Music of the Weak: Chinese Democracy, Bitches!

Remember when The Offspring threatened to name their new album “Chinese Democracy” in, like, 2003?  Or when Moby signed on to produce Guns n’ Roses in 1996?  Or when Bumblefoot replaced Buckethead?  Good times.  In the build-up to Chinese Democracy alone, Axl has already given us so much.  More than one blogger has already lamented the album’s actual release, because of all the internet material it has provided over the last couple of years.  The jokes pretty much wrote themselves.  An album release date would get announced and then get unceremoniously passed by, like Lucy yanking the football out from under Charlie Brown’s foot without so much as a “Good Grief.”  Now that the album lives, we know we never should have doubted Axl Rose.  Axl has never promised anything he has failed to deliver.  Even the cornrows, which couldn’t have been anything but a horrible decision on a dark and lonely night, have stuck around for more than six years.  That’s commitment.

Despite all of the pleasure of the hilariously agonizing wait, there’s nothing inherently wrong with taking a decade and a half to put out an album.  First of all, that kind of attentiveness to the quality of one’s work is a rare and valuable commodity—one some of our more prolific indie rockers (*cough*Deerhunter*cough*) should take notes on.  Reports of Axl working and reworking tracks to perfection have surfaced since the mid-90’s.  Megalomania it may be, but in service of the music—why not?  Secondly, Axl managed to avoid 1997, the year when every major rock band scrambled to make an electronic-influenced album they way every band in 1978 scrambled to make a disco album.  Not only was Moby tapped to produce (though he was in his speed metal phase at the time), Axl was trying to figure out how to create drum loops.  Thankfully, he let that weird little phase pass him by.

See, it gets obscured by all of the easy jokes, the megalomania, and, yes, the cornrows, but Axl Rose is a fucking genius.  It’s easy to imagine him laboring over the music for Chinese Democracy out of the sheer belief in himself “as a serious, unnatural artist,” as Chuck Klosterman proposes.  However, I suspect he has something much more ego-satisfying in mind as his major focus for Chinese Democracy:  branding.  Guns n’ Roses, the commodity, is teetering on the precipice of timelessness, threatening at any moment to fall into self-parody.  If Chinese Democracy succeeds on its own terms—which it does, admirably—it stands to solidify Guns n’ Roses as the monster rock band it always saw itself as, in a league with The Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Aerosmith.  While clearly not susceptible to bad press or excess or even the loss of all but one of the band’s founding members, Guns n’ Roses legacy would suffer greatly as the result of music out of sync with the band’s blueprint.  Chinese Democracy is the only album they possibly could have made to preserve their marketability.

Chinese Democracy has to do a couple of things, neither of which involve selling well or being artistically good from any objective point of view.  First of all, it has to appeal strongly to Guns n’ Roses’ fanbase.  Then, it has to extend the Guns n’ Roses aesthetic.  Eliminate the timeline and, essentially, Axl Rose made the exact record that should have followed Use Your Illusion I & II—using all of the signifiers of those albums, without outright repeating anything (except the Cool Hand Luke sample.)  It took so long because he clearly didn’t have the songs.  A lot of the material for the Use Your Illusion albums was written around the same time as Appetite For Destruction.  Most, if not all, of it was written with the core members of the band—Izzy, Duff and Slash.  With no consistent band behind him, Axl needed to take 14 years to write and woodshed the Chinese Democracy songs in order to ensure that they would live up to the Guns n’ Roses catalogue.

