I am not embarrassed to admit that I'm a fan of
Chinese Democracy and what
Axl is doing now, although I definitely don't think of it as proper
GNR. Unfortunately, that album is a bit of a laugh now due to it's sales and ridiculous marketing plan with
Best Buy. For crying out loud, you can go in to just about any
Best Buy and find
STACKS of that CD and it's vinyl counterpart for sale at full price. I kinda feel bad for
Best Buy, but not that bad because they were in bed with
Irving Azoff and nobody really did their job.
Axl has to suffer some of the blame too for taking so long to finish the album, but honestly that part didn't surprise me, especially after the
Use Your Illusion and
"The Spaghetti Incident?" delays.
In case you don't know the details, the two
Use Your Illusion albums were delayed over the course of several years prior to their releases in 1991. Everyone seems to blame
Axl for being a perfectionist, but it really seems like it was a perfect storm of bullshit from all parties involved, save
Izzy. Stories circulate that
Axl or
Slash would approve a mix only to have the other reject it, and this occured on a regular basis. Add to that the firing of
Steven Adler and search for his replacement which led to the hiring of
Matt Sorum and about seven months of mixing sessions by
Bill Price, the legend who mixed the
Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks, much of which involved him flying all over the US to play new mixes to the band for their approval and to collect multitracks for unfinished songs. They went on tour months before the album was even done!
It's really amazing that
GNR got anything done with all that chaos around them, although the
Use Your Illusion albums were the nail in the coffin for the band, at least as they were, as
Axl intended for those albums to erase the memory of
Appetite For Destruction, same as
Chinese Democracy was supposed to erase the memory of
Use Your Illusion. Still, the
Use Your Illusion albums meant a lot more to me than
Appetite ever did, and I have fond memories of the insane amount of vitriol all over the first
Illusion album. The second
Illusion album never did as much for me, but I've always heard that it was meant to be the
"friendly" record. Personally, if I never hear
Estranged again it won't affect me one way or another, but
Civil War,
Shotgun Blues and
You Could Be Mine are still killers.
Anyway, back in March I received an e-mail from a very friendly fellow named
Mark who pointed me in the direction of a site filled with
lossless GNR boots, mostly live recordings although there were several studio collections too. There were three collections of
Use Your Illusion roughs there, all of which I grabbed with much glee and abandon. I thought about posting all of them but I decided that was simply too much
GNR to share, so I've made a collection of highlights for all to examine. As for the lossless files, they are still up if you want to grab them. The name of the site is
Guns N' Roses Bootlegs and the links for the individual boots are below as well as the highlights collection for download. Enjoy!
Use Your Illusion OuttakesThis is apparently a bootleg comp someone pressed and sold a while back. Much of the content is from other boots but there is some unique stuff on it too like session excerpts and instrumentals.
Axl's Advanced CopyWho knows if this set of tracks were really ever in
Axl's possession, but this is a great boot regardless. Apparently it's collected from two CDs of rough mixes from the
Illusion sessions. Not all the tracks are hugely different and the quality is lacking, but it features the unreleased
Ain't Goin' Down and a rather odd version of
Don't Damn Me where
Axl ad libs the end of the song. This is one to grab!
Use Your Illusion Sessions: Rough Mixes and Q Sound MixesThis is another really interesting collection. The first part is from a DAT tape labeled
Rough Mixes with new Slash Guitars, which is just what it says it is.
Axl is nowhere to be found on those tracks so you get to hear the band sans overdubs as well as early instrumentals of some of the covers that ended up on
"The Spaghetti Incident?". The second part is labeled
Mixes And Q-Sound and contains a number of rough mixes but also features
QSound variants.
QSound was a
"positional three-dimensional sound processing algorithm" that was supposed to make you feel like you were in the middle of the music if you placed your head
just right between the speakers or were wearing good headphones. I don't remember it working
AT ALL, but apparently people in the video game industry believed in it enough to use it in arcades and some console games for a while. You can read a lot more about it at the
QSound wikipedia reference which also contains a list of the albums that were mixed in
QSound. It's a pretty short list.
One other note about this particular bootleg, while the mixes are high quality recordings and when ran through a spectral analyzer it's apparent they fill the full frequency range of a CD quality recording, whomever transferred them did so at ridiculously
HOT levels. The instrumental roughs with new
Slash guitars sound alright, but the rough mixes and their
QSound counterparts are totally brickwalled. So, if you're listening to these and wondering why they sound distorted as hell, there's your answer. I give credit to whomever leaked/shared them but if you load 'em up in
Audacity you're gonna cry at how badly damaged they are.
And now, a collection of highlights from the above bootlegs for your listening pleasure!
Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion Roughs01 Ain't Goin' DownFrom
Axl's Advanced Copy, this leftover was apparently used in a
Guns N' Roses pinball machine, although I've never seen one. Decent track.
02 Civil WarThe third version of the track on the
Use Your Illusion Outtakes boot, this one features vocals but not the intro from
Cool Hand Luke.
03 The GardenRough instrumental track from the
Rough Mixes with new Slash Guitars DAT. Pretty cool.
04 Get In The RingThis is a mostly instrumental mix but there are some vocals on it.
Get In The Ring was one of the last songs to be finished for the albums as
Axl was still working on the lyrics.
05 Double Talkin' JiveRough Mix
06 New RoseInstrumental from the
Slash Guitars DAT.
07 ComaFrom
Axl's Advanced Copy, this isn't much different from the released version but it is missing a lot of the extra sounds from the emergency room and, as the record credits them, the
"bitches".
08 November RainA December 1990 rough mix.
09 LocomotiveSlash Guitar Instrumental
10 Pretty Tied UpRough Mix
11 Don't Damn MeThis is the version where
Axl ad libs the very end of the recording. Funny.
12 You Could Be MineRough Mix
13 I Don't Care About YouSlash Guitar Instrumental
14 My WorldThis one is very suspicious. Load this up in your favorite audio editor and you'll see that the right and left channels mirror each other, making me wonder if this is really someone's attempt at tweaking the track. It also sounds strange, like it's out of phase. Regardless, even though I'm pretty sure
EVERYONE hates this track (except me) I thought I'd include this since it's mostly instrumental and gives one a better chance to examine the backing track. I have no idea what possessed
Axl to record this or why no one else in the band knew about it until the CD was pressed, but this ridiculously over-the-top abuse track is for me a lot of fun. I can't take the lyrics seriously, but I get the impression that
Axl was trying to be
Nine Inch Nails or
Skinny Puppy. It's not great, but I gotta give the guy a lot of credit for trying.
PS - No offense intended with this photo
Axl, I just thought it was cute and worth sharing. Get the next album out man! I know I'm not the only one that will buy it!
