Fourteen years in the making, and from one of the most celebrated hard rock bands in the world, Chinese Democracy has achieved mythical status in the music industry, not least because of the famous and dramatic disintegration of the original band and the strained attempts of front man Axl Rose to develop a new formula that has lived and died around him over almost fifteen years.
Released at last, the final composition and immediate reception have done justice to the theatricality surrounding one of the most hotly anticipated rock albums in history.
GNR Play with Expectations
Of course the length of the wait of an album titled Chinese Democracy could be one of the great jokes of pop culture in itself, but the fact that the opening track - the album's namesake - begins with the ambient sounds and inaudible mutterings of a band most famous for roaring and masculine rock openings like Welcome to the Jungle and Right Next Door to Hell, might well be the last trick of a band that iconic front man Axl Rose has built slowly but surely around himself; millions of fans will sit down to listen to the album for the first time, waiting at long last to hear the first industrial rock chords of that opening track, only to find that they have to wait that little bit longer.
'They Said It Would Never Happen', read the billboard posters, and for a number of traditional fans, it took a minute of the disc being played until it had.
The New GNR Album - Back to Basics
From there, the album runs along relatively familiar lines; Axl's characteristic pent up scream ushers in the opening riff, the second track hinges on a high octane, sickeningly over-driven, and testosterone infused guitar, and the third - surprisingly beginning with a synthesised drum beat - soon gives way to power chords.
Old fans, then, will be largely satisfied, even if the relatively genre-stretching Indian guitar scales of If the World and the slow, contemplative beat of Sorry could take some more conservative rock fans aback.
But will the album draw in new fans, or is it destined for throwback ridicule, the keepsake of the original Guns N' Roses audience? Perhaps the main problem with Chinese Democracy, now much posited, is that the album was touted - not least by Rose in the years between 1994 and 2008 - as a departure from the always slightly-out-of-touch sound of late '80s cock rock.
But the lengthy composition process has rendered what was once contemporary defunct, leaving the band with a series of songs taken from very different genres and movements, over a period of almost two decades. So the 'revolution' in the Guns N Roses sound, is, because of the nature of the composition, somewhat kitsch; a band taking their sound of 20 years ago, merging it with a sound from 10 years ago, final releasing the songs in the here and now.
Something for the Twenty-Somethings with Chinese Democracy
Really the main beneficiaries of that melting point are the twenty somethings; those who are old enough to have had the Guns N' Roses story culturally ingrained, and to remember with fondness the influences the album has taken from the mid and late nineties. Because what Chinese Democracy really does is create an interesting musical collage, running from the early '00s, back through the '90s, with its roots in the original inspirations of the Guns N Roses that saw a young and cocksure Axl Rose take to the stage with a smoking, long haired Slash.
Of course the magnitude of the band, combined with the long hiatus, means that this album will always be iconic. And it would not be surprising if - as Dr. Pepper honours its pledge to give free cans of its drink to the public if the album were released in 2008, and as the Chinese government blocks internet searches for the term Chinese Democracy - Axl Rose is smiling wryly, revelling in the egotism, theatricality, controversy and über-fame to which he was once - and is once again - supremely accustomed.
Chris Woolfrey - Writer.
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