Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Just got this via email :beer:

http://www.stonechromeradio.com/uploads/7/6/6/5/7665751/geoff_lenox_7_29.mp3

Some Quotes from Frank-

GNR Still exists and is going forward

"Well, I know there's gonna be some news very soon, , regarding, that whole situation."

And of course, "I know that Guns n Roses is still going, it's gonna go."

frank has been texting with axl about the DJ stuff. frank says everything is cool. GNR has a plan in place and it's happening. GNR is still forging ahead.

Thank you Emily  :)

And I don?t know what to think about what Frank said, seems like there?s no problem AT ALL about missing 2 guitar players at once. But, they have a plan... hmm...  why don?t they tell us whatdafuck is this plan for fucks sake!!!

Out of all the band members.   

You are telling me

Frank....

Knows whats going on in the band.....

Frank........

June 24th was his 9th anniversay in GNR, why not?

Thanks for posting.

I also got the e-mail, thanks to Geoff.



/jarmo

Good to hear that they will come out with an update on the situation.

Yeah. He said "soon."

that's good to know (even if I didn't doubt about that)  : ok:

Not that I don't believe it, how is this any different than anything that came out of DJ's mouth right up until he sent the letter, or out of Richards mouth right up until he said that there is no communication and he isn't sure where anything stands?

It's not.

But I don't think you can totally dismiss people WANTING to believe this more than ever, because it gives some hope at an uncertain time.  That's going to give it some extra weight, in my view. 

Even its no more real world than any of the 47 similar assurances that have come before it.

Add "soon" to the list of words I now hate because of this band.  It's right up there with "hiatus" and "artistic integrity".

Another good one is ''The Vault''.

Frank's vague assurances carry no more weight than any of the other ones that never panned out.

But, I think we might pump the breaks on the "this must mean reunion!!" talk though.

Just for shits n giggles... if there was a reunion in the works? Would Frank know about it anyway?  ;)

This is a guy who played his first show with GNR without ever having a conversation with Axl !

Can't listen to that bullshit for more than 30 secs. So, it'd be greatly appreciated if someone was able to tell at what time is Frank on.

Haha, fair point.

If we are to take Frank at his word, some things would have to be true.

Such as, if there truly is a new album coming out, Ron & DJ's input on it must have been minimal.  Hence their departure.  So perhaps the people that wanted that Bucket/Robin stuff as untouched as possible might get their wish.

Ron recorded all his parts for all the songs back in late 2006...pretty sure he hasn't seen a studio for Gnr since then.

Good & Positive New, Thanks

 : ok:

He did say he was texting with Axl about the current situation, so you can assume he has first hand knowledge directly from the main source.

Axl has twitter right? Someone tweet him.

Axl NEVER replies to any tweets...

Did it seem odd to anyone else that Frank didn?t really have any interaction with Axl prior to joining the band?  I thought Axl was hands on in the management of the band, yet left the decision to hire a band member to others?  I was surprised by that.

I'm surprised, but not as surprised as I would have been once upon a time.

Perhaps its all the times their either he or someone in his camp pleads total ignorance to something that comes down, but my once firmly held belief Axl was a control freak with his hands in every piece of the GNR pie has gone by the wayside.

To me, it shows he has zero interest in creating anything new with these guys, and views them more as replaceable widgets to help keep the boat afloat. 

Slash brought in Sorum... Buckethead brought in Brain... maybe Axl just doesn't get too invested with drummers.  A lot of people consider Freese, the one guy Axl did hand-pick, the most talented of the bunch. 

Exactly.  Axl was directly involved in picking Josh...perhaps because he wanted to create music with him.  But, as we got further and further down the line with changes, it shows, IMO, a level of indifference.

When it was all going down, I assumed (as I think many did) that Axl broke away from the other guys so he could have total control over every aspect.

I no longer think this.

