GN'R Didn't Have Finished Music Until a Month Before Release

GN'R Didn't Have Finished Music Until a Month Before Release
Saturday • January 31, 2009 8:07:10 PM

Black Ice, the first AC/DC studio album in eight years, was one of rock's biggest success stories in 2008. Selling nearly 800,000 copies in its first week and staying in the Billboard 200 since, it hasn't just revived the band's career—it's been one of the most successful examples of an emerging business model: the store exclusive. Black Ice is only for sale at Wal-Mart stores in the U.S.

But what about the year's other big exclusive deal—Guns N' Roses' release of Chinese Democracy through Best Buy? In many ways, it was something of an apples-and-oranges comparison. Wal-Mart is a much larger chain than Best Buy, and threw itself behind its chosen album much more vigorously. BB, which significantly reduced the amount of floor space devoted to music in 2008, offered no store-within-a-store, merely putting the album on cardboard towers on the sales floor, which were dwarfed in many outlets by similar displays advertising the complete Sopranos on DVD.

But according to a marketing executive familiar with the deal, this minimalist-seeming strategy was all that was arranged up front: "They're kinda just doing what they can do with what they've got. The only thing [Guns N' Roses] had to deliver was a video and the record." (The video will be for the second single, "Better," and should be out sometime soon.)

According to industry scuttlebutt, the negotiations for the Best Buy deal were frantic and down to the wire. "These guys didn't have finished music until a month before," says one source. "It was insane. In all honesty, Axl was working on everything – the art, everything—right to the end." Indeed, in a web chat on a Guns N' Roses fan site, Rose (manager Andy Gould later confirmed that it was really him) stated that there were plans for multiple covers which may emerge in the future, that he has a favorite, and it's not the one currently in stores.

There are rumors of a Guns N' Roses tour this year. And hell, Axl might even deign to submit to an interview. But thus far, Chinese Democracy sales have been disappointing: Fewer than half of the 1.3 million copies Best Buy took on have departed their warehouses.