http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/04/news/roses.htmli didn't like what i read i believe it's all bulshit but well if your decision
WEST HOLLYWOOD, California In the faint red light of the Rainbow Bar and Grill, Tom Zutaut sips at his drink and spills a bit of regret. It has been 19 years since he signed the then-unknown rock band Guns N' Roses to a contract with Geffen Records, where they turned into multiplatinum superstars. Back in those days, the Rainbow was their hangout of choice.
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Years after he left the label, he returned in 2001 to try to coax Axl Rose, the band's magnetic leader and by then its only original member, into completing one of the most highly anticipated albums in the industry: an opus tentatively titled "Chinese Democracy." The deadline for turning in the album had passed two years earlier.
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"I really thought I could get him to deliver the record," said Zutaut, who spent nine months trying. "And we got close."
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He is speaking in relative terms. Zutaut is but one of a long series of executives and producers brought in over the years to try to conjure up the maddeningly elusive album - to cajole the reclusive rock star into composing, singing, recording, just showing up.
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Like everyone else who had tried, or has tried since, Zutaut came away empty-handed.
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Rose began work on the album in 1994, recording in fits and starts with an ever-changing roster of musicians, marching through at least three recording studios, four producers and a decade of music business turmoil. The singer, whose management said he could not be reached for comment for this article, went through turmoil of his own during that period, battling lawsuits and personal demons, retreating from the limelight only to be followed by gossip about his rumored interest in plastic surgery and "past-life regression" therapy.
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Along the way, he has racked up more than $13 million in production costs, according to Geffen documents, ranking the album as probably the most expensive recording never released.
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As the production has dragged on, it has revealed one of the music industry's basic weaknesses: The more record companies rely on proven stars like Rose, the less it can control them.
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It's a story that applies to the creation of almost every major album. But in the case of "Chinese Democracy," it has a stark ending: The singer who cast himself as a master of predatory Hollywood in the hit song "Welcome to the Jungle" has come to be known instead as the keeper of the industry's most notorious white elephant.
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At the stroke of midnight on Sept. 17, 1991, Guns N' Roses was the biggest band in the world. Hundreds of record stores had stayed open late or reopened to cash in on the first sales that night of "Use Your Illusion," Vols. 1 and 2, the band's new twin albums. On the strength of that promotion - and the coattails of the band's blockbuster 1987 debut - the band set a record: For the first time in rock history, two albums from one act opened at Nos. 1 and 2 on Billboard's U.S. album sales chart.
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