I think what the past 15 years have shown us is that Axl broke with the other guys so there would be no one left to really challenge him in any meaningful way.  No one to answer to, and no one to kick him in the ass.

He wrested away total control, not to take over the world, but rather to be left alone.  

I think he has a different standard on who he'll record with and who he'll perform with.  For example, when Gilby was brought on board for the UYI tour, Axl went along no problem, but when it came to recording a new album, he was clear that Gilby wouldn't do.  When and if he'll create new music in the future, I think you would see that same hands-on approach. 

I think you are on the right track.

Look how excited he was to record with the original new band he put together.  We've heard talks of 30 plus tracks and several albums of stuff.  All done in a few years.  He was clearly energized to work with that group of people.

Compare that to the people he wound up getting as their replacements.  Not one new song or any substantive studio work in 10 years.

The difference in his approach seems fairly obvious.

But for years we heard Dj is known for his songwriting chops...Maybe Axl didn't see it the same way.

I think its a good bet that Axl is done creating brand new music in a group setting.

Sure seems it.

I mean, could the guy have seemed more excited about being in band, and working with Axl? 

Around 24 mins in

OK D-Gen and all the parrots...read up....Brain gives you first hand details of how he got the gig...don't read this...too much reality and not enough speculation...and by the way, Tommy obviously has and had alot of pull.

So, they gave me a first-class [plane] ticket from San Francisco to LA. A ridiculous 550SL-something black Mercedes, all tinted windows, comes and gets me. They drive me to the studio.

I met Axl, and they were like, 'Well, you have to learn these songs. We wanna jam. You have to learn Sweet Child O'Mine and this, this and this.' I was like, 'I don't really know those songs and I don't really want to learn them, 'cause I don't really care.'

I'm not saying like I'm a heavy, I'm just saying that through my attitude of 'Oh, whatever', it was like, 'No-one says whatever! This is Guns!' I went down and met everybody. Everybody seemed cool. Axl actually showed up - he was supercool. I go home and three months go by.

Tommy Stinson, the bass player, calls and says, 'Hey man, we need a drummer, so what's going on? You wanna do this or what?' I remember sitting in caf? in San Francisco when I picked up the phone, and I was like, 'Yeah, well, it sounds kinda cool.' And he's like, 'You should come down and jam. Learn some songs and do, whatever.'

So, it finally hit me then, because they flew me out, we went to a ridiculous rehearsal studio, I think it was at CenterStaging or something, and it was the biggest room and my drums are on a six-foot riser... I'm just thinking, 'Whoa, wait. This is kinda cool. This is like when you go to the tenth floor, this is eleven. This is - IT! Shit, man! Maybe I've made it if I take this gig! This is getting serious now!'



So, I go in and Tommy Stinson shows up with his Replacements punk-rock attitude. I had a boom stand, he fuckin' takes his jacket off and sets it on my boom stand. I'm thinking like, 'This motherfucker. Oh, OK. They wanna play here, so OK.'

We're playing the songs and I am sucking cock, 'cause I didn't know any of them. And Tommy's going like, 'I thought you were a good drummer, what the fuck's going on?' I'm like, 'Dude, I didn't learn any of the songs, I don't know any of them.' And he's going, 'Dude...' and then the phone rings - and I hear him talking to Axl.

'So, how's Brain working out?' I can just know what they're saying. And he's going, 'Well, it's kinda cool, but he doesn't know any of the songs.' I hear Tommy and him kind of going back and forth, and at that point, I thought, 'Uh oh. Now I'm turning out to look like a fuckin' douche.'

So I said, 'Tommy, give me a day. Just give me a fuckin' day and we'll come back.' Came back, I re-set my drums totally different, at that point, I had a kind of Primus' fusion set, so it didn't really work with Guns, anyway. Just having all these small toms and fuckin' splash symbals and shit.

