal action."

 

In the early nineties, Axl demanded and was granted sole control of the Guns N' Roses name. As to precisely where and when this happened, memories are fuzzy and contradictory, perhaps lost in the mists of rock & roll tour memory. Axl, backstage somewhere is said to have basically issued an ultimatum: He'd get the name of the band or he wouldn't perform. Papers memorializing this transfer were drawn up and guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan signed them.

 

What would it matter really? Axl, Slash and Duff would always be, it seemed, the inseparable three. Money was everywhere. Guns N' Roses grossed $57.9 million right out of the gate in the four years from 1988 to 1992, according to documents produced during the Adler litigation. Overhead was enormous - expensive video shoots, first class everything on the road, all the clichéd rock-star excess - but a $57.9 million gross in that time span for a relatively new band is almost unheard of in rock 'n' roll history. The Rolling Stones didn't make this kind of money until years deep into their career. David Bowie raised $55 million in 1997 selling bonds tied to the earnings his first twenty-five albums. The Grateful Dead earned $40 million to $50 million a year touring, but not until the 1990s, after they'd been together for more than twenty years.

 

After a 17.5 percent commission to management, Axl and his band mates divvied up the money according to a specific formula, which Axl described once in court. During pre-production for Appetite, Axl said, "Slash devised a system of figuring out who wrote what parts of a song or part of a song. There were four categories, I believe. There was lyrics, melody, music - meaning guitars, bass and drums - and accompaniment and arrangement. And we split each one of those into twenty-five percent. When we had finished, I had forty-one percent, and other people had different amounts."

 

Axl, with Slash, had always controlled most of the band's affairs. By this time Axl has full control. GN'R began work on a new album of original material, drawing from a Geffen advance thought to be around $10 million - Madonna kind of money.

 

GN'R released their fifth record, The Spaghetti Incident? In November 1993. It sold well, but nothing like Appetite or the Illusion records. The band began to unravel as Axl spent more time in court. He and Seymour argued violently at home in Malibu and broke up. Axl was devastated; he had wanted to marry her. "The split had an enormous effect on him," a friend says. "That was the first time in his life had stability. And then he had nothing."

 

Lawsuits flew back and forth. Seymour was charged that Axl had beaten her. Axl alleged it was she who had attacked him. According to Seymour's version of events, after an argument in their kitchen Axl shattered some bottles on the floor, grabbed Seymour by the throat, put her in a headlock and then dragged her barefoot through the broken glass "while repeatedly hitting her about the head and upper body and kicking her in abdomen." Axl's story was that Seymour grabbed his balls and he was just defending himself.

 

Erin Everly, long gone from Axl's life soon joined the fray, filing a suit of her own in 1994. In a deposition, Everly's roommate, Meegan Hodges-Knight, Slash's former girlfriend, recalled some disturbing encounters with Axl.

 

"I'd wake up to Erin saying, 'Please stop. Don't hurt me, don't hurt me,' and Axl screaming at her," Hodges-Knight said. "And then all of a sudden he' d come out and he'd like, break all of her really precious antiques, and she would be, 'Please don't break them, please.' And trying to get them back from him. And he'd push her and he'd break everything he could get his hands on.

 

"I remember sleeping and waking up to crystal flying over my head, shattering on the floor."

 

Sometimes, Slash was there when Axl went off on Erin.

 

"I remember asking Slash to do something, or I was going to do something," Hodges-Knight remembered. "I said, 'I have to do something' or something like that. And he said "No, you're going to make it worse.'"

 

Hodges-Knight testified that Axl kicked Everly with his cowboy boots, and dragged her around by the hair one night while she was wearing a see-through tank top and panties, threw a television set at her (it missed) and spit on her. "That pig," she said. "He spit on her."

 

Everly herself claimed Axl sexually assaulted her. She described a day when Axl ordered her to take off a bathing suit she was wearing, after which he tied her hands to her ankles from behind, put masking tape over her mouth and a bandana around her eyes, and led her, naked into a closet, where she remained for several hours while Axl talked to a friend of hers in the living room.

