Chinese Democracy

Chinese Democracy is the sixth studio album by American rock band Guns N’ Roses. It was released on November 23, 2008, worldwide and in the United Kingdom on November 24, 2008. It is the band’s first studio album since 1993’s “The Spaghetti Incident?”, and their first album of original studio material since the simultaneous release of Use Your Illusion I and II in September 1991. Retail store chain Best Buy is the exclusive retailer of the album in the United States.

In a 2007 interview, Axl Rose’s close friend Sebastian Bach stated that Chinese Democracy will be the first installment in a trilogy of new albums. Bach also remarked that Rose had told him the third, as yet untitled, album has been slated for 2012.

Background

Guns N’ Roses began to write and record new music in 1994. Ex-bassist Duff McKagan is quoted as saying, ” band was so splintered at that point that nothing got started”. Slash has criticized Rose for making the band seem “like a dictatorship”. Slash quit the band in 1996; drummer Matt Sorum and McKagan left soon afterwards. Slash was replaced by Nine Inch Nails touring guitarist Robin Finck, ex-Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson replaced McKagan, and Josh Freese joined as the drummer. In early 1998, the band — which comprised Rose, Finck, Stinson and Freese along with long-time Guns N’ Roses associate Paul Tobias, keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman — began recording at Rumbo Recorders, a state-of-the-art studio in the San Fernando Valley where Guns N’ Roses had partially recorded parts for their debut album, Appetite for Destruction.