Guns N’ Roses “Chinese Democracy”
Imagine you are a great sprinter. Better yet, imagine that you are the world’s greatest sprinter -- Usain Bolt. And imagine that you are at the starting block for the Olympic finals. You have an image in your mind for how the race will be run, how your entire body will move and how everything around you will approach and recede. This feels like the biggest moment in your career -- an event that you have prepared a lifetime for. But then, the starting gun never really fires. You see people around you running. You hear people screaming. You start to move your body, and the track beneath you starts to twist and turn in illogical directions. Finally, the track starts to disintegrate so you have no sense of which direction you are headed. Now suppose, through nobody’s fault but your own, you were destined to run this race every day for a decade. That sprinter, stalking perfection while the universe violently resists and disappears, would not be Usain Bolt. It would be Axl Rose chasing “Chinese Democracy.”
The history of “Chinese Democracy” is both exceedingly well-documented and mostly a mystery that resides inside Axl Rose’s mind. Almost everything I have read about the making of the album, I receive suspiciously, assuming it’s less than half truth. And yet, I kind of believe all of it. It is a story so complex and bombastic that it is a wonder that it has not yet been made into a film. It might, in fact, be a story too sprawling and epic for film. Unless, that is, Michael Bay is at the helm. “Chinese Democracy” would make “Armageddon” seem as darling and contained as a Wes Anderson movie.
The roughly five years from “Lies” through the two “Use Your Illusion” records are GNR’s unquestioned prime. That’s it. Five monumental years. Then came another five years of dissolution, interrupted mostly by a time-buying covers album and an occasional soundtrack single. In comparison, it took roughly ten years for Axl and his cadre of Guns for hire to make “Chinese Democracy.” In 1997, there was mostly the rubble of grand ideas and decade old dreams surrounding the feet of Axl Rose. Having fired or alienated his “Appetite for Destruction” era bandmates, all Axl had left was the bands’ name, a brain that he could not quiet down, and his incomparable voice. But, even then, Axl Rose could still sing like Axl Rose.
While a full recounting of “Chinese Democracy” is far beyond the reach of this essay, it is well established that, in 1997, Axl Rose was in obsessive pursuit of perfection. This perfect recipe, it seemed, called for five parts GNR, two parts Queen and three parts Nine Inch Nails. Brian May was invited to play some guitar parts that were eventually left on the cutting room floor. Moreover, Axl recruited NIN guitarist Robin Frinck and, briefly, drummer Chris Vrenna, to join GNR. Vrenna lasted only briefly, but Frinck, who boomeranged in and out for the decade, was a major contributor to “Chinese Democracy.”
In the late 90s and early 2000s, there were accusations that the album was greatly influenced by “Electronica” -- a term that has since been retired and had an uncertain definition even then. The implication, however, was that Axl was using more synthesized beats and effects. In that way, the claims were somewhat true. But, more than anything, what it seems Axl was searching for was an almost operatic grandeur, beyond even what he had made previously. It was GNR at their most soaring, combined with a furious, Industrial grind. What reads (and sounds) like an impossible recipe was evidently an imperative to Axl Rose for more than a decade. He could hear the music. He just needed the right people, tools and environment to make it.
The tragedy of “Chinese Democracy” was not caused by the fantasy of an impossible goal. Axl wanted nothing more than to make the perfect version of the album he heard inside. Rather, its undoing was Axl’s wanton blindness to time and context. The goal stayed fixed. What kept changing was, literally, everything else. Between the earliest days of “Chinese Democracy” in 1997 and its eventual release in the late fall of 2008, America traveled from the relatively flaccid, late Clinton era through 9/11 and beyond the election of Barack Obama. In between, there’s Bush and Cheney. Music goes from Third Eye Blind and Sugar Ray to a version of Rock radio that plays both Kings of Leon and Katy Perry. 1997 was the peak of US music sales. 2008 is two years from its nadir. In between, there are The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, and The White Stripes. By 2008, the meaning of Guns N’ Roses had completely changed. Their volume and fury was vaguely recalled. Their strife and conflict seemed more like reality television. The grime and beauty of 80s Los Angeles was barely a cautionary tale. Frankly, there was an entirely new generation of young music fans who knew nothing about Guns N’ Roses. But, somewhere, tucked away either in his home or in one of fifteen studios, Axl Rose was sprinting a decade long marathon.
