Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Somethings been bothering me about Rocket Queen on Live Era. Way back before I started actualy contributing to the board I remember someone mentioning this but done a search and could'nt find anything.

Whats the deal with the version on live era, is it just me or is there no rhythm guitar!?? :-\

It seems really odd. Sorry if this is "Dead Horse" type stuff but its something thats been bothering me. So can any of you guys explain as to why rhythm guitar seems strangly absent on Rocket Queen Live Era, becuase as far as I can tell, unless my stereo is sodimised, there aint no Izzy or Gibly.

Live era has been edited. Axl vocals are redone on some songs, Gilbys and izzys parts are taken out on some songs. Listen to estranged. You cant hear Gilby either.

Live Era should have been boycotted by all us fans. What a pathetic power trip by Axl. He was rerecording parts for a live album, while at the same time sitting on a bunch of instrumentals for a new album.

Yeah, there's no 2nd guitar. And the Izzy's part is my favourite rhythm guitar ever.. :(

He's on Estranged, but not in the whole song. Just after the piano solo, you can hear him.

Right but I meant some of his parts were taken out of estranged

Wow I never knew that.    That sucks actually.

Totally different projects with different motivations. Live Era was simple and Axl knew what he had to do and how to do it.. whilst the new album was something Axl was piecing together at the time, piece by piece.. a long term goal and project. You cannot compare them.

My point is that it was a waste of time. Why rerecord vocals? Most of live Era is Tokyo, a show everyone has heard a million times. Totally unnecessary. Deleting certain members parts was also uncalled for. There has always been bigger fish for him to fry.

They said they didn't have many tapes to choose from.
Plus, Axl AND Slash chose the versions of the song. So it wasn't just an Axl powertrip.

I don't think there was as much vocal re-recording as some people believe.
It's easy to clean vocal tracks up to make it sound studio-like. Plus, its nearly impossible to tell the difference on bootleg versions of songs and Live Era versions of songs that people claim were re-recorded.

I like the Live Era version better than the Tokyo DVD version. Slash+voice box=brilliant. Plus, in live era, theres not that weird rapping part.

That was the problem with the whole Illusion era--no rhythm guitar.  At times I think Gilby was playing air guitar about as effectively as Paul Huge did at Vegas and Rio.

At least Live Era still sounds live..I mean that is why one buys a live recording...It sorta defeats the purpose if you rerecord over the vocals.  But I couldn't tell...so if he did do it..It really wasn't noticeable at least to me.

Personaly i've heard better versions of most of those songs from various bootlegs.

For example SCOM from St. Pauls 87, the vocals are amazing.

I knew some parts were re-recorded like vocals on Nightrain etc but I found it odd to just leave out the guitar on Rocket Queen like that.

I had noticed that too. For the most part you can never really hear his guitar. I remember an interview after Izzy had left and he had said something about towards the end of his time in the band he was'nt even sure if the audience could hear his guitar anymore.

Oh totally agree james.. I was disappointed to hear tracks I had already heard. And it sounded silly as these tracks which were obviously the same tracks as the videos.. sounded totally different. I'm actually of the opinion that some of the tracks were rerecorded with Axl's new style "Oh My God" era voice to kind of prepare and get people used to hearing it so it isn't such a shock when the new tracks came out. Obivously they didn't end up coming out. That's just my thoery which is really unlikely but just something I had thought of. The rerecorded voice sounds a lot like the Big Daddy SCOM voice.  Luckily we have bootlegs for the real thing  : ok:

Maybe YOU heard them a million times, but I can gaurantee you a lot of other people haven't.  I know plenty of casual GNR fans who bought Live ERA and loved it.  Not everyone has copies of every Guns show ever recorded.

The idea of Live Era was cool, but Axl could have added a few extras on there, since it was mainly gonna be his hardcore fans that bought it. Whether it be the Big Daddy Sweet Child, or even better some rare live recordings. I just never understood why so much of Tokyo was used. There were many more shows to choose from. The only possible reason I can think of is Geffen pressured him into doing it, and he quickly put it together, and thats the reason for using mostly Tokyo. Maybe after CD, he can do a kick ass live album, and include some GNR gems on it.

yes Izzys Rocket Queen part is absolutley essential to the song - sounds empty with out it

my bro made a version of live era from all his live stuff using the original songs from the shows that are on the album and theres not much difference at all. :peace:

I dont mind Live Era, besides Patience and November Rain.

It's strange how he eliminates rhythm guitars from live era and gets 3 guitarists (at one point at least) for the CD thing.

I think Gilby's rhythm guitar on the Tokyo DVD's (and VHS) always sounds quite, and in parts non existant. The only time i can really hear him playing is on 'Wild Horses' and a bit on 'Civil War'.

Maybe it is Slash that has ego problems? I mean, Gilby can?t hardly be heard on the Tokyo show and because of the lacking of a solid rythm guitar, it just sounds bad.

Meanwhile Slash has a LOT of volume. He and Matt had too much.

And while on the subject of "Live Era", it is a really bad live album. The whistling on Patience is false and the rap on Rocket Queen is embarassing, and there aren?t that many good versions of their songs.

The songs that make Live Era worthwhile: Used to love her, It?s alright...