Told the drum tech, 'Dude, set up a bottom kit. 26" kick drum, 13, 16, 18, fuck it, I'm going in with just power.' Sat up all night, learned the five or six songs, and when fuckin' Tommy comes in one more time and puts his fuckin' jacket [on my boom stand]... I went in and just played so hard that four of five drums fell off the risers and Tommy was like, 'Yep, he's our guy, that's it. Let's just do this.' 

Who said anything about Brain?

Seriously, was he mentioned in any of this?

Exactly.  What does this have anything to do with Frank???  Cool story, btw.

"I'm surprised, but not as surprised as I would have been once upon a time.

Perhaps its all the times their either he or someone in his camp pleads total ignorance to something that comes down, but my once firmly held belief Axl was a control freak with his hands in every piece of the GNR pie has gone by the wayside."

my only point to the parrots was that apparently Axl always let other people make decisions on who other band members were going to be. So, he is not a complete control freak. And for the record, my only issue with the parrots is the incessantly never ending speculation on what really happened. You guys speculate negative, I speculate neutral or independent, and others speculate always positive. Two sides to every coin.

Ginger....the whole thing is classic...

That's one thing about Axl, too. He knows his shit, dude. I'll never forget, we were working on a track... I forget the name of the track, I don't know if it even made to Chinese Democracy, but we were working on it for two weeks, maybe even longer.

We would work at Village, which is a studio in Santa Monica. Everything would be dropped off to him. At that point it was, like, giving him CD's. So, there'd be a runner ready to go right when we were done at midnight, to bring it to his house in Malibu, and we'd wait about 35-40 minutes until it got there and get the call. 'Yeah, this is cool', or, 'No, we gotta change something or whatever.'   

We'd been doing that for about 2,5 weeks on this song, let's say. Finally, he loved what we were doing, but we had to change something with the drums. So, I remember replaying the part, but, on the beginning of the second half of the intro, there's a kick drum that I had missed on the final take. We had already figured out all the parts and everything was going great, and producer Roy Thomas Baker was like, 'That was the take.'

But I had noticed that I'd missed one kick drum. One kick drum on the one, on the second half of the intro, OK? We send it there, and I'm not shitting you, he says, 'Everything sounds great, except I think Brain missed a kick drum on the one.' 

So, he's fuckin' listening. We thought we were sending this shit and he's literally sitting there like King Arthur with seven chicks on his pipe. He's listening, he's working. After that, I respected... I was like, 'Holy shit! He caught that?!' Yeah, he's listening to every little thing. It was my time on getting the drums right, so he was focusing on that... It's pretty amazing. You'd think someone like that, does he need to care? That one got me. I was like, 'Wow. He caught that.'     

Oh that?  Yeah, that, I believe.

Which is it, you know?  He's super involved and all over every aspect...or he doesn't know when tours are booked and DVDs are coming out?  

You have to see the inconsistency there.

I didn't mean it as a dis.  It was more an admission I appeared to read the whole thing wrong, initially.

Haha, that's awesome.

http://www.gnrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?id=13342&p=1

the whole interview shows you how insane the whole process has been. Note, Roy Thomas Baker....means tons of shit was done 13 years ago...you can't make this shit up....that is why I follow the saga....it is classic. Also, why I don't get pissed. It is what it is. That is a fairly recent interview...on Gnr time that is.

My point is that Team Sunshine tends to exaggerate what we ?negative? folk say.  Case in point.  I?m talking about Frank, the drummer who replaced the drummer, who replaced the drummer, who replaced the drummer, who replaced the drummer.  You think it?s a positive (or neutral) that Axl had little to any interaction with him before he was hired to play in his band?  I think it tends to point to his indifference. 

I?m saying nothing about his ambition to work with prior people (Josh, Brain, Robin, etc.).  Again, it?s just the impression I got from hearing Frank?s story.  I would just expect the lead singer in a band to be involved in who the band is hiring.

I agree that the making of CD stories are classic.  I've read Chinese Whispers.  It's incredible stuff.

That Chinese Whispers site should be required reading for all GNR fans.

