Democracy In Action

Sanctuary Records chief Merck Mercuriadis shoots back at the New York Times for their weekend piece on the Guns N' Roses Chinese Democracy saga. The fun parts:

• Mercuriadis complains that writer Jeff Leeds didn't talk to "anyone who has actually been involved in the making of the album," and then immediately identifies the five people quoted on the record as having been involved in the making of the album. Just not recently. Point, Leeds.
• "I also asked why if he was reporting on the 'process' why we were the last people he was contacting, as it was obvious from the discussion that he had been working on this for a number of weeks." Um, Merck? It's a ten-plus-year process, and you're at the end of it.
• "It should also be mentioned that during our initial conversation the writer was offered the opportunity to hear the album in the studio when it was finished." Emphasis mine. For obvious reasons.
• According to Mercuriadis, Axl's "only interest is making the best album he is capable of so that it can have a positive effect in 2005 on people who are enthusiasts of music and interested in GUNS N' ROSES." Parse that for me and tell me if he's saying the record is coming out in 2005. I didn't think so.

I think Leeds had a legitimate angle in that after over 10 years and $13 million, there's no record. Interscope pulling the plug, for a mass audience, marks some kind of end to the process, and it's this, the major-label process, Leeds is commenting on. A small, mostly nostalgia label picking up the pieces and running with them could be viewed as either an entirely different story or an entirely different chapter, and clearly not the one the Times was interested in.

The fact that Sanctuary is dodging the issue of whether or not the album will actually be done this year with some not-so-clever wordplay lends weight to the orginal article, in my opinion.