The result is an anachronistic album, built to satisfy—one that couldn’t have been made any time but 2008, but that wants to have been made in 1994.  Axl Rose does everything we expect Axl Rose to do: spends plenty of time being ambiguously emotional, gets paranoid on “Chinese Democracy,” wails “Riad and the Bedouins/ Had a plan and thought they’d win/ But I don’t give a fuck ‘bout them/ ‘Cause I am crazy” on “Riad N’ the Bedouins” and then proves it by sampling Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on “Madagascar.”  The music treads between “November Rain”-style power balladry and “You Could Be Mine” style rockers, often within the same song.  There are electronic flourishes, mostly on the song intros, but all of the surprises conform to a general Guns n’ Roses aesthetic.  Klosterman wonders why Axl chooses to “sing an otherwise innocuous line ("But I don't want to do it") in some bizarre, quasi-Transylvanian accent” on “Sorry,” even though he must have thought through a million other deliveries for that line.  Axl knows his audience expects a smattering of weird ass shit.  It’s a calculated moment of whimsy.

Chinese Democracy ends an incredibly strange product--simultaneously sounding like nothing else on the market and fulfilling every expectation of a Guns n' Roses album.  Most importantly, it falls in neatly with Guns n' Roses' body of work, establishing them as a brand that can survive the exit of four of it's founding members--something The Stones, AC/DC or Aerosmith could never do.  Say what you will about Axl Rose, he's never taken his eye off the prize.

-Martin Brown, 2008

Comments

[Kenny]

Hell yeah, Marty! Posting on Thanksgiving! Woo! I've temporarily escaped from my family, so I'm happy to spend my momentary peace reading you! I'm going to read your article now!

[Kenny]

OK, Marty, I read it! My one big thought is this - everything you said could be true if only Axl hadn't made a parody out of himself and his group by splitting with the entire band. I mean, who really cares anymore? Any true Guns n Roses fan already moved on to Velvet Revolver. Who's left to care if Axl made a perfect album on his own? At this point, the album exists purely for posterity - the music itself is irrelevant.

[Squidhelmet]

I feel like there was almost as much anticipation for an MCStankbooty review of Chinese Democracy as there was for the album itself.

Glad you went there. I can't say that I'll listen to it to find out if your words are true, but they SEEM true, and sometimes that's worth much much more. :)

Gobble Gobble!

[andre]

damn yo cant you pick on a band that sucks more than deerhunter? like u2? what about ryan adams? hes prolific and definitely sucks most of the time. bright eyes thats a good one. OHH trent reznor should mos def stop makin music. there was this guy called thunder egg who sucked cause he was TOO prolific... dylan kinda sucked once he would not stop making music "people" didnt wanna hear. OH and his fuck buddy lou reed! but deerhunter? there so out of the way ...lets get something that punches EVERYONE in the gut for kind of liking.

COLDPLAY!! no they were kinda good then really sucked in a way that made you feel betrayed for liking them....not the same thing.

[Marty]

Kenny,

The thing is, Axl had to make this album to be able to keep Guns n' Roses alive as a touring force, and maybe to continue to sell his back catalogue--which I think he will. Everyone who jumped ship for Velvet Revolver just really wanted more Guns n' Roses. Chinese Democracy, in my opinion, gives 'em plenty of reasons to jump back.

Squiddy,

Hey thanks man. I imagine you'll get a sneak preview of the album on the 2008 mix. Want to do a cover?

Dre Bone,

Of course you're totally right. At this point, I'm just making easy jokes about Deerhunter to get a rise out of you. And I gotta say I was delighted to see your comment! I'll move on now... At least until I actually listen to Microcastle.

[Kenny]

Marty,

As far as Guns n Roses as a touring force - do they tour anymore? I genuinely don't know, but I do know I've seen more about Motley Cru touring than any recent version of GnR.

I definitely agree anyone who moved on to Velvet Revolver just really wanted more GnR, but does Velvet Revolver fill that desire? It does for me, at least.

I guess more than anything else, I'm pleasantly surprised the album is generating this much chatter. I expected it to come out and be forgotten in the same week, so this has been cool. I just need to find the desire to listen to it now! lol

[Biz]

It is nice to see GNR back. It was too long time since "Use Your Illusion". This album is not that good, but still shows that Axel is back on the track.