You get nothing for nothing, if that's what you do

On August 26, we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Axl Rose's first major public announcement of his upcoming album.

“There’s been some concern.  That if we play five or six new songs, then there can’t that many more on the album.  Au contraire, mon frére.  We’re just playing the songs we’re not considering putting out as singles or anything.  So, you’ll get 18 songs, and about 10 extra tracks.  And when that, when the record company feels that has run its course, then you’ll get it all over again.  By that time, I should be done with the third album.  So we’ll see if all goes well, boys and girls.”

It hasn't gone well, at least not for anybody who wants new Axl Rose music.  He had already been working on it for eight years when he even made this statement and it would still be another six years before he actually released anything.

What he did release only had 14 songs, not 18, and there were no "extra tracks."  Four of the songs he played that night did appear on Chinese Democracy - "Chinese Democracy," "Madagascar," "Riad and the Bedouins" and "The Blues" - and two of them were released as singles, the title track and the last one, renamed "Street of Dreams."  So right there, only half of the first promised release ever happened in the next twenty years.

On December 12, 2008, Axl did promise that a video would be released for a new single, "Better."  THe video was ready, it would be out in the next week or so, he said "soon is the word."  On December 29, 2008, Axl's employee Fernando announced that Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich appeared in one clip and they were just waiting for him to sign a release form.  Lars replied that he was waiting to receive the release form and Fernando responded that it was all a joke, there was no problem, the video would be out soon.

In 2014, someone put a rough cut of the video on Youtube, just footage from a 2007 concert.  Ulrich only appeared in a short clip after the song finished, which added nothing and could very easily have been removed, so the release form wouldn't have been required.  It wasn't worth waiting for and it still took six years go get to.

There's certainly been no explanation for any of this by the one person who owns the band, or even any of his hired employees.  'We decided those other 14 songs for that album were crap and we won't release them, along with that second and third album, they were all garbage.'

Ok, so are you going to do anything new?  "We're not paid enough for that.  We're paid to play a bunch of Appetite for Destruction songs and 'November Rain,' that's all we need.  If we really want to write, record, release and tour for new music, that's what solo albums are for."

Some of Axl's current employees did get added to a couple songs that were available on bootlegs 20 years ago and those were released last year, Axl's first new release since Chinese Democracy.  If you count 1999's "Oh My God" and the re-release of "Shadow of Your Love," the b-side for the band's very first single, then Axl has finally reached the 18 songs to make up the first album of his 'trilogy' promised 20 years ago.  Not counting the bonus tracks.

That's where I start thinking up conspiracy theories.  Whatever the merits of Axl's recording career, it ended a long time ago, so what the hell is this about?  What obsession is required to make people pay attention to him decades later to the point that he's still filling stadiums?  He didn't send enough girlfriends to the hospital because they got him mad so that makes him awesome?  A few expensive videos and a pile of noise that he spent fifteen years on?  Doing nothing for decades and still singing "It's So Easy"?

"It's so easy, so fuckin' easy.  It's so easy, so damn easy.  It's so easy, so fuckin' easy.  It's so easy, yeah it's so easy!  It's so easy, so fuckin' easy.  It's so easy, yeah!"  Wow man, that just really speaks to me.

I've been wondering if the media pushed this.  Axl got tons of attention for being a horrible person, even as a few years passed.  Then Geffen *finally* released the Use Your Illusions albums on September 17, 1991.  A week later, Geffen released Nirvana's Nevermind on September 24, which I blame for destroying rock'n'fn'roll, although it had help from the promotion of gangsta rap and the rise of technology that made it easy to record music without an expensive studio.

Why they would do this, I don't have a clue, but they were doing something.  Rock'n'Roll ended and nothing came in to replace it.  What popular music there is just seems to come and go.  To an extent, it's always been like that, but even if I'm wrong about the reasons for it, I'm right about what they're actually doing.

I do wonder if Axl actually has made more music but it's only available to private groups of rich people like him.  That would actually explain a lot.