GUNS N’ ROSES OR THE ART OF EXORCIZING
À
l’origine intitulée « GN’R in the
aristocrat’s perspectives » (un titre quelque peu
prétentieux que je n’avais pas choisi et qui m’embarrassait
pour des raisons évidentes), une interview conduite en novembre 2001 par
mails interposés par Christophe Litwin, et au cours de laquelle
j’ai pu exposer directement en anglais ma vision personnelle et
philosophique de ce dans quoi l’art d’Axl Rose consiste…
Originally titled
« GN’R in the aristocrat’s perspectives » (a
somehow pretentious title that I didn’t chose and which I don’t
feel comfortable with), an interview conducted in november 2001 by Christophe
Litwin which gave me the opportunity to write down directly in english my
personal and philosophical conception of Axl Rose’s art.
This interview
is meant to be a tribute to Axl Rose and to the general concept of Guns
N’ Roses…
Added on january
2006 : for those who asked and those who might be wondering, YES,
despite all the problems that have occurred during the past years, I am still
fully supportive of Axl Rose’s will to go on with Guns N’ Roses and
to push things further.
Any question or
comment can be sent to me at this address : dust_of_my_dust@dustofmydust.com
I’ll do my
best to give an answer, though I can’t promise I’ll always have the
time to do it quickly. If you want to write me a message, please specify in the
subject that your mail is GN’R related…
Amine
Boucekkine is all at the same time a poet, a philosopher, a musician, a dandy,
an aristocrat and surprisingly enough the greatest Guns n’ Roses’
fan in France. Even though GN’R used to be very popular in France, most
of the fans have dismissed for various reasons. Some found GN’R were
outdated, others just forgot about them, and many just felt disappointed by the
constant album delays and the cancellations of recently announced European
tours. Yet Amine has never ceased to love the band and feel a peculiar sympathy
towards its members, and mostly towards Axl Rose. He insists not only on the
band’s “avant-gardisme”, but also on its future, since,
according to what he says, and against many odds, although the band has a brand
new line-up and Axl Rose has been living in an almost complete solitude for the
past six or seven years, the
band’s leader has been very active, digging further “to exorcise
his demons”. Amine is thus one of the rare fans who is able to produce a
critical analysis of GN’R’ art, not hesitating to compare their
work to a Kantian “battlefield of metaphysics”!
His own
experience of GN’R is therefore, unlike what many people who listen to
rock n’ roll music may think, all at the same time raw, Dionysiac,
passionate, very intellectualized, and, as he claims to be very aware of what
he calls “the heterogeneity of truth”, set into various
perspectives… I wanted to ask him a few questions about the eventual
nature of the link between his fanatic passion for GN’R and his own
intellectual development. You’ll be able to judge at his style whether it
expresses an extremely accurate analysis, the mania of a self-deluded fan, the
abstract and much too complex theorization of a true and raw feeling, or the
voice of someone who is always flirting with the bounds of the reader’s
(especially the English reader, since, as you will see, his syntax is very
French, almost German regarding its complexity) understanding, always worried
of being misunderstood, always allergic to its own and not own misleadings and
fake refuges, always obsessed with its own awkward righteousness and roaming…
Christophe
Litwin: Can you describe under what circumstances you listened to a Guns n'
Roses song for the first time? Did you immediately fall in love with the band
and their music?
Amine
Boucekkine: The first time I really did listen to a Guns
N' Roses song was just another afternoon in my solitary adolescence when I was
about to pour blood off my right arm on the floor by gashing my forearm using
an ordinary kitchen knife I had taken from a cupboard five minutes before... I
was fourteen then, but for many reasons, as I suppose that it's always the
case, I had decided I already had enough of this life I was feeling helplessly
drowned into. That was just as sordid and cliché as these words may give
the impression that it was. Typically the kind of situation which you can't
really talk of or describe to other people without sounding much too dramatic
and self-indulgent, or maybe just irrelevant.
Anyway,
as I was thinking about the failure my life seemed to be bound to, the video of
Don't Cry showed on television; and that is how I
met the music of GN'R. The impact was instantaneous: it was a breath-taking
experience for a teenager like me, who was not really introduced to the world
of music. The images at the beginning of the video - especially the ones that
show a parallel between Axl Rose who's about to commit suicide and an image of
him caught in a tempest of snow as a metaphor for being prisoner of an
unbearable condition - just seemed to reflect beautifully the wrecking I was
going through. The combination of this morbid yet dreamy imagery with a music
that was so gentle and full of compassion gave me a sense of comfort and
understanding that I felt like I could hold onto.
