When Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy finally arrived in 2008, nearly ten years after it began taking shape, the album felt less like a triumphant return and more like a long-delayed footnote.
Axl Rose was the only original member of Guns N’ Roses left by the time it was released, and for many fans, the band they remembered had already ceased to exist. While some listeners have come to admire the dense, layered production over time, the record remains polarizing — not so much for its quality, but for what it represents.
For Alan Niven, who managed Guns N’ Roses from 1986 to 1991, the album stands as a betrayal of the band’s original spirit. In a recent appearance on the Appetite for Distortion podcast, Niven didn’t mince words. He referred to both Chinese Democracy and 1993’s The Spaghetti Incident as the fallout from a behind-the-scenes power shift that, in his view, fundamentally altered the band’s trajectory.
“Goldstein was the tour manager. He had nothing to do with forming the marketing strategy that I employed. He was the tour manager. He makes some rather extravagant claims of his significance, and the one thing I will say was, yeah, you were significant as the tour manager. You did a good job as a tour manager. And I could ride on the bus getting to the next gig, knowing he was on it,” he recalled (via Ultimate Guitar)
He continued: “So, Doug is a tour manager. That’s what he’s good at. Let’s get something else straight because this is not an opinion. It’s a matter of history we can all look at. And because it’s history, it’s incontrovertible. The fact the matter is, once he and Michele Anthony pulled their coup, what do we get out of Guns N’ Roses? We get The Spaghetti Incident, [and] an Axl solo record masquerading under a GN’R logo.”
“And you know, to me… The biggest sin of the record was that it was boring; that Chinese Democracy was a boring record. But calling it Guns N’ Roses was not honest. It was totally a solo record, and that’s all it has been since 1991. So, you have to look at it, and go, ‘Well, Doug, Well, Michelle, that worked out really well, didn’t it?’ All those years were lost. Who knows what that band could have done had it stayed together, had it kept its chemical dynamic… Who knows what they would have written in those 10, 20, 30 years?”
Niven’s comments are less about musical critique and more about the band’s legacy. To him, Chinese Democracy marked a moment when Guns N’ Roses stopped being a band and became a vehicle for one man’s vision.
And the key reason for that shift, according to Niven, is simple: “There is only one reason why — Axl got control of everything.”
He described tension between Rose and other members dating back to the band’s early years. He recalled a conversation with rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, whose disillusionment set in shortly after signing with the band.
“My joy in making rock and roll pretty much came to an end in September of ’86, when I signed the contract with GN’R, because from then on, it was pressure, anxiety, and stress, all the time. We’re in Toronto, second or third day on their very first tour with The Cult.”
“I could only get to the third show, and I just dropped my bags on my bed, and there’s a bang on the door. I go to the door, and there’s Izzy, and he looks frazzled. He pushes past me, goes into the room, and flops onto the sofa. I go, ‘Izzy, what’s up? What’s wrong?’ ‘That fu**er makes us fu**ing miserable every fu**ing day.’ It’s a quote I will never forget.”
Source: metalinjection.net
