The Most Expensive Album Never Made

[Luigi]

That would be nice is what I was saying.

[estranged.1098]

If you want Axl and Slash to get back together you obviously haven't been following what they're saying for the past few years.

"For the fans to attempt to condemn me to relationships even only professional with any of these men is a prison sentence and something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I'd say my parole is nearly over. I'm practically a free man and if you don't like it you'll have plenty of time to get used to the idea."

[Smoking Guns]

What else would expect them to say.  They talk like this cause they think they feel this way, however, if they ever thought why they felt that way, they would realize there is too much shit between them to just forget it.  The reason will lead them back to the truth that they all belong together.

[Freya]

Oh, and to all the armchair psychologists out there - Please shut up.

I don't think you need to be a psychiatrist to recognize when someone is mentally ill. ?Axl obviously is, and to my mind that's a far better excuse to his behaviour past and present, than he's a "perfectionist" or a "diva" or etc.

[killingvector]

Slash and Duff would and will go back to Axl in time, if Axl doesn't kill himself before that time.  What they are doing with Scott is making great music.  But after there three records and years of touring, they will have proven themselves as great muscians outside of GNR.  Time heals all wounds and they will get those songs they wrote with Izzy and make one hell of an album.  But right now they are having too much fun playing gigs and writing new music to even think about getting involved with Axl.  They will all play together again one day.  And to GunsUK, in a recent article, Scott talks about his promising friendship that has blossomed again with Dean Deleo.  So yes, Scott will write with him again too.  Its like VR is the vehicle to make them who they are again..............Given time they may be ready for what made them famous the first time around.  Hell, how awesome would it be if STP and GNR did a tour together, and maybe did some VR tunes!

I don't think axl is waiting around for a reunion as you seem to suggest. There will never be a reunion until both parties agree to it; right now, neither side sees the benefit of rehashing old relationships.

[younggunner]

Axl knows that, but he is too proud to recognize that point. He recognized that point just once, in an interview in 1999. Everytime he goes on stage, the crowd screams "Slash!". This is something he could NEVER fight against until Slash really comes back. This pressure of Slash shadow will always be there.Slash is waaaayyy too much important, too much legendary and too much unique, to be "replaced". It's not (only) a musical question, but a human one.

You always fail to miss the poin. WHo the hell said Slash wuld be "replace/overshadowed or forgotten" in gnr or musical history? Get a fukin life dude. Slash is one of the best guitarists ever. Just because Axl wants a new band doesnt mean hes trying to overtop it with some1 better than Slash. They went in different directions. Case Closed.

When Axl says Fuck you to people who call out Slash he wants them to shut the fuck up. WHy are they there then? When Axl has a request about not talking about the past and old members its because he doesnt want that to be the focus. Its over so let it be. Instead of VR doing that they do the opposite. Thats why GNr is basically mentioned in every dam article. Axl wants it to be about the new band.

As for all the people who are worried about this article. REad it again!. Its nothing new! Its the same shit we already knew reagrding the post illusion era. The only difference, is it provides a lot of descriptions!. Which makes the story a great read.

I think a lot of you are thinking this has to do with the current state of GNR. It has to do with 94-2000. AFter that we dont know the state of gnr. Except that they had a solidified band, toured, and did much more recording.

This article brought a descriptive account of the state of gnr managemnet and Axl during a time when GNR were in shambles. WHy are you getting your panties all up in a bunch? Relax, as some have said already, we are in the same situation as yesterday before this article. The only difference is we now have some cool insight on what went on during a certain period of time.

Maybe Axl will be runnin over or burning a stack of NY Times newspapers tomorrow morning as he blasts "SuckerPunched" in his sick car....

[Drew]

Very good read Booker. Thanks for the article.

[jabba2]

Axl knows that, but he is too proud to recognize that point. He recognized that point just once, in an interview in 1999. Everytime he goes on stage, the crowd screams "Slash!". This is something he could NEVER fight against until Slash really comes back. This pressure of Slash shadow will always be there.Slash is waaaayyy too much important, too much legendary and too much unique, to be "replaced". It's not (only) a musical question, but a human one.