When
the video eventually ended, it just left me sad and at peace at the same time.
C.L: You don't
seem to be the casual GN'R fan. You write philosophy and poetry, compose music,
all aspects that don't seem to match with being the greatest Guns n' Roses fan.
How do you explain that?
A.B:
People often like to see Guns N' Roses fans just as
uneducated persons who want to be called "bad-ass motherfuckers" and
whose main focus in life is to drink more beer than anybody else in the wide
wild world. Sometimes it can actually be the case and some other times it's just
a lot more complicated... much too complicated to judge the persons simply by
"reading what we want between selected lines", as Axl Rose himself
(in a song whose title is precisely Don't damn me ) warned us against being foolish enough to let ourselves do so.
I
don't want to speak for all the GN'R fans since I am not stupid enough to think
that I am representative of them (how could I be so when, for instance, I don't
even drink alcohol...). But I think that if there is a common point between all
the different people who support that band, it must then be a certain
sensitivity to true raw emotions, rather than a vague definition of what a
"bad boy" is. Whether you appreciate songs like Welcome To The
Jungle , Garden
Of Eden and Oh
My God as
some "ass-kicking anthems for raising chaos" or whether you will
consider them as powerful representations of the Kantian idea that metaphysics
are actually a battlefield, you become a fan of GN'R because of the flamboyant
passion that drives their art.
That
art, I would eventually call it an art of exorcism, since I think Axl Rose's
main work is to dig as deep as he can into himself to truly face his demons and
make a song and a performance out of this fundamental inner battle. By taking
upon himself to go back to the very core of the fight in order to release its
harsh reality in a relevant way, he releases the demons to finally exorcise
them. What comes out of this process is something unique that I just don't find
in the other bands I love and may find richer than GN'R on a certain number of
aspects (and the list goes from the likes of Nine Inch Nails or Ministry to
Current 93, Rozz Williams or Neubauten, not to mention Pink Floyd or
Autechre...). And it is for I cherish that beautiful gift that I am a fan of
Guns N' Roses and Axl Rose. A fan among others, for specific reasons.
As a
philosopher and as an artist, I have an extreme conception of what I do, which
I also consider to be a sort of exorcising. So I guess all of this makes sense
even though it may sound a bit pompous...
C.L: How do you
identify spiritually with members of the band like Slash and Duff? Do you
identify yourself in the same way with Axl?
A.B:
First of all, don't count on me to make any kind of
statement about the split of GN'R’ former line-up since I think it is in
no way my business and I have no competence at all to comment or judge the
circumstances that led to that situation. Don't expect me to have bad words
against great artists such
as Slash or Duff McKagan who brought me happiness and inspiration, nor to
spread the media beloved image of an Axl Rose who would be a pathetic loser
who's blinded by his egomania. I find that it's not for me to comment personal
issues which I am not concerned with and correctly aware of...
As
an answer to your question, I wouldn't say that I relate to Slash or Duff to
the same extent than I do to Axl Rose. As a music lover and as a musician, I
have always been inspired by Slash: though the music I have recorded lately
uses only keyboards and is more of an experimentation with sounds and their
combination with naked melodies and “contemporary-musiclike” piano
playing, I have started to play music as a blues based rock n' roll lead guitar
player. As a human being, my way of life is surely very different from Slash's,
but I can strongly relate to his very raw yet emotional soulful guitar playing.
It is that depth and that edge, that dedicated passion, which I find in his
music that talk to me on an intimate level: his guitar playing reflects some of
my inmost emotions. With Duff, it is yet another question since I think that he
has accomplished his best works after his departure from the Guns: with Beautiful
Disease (his second solo album that unfortunately
never found its way to an official release - blame it on a rotten music
industry...) and his latest effort, Dark Days ,
Duff has reached his maturity as a musician and as a songwriter. Back to the
GN'R days, he was more like the "coolest dude" in the band, with that
sincere punk energy that was a joy to see and feel. He has now reached another
level to let the world know how an interesting and relevant artist he can be on
his own, since he has battled to keep himself together, lucid and sober. I am
happy and proud of what I know of his artistic and his personal evolution,
though it is sad of course that he had to turn away from Axl.
Thus
I am very attached to Slash and Duff (and let's not forget the other members
and especially Izzy who was a big part of the songwriting process) even if my
favorite member has always been Axl. I spiritually identify with Axl Rose
because I believe we share an essentially common sensibility though our life
had to be completely different as some/many of our beliefs and habits probably
are.