There's no rap on the 'Live Era' version of Rocket Queen

Yea I know... :crying: I love that rap! It totally rockz! ;D I wish people would stop bashing it!

i don`t think gilby`s guitar parts were deleted on purpose on live era... they might were during the illusion tour in general..... on most shows of 92 you can barely hear gilby.....   and well   axl`s vocals rerecorded?  it`s jsut a rumour and no fact at all.....  the songs of which we have bootlegs to compare sound pretty equal. as far as i know there`s no boot of the vegas show around, so it`s all speculation...

and @jameslofton: this was no axl powertrip. the whole band decided to do this album also decided on the songs together (through their managements....)   and well  i personally think it`s ok (the album...)  itt`s better than no live album at all..... but i agree: a kick ass concert would`ve been way better. same with tokyo by the way....

uhhh, no they were definitely rerecorded.  Also there is no way they sound equal.  My favorite rerecorded song on Live Era is You Could Be Mine.... it is so blatantly fake its almost comical. 

ehi guys ....
u'r wrong:you say most of recordings come tokyo;this is not true;
Nightrain is not from tokyo and so SCOM
Neither estranged ... the preentation before the song belongs to tokyo,but not the song itself
Not to mention rocket queen;Judgin' by the lousy Matt drummin' it comes from the illusion tour bu t surely not from tokio.You should listen carefully to guitar solo before judgin' guys....

well there is nothing official about this. and as long as we don`t own all gnr soundboards or get some statement from axl/slash about this it will stay that way......

hahahaha oh come on man give me a break. 

www.gnrontour.com/jm78/liveera.htm

did you know gnrontour.com isn`t official?? ;)

maybe i`m wrong and there is an official track source list out there, but as far as i know it`s not.

by the way the songs that are rumored to have rerecorded lyrics are mainly from vegas 92  (rocket queen, nightrain, vesterdays....)   and i don?t think there`s a bootleg of that show around.... but i could be wrong

The official excuse was because of DAT recordings. Not every show was recorded with many tracks for each song, so you can't judge just by some soundboard bootleg...

BTW, Estranged has some parts of Tokyo (I still can hear Axl's "wow" before Slash's first solo leaking in the sound with good earphones) , but it sure sounds like a mix of performances.

Agreed...I like it too :beer:

Lemme ask this...do all bands do this when they release a live album or just GNR at the time?   I feel that in watching all the many bootlegs that I have...they really for most part sound excellent live..I mean sure Axl has his off night like all of them have.  I can see having different songs from different shows in different years but mix those songs or edit over certain tracks with another live performance that may have sounded better...it kinda takes away from what LIVE really means.   I was just wondering if other bands have done this?

i agree. it's really lame to actually re-record parts and mix different shows together.

Kiss had a couple famous live albums (Alive I & II). and they did alot of work on those in the studio. i believe they admitted re-recording parts of songs in the studio.

yeah it?s lame..... they should?ve just released some kickass concert from '91

FINALLY! Someone who agreez with me!! :beer:

Well, I dont buy alot of bands live albums, but I do know that Sarah Mclachlan's live album from the late 90's had major work done on it. The songs sounded so perfect the radio stations were for awhile playing her hits from the "live" album instead of from her regular albums. She cant possibly be that good live. I'm sure alot of people do that kind of stuff. Maybe some other people can give more examples.

Kinda embarrassed to admit this, but I used to be a HUGE Dokken fan back in the late 80s (Back for the attack was a good album!) haha.  But on their Beast from the East LIVE cd I'm 99% sure they re-did some of the vocals on it. 

I don't know for sure, pure speculation, but I imagine its fairly common for bands to do this if they are making a LIVE album a legit release.  I think if its just bits and pieces its no biggie, but it they are laying down new vocals for every track...not really that live now is it :)

 i actually think the "recording quality"  excuse is an honest one, after thinking about it for while......   i?d guess they recorded most shows only in stereo quality.  i?d still be fine to get hold of those, of course, but i think it?s to bad for an official release...

i mean there are probably 200 gnr shows good enough to be released outright in terms of performace....

Short of buying a bootleg you are going to be hard pressed to find any officially released live album that isn't doctored up in the studio. Live Era is nothing new in that respect. They may or may not have parts rerecorded, but a vocal track might get smoothed out with auto-tune, or a guitar part that has a bad sound might get reamped through an amplifier in the studio and rerecorded with a better sound and put back into the track (if the band has a decent multitrack of the show anyway).

The king of doctoring and editing live tracks was Frank Zappa. There are live albums that might have most of the song from one night and the solo lifted from a totally different night and put into it. That's a LOT of work! Other times the first half might be one version of his band (as it changed many times through the years), with a totally different band from a show recorded three years later. He also used a lot of live band tracks for studio albums. But Zappa was the first person I had ever heard of that would take live guitar tracks, reamp them and put them back into the song.

Thanks for the replies...I guess it's pretty common then.   Short of not hearing a solo or vocal..I think it should just be left alone..imo.  We all love watching tokyo and other live GNR concerts...it's great to hear or see any band live but I guess in releasing live albums in the past or cd's today they all do it.

Oh and Hanna I used to really like Dokken too :beer: I didn't get their live album but I have seen them live in Cali.

Hey, you know what they say, Dokken rhymes with Rockin' hahah  : ok:  I was DEVASTATED when I heard they broke up...I don't think I went to school the next day hahaha.

Beast from the East is actually still a decent disc even today.  I really can't put on an old dokken CD now b/c the production quality of them is just pretty bad and the songs sound really outdated.  But any music LIVE to me is a differnet story.  I'd check it out if you ever find it in a bargain bin.  The last track was an unreleased studio track (I think it was called Walk Away??) pretty good ballad.

Hearing George Lynch live is cool no matter what the decade was :) 

Ok, no more Dokken posts for me hahahah  ....uh, how can I make this relevant......um...GNR F'ing RULES! haha :)