You always fail to miss the poin. WHo the hell said Slash wuld be "replace/overshadowed or forgotten" in gnr or musical history? Get a fukin life dude. Slash is one of the best guitarists ever. Just because Axl wants a new band doesnt mean hes trying to overtop it with some1 better than Slash. They went in different directions. Case Closed.

When Axl says Fuck you to people who call out Slash he wants them to shut the fuck up. WHy are they there then? When Axl has a request about not talking about the past and old members its because he doesnt want that to be the focus. Its over so let it be. Instead of VR doing that they do the opposite. Thats why GNr is basically mentioned in every dam article. Axl wants it to be about the new band.

As for all the people who are worried about this article. REad it again!. Its nothing new! Its the same shit we already knew reagrding the post illusion era. The only difference, is it provides a lot of descriptions!. Which makes the story a great read.

I think a lot of you are thinking this has to do with the current state of GNR. It has to do with 94-2000. AFter that we dont know the state of gnr. Except that they had a solidified band, toured, and did much more recording.

This article brought a descriptive account of the state of gnr managemnet and Axl during a time when GNR were in shambles. WHy are you getting your panties all up in a bunch? Relax, as some have said already, we are in the same situation as yesterday before this article. The only difference is we now have some cool insight on what went on during a certain period of time.

Maybe Axl will be runnin over or burning a stack of NY Times newspapers tomorrow morning as he blasts "SuckerPunched" in his sick car....

Whats disturbs me is the music appears to be the last thing on Axl's mind during GNR's downtime period up until the late 90's. His comeback essentially started a few years ago with CD, The Blues and the other songs released on tour. Thats kind of worrying, because Axl didnt always appear to have it together during the 2002 comeback. If Axl's able to succesfully return he  needs a full emotional turnaround, and i dont know if thats possible anymore.

[younggunner]

Whats disturbs me is the music appears to be the last thing on Axl's mind during GNR's downtime period up until the late 90's.

Exactely. But you have to realize that the reason for this is because Axl wanted to revamp the whole thing whereas the company wanted Axl to get thing sin motion right away because they just cam eoff the successful illusions. The reocrd company wanted to ride that wave.

But what they failed to realize is Axls desire to create something that will give the old band its run fir the money and that can represent GNR well. I think thats what most peopel are missing here. IU have been saying this from day 1, Once Axl decided the old was history he was going to scrap the whole thing and start anew. He had to rebuild it back up. From 94-99ish the whole thing wa sin dissarray like the article pointed out. Axl just seeing what he had and began there.

His comeback essentially started a few years ago

You hit the nail right on the head! That is essentially what I have been trying to drive hom here to everyone day in and day out with all these arguments we have here at the board.

The time when things got serious and focused with this comeback was around 2001. When Axl finally assembled a group of guys that mesh musically and on a personal level. Thats when Axl felt he could have a band that could musically and band wise match the old band. Thats when the bits and pieces from the late 90's began to get worked on. Thats when Bucket came and added even newer material. When arrangers,etc came in. During 2001- till now.

I have been trying to tell everyone this since Ive been here. That this thing really began to pick up speed in the 2000s. This article backs up that theory and explains why its "taken so long".

[jarmo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/arts/music/06leed.html

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/jarmo

[younggunner]

Ive got the full article...im going to post what was left out...much more interesting stuff brb...

Wow so much more stuff. Jarmo maybe you can just replace the current article with the original becuase there is tons of info that didnt make the 1 we have here. Great info on a lot of things!


 But Mr. 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. It's an impossible task. You could go on
infinitely, which is what they've done."

As time and dollars flew by, pressure mounted at Geffen. The label's dry
spell lingered, making them more dependent than ever on new music from
their heavy hitters. "The Hail Mary that's going to save the game," the
recording expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity explained, "is a
Guns N' Roses record. It keeps not coming and not coming."
By one count, the band kept roughly 20 songs it considered on the A list
and another 40 or so in various stages of completion on the B list.