 

Later, according to Everly, Axl untied her, picked her up and tied her, face down, to a convertible bed. And then, "he forced himself on me anally really hard. Really hard."

 

"Were you screaming?" she was asked.

 

"Yes."

 

"How long did that last?"

 

"I don't remember."

 

"What happened when it was over?"

 

"He took it out and stuck it in my mouth."

 

An unreleased version of the video for GN'R song "It's So Easy", directed by Englishman Nigel Dick features Everly in bondage gear, with a red ball in her mouth as Axl screams, "See me hit you! You fall down!" The singer, according to a former associate, went to some lengths to gather up the few existing copies of the tape after Everly went to court against him.

 

Both cases were eventually settled. Seymour's lawyer, Michael Plonsker won't comment except to say that the suit was resolved "amicably". Despite their claims of injury and abuse, neither Erin Everly nor Stephanie Seymour ever filed criminal charges against Axl Rose in connection with the events described.

 

Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin's replacement, Gilby Clarke, meanwhile left the band. And rejoined. And left again. "As you are aware, Gilby has been fired at least three times by the band in the past month and has been rehired at least two times," Clarke's lawyer Jeffrey Light wrote in an April 14th, 1994 letter to GN'R lawyer Laurie Soriano. After failing to receive royalties he claimed were due him, Clarke sued the band in 1995. Clarke says he didn't want to go to court but nobody in the GN'R camp would call him back. G'n'R countersued. The matter was settled with an undisclosed payment to Clarke.

 

Unsure of Axl's intentions, Slash and Duff drifted into other projects. Slash, Duff and drummer Matt Sorum participated in numerous sessions for the new record. Complementing this ensemble were the loyal GN'R keyboard player, Dizzuy Reed, and Axl's old friend from Indiana, guitarist Paul Huge. Paul is part of the Axl and David Lank crew. Slash and Duff didn't click with him. "Nice enough guy," says a friend of the three musicians. "But they 're Guns N' Roses for God's sake - great band, great players. He's not that good. Doesn't have the chops." In 1996 Slash walked away. Sorum was fired. Duff hung on until the end of 1997 then quit in disgust. "The record wasn't going anywhere," says a GN'R source. "Duff reached a point where he said 'I don't need this in my life anymore. This is too insane. This is rock 'n' roll. It's supposed to be fun."

 

Slash is angry, now, about giving up rights to the GN'R name. "I was blindsided by it, more or less a legal faux pas," he complained to the Internet news service Addicted to Noise in January 1997. "I'd be lying to say I wasn't a little bit peeved at that. It'd be one thing if I'd quit altogether. But I haven't, and the fact that he can actually go and record a new GN'R record without the consent of the other members of the band."

 

Slash continued, "Axl's whole visionary style, as far as his input in Guns N' Roses is completely different from mine. I just like to play guitar, write a good riff, go out there and play as opposed to presenting an image."

 

The relationship between Axl and Slash, the cornerstone of the band, remains deeply fractured, though Slash has never closed the door on getting back together. The two men have not spoken to each other in four years. When work was under way last year on a long-overdue live GN'R double album, Live Era '87-'93, Axl and Slash interacted only through their respective managers, Goldstein and Tom Maher. "It was all very odd." Says a source. "Slash and Duff would get together and work on it, and Axl would be sent CDs. He never came to the studio when they were there. It was done in shifts."

 

