Petal to the Metal.(Chinese Democracy)(Sound recording review)

Remember September, 1991? It was the month of Tailhook and of Tajik independence. Arkansas's little-known governor, Bill Clinton, was about to announce his candidacy for the Presidency. And the rock band Guns N' Roses, led by the twenty-nine-year-old singer Axl Rose, released a pair of records, "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion II," full of charging, nasty hard rock and overblown ballads. The group followed up in 1993 with a nonessential record of covers and proceeded to fall apart. And then there was only Axl Rose, working--always working, if you believed the reports--on a new album, which he said would be called "Chinese Democracy." Five years passed, then five more, and five more after that.

At some point, the absence of the album became a sort of presence. Rock and roll seemed poorer without Rose's inhuman yowl--every time I heard two cats fighting, I got my hopes up--but richer, somehow, thanks to the never-ending saga of the album's nonexistence: Rose's perfectionism and possible psychosis, his equally crazy cornrows, the bottomless pit of musicians, producers, money. Now that "Chinese Democracy" (Geffen) is an actuality, it's hard not to treat the music as an afterthought. But it's a temptation worth ...