“It’s a grand statement”: The Guns N’ Roses album Slash could have never made
There was a certain magic lost the day that Slash decided to quit Guns N’ Roses.
Even though he was one of the greatest guitarists of his generation and made absolute magic on every one of their records, there’s only so much waiting and demanding that someone could take out of Axl Rose circa 1994 before they wanted out of the group. There were a lot more possibilities for Slash to explore when he decided to go solo, but there were also records that he would have never been able to match if he didn’t have the rest of the band behind him.
But when you look at Slash’s resume as a studio musician, he could bring his guitar to nearly everything that was thrown at him. Not many people could claim to hold their own next to everyone from Bob Dylan to Michael Jackson to Carol King to Ray Charles, but on every one of those records, Slash was never trying to showboat. He was always perfectly tasteful whenever he made a lead solo, but when it came to his own personal records, he needed to have a bit more edge to what he was doing.
Slash’s Snakepit was fun while it lasted, but after only a few records, it felt like the band were already burning themselves out way too quickly. He needed to go back to what Guns N’ Roses was always supposed to be, and while Velvet Revolver suited that mentality nicely whenever he started writing with Scott Weiland, it only took a couple more years before he started to get tired of them as well. If he wanted to get something done right, he had to do it himself, but the same could be said about Rose.
Then again, if Slash only needed a few months to put together his debut solo album with a round robin of singers, Rose’s attempts to resurrect Guns N’ Roses were going to be a lot more long-winded. Rose wanted to make sure that he had the right record that would leave the rest of his catalogue, and while he did take his sweet time working on Chinese Democracy, it’s not like the record is being looked at as everyone’s favourite Guns N’ Roses release by any means.
It’s not a complete dud, looking at the negative comments about it over the years, but it’s also way too bloated to be considered a classic. Rose’s voice had clearly gone through better days on some of the songs, but there are brief glimpses of what he wanted the band to become after everyone left, like on the title track or ‘This I Love’, which is probably the closest the album gets to tugging on people’s heartstrings.
And for all of the vitriol that Slash threw towards Rose, he admitted that he couldn’t have brought the same kind of spark to that album as he did, saying, “I listened to it: It’s a really good record. It’s very different from what the original Guns N’ Roses sounded like, but it’s a great statement by Axl. Now you understand where he was heading all this time. It’s a record that the original Guns N’ Roses could never possibly make. And at the same time it just shows you how brilliant Axl is. So it was a relief for me to actually hear it.”
Brilliant might be a strong word to use towards this album, but there’s always a fine line between brilliance and utter insanity in rock and roll. And while Rose does have a few moments where he does bear his soul, there are far too many cooks in the kitchen for the record to be labelled as one of the greatest of all time, especially since it took almost two decades of work to be completed.
Anything that takes that long to release should really be considered one of the greatest records of all time, but all of the money that was thrown in its direction wasn’t exactly about making a great album. Most Guns N’ Roses simply wanted an album, but for a record that’s basically an Axl Rose solo album with the band’s name thrown over top of it, it could have been a whole lot worse than what we got.
