Prelude to Chinese Democracy

Fifteen years in the making, Chinese Democracy breaks a generation of silence from what was perhaps the most popular rock group of its day, a group that had once typified the simultaneously hard and silly genre of Sunset Strip hair metal and that had grown to transcend it with ambitious and masterful recordings.

Guns N' Roses last album was 1993's "The Spaghetti Incident?", a collection of covers ranging from the Skyliners' 1959 doo-wop tune "Since I Don't Have You" to a controversial cover of Charles Manson's "Look at Your Game Girl." Mostly, GN'R filled the album with 70s and 80s punk and glam rock, such as tunes from the New York Dolls and the Stooges.

Prior to that release, the band had issued the two-volume Use Your Illusion; both albums went 7x platinum and are packed with some of the band's most powerful and memorable singles such as "Civil War," "You Could Be Mine," "Don't Cry," and the unforgettable covers of Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die." Cited often as the band's best work, these albums, too, were subject to delays in release dates, taking ages to record, mix, remix, and perfect. But who could have imagined how those few hungry months for GN'R fans would compare to the years to come.

Lead singer Axl Rose's words to Rolling Stonein 1991 were spoken with regard to perceived delays in Use Your Illusion I and II's release, but they can be applied just as well to the long-anticipated Chinese Democracy:

"People want something, and they want it as soon as they can get it...And I'm the same way, but I want it to be right-I don't want it to be half-assed. Since we put out Appetite for Destruction, I've watched a lot of bands put out two to four albums, and who cares? They went out, they did a big tour, they were big rock stars for that period of time. That's what everybody's used to now-the record companies push that. But I want no part of that. We weren't just throwing something together to be rock stars. We wanted to put something together that meant everything to us."

I remember listening to GN'R on the school bus before I had all my adult teeth. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," a live performance, was the first music video I ever saw. And now, here I am, beginning to fear the thought of being thirty, with the first new album from a band I've loved for about two decades and that has gone through as many changes as I have during that time.

As of the album's release, Axl Rose is the last remaining original member of Guns N' Roses. Steven Adler, who was for all intents and purposes Guns N' Roses' first drummer, was ejected from the band in 1990 because of drug addiction. In 1991, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin jumped ship, citing problems with Rose's personal behavior. Lead guitarist Slash has not played a show with Rose since 1993 and officially left the group in 1996, instead choosing to work as the leading man of Slash's Snakepit until 1998 and as a (rightfully) glorified session musician thereafter. He later signed up to be part of the who's-not-working-in-Hollywood mashup Velvet Revolver, a collaboration best described as forgettable. Finally, bassist Duff McKagan quit the band in 1998 after Rose's insistence that he focus solely on GN'R to the exclusion of side projects.

Subsequent additions and replacements to the band's roster have been fired or have quit over the years, including former Cult drummer Matt Sorum and the enigmatic guitar artist Buckethead. Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck has also had an on again, off again lead guitar relationship with GN'R.

Currently, Guns N' Roses comprises Axl Rose, longtime member and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, bassist Tommy Stinson of the Replacements, Brian Mantia and Frank Ferrer on drums, Chris Pitman on keys, and Richard Fortus and Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal playing rhythm and lead guitar, respectively.

And the band's lineup isn't the only shift. Following the raucous but pop-centric Appetite for Destruction (which Slash said had become "so popular kids' moms were listening to it"), the world was treated to a double album of more depth and breadth than could have been imagined from a band that had epitomized the raw noise and energy of Sunset Strip hair metal. Use Your Illusion I and II moved away from the punk/blues roots of Slash and McKagan as Rose pruned the sound in more artistic and progressive directions. Use Your Illusion forever set GN'R apart from Poison, Ratt, Skid Row, and the myriad lighter hair bands of similar idiom. The ensuing years have bred more stylistic changes, more variations in genre and scope, more flexibility in song structure and instrumentation, and a lyrical story that is all Axl's. Chinese Democracy is as much a departure from Use Your Illusion as those albums were from Appetite for Destruction.

The weight of 15 years, 14 studios, and an estimated 13 million dollars-the greatest sum ever sunk into a single album, with many thanks to Uncle David and the rest of the Geffen crew-is quite a burden for a single disc to bear; but Chinese Democracy will never be held or heard without the unseen but deeply felt payload of labor, time, and uncompromising patience. All that Guns N' Roses (and Axl Rose himself) have become in these silent years is the cultural relay now carried in the expectations of this album.