Chinese Democracy

Recording Sessions

Other rumored titles: Cock-a-roach Soup, Suckerpunched, No Love Remains, Friend Or Foe, Zip It, Something Always, Hearts Get Killed, Closing In On You, Strange Disease, Zodiac, Quick Song, Atlantis, Broken, Did I Ever, Eulogy Of A Broken Heart, Greenletter, Heaven Is A Lonely Place For Two, Never Had It, Prosperous Chili, Push,  Shameless, Servitude, Today, Tomorrow, Forever, Todd The Intern, Velvet Rope Dope, Victory, Wombasi

Out of the unconfirmed song titles only Broken has a kind of reputation since it was said that Frank Ferrer mentioned it to a fan. "Checkmate" was confirmed to be a fan made title by the leaker himself. However the song itself is a GnR track and was indirectly confirmed being one when Geffen let youtube take nearly all leaks of it down because of copyright issues.

Equipment used: Richard ('64 firebird)

The Cover

In Hong Kong, China, August 14, 2002, Axl showed the crowd artwork for "Chinese Democracy". Accordingly, the artwork is black and white and features a bicycle in front of a wall where someone had grafittied "Guns N' Roses". This may of course have changed since then, and it is not confirmed whether or not it would be in the album, or if it would be the album cover.

Contributors

Band Members

Everyone of these (possibly except Ferrer and Ron Thal) contributed to the songwriting for the album. The majority of the lyrics will be written by Axl. It has been confirmed from several sources that Chris Pitman, Robin Finck and Tommy Stinson wrote material for the album.

The parts Buckethead, Paul Tobias and Josh Freese did, may have been redone by others, though Buckethead's parts most likely will stay. Ferrer and Thal probably only contributed to a few songs. Axl's guitar playing is also a source of question. The information above may be slightly inaccurate.

Shaquille O'Neal, Dave Navarro, Krys Baratto, Chris Vrenna, Dave Abbruzzese and Kelli Scott will not likely make any contributions on the final album. Stevie Salas will definitely NOT be on the album. The others are somewhat likely.

Programmers: Paul De Carli, Stuart White

In Their Own Words

Axl: We tried writing songs in the old style of Guns N' Roses, [but] they sounded too old, they didn't sound so alive. We could not make that. And I think that that also passed with the old Guns N' Roses. The songs composed by the boys for another album many years ago, everything sounded old. Then we tried to explore to maintain the band alive.²

Axl: People in the record company had many opinions and they wanted to make the best possible record. Every time that we thought that we had the correct songs, then somebody thought that we could make it better. We started over, we continued adding songs, continued recording and recording.³

Moby: The music they're working on is really wonderful.

Tommy: It touches on a lot of different elements of old Guns N' Roses in some ways; in other ways it touches with more current-sounding music.⁴

Axl: I think it is like old Guns N' Roses as far as, like, the spirit and the attempt to throw all kinds of different styles together.⁵

Brian May: I think it's very good stuff. I was very impressed Axl singing fantastically.⁶

Dizzy: Axl sounds amazing!⁷

Dizzy: It’s a little more diversified and a little more spread out and there is a little bit of something for everybody. That is the only way I can really describe it, kind of like an adventure in music I guess.

Jim Barber (former Geffen A&R executive): The tracks reminded me of the best moments of Seventies Pink Floyd or later Led Zeppelin. There's nothing out there right now that has that kind of scope. Axl hasn't spent the last several years struggling to write Use Your Illusion over again.⁸

David Wild: Imagine Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti remixed by Beck and Trent Reznor, and you'll have some sense of Axl's new sound. Song after song combines the edgy hard-rock force and pop smarts of vintage Guns n' Roses with surprisingly modern and ambitious musical textures.⁹

Zakk Wylde: It fucking sounds like Appetite For Destruction on steroids.

Axl: Mainly, you know, it will be the new band and the new band that played the songs live.

Tommy: We're all writing these songs, and we're all playing them. I just feel more a part of it.¹⁰

Axl: There may be a couple of other players. Brian May from Queen plays on a couple of songs. Umm, the drummer Josh Freese, umm who is in another band now, he plays on a lot of the songs.