It seems unlikely that anyone, including Axl Rose, has a full inventory of the players, session and contributions to “Chinese Democracy.” The list of musicians and producers on this album -- verified, unverified, hired or consulted -- is staggering. Additionally, many of the claims surrounding the recording are contested, unsurprisingly, by Axl himself. That being said, there is substantial corroboration for the following allegations, which begin to paint very broad, messy strokes:
The album cost around fourteen million dollars to make, the largest budget for any album ever released. At points of intense activity and waste, costs averaged roughly a quarter of a million dollars per month.
A&R manager Tom Zutaut, who had been fired by Geffen Records two years earlier, was rehired by the same label to work with GNR provided that his aura, as seen in a photograph, was read and approved by a friend of Axl’s.
In 2001, a faux chicken coop was installed in the studio as an incentive for the guitarist, Buckethead, to return to work. Buckethead secluded himself in the coop, often watching pornograopy there, to the frustration of Axl.
Dr Pepper offered a can of soda to everyone in America if GNR released “Chinese Democracy” in 2008. When the album did, in fact, come out that year, Dr Pepper’s promotional website crashed, resulting in GNR suing the soda maker.
Following a series of online album leaks and just weeks after Barrack Obama’s election, “Chinese Democracy” finally arrived in late November 2008. Although some fans were rabid in their anticipation, most of the world was either confounded by or disinterested in what was perceived to be a historic anti-climax. Personally, I was much closer to disinterest by then. I was still very interested in Axl Rose, the person. But a deep pang of empathy suggested that I look away. So, I did just that, for over a decade. In spite of its famous hype, I did not listen to a single track not from the album. It felt sadistic or ungenerous to do otherwise. I didn’t read reviews. I barely listened to Axl news or gossip. It just seemed plain to me that the album was a death knell. In my mind, it was a document of a man going through a profound crisis. It all reminded me of the scene in Rocky IV, right before Ivan Drago kills Apollo Creed. Rocky has the briefest moment of opportunity to throw the towel and perhaps spare Apollo’s life. In doing so, though, he would also rob his frenemy of a fighter’s dignity. Rocky does not throw the towel and is forced to rewatch that scene in his mind for the rest of his life. In 2008, I sensed that listening to “Chinese Democracy” would amount to being stuck in a similar moment of torment. Unlike Rocky, I threw in the towel so that I could walk away unscathed. It was the undignified, but safer choice.
It took me twelve years to return to that decision. By now, Axl Rose is nearly sixty, and mostly looks his age. Gone is the pony tail. Gone are the unfortunate corn rows. He is still blonde. There is still lots of denim and black and, sometimes, red bandanas. But time has taken its toll. For my part, I had stared down middle age -- a much less tormented version, of course. But still, I felt prepared to revisit that decade in GNR’s history when perfection seemed like a matter of life and death and when it appeared that everything was conspiring against Axl Rose. At least, according to Axl Rose.
With just a vestige of trepidation, I first pressed play on “Chinese Democracy” in late 2020. First impressions confirmed that the album is exceedingly long -- fourteen songs and over seventy minutes. For reference, that makes it five minutes longer than “Exile on Main Street” but a minute shorter than “Blonde on Blonde.” We’ll likely never know if these were the best fourteen songs of the fifty or so that GNR had purportedly written and, to varying degrees, recorded, during the “Chinese Democracy” years. But, we do know that these were the songs that Axl opted to record, mix, master and release.
Second impressions regarded the sound of the music, which I would generally describe as massive, theatrical and dense. Vintage GNR was similarly huge and furious. However, Slash’s guitar tone and the paucity of synthesizers produced something heavy but elemental. When “Chinese Democracy” gets heavy, it is filled with texture and compounds. Additionally, and consistent with pre-release rumors, there are occasionally beats that, in the 1990s, one might describe as trippy. Those, however, are less frequent and onerous than advertised. The guitarists -- Finck, Buckethead and Bumblefoot -- are each virtuosic in their own way, but they also lack the clean, musculature that Slash is famous for.