It seems that beyond a connection Axl has with Beta, Yoda and Bert Deixler, his lawyer, Axl's relationship with Doug Goldstein is one of the few that the singer has gone out of his way to maintain. A former security guard for Air Supply, Goldstein joined the G N' R camp as tour manager in 1987 and eventually took over management of the band upon Niven's 1991 firing. Goldstein operates Big F.D. Entertainment in Newport Beach, California. Besides Axl, BFD's clients include Chris Perez, Selena's widower, and the metal band Jack Off Jill. Mostly, Goldstein concentrates on Axl. "If Axl says, `Jump,' he says, `Fine,' " says a music-industry source. "If he's in the air, he says, `How much higher?"' Finally released last November after long delays, Live Era was not the blockbuster everyone had hoped it would be. Sales have been under­whelming: 403,000 units as of early April. Promotion of the record was limited to television and print advertising. There was barely a peep from any of the old band members -- following, some believe, an Axl decree.For the new G N' R studio record, Axl hired a legion of talented players from across the popular-music spectrum: Tommy Stinson, the former Replacement; Dave Abbruzzese, Pearl Jam's former drummer; Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails; Dave Navarro, former Jane's Addiction guitarist; Josh Freese of the Vandals; and Zakk Wylde from Ozzy Osbourne's band. They jammed at the Complex in Los Angeles and at Rumbo Recorders for weeks and months at a time, usually at night. Axl brought in a showroom full of guitars and effects. "It's a musical-instrument convention," one observer says. "He has more knobs and keyboards and strings and wire and wood in there than you could possibly imagine could even be manufactured." Of Axl's guitar setup, Abbruzzese recalls, "You could hunt buffalo with his rig. It had a lot of lights, a lot of blinking lights, a lot of things that you stepped on. It sounded like a freight train that was somehow playable."

 

Axl was distracted by events tragic, potentially tragic and strange. His mother, Sharon Bailey, died in May 1996 at the age of fifty-one. Wildfires nipped at the edges of Axl's Latigo Canyon property the same year. The following May, Axl's old friend and songwriting partner West Arkeen died from a drug overdose at the age of thirty-six. A frequent visitor to the studio says. "When Stephanie Seymour's birthday came around. Axl seemed to shut down for weeks. A lot of this record is about Stephanie: She was his perfect woman, at least his im­age of what she should be."

 

Though plenty of nights passed when little was accomplished, Axl was usually all business in the studio. Excessive use of drugs or alcohol was frowned upon. Axl composed at the piano. The other musicians contributed ideas and riffs, but Axl was clearly in charge.When Zakk Wylde arrived at the Complex, where Axl was rehearsing, he was slightly surprised. "There were never any melodies," Wylde recalls. "There were never any lyrics." The music Wylde heard during a period of several months sounded like "Guns on steroids." Wylde felt sorry for Axl. "The poor fuckin' guy's got every fuckin' cunt trying to sue his ass," Wylde says. "I'd be on the phone with him. He'd be telling me about all these strategic moves his lawyers were making. I was listening to him playing Axis and Allies on the fuckin' phone." Wylde left to record with his new band, Black Label Society."They were trying to get ideas together, see who was compatible with who as far as a band vibe," says former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna, who came in for a few sessions in the spring of 1997 when late­night jams (10 P.M. to 6 A.M.) were still taking place at the Complex. Vrenna turned down a drumming spot in G N' R to work on a record of his own. "It was going to be a long commitment," Vrenna says. "There was no firm lineup. Axl had a definite direction he ultimately wanted to head toward, but at the time there wasn't even a song yet."

 

Producers came and went like pizza deliverymen: Youth, Moby, Mike Clink and Sean Beaven. Axl's legal troubles continued to distract him. Finally, a wall full of tapes, hours and hours of scraps of music, riffs, ideas, stacked up. Some of the music reportedly sounded like U2 during their Achtung Baby period, powerful and melod­ic. Some gave off a whiff of Nine Inch Nails or Nirvana. Touring was on the horizon. All the new songs, Axl announced, would have to work live.

 

"I found it difficult to chart a linear development of the songs that they were working on," recalls Moby. "They would work on something, it would be a sketch for a while, and then they'd put it aside and go back to it a year, six months later.

 

"He became a little bit defensive when I asked him about the vocals. He just said that he was going to get to them eventually," Moby continues. "I wouldn't be surprised if the record never came out, they've been working on it for such a long time."

