In a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar, former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal gave some behind the scenes details about his time with the band and the making of their 2008 album “Chinese Democracy.”
When asked if there were any songs he helped to write and record during the record’s sessions that have not yet been released, Bumblefoot revealed that anything he had a hand in that has since been released has been re-recorded by Slash.
“I wrote my own guitar parts, but I didn’t write the actual songs,” he said. “The songs were already there, and then I just tried to come up with something like, for the title track, in the verses, I came up with sliding, growling, fretless stuff. Where before, it was just empty space and just some atmospheric sounds.
“So, things like that. I would just try and come up with my own parts to songs that structurally and recording-wise were pretty much there, pretty much done. We did a lot of songs, things that came out after I was gone, that they took me off and Slash is on there, and just reworked them for the current band. Which, as they should.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Bumblefoot opened up about what it was like working with Axl Rose on “Chinese Democracy.”
“That was something! … I’d bring a bunch of guitars, and we’d have amps and just experiment. I would lay, God, like 100 layers of possibilities for songs that were very close to finished. And you want to come up with something that has value to the song, but doesn’t step on what’s already there,” he said.
“So, we would just try all different things for each song, like 14 hours a day one song, maybe we’ll get to a second one…”
“And then with Axl, they would decide what works, what doesn’t… And they did what producers do. They did what they thought was best for the songs. And they would splice things.”
“And then in the end, I hear the album and it is like, ‘Oh, wait, is that me? Yeah, it is! That’s right, I played that!’ So it was kind of a surprise seeing what they pieced together and how they imagined it, and what they chose to use.”
“There’s so many layers to what’s going on in each song. You can’t just listen to those songs once and hear it all. It’s like one of those movies that you go back, watch again, and catch something you missed before.”
