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Tuesday, 05 August 2008 15:35 |
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 The Irish Independent reports that when Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses set out to record their sixth studio album back in 1993, George Bush Snr was leaving the White House, Russian troops were pulling out of Poland and Bill Gates was getting very excited about something called "The World Wide Web".
Fifteen years later and the world has moved on. But rock fans are still waiting for the "new" Gn'R album -- Chinese Democracy.
And it's not just the fans who are waiting for Axl to hurry up and finish the album that was first slated to hit record stores in 1995 (three years after Gn'R played a memorable gig at Slane).
There is a small army of record company executives, managers, musicians, accountants, lawyers and (if the rumours are true) plastic surgeons and psychiatrists with varying stakes in seeing Axl -- by now a one-man band -- finish his great project.
Careers have been ruined, record companies have gone to the wall, childhood relationships have been destroyed and the music business has buzzed with wild rumours of mental breakdown, chicken abuse and the kind of self-indulgent egomania that would have made Caligula blush.
The singer who once belted out hits like Sweet Child O'Mine and Welcome to the Jungle appeared to have had extensive "work" done to his features as former friends and band mates questioned his grip on reality.
Plastic surgery apart -- the cost so far to Axl's record company Geffen is conservatively estimated at around $15 million dollars for an opus The New York Times calls "The Most Expensive Album Never Made".
And the longest running joke in the music industry has been that there will be democracy in China before anybody gets to listen to Chinese Democracy.
Read the full story here.
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