 

I asked Moby whether Axl seemed at peace. Moby thought carefully. "He seemed like he had an idea of what be­ing at peace would be like, and he was working toward that." Axl's record would address the issue of domestic violence. So went the industry gossip. "It's Guns N' Roses music," Goldstein says. "There's rumors about it being a techno record. It's what Guns N' Roses has always been: diversified." Jim Barber, the former Geffen executive, recalls, "An artist [like Axl] who's had as much success with Guns N' Roses as he has gets to a point in his career where he can settle into one sound and do it over and over again, usually with diminishing returns. Axl is determined not to do that. There's a sort of ruthlessness about pushing Guns N' Roses to grow, and to find some depth in their music, and to evolve." A new single, "Oh My God," was released last November as part of the End of Days soundtrack. Even though it was the first new material from the band to be released in nearly six years, the song disappeared without a trace. Musically, at least, Axl seems to have what he wants: complete control. If the new G N' R record becomes a spectacular hit, the six-year delay in making it and the millions spent on it won't matter. Axl will have proved his doubters wrong and probably will have also ended any hope of getting the original band back together. But there is such a thing as having too much control."One of the aspects of being a mega­lomaniac is the discovery that some times being in a decisive situation is not so appealing as you thought it was," says a source. "When you have a support system and decisions are made communally and quickly, things move. There's energy. It becomes alive, it becomes real. Once you're on your own, you drive it yourself, you make all the decisions yourself. You sit and worry about it." In August, guitarist Robin Finck abruptly quit G N' R to return to Nine Inch Nails. Axl ordered some of Finck's parts erased. In March, drummer Josh Freese departed to concentrate on other projects, including a solo record, due in July, and a tour with A Perfect Circle in support of Nine Inch Nails.

 

Neither Finck nor Freese will discuss what happened.

 

Whether Chinese Democracy comes out or not, Axl himself, friends say, seems healthier, less angry - and still a maze of contradictions. He likes to think he makes all the decisions in his life, yet he listens carefully to New Age counselors. He feels like the world revolves around him, but he refuses most requests to speak publicly about himself. He believes in justice, but he doesn't believe he has to be fair. He can be an incisive observer of human weakness in his songs, yet when it comes to his own conduct, he has little perspective. "Axl's really easy to hate, and he doesn't understand why," a friend observes. "He lives in a fantasy world, a parallel universe. He's self­centered, like a child, but not so naive. When he calls, all he wants to talk about is his record and how Interscope can't fix things for him."

 

"A family is what Axl wants more than anything in life," another friend says. "He wants to find within himself the ability to show affection. He's really, really incapable of showing gratitude and affection."

 

As long as he remains on his mountain, behind his fence, rumors swirl and the appetite for his return grows.

 

Or does it? How much of a G N' R audience is really left? Who wants to watch a G N' R show that will probably include only one founding member: Mr. Rose himself?

 

On September 22nd, Axl issued a statement, his first in years. The document was by turns bitter (Axl referred to Matt Sorum as a "former employee"), funny ("Power to the people, peace out and blame Canada," he signed off) and incomprehensible. Its stilted phrasing and syntax sounded like just the sort of thing you'd expect from a man too long immersed in self­help books and too long isolated from the world. Axl announced, "OH MY GOD etc. deals with the societal repression of deep and often agonizing emotions - some of which may be willingly accepted for one reason or which (one that promotes a healing, release and a positive resolve) is often discouraged and many times denied." Whatever that means. "The appropriate expression and vehicle for such emotions and concepts is not some­thing taken for granted." Axl, in recent months, promised, through his manager, to take time from his recording schedule and pen exclusively for ROLLING STONE his version of how and why Guns N' Roses broke up. Months went by, and this missive never materialized. Then, days before this story went to press, Doug Goldstein proclaimed, "Good news!" Axl was ready to hand over a 10,000-word-plus essay. A day later, Goldstein withdrew that promise and ended all communication with ROLLING STONE.