All that material, however, didn't do much to reassure the band's label.
"In 1998 and 1999 you start getting a little bit nervous," Mr. Rosenblatt,
the executive who led the outfit after David Geffen's departure, said
delicately. "Edgar Bronfman picks up the phone more than once. He wanted to
know what was going on. You unfortunately have got to give him the answer,
you don't know. Because you don't." To take the pressure off, Mr. Rose's
manager at the time presented the idea of releasing a live album from the
original band, which. Mr. Rose's crew began to assemble.


Mr. Rose was said to be crushed by the departure of his Geffen contacts -
just as "White Trash Wins Lotto," a musical satire that sent the singer up
as a star-eyed hayseed forced to learn the harsh lessons of the music
industry, was developing a cult following in Los Angeles. When he missed
his March 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.

That June he allowed a version of the old Guns N' Roses hit "Sweet Child O'
Mine" that begins with the original band playing but almost seamlessly
shifts into the new band to appear on the soundtrack of the film "Big
Daddy." Later that summer he agreed to release his first original song in
eight years, the industrial-flavored "Oh My God," for another soundtrack
and introduced it in a commercial on MTV. (Mr. Rose fussed over the song so
much that he, Mr. Iovine and studio technicians stayed up until nearly dawn
adjusting the final mix, according to people involved.) News of its release
stoked speculation that an album might follow. But it was panned by many
critics and quickly forgotten.

In late 1999 he invited Rolling Stone to preview about a dozen tracks. The
magazine reported the album appeared "loosely scheduled" for release in the
summer of 2000. In fact, Mr. Rose's visits to the studio had become so
irregular, according to several executives and musicians involved with the
band, that an engineer working with him, Billy Howerdel, and the band's
drummer, Josh Freese, found time during that period to start their own
project, the band A Perfect Circle, and to begin recording an album, "Mer
de Noms," which went on to sell 1.7 million copies.


Label executives still clung to the idea that if they could just bring in
the right producer, he could find a way to finish the album and finally
bring a return on their ever-growing investment. They summoned Roy Thomas
Baker, famed for his work with the art-rock band Queen. (Mr. Beavan, who
was said to have tired of the project, soon bowed out.) But instead of
wrapping things up, Mr. Baker decided that much of what the band had needed
to be re-recorded - and painstakingly so, as he sometimes spent as long as
eight hours on a few bars of music.

The process was drawn out even further after Mr. Rose hired two new
musicians - the guitarist Buckethead, a virtuoso who wore a mannequin-like
face mask and a KFC bucket on his head, and the drummer Brian "Brain"
Mantia - whom the singer directed to re-record all the music that their
predecessors had spent months performing.

Still, Mr. Rose seemed to be emerging from his sullen shell. In mid-2000,
for what was thought to be the first time since the "Illusions" tour ended
in 1993, he performed in public, with the Thursday night bar band at the
Cat Club on the Sunset Strip. "He was psyched," recalled one person who
worked with the band at Rumbo. "It seemed like it boosted him again, people
still want to hear him."

At about 4 a.m on New Year's Day 2001, at the House of Blues in Las Vegas,
he and the new lineup of the band finally unveiled some of their new
material. "I have traversed a treacherous sea of horrors to be with you
here tonight," Mr. Rose told the crowd, which received him with roars of
approval. Warm reviews followed. Making the most of the moment, he took his
band on the road, going to Brazil to play in the Rock in Rio festival.

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.

Label executives were losing patience. Interscope turned to Mr. Zutaut, the
original band's talent scout. Could an old friend succeed where so many
others had failed? He was offered a roughly 30 percent bonus, he said, if
he could usher the project to completion within a year.

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.

Mr. Rose was far less indulgent of his producers and label. Around
Christmas, he ousted both Mr. Baker and Mr. Zutaut (who said there had been
a miscommunication). It would be weeks before the singer would even allow
an Interscope executive to visit him in the studio, according to people
involved with the production. Interscope dispatched a senior talent
executive, Mark Williams, to oversee the project. Mr. Williams declined to
comment for this article.


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.

Released in March of 2004, it turned out to be a surprisingly strong
seller, racking up sales of more than 1.8 million copies even without any
new music or promotional efforts by the original band. The original band's
debut, "Appetite for Destruction," which has sold 15 million copies,
remains popular and racked up sales of another 192,000 copies last year,
according to Nielsen SoundScan. It is a sign that Mr. Rose's audience still
waits.