They are all direct quotes.  How much clearer can your picture be?

There are quotes on that website by people like Moby who said when they arrived Axl didn't have a clue and had basically hundreds of vocal less tapes.

Oh yeah...it shows the good, the bad, and the crazy.  It really should be required reading.

hahaha daaamn!! thanks for the link! Crazy shit!  :rofl:

There are so many that say how disjointed and off the rails it all was...and then they all finish up saying how awesome what they heard was.

I'm sure whoever they hire will be better than the old one.  ;D

Hahaha.  I guess she is going to need a new sign.

Wow. How dare you? 
Just kidding. :hihi:





/jarmo

"Forging ahead" What a bunch of shit. DJ was in the band for 6 years and they didn't produce 1 record. People may not like DJ, but he wanted to make music, he wanted "Guns n Roses" to be a band that makes records. It's a shame he left, but why stay in a band that is clearly dead and not doing anything. How can they be forging ahead when they don't have 2 guitarists. Oh thats right, Dizzy Reed is all ready to go :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

By replacing them with people who want to be there? :D


/jarmo

Yes because so many great guitarists are lining up to be part of this carnival act  :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Do you like new-GNR?

Legit point. Let's say you are a moderately successful guitarist who has written and recorded in the past and the Guns N' Roses offer comes up. You will look at the offer and think,

- the band do not appear to write together
- the band do not appear to record together and there is this big mess with a back log of material
- the band do not release albums or have very little desire to release albums
- the band do not seem to communicate or know what is happening
- There have been 8 former guitarists who have either quit or being sacked
- most of your time in this band will consist of going back and forth between South America and Las Vegas playing a setlist composed by former guitarists.

But the pays good.

It is not a good advertisement for an aspiring guitarist.

What really gets me is Chris Pitman. He was interviewed saying "Why release an album, who cares?" Case in point, exit Ashba, exit Ron. Why Axl wants Pitman around I will never understand, brings nothing to the band.

Look at the guitar players who've been in the band. It's not like they're the last ones on earth.....

By the way, your jokes are lame.


/jarmo

Unless you follow a band as closely as we do, you would have no idea about that. I doubt professional musicians are paying that close attention to other band's activities. However, many band members have said they've written stuff post-Chinese. Tommy, Richard and Dizzy has said so publicly at least.



They have not gone public with much, I'll give you that. If you are to join the band, I suppose you'll get to know what the plan ahead is. Even if we, the fans, never get to know anything, I would hope there's a plan in place, and if there is, you could make a decision based on that. I would say it's highly probable that there are things going on, however frustrating it is to be a fan starving for information on anything.



Sometimes it seems that way yes. Richard with the "up in the air" comment, but then you have Frank a week later saying there's a plan and he's in communication with Axl. What we get from interviews of the band members might not always tell the full story. For all we know, Richard's comment was said jokingly and misinterpreted by the interviewer.



It's a bad statistic yes.



You're basing this on the last couple of years, totally disregarding the rest of the tour...

The setlist... yes, you can't play a GNR show without the classic songs, there's no way getting around that, and fans wouldn't want to. Let's see what's in store for the next run though. If the new guitarist isn't Robin or Bucket, he would have to be cool with playing a full set of songs which he had no hand in composing, that's true.



Probably better than most places.



Let's see if anyone joins. Wanna bet?

He did write songs on Chinese. His instrument provides a subtle layer of sounds to the songs that sort of "updates" the sound. Listen to You Could Be Mine live nowadays, I think he provides the little extra.

Chris Pitman's sound had the most influance regarding the bands music during the 2001-2002 and 2006-2007 tours

"Now we believe even more!"

I just hope we don't end up with a couple D-List players just for a tour.  God I hope Robin has some interest in returning.

Quote from: mortismurphy on Today at 01:55:24 PM

- There have been 8 former guitarists who have either quit or being sacked


Other than dying, how else cold they leave  ;)