 

Axl may not yet know who he is. That search continues. He knows enough to still be in charge. Ultimately, that may be his victory and his curse. There is only one certainty in Axl's world now. When, and if, his new record comes out, he will have to take complete responsibility for it. Nobody else will get the credit or the blame. David Bowie exiled himself to Berlin in the 1970s, and Berlin motivated him. Working with Brian Eno, Bowie made three of his best records, Low, "Heroes" and Lodger. After the Doors tour of 1970, Jim Morrison re­treated to Paris to try and dry out, write poetry, walk the streets and consider new challenges. For Axl Rose, the arc of his fame remains stuck, languishing near its 1993 high point. Self ­imposed exile seems to have failed him. Unlike Bowie or Morrison, Axl Rose did not seek a new environment for inspiration or salvation. He only looked inward. He went home, retreating to an airless room from which he has yet to emerge.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I don't care about Guns 'n' Roses, but he should just go ahead and release a shitty album now, paving the way for a future "good" album. There's no way Chinese Democracy will be worth a damn, so Rose should cut his losses.

[UZI Suicide 0]

Judging by the songs that have already came out, Chinese Democracy is going to suck ass, so I agree to just forget about the album. Then beg Slash and Duff to come back.

[GreatWhiteNope 0]

If my calculations are correct - GNR will be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

 

So a one-night reunion is possible.

[Use Your Illusion 0]

Someone from Team Axl has lashed out at the NY Times for their article on Chinese Democracy...

 

Sir - I find it remarkable that the New York Times - a newspaper of some repute - has chosen to run an article on the making of the forthcoming Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy without even bothering to talk to anyone who has actually been involved in the making of the album. You quote 5 people on the record all of whom with the exception of Tom Zutaut have been out of the picture for between 6 and 9 years and like the author of your article have never even heard the album! Tom Zutaut himself has not been involved for three years and has heard virtually none of the actual record. Your journalist Jeff Leeds - is this the return of Jayson Blair under a pseudonym? - contacted us last Thursday the 24th of February to inform us he had been working on an article about the "process" of making the album. I explained that it was not possible for him to write such a story as he had not spoken to the band, our 2 engineers, myself or most importantly Axl all of whom have been working on the actual album for the last two years and enquired how he could write an investigative report with any integrity without doing so. I also asked why if he was reporting on the "process" why we were the last people he was contacting as it was obvious from the discussion that he had been working on this for a number of weeks. Contrary to his blatant lie that he was told by "management" that W. Axl Rose "could not be reached for comment" I made it clear that we could not consider his request for an interview with either Axl or myself until we knew who the other people involved in the article were as we were not going to lend credibility to an article that was based on hearsay from people that have not only had nothing to do with the album but whose only agenda was to recapture their 15 minutes of fame in an industry that had cast them aside and left them unemployed many years ago. Mr Leeds told me he would call this week once he had considered our position so that we could discuss it further. This past Monday the 27th at 6 pm he left a message with my office saying that his deadline to file the story was 12 pm the following day. I called him immediately on receipt of the message the following morning and reminded him that we had made an agreement that he would consider whether he was going to divulge the people involved in the article following which I would then contact Axl and we could consider whether to participate and asked why he had not mentioned that he was working to a tight deadline when we had previously spoken. I also made the point that this piece was not "news" nor was it "fragile" and that surely if his article was to genuinely be about the "process" then he must speak to someone who was involved. After much discussion with Mr Leeds it was clear that both the writer and the Times had it's own agenda and that it was not only not interested in presenting an accurate view but both he and his editor refused my request for 24 hours to discuss the situation with Axl despite the fact that the story was scheduled to run 6 days later! It should also be mentioned that during our initial conversation the writer was offered the opportunity to hear the album in the studio when it was finished and talk to people who were directly involved and declined in favour of the article you have chosen to run. As one of the few people involved in the making of this album I can tell your readers the following. W, Axl Rose is not interested in fame, money, popularity or what the New York Times or any other paper for that matter might think of him. His only interest is making the best album he is capable of so that it can have a positive affect in 2005 on people who are enthusiasts of music and interested in Guns N' Roses. His artistic integrity is such that he has chosen to do so without compromise at great personal sacrifice which makes him a soft target for the sort of rubbish you have chosen to print. I believe he will have the last laugh.

