The Chinese Democracy Years – 2000: God Save The Queen

The new millennium proved to be a slow starter in the GN’R world. In April, a new producer was brought into the fold: legendary Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker.

Sean Beavan was out. In an interview with Antiquiet, a website that would later become notorious for leaking the album, he was asked if there was any sense that Chinese Democracy was nearing completion back then?
“I thought there was,” said Beavan. “I think we worked on 35 songs or something. But the guy just continually creates, and as people changed into and out of the band, a lot of things got re-tracked…”

Buckethead lured his frequent collaborator Brian ‘Brain’ Mantia in for the vacant drummer stool. Brain told Rhythm magazine: “I went down and met the guys and Axl, and everyone was super cool. The whole Guns thing really excited me and I think the record’s incredible – it could be their Led Zeppelin II.”

While the album release was still up in the air, Axl did resurface soon enough, with his first public appearance since 1998, at a gig featuring Gilby Clarke in West Hollywood. Said MTV: ”According to club co-owner and drummer Slim Jim Phantom (of Stray Cats fame), Clarke was heading up a jam session with the pair’s sideband, The Starfuckers, at the intimate Cat Club on Sunset Boulevard.” Axl and Gilby duetted on two Rolling Stones songs, Wild Horses and Dead Flowers.

In the fall, a new A&R man was hired to help bring the project into completion. He was someone who specialised in providing the ‘final push’ for albums nearing completion: legendary Alice Cooper/Lou Reed/Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin. As Alice Cooper told it later,”To this day, really good songwriters that are ready to finish an album call me up and go, ‘Do you have Bob Ezrin’s number?’…Bob’s not going to be a yes man. He’s going to go in there and tell you how many (decent) songs you actually have… He did
it with Guns N’Roses.

“I know Axl called him up and said, ‘I want you to listen to Chinese Democracy and tell me what I’ve got [that’s good].’ Bob listened to it and said, ‘Three songs.’ This is after seven years [of songwriting].”
In mid-September, retailers were notified that Chinese Democracy was projected to be released in November, which does seem to support the notion that the record was essentially done, and – prior to his negative assessment – Ezrin was merely called in for some final pre-release tweaks.

It was probably at this point when Baker moved the band to Village Recording Studios in Western LA. The studio team would also be revamped with Pro Tools engineer Eric Caudieux (and, presumably, new main engineer Caram Costanzo).

Axl went back to the demo tape Duff and Izzy prepared in 1995. Izzy told Popular magazine in 2001, “In ’95, Duff and me recorded songs for the band. We made a tape that went nowhere. Then, a couple of months ago I have a message on my answering machine: ‘Yo! It’s Axl, I need a copy of the songs that you did.’ There was one called Down By The Ocean or Down By The Sea, they may have used it, I [don’t know].”

This I Love is another old track that might’ve been drawn back into the mix in 2000. Howard Karp worked on the song at that time as an assistant engineer to Caram Costanzo and producer Roy Thomas Baker. Karp: “It was very boring, sorry to say, just Axl and his piano (no singing) and a bunch of idiots running around catering to him and stroking him. I don’t know if they’ll ever release anything… shame.”

Another track which might’ve been brought up in response to Ezrin’s hardline assessment could’ve been Shackler’s Revenge. The original song, simply called Shackler, featured Buckethead and Bootsy Collins, and was released on the DragonBall Z soundtrack, The History of Trunks in December 2001. It was subsequently featured on Buckethead’s Secret Recipe DVD in 2005.The working relationship with Ezrin had deteriorated: Axl later confided to Tom Zutaut that work on the album had effectively halted around August 2000, which either corresponds with Ezrin’s blunt opinion on the material – or refers to the situation which Ezrin had
been summoned to help mend.

In late October, it was announced that the band would play the Rock in Rio festival in January 2001. A warm-up gig was now being planned, and the band begun to rehearse as an eight-piece in early December.
Axl later commented: “This band did not come together by a bunch of guys meeting each other in a bar or down on a corner in their old neighbourhood, so it’s taken a long time to pull these guys together and then have them develop a chemistry with themselves. When we did our first show in Vegas, Robin and Buckethead didn’t know each other at all. You’ve got two lead guitar players trying to kill each other with their abilities… I think they can be cordial to each other, that whole kind of thing, but when they’re actually playing, it gets
that kind of alpha male thing going, like: ‘Who’s the real lead guitar player?’”

A New Year’s Eve concert at the Las Vegas House of Blues was announced. There was hope for 2001 yet.

Click here for The Chinese Democracy Years – 2001: A Spaced Odyssey