Axl gets his 'Chinese Democracy'

In the 2000 movie "Wonder Boys," Michael Douglas plays a novelist struggling with writer's block of a peculiar sort: It's not that he can't write -- he can't stop writing. Douglas' character has spent years trying to finish a book, a monster that has grown to thousands of pages, with no end in sight. Eventually, Douglas' book literally blows away.

On Sunday, the musical equivalent of that tome will reach the end of the road: "Chinese Democracy," the heavy metal band Guns N' Roses' ridiculously long-awaited new album, arrives at Best Buy.

In the 14 years "Chinese Democracy" has been in the works, it has become a music business punchline similar to "Christmas is coming, too." It's been a mystery for so long, the actual release feels anticlimactic. The music is less interesting than the strange and excessive circumstances of its making.

During the long gestation of "Chinese Democracy," every Guns N' Roses member except frontman Axl Rose quit or was fired. That left Rose to go through scores of musicians, producers and engineers, not to mention tens of millions of dollars, to finish his obsession.

A 2005 New York Times article called it "The Most Expensive Album Never Made," estimating it cost $13 million (three years later, it has no doubt gone up). By contrast, major-label records can be made for less than $100,000.

"I can't even begin to fantasize how you'd spend that kind of money to make one record," says local mastering engineer Brent Lambert. "You could build 13 studios from the ground up for that. That's just insane."

But there's been much insanity about "Chinese Democracy." In an online interview, drummer Bryan "Brain" Mantia described the painstaking process of cutting drum tracks for the 30 tracks under consideration.

At Rose's behest, Mantia played drum parts that another drummer had written, duplicated note for note, with pages of transcriptions taped onto a banner. Mantia guesses it took "about seven to eight months" -- in a studio that cost $2,000 a day.

That's how you spend $13 million and 14 years to make a record.

Way back in '94

Other artists have spent years on their projects, but "Chinese Democracy" came out of highly unusual circumstances. When recording began in 1994, Guns N' Roses was one of the most popular and controversial bands in the world. "Appetite for Destruction," the band's 1987 debut, sold more than 15 million copies, and 1991's two-disc "Use Your Illusion" was a signpost of larger-than-life, MTV-era spectacle.

That created immense pressure on Rose to deliver a career-defining magnum opus. He responded the way many artists do, by creating impossibly high standards.

Perry Wright, leader of the Chapel Hill band The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers, went through something similar on a smaller scale in writing songs for his band's second album. It started out as writer's block, then mutated into a paralyzing hyperperfectionism.

"For a year, I just could not write anything," Wright says. "But once I started again, it wasn't writer's block so much as editorial block. I couldn't put together stuff that I felt was a step forward."

Ultimately, Wright came up with songs he felt were a step forward (that album is due out next year). And his case is mild compared with the neurotic perfectionism Brent Lambert deals with.

Lambert operates Kitchen Mastering in Carrboro, where he has mastered albums for Ani DiFranco, Avett Brothers, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Rosebuds and many other local and national acts. He sees mastering as the sonic equivalent of what a colorist does on films: fine-tuning adjustments. It's the final stage of production, and a lot of people just can't stop tinkering.