Guns N’ Roses former Mitch Lafon — who cut his teeth with the band between 1987 to 1981 — has weighed in on what he believes to be the greatest mistake of 2008’s Chinese Democracy.
Niven recently sat down with Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon, to discuss everything from new music from the band, old demos and Axl Rose’s political ideologies. He also gave his no holds barred opinion on Chinese Democracy.
When asked if there was a potential future Guns N’ Roses album on the horizon, Niven mused:
“The idea that it [a new album] would just suddenly appear is, forgive me for saying this, but it’s something I would have done after all the ridiculous waiting for Chinese demos.”
Niven went on to claim that the bands greatest mistake was releasing the album in the first palce. “I mean, my viewpoint on Chinese Democracy was that the biggest mistake was to release it at all; I would have rather it remained mysterious. I would have rather that the songs from that would be snuck in to live shows – one here, one there and just play with that.”
He continued, “And just make it even more full of mystique and even more fascinating and then finally drop it if you have to. But to drop a new record without any pre-press or any bullshit, that smacks to me, ‘Never mind all the rumors, never mind all the bollocks – here it is, fuckers.’
“And that, for me, is pure GN’R right there, that is perfectly GNR, so it fits, to that kind of approach.”
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Elsewhere in the interview, Niven expressed hope that Axl’s political outspokenness on the internet will translate to his writing.
“I’m really interested to see if Axl’s demonstration of using Twitter translates into some of what he’s writing. I want to hear some fucking politics from it, you know?,” he added.
“On the other hand, he’s been very vociferous about what he believes in and for me, that goes back to ‘Jungle,’ that’s part of why I got involved with them – because I thought that was a brilliant lyric and a brilliant song.”