More noticeable than these relatively minor details, though, is the grind of guitars’ distortion, as well as the heavier bass and the squalls of ambient noise. Some of these songs lean Industrial -- the title track and “Shackler’s Revenge” come to mind. Others lean towards something between Hardcore and Thrash, like “Scraped” and "Riad N' the Bedouins.” In these moments, you can pretty clearly imagine what “Nine Inch Roses” or “Guns N’ Nails” would have sounded like. It is indisputable that Axl Rose was very curious about how Trent Reznor made his music sound the way it did. Each of these aforementioned tracks is forceful and impressive in their own way. But none of them eclipse the grandeur of vintage Guns N’ Roses, nor do they add intrigue for the bands and songs they were inspired by.
Fortunately, for most of the album, Axl avoids chasing trends or genres and lets his own flag fly. There are moments of great extravagance, where the band embraces the power ballad, only to then turn hard into a sound that seems taken straight from Broadway, before finally plugging the guitars back in and scaling the greatest heights of hard Rock. The sheer speed and frequency of ideas and the changes within songs can be breathless. Moreover, there is something very theatrical about the scale of it all. Axl Rose has infinitely more vocal prowess than Meat Loaf, but there are parts of “Streets of Dreams” and “This is Love” that rank alongside Jim Steinman’s greatest histrionics. The better comp, is undoubtedly Axl’s avowed hero, Freddie Mercury.
Whereas Axl and Slash were frequently likened to Freddie and Brian May, you always sensed that Slash would have preferred a Steven Tyler and Joe Perry comparison. There is scarcely a hint of Aerosmith on “Chinese Democracy.” Axl freely indulges the vocal gymnastics, whiplash tempo changes and unadorned Pop that distinguished Queen from every other hard Rock band before and since. Amid countless instruments and sounds, the single most important thing on the album is Axl Rose’s voice. Free of the strain of constant touring and healthier in his consumption habits, his singing is frequently incredible. He growls and howls. He rages. He soars in his famous falsetto. He even finds a croon somewhere in between Count Dracula and the Thin White Duke. To put it simply: without Axl’s voice, “Chinese Democracy” would be exhausting. Because of it, it is often exhilarating.
Third impressions of the album reveal how deeply isolated and disenchanted the lead singer was. Whereas “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is an unapologetic love song and “November Rain” portends tempestuous romance, many of the tracks on “Chinese Democracy” are decidedly not-love songs. He frequently considers shattered love (“Better”) and grievances and betrayals (“I.R.S.”) and love on the verge of apocalypse (“If the World”). In 2008, mIddle-aged Axl Rose seems convinced of his fate as a broken, masochistic romantic. He sounds cynical and suspicious to the point of paranoia. He sounds lonely and resentful. But, most of all, he sounds overwhelmed -- by his past, his future, by the heavy baggage and by the opportunity to be perfect.
By almost any standard, “Chinese Democracy” is a plainly weird album, full of singular ideas and experiments. While many of these experiments do not succeed, it is hard not to marvel at their ambition. “There Was a Time” almost successfully answers the question: “What if Moby wrote a song for R.E.O. Speedwagon?” “If the World” has a sneaky great groove that would befit Lenny Kravitz on his best day. On “Madagasgar,” we get to the depths of Axl’s persecution through an extended drop of Gene Hackman speaking in “Mississippi Burning” followed by Martin Luther King Jr. shouting, “Free at last!”
Many years and, now, many plays later, “Chinese Democracy” serves as a time lapse document of a crisis of middle age. It is not perfect. It is frequently not even good. But, just as often, it is great. Yes — there are too many songs. Yes — many of them go on for too long. And — yes — some of them are over-seasoned. But, in the meandering journey, there is so much to take in. You hear the passage of time. You hear the fear approaching. You hear the loneliness settle in. You hear the rage surge and recede. You hear the weight of the past and the uncertainty of the future. You can hear shame and acceptance. You hear almost insufferable ego and you hear genuine brilliance.
Of course, “Chinese Democracy” is not literally about any of this. Fans and critics will continue to debate it. Stories will be told, re-told, and mis-told. Hopefully, Michael Bay will one day celebrate it on screen. But, I’m not sure anyone will ever know what its really about. Even Axl Rose.