Sincerely,

Merck Mercuriadis

Chief Executive Officer

[1234-5678 0]

Yeah I just bought it, it was unsurprisingly the same article. Maybe this will finally light a fire under Uncle Axl's ass and he'll release the motherfucker.

[1234-5678 0]

Judging by the songs that have already came out, Chinese Democracy is going to suck ass, so I agree to just forget about the album. Then beg Slash and Duff to come back.

"The Blues" is up there in GNR's top 10 songs. "Madagascar" is ambitious, and a very decent song to chill to. "Chinese Democracy" is one hell of a fucking rocker.

[UZI Suicide 0]

The Blues is a nice song, but it's nowhere near a Top 10 GnR song. Madagascar is just a terrible song and Chinese Democracy is average at best. Silkworms, Oh My God and that Rhiad song are three of the worst GnR songs I've ever heard.

[Use Your Illusion 0]

Both Axl & Dizzy have said those songs are just the 'filler' material on Chinese Democracy and that Axl is holding back his big guns for when it is finally released.

[1234-5678 0]

Silk Worms, I like the intro, and the melodic part in the middle. The lyrics, are, eh, but I mean, it's still pretty decent. Rhiad..........I dunno. It's the much talked about song "Oklahoma" just under another name. He wrote it after being in the court the day after the Oklahoma bombing. It reminds of Zeppelin. Oh My God fucking rocks. To this day I don't understand why it was so shit on.

 

And The Blues has great fucking lyrics.

 

What's your beef with Madagascar?

[Use Your Illusion 0]

Hasn't Geffen completely pulled out of the making of CD now? *THAT* is the only fire that is going to do anything. Axl's been sitting around with unlimited time and money to throw at this thing, meaning he has no incentive to release it until he feels like it.

 

Axl needs to be put into a position where he has no choice but to release the album

[UZI Suicide 0]

Both Axl & Dizzy have said those songs are just the 'filler' material on Chinese Democracy and that Axl is holding back his big guns for when it is finally released.

There is no excuse for having any "filler" on the CD.

[1234-5678 0]

There's a track called "This I Love" that Axl's been working on since around 1994. That's supposed to be his best work.

 

 

After a week of investigating Sp1at.com can exclusively reveal that the unreleased GUNS N' ROSES song "This I Love" was intended to feature in the 1998 film "What Dreams May Come".

 

Sp1at was originally alerted to the connection between Axl Rose and the film when Dave Dominguez, a producer on the "Chinese Democracy" album in the late '90s, told Sp1at that the song was intended for "some Robin Williams film." Sp1at's intrepid reporter followed this up and soon contacted the office of Dawn Soler, the musical supervisor for the film "What Dreams May Come".

 

Speaking exclusively to Sp1at on the subject, Dawn Soler said, "Oh, boy, that was a long time ago," and admitted she was unable to recollect how the oppourtunity to work with Axl Rose came along in the first place. She did assure Sp1at that Axl was "really into the film" and even suggested that he "wrote the song for it." However, Sp1at does not believe this to be the case as the song was originally mentioned in 1994 by Axl Rose himself when he described "This I Love" as "the heaviest thing I've ever done." Fans of the band have often speculated that the song was about Dylan, the son of Axl's ex-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour.

 

As it turned out, the song did not make the final cut of the film, although Dawn Soler insists it was not down to her. She said, "The director was a pill and didn't get how cool it would be." Sp1at has contacted the agent of Vincent Ward, the "pill" of a director, on the issue but they have yet to reply.

 

Sp1at went back to Dominguez to see if he had any further comments on the song and he went on to say that "it was definitely a love song...very heartfelt, it would have fit perfectly with 'What Dreams May Come'," before adding that the song was "five minutes or more" in length.

 

It is unlikely that the song remains in the same form as it did in 1998. Howard Karp, who worked on the song in 2000, told Sp1at that it was just him and Axl in the studio at the time and that the song was a "simple, piano ballad." It is also known that Bryan "Brain" Mantia has recorded on the song since joining the band in 2001.

