Not too shabby for an album 300 years in the making. Okay, so it only took 17, but what a 17 years! We were sitting edge of our seats! Was Axl Rose ever going to release the long-anticipated Chinese Democracy? Or tinker with it until he faded into senility?
In 2008 we got our answer, by which time most of us had stopped caring whether Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy was Axl’s Sistine Chapel or the hard rock equivalent of the Challenger disaster. As it turned out it was–for the most part anyway–the latter, but the LP with the 13 million dollar budget will stand forever as both an object lesson in artistic hubris and fruitless audience anticipation. As Spin magazine noted, “the only way the record could have lived up to its legend would have been to never come out at all.”
In the end Chinese Democracy suffered that worst of all judgments–mediocrity. Despite the millions of hours of dicking around in 15 studios, numerous producers and merry-go-round line-up shifts, for the most part Chinese Democracy inspired neither love nor loathing. It was mere and over-product at that. And the record shelves are awash in product.
My chief complaint with Chinese Democracy is not–as many complain–that Axl went mad amidst the newfangled studio equipment at his disposal–no Luddite, Rose made full use of every manner of 21st Century technology he could lay his hands on and good for him. My problem is most of the songs on Chinese Democracy suck like the synchronized honkers of Rose’s hometown, Lafayette, Indiana.
Axl’s genius for melody has gone MIA–you’ll find nary a tune that comes within a Sunset Strip of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” or “November Rain.” What you’ll find are so-so melodies and serious song bloat. Buckethead plays up a storm, but you know an album’s in trouble when you find yourself listening to the songs for the guitar solos.
I see no reason to discuss the LP’s songs; they may inspire arguments amongst the masochistic faithful, but so far as I’m concerned they’re a bore. I find it interesting that Rose entitled one track “Catcher in the Rye” after the novel by J.D. Salinger, who unlike Rose was sage enough to shut up afterwards, forever establishing himself as an enigmatic crank.
Scraped,” “Riad N’ the Bedouins” and “I.R.S.” show traces of the lean and mean directness of the Guns N’ Roses of yore, but I doubt you’ll ever hear someone utter the words, “You know what? I could listen to ‘Welcome to the Jungle,’ but I think I’ll crank up ‘Riad N’ the Bedouins’ instead.”
It’s tragic that a musician as talented as Axl Rose spent 17 making an album I listened to twice before filing it under B for Boondoggle. Imagine if Axl had destroyed every last trace of Chinese Democracy then split for the Abyssinia desert like a latter day Arthur Rimbaud. Would that have been worth the wait or what?
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D+
