US rag
Billboard has printed a wide-ranging interview with Axl Rose, his first press interview in nine years. Rose got comfortable, put on some nice music and responded to questions via email.
The first leaks of
Chinese Democracy, he reveals, "were from using a sound system in a strip
club in the early hours when it was basically empty."
"I went there to
play the tracks for someone I was interested in working with," Rose answers (only to immediately open up more questions -- why a strip club, for example?).
"I'd gone
there with a guy who worked band security, who was allegedly somehow
related to the owners, feeling it was a bit more of a protected
environment than it turned out to be," he writes. No no, not there for the booty dancing. Business, not pleasure.
Elsewhere, Axl nonsensically delcares that "I get freedom of the press." (Is that an old Public Enemy song or something?)
But, he goes on to (not) clarify, "I'm not clear in regard to their
writers or those who choose to run their spin, why someone who no one's
ever heard of with so little "real" information is deemed qualified —
let alone allowed so much corporate backing — to promote negative and
often completely inaccurate and purely opinion-based (at best, if that)
shots in forums with so much exposure at the public's and our expense."
Erm.
Read the entire edifying article in
Billboard.