Mr. Rose is reportedly working on the album even now in a San Fernando
Valley studio

There's certainly more than enough material; as Mr. Zutaut
says, even years ago "people felt like the record had been made four or
five times already." 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.

[younggunner]

fascinating stuff!

unfortunately its not as simple as laying down some tracks. The whole Bucket part is interesting and now I understand what Axl said in regards to catering to Bucket on many occasions. I think this article brings a new light into this whole process. I hope many of you read it fully and realize that this is much more about record companies, directions, etc than just perfection. Perfection is  a huge key but the whole behind the scenes thing is very interesting. Axl is stubborn and when things dont go his way hes going to make you pay.

1 thing we all know for sure..

Axl isnt going to give in to any deadlines until he feels its ready. Meaning we are going to get GNRS best all out effort. Whatver that equates to remains to be seen but we are going to get 150% and then some.

[welshrose]

Awesome, much more in depth. I like the fact that Interscope gave him the boot. He will run out of money eventually and have to release it.

[Naupis]

That whole thing with the chicken coup is just downright bizarre.

Reading this thing it makes the guy sound like a complete whack job. It doesn't really bash him, but to an average person who might just pick up the paper on Sunday morning he comes off as being a lunatic and fanatical. They even credited the tour cancellation on him being refused entry into a club, which coming from the NY Times I am going to go out on a limb and put some credence into.

At least the label has finally given him the boot and cut him off. More than anything, that should motivate him to finish it. Although if he couldn't finish it with what sounds like was the top of the line stuff ever created, I can't see how he will be more efficient working with stuff that is not up to par with the stuff they took away from him. This to me though is the most positive sign of the entire article, as there is no more free lunch.

Still sounds like the music is all over the map though. He should just release multiple albums at one time in that case and just see where things fall.

On a side note, so much for that theory about OMG being an unfinished rough cut we have heard from people about all these years. It sounds like from the way they portray it OMG sounds exactly as Axl wanted it to as it seems like a lot of work went into its production and release. Doesn't sound as if it was an unfinished track as has been somewhat previously reported.

[NickNasty]

This is perhaps the best article written abbout post UYI GnR I've ever read...there's no real news, per se, but it is a finely crafted restrospective of what is a pretty sad tale, IMO.

[Naupis]

Awesome, much more in depth. I like the fact that Interscope gave him the boot. He will run out of money eventually and have to release it

Maybe that has already happened, hence the need to sell his ownership of the back catalog to infuse some captial into this project. If he really was cut off, I think that it is quite possible that is why he did that given I could never see him giving up control like that unless he really needed the money.

[welshrose]

Performing on GTA, selling his back catalogue, this hombre needed dinero badly. All I know is youll get even more money if you release it homeboy.

[GNROSAS]

Fuck Me. Geffen stopped Funding Him and He had also A lawsuit From Slash and Duff.
That is probably the reason he sold his back/new Catalog.... To Gain more Money For this Fuckin Project....

I Just hope everything  turns up Well With This Guy....I never thought He was in trouble....
I don't Wonder Why Buckethead left after Geffen Stopped Funding Them.....

Sad Article...

[Mikkamakka]

This article made me really sad. I don't know if this album will be ever released, but for sure, it's Axl's swan song. 

[ppbebe]

And we have all the best hearties. Robin, Tommy, Brain, Dizzy Chris, Richard....

Thanks Booker, jarmo n younggunner I'm reading the article carefully later.

Boom boom boom  waa waa waa ...
Enough is enough. Chinese D will be out when he is damn good and ready (or when the will of the force tells him).

Axl is "steady" and Chinese D will be "go" when we're damn good and ready.

I took various bits and pieces of band members interviews and mix them with some consistent rumors including articles and other fans views, plus most importantly, the lyrics of new songs and then I got this bloody idea. Just a thought though.

For instance, this bits of band members interview

"For the fans to attempt to condemn me to relationships even only professional with any of these men is a prison sentence and something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I'd say my parole is nearly over. I'm practically a free man and if you don't like it you'll have plenty of time to get used to the idea."