‘Chinese Democracy’: Rock music’s most expensive flop
No band is completely immune to having a flop album in their arsenal. Even if fans think their favourite acts have the kind of track record to rival The Beatles, The Clash will always have to look back on Cut the Crap as a disappointment, and Metallica fans tend to only speak of St Anger in hushed tones or make a deliberate effort to clown on it. But when looking at the history of flop albums, there should be a separate category for what unfolded within Guns N’ Roses to bring Chinese Democracy into existence.
Before getting into the actual music, it’s important to catch up on where Guns N’ Roses were when the whole thing started. The Use Your Illusion tour had already done a number on every band member, and since Axl Rose was convinced to host lavish parties behind the scenes every night, they hardly managed to break even on some nights because of how much they were spending on their festivities.
So when Rose had the rights of the name signed over to him halfway through the tour and insisted on making the next record another change of scenery, no one was happy to hear it. “The Spaghetti Incident?” at least got them back playing together, but over the next few years, everyone gradually started filing out, with Slash leaving for his solo outfit and Duff McKagan making his own bands in the meantime.
Rose didn’t spend all that time fighting for ownership of the name to throw it out, though. If his band members didn’t want to join the party, he would spend that time recording the perfect tracks to prove them wrong. And so began one of the most obnoxious album rollouts of all time, featuring some of the greatest musicians that money could buy, all vying for a position on the album.
The frontman had already floated the idea of bringing Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde into the group, but once the band debuted in the 2000s, Buckethead had been selected for the lead guitarist slot. He was certainly capable of playing Slash’s leads, but even when they brought their new live show to MTV in 2002, they weren’t even close to finishing the record.
And listening back to the development stages, it was far from the most easygoing sessions, either. Buckethead could certainly shred on any song he liked, but after quitting halfway through working on the record, the only way that he was convinced to come back was when he insisted that an actual chicken coop be installed in the studio so that he would have a place to relax in between takes.
Over the next few years, everyone from Bumblefoot to Robin Finck to session veterans like Paul Buckmaster and Josh Freese would contribute, but by 2008, hardly anyone cared any more. Oh, it still sold major numbers because of the name on the cover, but listening to the album itself, it reads more like an Axl Rose solo album that anything remotely connected to Guns N’ Roses, especially when he gets behind the keys for ‘This I Love’ or brings in those industrial sounds he was toying with on ‘My World’ on tracks like ‘Shackler’s Revenge’.
But by then, anyone remotely interested in Guns N’ Roses’ brand of sleazy rock and roll would have done a lot better listening to what Velvet Revolver was doing. Scott Weiland may have been a significant change from Rose’s vocals, but the riffs from Slash were as solid as ever, and considering songs like ‘Slither’ and ‘Fall to Pieces’ were becoming modern classics, they felt like the true version of GNR that we all wanted but never truly got.
While any band can get over a bad album, the true weakness behind Chinese Democracy has more to do with its pricetag than anything. After 14 years of buildup, the band spent over $13million on the record before it came out, which would have been $22m when adjusted for inflation. So, despite the album sounding alright and selling respectably, the fact that it wasn’t one of the greatest records on Earth was downright catastrophic.
Because if any of us spent more money than anyone makes in a year on one album, we’d probably do our best to make sure it was one of the greatest musical achievements of our generation. But for Rose, all it served to do was to confirm what Guns N’ Roses had become during that recording process. They still sounded dangerous, but Rose sounded like a broken frontman aching for his passion project to be finished without anyone else by his side.