 

Whether we'll ever get to hear the song "This I Love" is debateable. GUNS N' ROSES' "Chinese Democracy" album has been in the works for around seven years but is at present set for a "mid-year release," according to an industry source. However had Mr. Ward followed the advice of Dawn Soler, then "This I Love" would be a seven-year-old track rather than another myth in the world of GUNS N' ROSES.

[UZI Suicide 0]

Silk Worms, I like the intro, and the melodic part in the middle. The lyrics, are, eh, but I mean, it's still pretty decent. Rhiad..........I dunno. It's the much talked about song "Oklahoma" just under another name. He wrote it after being in the court the day after the Oklahoma bombing. It reminds of Zeppelin. Oh My God fucking rocks. To this day I don't understand why it was so shit on.

 

And The Blues has great fucking lyrics.

 

What's your beef with Madagascar?

As far as The Blues goes, it does sound like a good song, but the only version I've heard of it is from that Las Vegas show and Axl sounds terrible so it's hard to really judge it. I'd like to hear a studio version of it. Oh My God gets shit on because it sounds like some weird trance/techno mix bullshit.

 

I probably shouldn't have said Madagascar is terrible. It isn't terrible, but I just don't like it. I can see how people like it because it's catchy, but I just think the quotes stuff in the middle of it completely kills the song. The lyrics are repetative too.

[1234-5678 0]

You'd have to listen to "The Blues" from Rock In Rio or maybe one of the soundboards that are available out there. Pittsburgh is good.

 

I do agree about "Madagascar" being repetitive, but I enjoy the quotes in the middle.

[BUTT 0]

Both Axl & Dizzy have said those songs are just the 'filler' material on Chinese Democracy and that Axl is holding back his big guns for when it is finally released.

There is no excuse for having any "filler" on the CD.

Axl didn't say they were "filler". He said they wouldn't be released as singles.

[BUTT 0]

Well, it turns out that the full article was actually longer than the version JAxl posted. Here are some choice quotes from that one:

 

"With the band's return, Mr. Rose's machinery cranked up again. One internal cost analysis from the period pegs the operation's monthly tab at a staggering $244,000. It included more than $50,000 in studio time at the Village, a more modern studio where Mr. Baker had moved the band. It also included a combined payroll for seven band members that exceeded $62,000, with the star players earning roughly $11,000 each. Guitar technicians earned about $6,000 per month, while the album's main engineer was paid $14,000 per month and a recording software engineer was paid $25,000 a month, the document stated. "

 

"But Mr. Rose's renewed energies were not being directed toward the finish line. He had the crew send him CD's almost daily, sometimes with 16 or more takes of a musician performing his part of a single song. He accompanied Buckethead on a jaunt to Disneyland when the guitarist was drifting toward quitting, several people involved recalled; then Buckethead announced he would be more comfortable working inside a chicken coop, so one was built for him in the studio, from wood planks and chicken wire. "

 

"The band went on a successful tour, but in the hours after their triumphant Madison Square Garden appearance, Mr. Rose was reportedly refused entry to the Manhattan nightclub Spa because he was wearing fur, which the club does not allow. That killed the mood. He didn't show up for the band's next performance, and the promoter canceled the rest of the tour.

 

Months dragged on as the band waited for Mr. Rose to record more vocals. In August 2003 when label executives announced their intention to release a Guns N' Roses greatest-hits CD for the holidays, the band's representatives managed to hold them off with yet another promise to deliver "Chinese Democracy" by the end of the year. But the album, of course, did not materialize. And then the game was over.

 

"HAVING EXCEEDED ALL budgeted and approved recording costs by millions of dollars," the label wrote in a letter dated Feb. 2 , 2004, "it is Mr. Rose's obligation to fund and complete the album, not Geffen's." The tab at Village studio was closed out, and Mr. Rose tried a brief stint recording at the label's in-house studio before that too was ended. The band's computer gear, guitars and keyboards were packed away. Over a legal challenge by Mr. Rose, the label issued a greatest-hits compilation, in search of even a modest return on their eight-figure investment. "

 

http://www.metalsludge.tv/main/index.php?n...ewtopic&t=17085