| Though no big secret, Guns N' Roses' management company, Big F.D., has officially confirmed that Buckethead and former Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck are handling noodling duties for the band.
The announcement came late Friday (Oct. 27), and also stated that Bob Ezrin -- best known for producing Pink Floyd's The Wall -- has signed on as A&R man for the project. While neither management nor Interscope has officially said so, Brain from Primus has been behind the kit since the departure of Josh Freese.
To recap, Finck originally left the unhappy NIN camp in late 1995 and joined GNR around 1997. Obviously unable to figure out which is the lesser of two evils, Finck then left GNR in August 1999 to re-join NIN for The Fragile tour only to return once again to Axl Rose & Co. in the past weeks.
Bay Area, twenty-something guitar prodigy Buckethead is best known for his avant-garde solo guitar albums and his eccentric stage look in which he's been known to wear masks or buckets on his head. His latest album is Giant Robot, which was released this August on Higher Octave.
A release date still hasn't been set for GNR's next album, the Roy Thomas Baker-produced Chinese Democracy, but a world tour is expected to rear its head in the summer of 2001. As previously reported, the band is slated for Rock in Rio in January. This will be GNR's first concert in seven years.
-- Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna |
