Pat Dollard | Young Americans

“The word for it is ‘grand.’ It’s fucking epic. He’s reinvented himself yet again. These aren’t songs so much as works, sculpted into diverse musical sections with his rotating cast of players.”

Times Of London:

There are barely 48 hours to go before the release of the most widely anticipated album in music history. Yet its creator — Axl Rose — is nowhere to be found.

According to one gossip columnist, the 46-year-old recluse was last seen at a restaurant called The Bagel Café in Las Vegas. As usual, there were no photographs to prove it.

But it is not just Rose’s whereabouts that remain uncertain before Chinese Democracy is released. Rumours were also circulating last night about a rift between the volatile rocker and those who manage his business affairs — in particular his Los Angeles-based managers, Irving Azoff and Andy Gould.

Larry Solters, Rose’s public relations chief, seemingly hired to avoid relations with the public, declined to clarify the situation. “Not able to assist. Sorry,” he e-mailed The Times.

And so it appears that Chinese Democracy, an album that took more than a decade to make and cost an estimated $928,571 per song, will be released in precisely the same way it was conceived — amid chaos and acrimony, and with the sole remaining member of the original Guns N’ Roses in hiding, maybe somewhere within his 2.3-acre clifftop estate on Latigo Canyon Road in Malibu, about an hour from Los Angeles.

The mansion, bought in 1992 for $3.6 million, according to LA’s public records, affords a view so impressive that it is almost laughable: 180 degrees of Pacific surf, shimmering in Malibu’s late November sun. Yesterday, all that could be seen from outside was a huge white gate, an intercom system, a military-grade satellite dish poking up through the trees and a couple of SUVs parked outside.

None of the drama that has surrounded Rose’s release of Chinese Democracy is likely to come as a surprise to his former bandmates — in particular the iconic guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, Slash, who left the band in the mid-1990s with the bass player Duff McKagan and the drummer Matt Sorum (who had replaced the drug-addicted Steven Adler).

In an interview last year, Slash described how in the early days of Guns N’ Roses, he once confronted the Indiana-born singer about falling asleep on his grandmother’s sofa, leaving her with nowhere to sit. “We got in the car [on the way to the recording studio] and I very delicately put it to him that [his hogging the sofa] was sort of rude,” recalled the British-born Slash, 43. “His reaction was to jump out of the car. It was going 35-40mph. From that point on, it was kid gloves.”

Rose, a former church choirboy who was beaten and sexually abused as a child, also displayed all the classic symptoms of egomania, turning up to gigs two hours late (in a Rolling Stone interview he blamed this on weak ankles) and losing his temper with audience members, once provoking a riot in St Louis, Missouri, that destroyed a new arena.

His personal life was no duller. In 1990 Rose proposed marriage to Erin Everly (daughter of Don Everly), after reportedly informing her he had a gun in his car and would kill himself if she refused. She accepted and the union lasted a month. Erin is the subject of the song Sweet Child o’ Mine.

When it came to recording Chinese Democracy, Rose’s eccentricities were almost on a par with those of Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, who spent 38 years making the album Smile. And Rose’s obsession was on a par with filmmaker and American hero Howard Hughes. Producing, directing and financing his first movie, Hells Angels (aka Wings), whose shockingly deadly making played out over three years, Hughes was lost to an obsession that pulled him entirely out of the world of his business and ultimately into his own dark world of post-production, just as became the case with Mr. Rose. Authenticity was so important to Hughes that he piloted a plane himself, and ended up in a combat scene crash that broke bones and caused head trauma that slowly cost him his sanity and his life. As crew members and medics rushed to the wreck, enveloped in a cloud of dust and smoke, they were amazed to see Hughes emerge, battered and bloodied but somehow in one piece. And with that, he collapsed.

With Hughes’ life hanging in the balance, Hell’s Angels at least was presumed dead. A shard of metal had lodged itself into his cracked skull and he slipped into a coma; doctors warned his brain had been irrevocably damaged. Upon awaking four days later Hughes contrarily declared himself to be in fine health. Having failed to learn his lesson, he again defied expert opinion, discharged himself and, inconceivably, was back on set the next day. It took until he was on his death-bed for Hughes to admit the gravity of the injury, probably the root cause of much of the irrational behaviour he displayed later in life. Still, he could count himself lucky to survive; three actual combat pilots lost their lives making the movie. It went on to win the first Oscar for Best Picture.

It’s been belabored that Rose has been equally obsessed, and his Brian Wilson-like eccentricities have included the employment of a spiritual therapist named Sharon “Yoda” Maynard to vet employees; he fired eight guitarists (including Brian May, of Queen) and installed a chicken coop in his studio. Hence the reason no one thought that the album would ever get made — including the soft drinks company Dr Pepper, which promised every American a free can if that if Guns N’ Roses completed Chinese Democracy at any time in 2008 every single American will receive a free can of Dr. Pepper.

And this isn’t meant as a jab at old Axl Rose, whose been working on the album for a record 17 years now, but rather a show of support from the company. “It took a little patience to perfect Dr Pepper’s special mix of 23 ingredients that our fans have come to know and love,” said Jaxie Alt, director of marketing for Dr. Pepper, in a press release. “So we completely understand and empathize with Axl’s quest for perfection — for something more than the average album.”

The press release also goes on to add: “We know once it’s released, people will refer to it as ‘Dr Pepper for the ears’ because it will be such a refreshing blend of rich, bold sounds — an instant classic.”