We never see Clark Kent and Axl Rose together. Clark prefers hanging out with Slash.

Joe Clark, NJ principal, "Lean on Me," age 82
December 30, 2020

Dawn Wells, Mary Ann of "Gilligan's Island," age 82
December 30, 2020

Time is short.  About 30 hours left in the year.

I'm still focusing on Axl Rose's failure to do anything.  Slash made a comment recently that he was preparing for another solo album, about 20 songs were in preproduction and they'd get back to it at the beginning of the year.  He also added that work had been done on a new G'n'R album, a much less detailed and specific description of progress being made compared to what he'd just said about his latest solo album.

On August 26, 2002, Axl said "You'll get 18 songs and about 10 extra tracks.  And when that's done, 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."  He had already been talking about the upcoming album, the cover art was ready, the songs for the album had been chosen and sequenced.  It just needed to be wrapped up.

That was 6702 days ago and Guns'n'Roses has released one album with fourteen songs.  6702 days before Axl said this, there was no Guns'n'Roses but band-members of L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose were moving back and forth and demos of "Anything Goes" and "Shadow of Your Love" had already been recorded in January 1984.

6702 days after Elvis recorded his first release, he'd gone through his early career, his army career, his movie career and his marriage to Pricilla.  Michael Jackson's first wife was over 4 and a half years old by then.

6702 days before John Lennon died, the Beatles were getting ready to fire Pete Best and get a new drummer.  They were still a little over two months away from recording their first single.  To be fair, Lennon did flat-out take several years off to focus on his son.  You wouldn't catch Axl doing that.

6702 before Freddie Mercury died, Queen's first album had been released for six days.  Their entire career can be contained within the time since Axl was ready to release the first album in his "trilogy" and that's not counting the nearly-eight years that had already passed since Axl's previous release, the "Sympathy for the Devil" cover, January 2, 1995.

And at least they had long careers.  Jim Morrison died 1642 days after his first release - 24.5% of the 6702 days since Axl's comment - and he'd already released as many albums as Axl ever has.  Hell, the Doors have released six live albums since Chinese Democracy came out, seven if you count the one that came out a week earlier than Chinese Democracy.

Jimi Hendrix has released three studio albums since Chinese Democracy came out and his career was even shorter than Morrison's.

David Bowie has release six studio albums since G'n'R's "Sympathy for the Devil" cover and he also took several years off.  Two of those albums came out after Chinese Democracy and did have bonus tracks.

Prince has only released old material since he died in 2016 but he still had seven albums after Chinese Democracy came out.  Some are bizarre but you'd expect that from Prince.  One album is actually a double-album that includes a third album by someone Prince was working with.  That's not what Axl does.

The point is that work needs to be finished and there's nothing to gain from keeping it away from the audience.  Even if we pretend that the people I've mentioned never did anything worth listening to in their entire lives except for "If I Can Dream," "A Hard Day's Night," "Bicycle Race," "Touch Me," "The Star Spangled Banner," "Ashes to Ashes" or "7," they still did other stuff for the sake of getting it done.  That's what made them the legends they were.

Music, and art in general, is not about sitting for years on expensive creations and pretending they'll be out shortly.  In one of his rare promotions for the album he'd been promising for years, Axl said the first music video would be out in a week or so.  It was just footage from a 2007 concert.  That was 12 years ago and he hasn't even bothered to explain why he made such a ridiculous claim in the first place.  Or any of the other ridiculous claims.