Analysis: As Axl Rose found out during the making of this record, experimentation without a defined endpoint can lead to a state of permanent liminality
Guns N’ Roses were the most popular rock band in the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s and they continue to be hugely popular, both in Ireland and around the world. The released their most important album, Appetite for Destruction, in 1987 with the follow-ups Use Your Illusions, following in 1991.
In 1994, Guns N’ Roses began work on a new album, at which point something interesting and strange happened. The band could not agree on a creative path forward for themselves. Lead guitarist Slash wanted to return to the band’s blues-based roots with a Rolling Stones/Aerosmith type sound. On the other hand, singer Axl Rose wanted to modernise the band’s sound and bring in influences from groups that were then becoming more popular, such as Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails.
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From RTÉ Archives, Tom Kelly reports for RTÉ News on Guns N’ Roses’ show at Slane Castle in 1992
Slash felt that not turning back to the band’s original sound was a form of creative death; Rose felt that failing to experiment with new sounds was a form of creative death. The band reached an impasse. Band members began to leave one by one. In a few years, Rose was the last original member of Guns N’ Roses left in the band.
Rose then began to recreate Guns N’ Roses, bringing in members of Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, The Replacements and the Vandals, as well as underground virtuosos such as Buckethead. Musicians noted that what he was attempting to do was highly unconventional and risky. Once this new version of the band solidified, they then needed to create music. They spent years in the late 1990s experimenting with different songs and sounds. Hundreds of hours of music were recorded, combined and recombined. From interviews that this new band gave, creating this music for the project (which was eventually given the title Chinese Democracy) generated significant feelings of life and vitality in them.
But experimentation without a defined endpoint can become what the sociologist Arpad Szakolczai refers to as permanent liminality. Guns N’ Roses experimented for years, and time went on, and on, and on. Members of the new band left, because they could not take the liminality, and were replaced by new members. These people sometimes then rerecorded all the parts of the musicians who left the project, sometimes note for note. Observers began to realise that something unusual was going on with the album’s creation. The album was ultimately released in 2008, after about 14 years in the making and millions and millions of dollars in production costs.
From Rock N’ Roll True Stories, the story of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy and why Axl Rose took so long to put out the album
So what was going on here? Sociologist Max Weber differentiates between instrumental and value rationality. Instrumental rationality is action that is engaged in for a defined purpose. It involves weighing the means and the ends of social action and giving thought to how to the best end can be achieved by the most efficient means. This type of rationality would be familiar to anyone involved in business in Ireland. Value rationality is different. It is concerned with achieving what the person considers to be a radiant ideal, irrespective of the costs of benefits of trying to do so. I think that in the making of Chinese Democracy value rationality became much more strongly present, and instrumental rationality became much less strongly present, than in the creation of most other albums.
So, what ideals and values became present in the project and destabilized it? One I think was wanting to make a great work of art. One observer noted that “what Axl wanted to do was make the best record that had ever been made. It’s an impossible task. You could go on indefinitely”. Another was a commitment to creative independence, to wanting to produce something without paying significant attention to economic concerns.
A third set of values that were being pursued related to experimentation and evolution. Chinese Democracy was a project that was unusual in the strength of its commitment to experimentation. This can be seen in the extent to which the band itself was transformed to make the album. Chinese Democracy was not created to serve the needs of Guns N’ Roses; Guns N’ Roses was recreated to serve the needs of Chinese Democracy. The idea of valuing experimentation and transformation as ends in themselves is something that the psychiatrist Robert Lifton referred to as ‘proteanism’.
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Observers and rock fans could not make sense of the project because they were used to viewing the world in terms of instrumental rationality. Value rationality based around the pursuit of ideals such as proteanism was inexplicable to them.
When all is said and done, did Chinese Democracy justify the human and economic capital that went into its creation? Probably not. But there was a time when a group of musicians in the 1990s did something interesting and did so for interesting reasons.
The full research article on which this piece is based can be read here
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