Axl: I think that when we release the album, it's gonna be something that I'm gonna be proud of and confident in. Then, we will also have an extra heap of songs.¹¹

Axl: It is not industrial, the closest thing to that was perhaps Oh My God, but there are some songs that won't be on the album that were this way. There will be all kinds of styles, many influences as blues, mixed in the songs. But not so much inspiration of Aerosmith or AC/DC that was used on Appetite.¹²

Tommy: Either way it goes, it’s going to be big. It could be a huge fucking success and historical in that no lead singer has undertaken the [band] name and the whole band has quit. So if it goes huge, we all win and we’ll have done something that hasn’t been done yet. And if it flops, it’s going to be a huge fuckin’ flop. And I don’t think that’s the case. I think there’s a lot of viable music that we’ve done and I have confidence in it that it won’t be the other extreme. Either way, it’s a biggie.

Tommy: We wouldn't be doing this if it weren't going to come out -- are you kidding?¹³

Doug Goldstein: [It's] updated nineties-rock sound with a little more technology thrown in.¹⁴

Moby: I met with Axl last week to hear their new demos. They're writing with a lot of loops, and believe it or not, they're doing it better than anybody I've heard lately.¹⁵

Brian May: Boy, is there a lot of energy there and his singing is outrageous. There's some great tracks on it.¹⁶

Brain May: I think I played on 3 tracks, and messed around on various other things. But it worked out pretty well as far as I can tell.¹⁷

Brian May: I had a great time playing, and interacting with the guys, and I was hugely impressed wihth the material they'd already put down.¹⁸

Brian May: There is a whole album of vocal parts, infact 2 albums worth at least... There is some wonderful stuff there.¹⁹

Chris Vrenna: I have a feeling it's gonna be more like Appetite [For Destruction] than people are expecting.²⁰

Richard: Not much of my writing style has been included on the new Gn'R as most of the songs had been written before I was in the band.

Richard: Axl has written all of the words on the new record. I think that they are the best lyrics he has written. Some really powerful and honest words.

Josh Freese: I would really like to see it come out. Everybody worked their asses off on the project.²¹

Richard: I've been doing recording on the record pretty much since i joined the band. It's been an on-going process the entire time. I love the record.

Dizzy Reed: [It's] a pretty intense musical journey. It takes you to some really interesting musical places.²²

Tommy Stinson: For a GN'R record, it's pretty diverse. It's not straight down the rock 'n' roll road. It's all over the place, in a good way. It has a little bit of everything - the old Guns N' Roses vibe, ballads, a couple of pop songs.²³

Tommy Stinson: You really get to hear some different tones in his voice which don't lend themselves to traditional bluesy riff-rock. And the lyrics are a lot more in-depth, with deeper sentiment and emotion than some of the earlier stuff.²⁴

Tommy Stinson: On the new record, everyone’s got a bit in there, their part of a song. It lends itself to us feeling a part of the whole record.²⁵

Marco Beltrami: That was sort of just work for hire. I guess they'd heard some of my orchestral music of mine. I met with Axl and he played me these songs, asked me my ideas about them, and I told him what I thought they needed. They gave me four songs to orchestrate. A couple of them I did more than orchestrating, I actually wrote some melodies and stuff. It was a fun project. I really enjoyed it. The music was eclectic and at the time that I was doing it there were no lyrics on the songs that I was working on. People ask me about the album and I really have no idea about the release. I thought it was coming out last September. I'm the wrong person to ask about that.²⁶

Marco Beltrami: They had finished tracks. On one song I actually wrote a guitar part, but they pretty much had the band tracks down and then I added orchestral stuff on top of it.²⁷

Marco Beltrami: I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was different than doing film music, but it was a lot of fun. I would probably do it again. It would probably be more fun at some point, to do it as a more collaborative affair, starting more from scratch, working and writing stuff [together]. But it was definitely fun.²⁸

Richard: It is a truly amazing piece of work and I hope that the world has the chance to hear it. If not, the world will survive.

Slash: It's gonna be interesting to hear it. After all this time and after all this talk what's going on with him.