The seemingly forever-elusive “Chinese Democracy” disc is now staring me in the face, and is sitting on shelves and digital download lists everywhere… available to actually hold, touch, read, and most importantly to listen to… and the Earth still turns.
The rock-lore behind the making of the disc, behind frontman Axl Rose’s obsessive perfectionism, behind his corn rows and the dismissal of the rest of Guns N’ Roses is common knowledge among all who care — but essential to understand this collection of songs.
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“Chinese Democracy” is a very, very, good rock album. Now, the weight of that statement changes, depending on the importance you give to rock music in this day and age. If it were not for all those years and the surrounding headlines it took to make the disc, I would call “Chinese Democracy” a great album, a complete “A.” But it just isn’t that simple.
With the first listen, all those passing years, Internet searches for Axl updates, new song titles, and band member firings go to the wayside, as you are now faced with the actual music. And you know what? You get pretty much what you expect. Some crazy great songs, some so-so songs, some outdated songs…as they were obviously written in the late ‘90s, the clear but obsessive, paranoid, and myopic world of its creator, and the reminder that Axl Rose is a true genius, and possibly our last standing true rock star.
It’s been about approximately 14 years…and we get 14 songs. As stated, you get a wide range of music, from true greatness — “Catcher in the Rye” and the “November Rain” of the collection, “There Was A Time” — to some true likes of greatness, such as the Zeppelin-esque “Riad N’ The Bedouins,” to the very common late ‘90s industrial grunge, “Shackler’s Revenge,” to over-stuffed but outstanding piano epics with the aforementioned “There Was A Time” and “Street of Dreams,” to most importantly, the all-out Guns N’ Roses rockers, such as the title track, “I.R.S,” and “Madagascar,” which could be easily be titled “Civil War,” part 2. “If The World” is a nice moody piece better left off the disc or on a single or something. The aforementioned “Shackler’s Revenge” sounds like Axl was listening to Korn in ’99 when he wrote it, but what follows is the most radio-friendly song on the album, “Better.” Here, Axl has the clearest sense of melody and the listener gets the clearest sense of Axl’s remarkable voice. And isn’t that really all we are listening for?
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That brings up a problem with the disc—there is often just too much going on. In Axl’s drive to greatness, to create whatever he is hearing in his head, which he must think will make each and every moment in each song eternal, he has just often put too much stuff on top of too much stuff. Allow an artistic perfectionist like Axl from around 1994 to the end of time to contemplate every measure of every song means that every measure of every song seems to have about everything Axl could find in it…bass, drums, layers of digitally stylized vocals, literally five guitars, pianos, keyboards, drum machines…real orchestras, synth orchestras, a mellotron… and I think I heard him whistle once. What used to take five guys living in a garage now takes a stadium full of people, including some truly out-of this-world guitar work from guitar savant Buckethead, among others. There is only so much sonic space and kudos to the engineers for getting it all in there, but as a result it often seems to sort of castrate Axl’s golden tones, to pinch them or drown them.
In comparison to the other long-ago-immortalized Guns N’ Roses discs, the angry songs about young guys living on the streets (“Welcome To The Jungle”) have been replaced with angry songs about Axl takin’ s*** from the world because he is, well, the way he is — and was taking forever to do this album. Where the other discs contain clear rockers (“Welcome to The Jungle” “You Could Be Mine”) and clear piano-driven love songs such as “November Rain”, with just Axl at the helm, “Chinese Democracy” tends to mix the two much more often, leaning more to the longer “November Rain” and “Estranged”-type numbers. With “Democracy,” there is an obvious sense of his influence from Elton John and Queen, his ‘90s interest in industrial metal, and what’s really unfortunate for me to have to mention, a bit of Meatloaf and “Phantom of the Opera” sprinkled throughout.
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So what does all of this mean? It means — even with the truly exorbitant amount of time and build-up given to this album, nothing seen since like the likes of Beethoven’s 9th — Axl did NOT disappoint. Think about how easy that would have been to do. It means that “Chinese Democracy” is now a concrete reminder that Axl is, if an obsessive perfectionist, also a true artist who can actually write, sing, perform and live the life of the dying rock star.
But it also means, man, it’s been just a little too long. And business-wise, maybe it showed that shortcoming in its opening week, bowing at only No. 3.
Ten years ago, I lay all my money down that this would have been an “A” review of a leaner collection of songs. But now, Guns N’ Roses have left us with a very, very good rocker that still, I can’t resist.
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