Guns n’ Roses
Chinese Democracy Interscope
by David Fricke
Let’s get right to it: The first Guns n’ Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. In other words, it sounds a lot like the Guns n’ Roses you know. At times, it’s the clenched-fist five that made 1987’s perfect storm, Appetite for Destruction; more often, it’s the one sprawled across the maxed-out CDs of 1991’s Use Your Illusion I and II, but here compressed into a convulsive single disc of supershred guitars, orchestral fanfares, hip-hop electronics, metallic tabernacle choirs and Axl Rose’s still-virile, rusted-siren singing.
If Rose ever had a moment’s doubt or repentance over what Chinese Democracy has cost him in time (13 years), money (14 studios are listed in the credits) and body count including the exit of every other founding member of the band he left no room for it in these 14 songs. “I bet you think I’m doin’ this all for my health,” Rose cracks through the saturation-bombing guitars in “I.R.S.,” one of several glancing references on the album to what he knows a lot of people think of him: that Rose, now 46, has spent the last third of his life running off the rails, in half-light. But when he snaps, “All things are possible/I am unstoppable,” in the thumper “Scraped,” that’s not loony hubris just a good old rock & roll “fuck you,” the kind that made him and the old band hot and famous in the first place.
Something else Rose broadcasts over and over on Chinese Democracy: Restraint is for suckers. There is plenty of familiar guitar firepower the stabbing-dagger lick that opens the first track, “Chinese Democracy,” the sand-devil fuzz in “Riad N’ the Bedouins” and the looping squeals over the grand anguish of “Street of Dreams.” But what Slash and Izzy Stradlin used to do with two guitars now takes a wall of ’em. On some tracks, Rose has up to five guys Robin Finck, Buckethead, Paul Tobias, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and Richard Fortus riffing and soloing in broad, saw-toothed blurs. And that’s no drag. I still think the wild, superstuffed “Oh My God” the early Chinese Democracy track wasted on the 1999 End of Days soundtrack beats everything on Guns n’ Roses’ 1993 covers album, The Spaghetti Incident?
Most of these songs also go through multiple U-turns in personality, as if Rose kept trying new approachBy Laura Petrecca, USA TODAY
Dr Pepper recently teamed with celebrity “doctors,” such as NBA great Julius Erving (Dr. J) and Kelsey Grammer (Dr. Frasier Crane on TV’s Frasier), to bolster its brand. But given its recent public relations imbroglio, what it needs now is a savvy spin doctor.
The company has been bashed online after a Nov. 25 letter from the attorney for rock band Guns N’ Roses charging Dr Pepper failed to deliver a promised free soft drink for every American if the band finally released its Chinese Democracy album this year.
The letter, which called the drink giveaway a “fiasco,” was widely picked up and spread by bloggers last week.
Dr Pepper joins a growing list of marketers that have recently seen how quickly negative comments can spread online.
With blogs, short-post forums such as Twitter, video sites and other social-networking sites, “bad (publicity) spreads faster” than ever, says Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president at Web researcher Nielsen Online.
The rise of social media enables marketing mishaps “to (reach) a much larger audience in a much shorter time,” says Peter Shankman, author of Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them.
While there’s no way to foresee every pitfall with a promotion, “Marketers need to think more like political advance people,” Blackshaw says. “Political advance people are always scoping out what could go wrong, and in an age of (viral communications) and consumer control, you really need to up the ante on advance work.”
As in politics, others will seize on any marketing mess-up to further their own agenda.
Guns N’ Roses had no formal tie with the Dr Pepper promotion but initially seemed pleased with it. In March, after the free soft-drink offer, it posted a statement that it was “very happy to have the support of Dr Pepper.”
When the album went on sale on Nov. 23, consumers had 24 hours to sign up at DrPepper.com for a coupon for a free bottle of the soft drink. But the website collapsed under an avalanche of response. The botched promotion “ruined” the album’s release, says the letter from Guns N’ Roses attorney Alan Gutman.
In a statement, Dr Pepper says it tried to rectify the Web problems by extending the giveaway window to 42 hours and also set up a toll-free hotline for coupons.
Yet Guns N’ Roses is demanding full-page apologies in major newspapers and “an appropriate payment” to the band.
David Schwab, managing director of celebrity consultants First Call, believes the wide release of Gutman’s letter and the request for full-page ads is an attempt by that camp to spin the situation in its favor.
“My guess is that Guns N’ Roses and its lawyer’s strategy is that the more (the Dr Pepper controversy) is out there, the more that Chinese Democracy sells,” he says. “Think about the attention that the album is getting this keeps Chinese Democracy in the limelight.”
Shankman agrees. The harsh-sounding letter “in itself is a good PR stunt,” he says.