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At a time when pop was dominated
by dance music and pop metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock
& roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice
boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynist, violent; they were also funny, vulnerable, and
occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit "Sweet Child O'
Mine" showed. While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out dueling guitar riffs
worthy of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose
screeched out his tales of sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city;
bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler
were a limber rhythm section that kept the music loose and powerful.
Guns N' Roses' music was basic and gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy
base; they were dark, sleazy, dirty, and honest -- everything that good
hard rock and heavy metal should be.
Guns N' Roses released their first EP in in 1986, which led to a contract with Geffen; the
following year, the band released their debut album, Appetite for
Destruction. They started to build a following with their numerous live
shows, but the album didn't start selling until almost a year later,
when MTV started playing "Sweet Child o' Mine." Soon, the
album shot to number one and Guns N' Roses became one of the biggest
bands in the world. By the end of 1988, they released G N' R Lies,
which paired four new, acoustic-based songs with their first EP.
Guns N' Roses began to work on the follow-up to Appetite
at the end of 1990.
In October of that year, the band fired Adler,
claiming that his drug dependency caused him to play poorly; he was
replaced by Matt Sorum from the Cult. During
recording, the band added Dizzy Reed on keyboards. By the time the
sessions were finished, the new album had become two new albums. After
being delayed for nearly a year, the albums,
Use Your Illusion I and II, were released in the fall of 1991. The
Illusions showcased a more ambitious band; while there were still a
fair number of full-throttle guitar rockers, there were stabs at Elton
John-style balladry, acoustic blues, horn sections, female backup
singers, ten-minute songs with several different sections, and a good
number of introspective, soul-searching lyrics. In short, they were now
making art; amazingly, they were successful at it.
While the albums sold very well initially, the band soon
fell out of favor. Stradlin left the band by
the end of 1991 and with his departure the band lost their best
songwriter. Once Nirvana's Nevermind hit the
top of the charts in early 1992, there was a distinct division between
what was cool in hard rock and what wasn't; Guns N' Roses -- with all
of their pretensions, impressionistic videos, models, and rock star
excesses -- were very uncool. The band didn't
fully grasp the change until 1993, when they released their album of
punk songs, The Spaghetti Incident?; it received some good reviews, but
the band failed to capture the reckless spirit of not only the original
versions, but their own Appetite for Destruction. By the middle of
1994, there were rumors flying that the band was about to break up,
since Rose wanted to pursue a new, more industrial direction and Slash
wanted to stick with their blues-inflected hard rock.
New guns
The revised lineup finally made a
public appearance in January 2001, with two well-received concerts, one
in Las Vegas and one at the Rock in Rio
Festival in Rio de Janeiro.
The band played a mixture of old hits as well as new songs from their
forthcoming album. During their Rock in Rio
set, Rose made the following comment regarding former members of the
band:
"I know that many of you are
disappointed that some of the people you came to know and love could
not be with us here today. Regardless of what you have heard or read,
people worked very hard (meaning my former friends) to do everything
they could so that I could not be here today. I say fuck that. I am as
hurt and disappointed as you that unlike Oasis, we could not find a way
to all get along."
The new lineup played a further two
shows in Las Vegas
at the end of 2001.
In 2002, rhythm guitarist Paul Tobias left the
band because of his frustrations with life on the road. He was replaced
by Richard Fortus (formerly of The
Psychedelic Furs and Love Spit Love). The band then played several
shows in August 2002, headlining festivals and concerts throughout Asia
and Europe. They made their way to New York for a
surprise appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.
In 2002, the band's first North
American tour since 1993 was organized to support Chinese Democracy.
However, the opening show in Vancouver
was cancelled by the venue when Rose failed to turn up (having remained
in Los Angeles),
and a riot ensued. This tour was met with mixed results. Some concerts
did not sell well, while shows in larger markets such as New York sold
out in minutes. Due to a second riot by fans in Philadelphia, tour promoter Clear
Channel cancelled the remainder of the tour.
The band went on hiatus until they
were scheduled to play at Rock in Rio
IV in May 2004. However, Buckethead left the
band in March of that year, causing the band to cancel. Also in March
2004, Geffen released Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits, since Rose
had failed to deliver a new studio album in more than ten years. Rose
expressed his displeasure with this album as its track listing was
established without his consent and went as far as trying to block its
release by suing Geffen. This failed, however, and the album went
triple platinum in the USA.
In February 2006, demos of the songs
"Better", "Catcher in the Rye", "I.R.S.", and
"There Was a Time" were leaked on the internet through a Guns
N' Roses fan site. The band's management requested that all links to
the MP3 files and all lyrics to the songs be removed from forums and
websites. Despite this, radio stations began adding "I.R.S."
to playlists, and the song actually reached
#49 on the Radio & Records Active Rock National Airplay chart in
the final week of February - the first time an internet leak has done
so.
On May 5, 2006, Axl Rose appeared on
the Friday Night Rocks with Eddie Trunk radio show (during an
interview with Sebastian Bach) and said that the new Guns N' Roses
album would be released before the end of the year. Later in May, the
band launched a European tour, headlining both the Download Festival
and Rock In Rio - Lisbon.
Four warm-up shows preceded the tour at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City and
became the band's first live concert dates since the aborted 2002 tour.
The shows also marked the debut of guitarist and composer Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal,
replacing Buckethead. During the tour, former
bandmate Izzy Stradlin and ex-Skid Row frontman
Sebastian Bach made frequent guest appearances.
Five warm-up shows before a 2006
North American tour were held in September 2006. The tour officially
commenced on October 24
in Miami.
Drummer Frank Ferrer replaced Bryan Mantia, who took a leave of absence to be with his
wife and newborn child. Coinciding with the tour, the song
"Better" was featured in an internet advertisement for
Harley-Davidson beginning in October 2006. That same month, Rolling
Stone published an article revealing that Andy Wallace would be mixing
the final album.
In December 2006, Axl Rose released
an open letter to fans announcing that Merck Mercuriadis
had been fired as the band's manager. He revealed that the last four
dates of the North American tour would be cut so the band could work on
postproduction for Chinese Democracy. He also set a tentative
release date for the album for the first time since the album's
announcement: March 6, 2007.
On February 8, 2007, the band played
a two-song set at the Rodeo
Drive's Walk of Style ceremony, held on
February 8 in
Beverly Hills, California. The band, with Chris
Pitman on bass, blazed through "Knockin'
on Heaven's Door" and "Sweet Child o' Mine" to close the
event, which honored Gianni and Donatella
Versace.
On February 23, 2007, Del James
announced that Chinese Democracy's recording stage was finished,
and the band had now moved onto mixing the album. However, this proved
that the March 6 release date would be impossible to achieve, and the
album once again had no scheduled release date.
Current members
·
Axl Rose - lead vocals, piano (1985–present)
·
Dizzy Reed - keyboards, backing vocals (1990–present)
·
Robin Finck - lead guitar (1997–1999,
2000–present)
·
Tommy Stinson - bass, backing vocals (1998–present)
·
Chris Pitman - keyboards, programming (1998–present)
·
Bryan Mantia - drums (2000–present, has been
on hiatus since September 2006)
·
Richard Fortus - rhythm guitar, backing
vocals (2002–present)
·
Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal - lead guitar (2006–present)
·
Frank Ferrer - drums (2006–present)
Sources: http://www.sing365.com
and en.wikipedia.org/
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