Axl Rose may have been out of the limelight for a long time, but that doesn’t mean he’s immune to a major-label artist’s most feared pitfall: having an album leak onto the Internet.
Three studio tracks from Chinese Democracy, the long-awaited new Guns N’ Roses album, made their way onto several websites this week. Despite the efforts of Rose’s manager, Merck Mercuriadis, to have the links removed, some tracks have been added into rotation at radio stations such as WAAF in Boston, which has been regularly spinning “IRS.” The other leaked tracks are “Better” and “There Was a Time.”
Keyboard player Dizzy Reed’s wife, Lisa, took to the Internet herself to ask fans not to leak anymore tracks, offering a poetic metaphor: “It’s like shaking all our Christmas presents on the 23rd of December and figuring out what they are.” We don’t know how Reed’s family celebrates Christmas, but for most people on earth, there are 24 hours between December 23 and Christmas Eve, not ten years.
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Here’s hoping we find the aural equivalent of a new bike under the Chinese tree, and not any tube socks.
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