C.L: Which G n'R
song do you relate the most to? Do you relate the most to that song because you
think it is the most achieved artistically, or because it is one expressing
something closer to your personal concerns?
A.B: There are many Guns N' Roses songs which I can strongly relate to, and
it is very hard for me to pick up just one and put it on the top of an abstract
list, since the way I relate to a song and the degree to which I identify
myself with it depend completely on the state of mind I am currently in and
what circumstances I am going through at the moment. There is no such thing as
"the greatest song ever written" exactly as there is no band that one
could objectively call "the greatest band the world has ever seen".
For instance, as much as I can be a fan of them, I wouldn't say that Guns N'
Roses is the best band on this planet, since I think there has been many
different great artists who have produced over the years some wonderful diverse
music that it would be totally vain to try and hierarchize. If asked, I would
eventually find myself unable to hierarchize bands such as GN'R, Nine Inch
Nails or Alice In Chains for the same reason why I could never determine what
is superior between seven apples, ten pears and four melons: that comparison
would just be made between values that belong to different orders. French
novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet likes to say that a writer has to go as far as he
can in his own deadlock, letting us think that the great writer is the one who
finds his (or her) way to the very end of it. Whether you agree with
Robbe-Grillet to consider it as an impasse or whether you think - as I do -
that it is just one if you conceive it in terms of going somewhere when you are
not necessary supposed to do so, a true artistic achievement may consist in
going the whole way of one or several perspectives in order not to go somewhere
but to express its very singularity and its very own identity. An identity
doesn't go anywhere, and neither does a voice. And for a writer or a musician -
especially a singer - art is often all about finding one's way through one's
very voice and singularity to eventually express it rightly in a universal
manner. That's the sense you can make out of Robbe-Grillet's statement: the way
we've just been talking about has an end that bounds it and the greatest
artists are just the ones who go their own whole way. That's why there is just
no way of going further than Celine, Cioran or Shakespeare when you follow
their steps.
Coming
back to your interrogation, you may probably have understood by now that each
and every question that tends to establish a hierarchy between different values
will not find a simple answer by me, since I am way too scrupulous to disregard
the heterogeneity of truth. I put it all into perspectives. I could tell you
that Coma is my favorite GN'R song since I believe
it to be the deepest one and the most achieved but then again, for different
reasons, there are times when I relate more to Sweet Child O'Mine (especially the ecstatic live version), Locomotive or Ain't It Fun (actually a cover from the Dead Boys that
features at the end a scream that is as primal as ultimate...). There are days
when I could tell you that there is nothing like the soulful meditation that
Axl Rose’s piano solos reflect, but then again it can't really be
considered to be better than raw songs such as Welcome To The Jungle , Right Next Door To Hell , It's
So Easy or Rocket Queen . that are not meant to express the same feeling, to exorcise the same
demon. All these songs are unbeatable in their own special way, and the
potential hierarchy that one can form between them is just relative to the
nature of one's sensibility and priorities. For example, these days, I relate a
lot to Madagascar , one of the new line-up creations,
because that song could be a sort of soundtrack for what my life has been about
for the last four years.
C.L: Is music to
you an art more specifically adapted than others to the kind of exorcism you
pictured, or do you think it is the purpose of art in general? Should it be the
purpose of art in general, what artists using other sorts of art would you
compare most naturally to Axl?
A.B:
Many questions at once, and not the easiest ones in
addition... Let's see if I can give you a non-exhaustive yet satisfying answer
so that this interview may not become a much too serious case of anal pain for
the potential reader...
First
of all, I would like to have you note that your first declared question is
ambiguous as it tends to implicitly create an opposition between the idea that
music would be the most adapted art to the process of exorcising and the idea
that this process may be the purpose of art in general, as if those two ideas
were the two opposite alternatives that one could choose from, considering a
same problem. And that reasoning which you seem to take for granted I just
can't agree with, since I believe it possible to consider at the same time that
music is the most adapted art to exorcise demons and that exorcising is the
purpose of art in general (and you can find theories in the history of
philosophy that defend such a point of view...) as I believe that it is also
possible to think that both of these statements are wrong. Actually, this last
option is the one I personally choose.
To
use that English turn of phrase that I definitely seem to appreciate, I don't
believe there is such a thing as a general purpose everyone should apply to so
that their work could be considered as an artistic effort. I don't believe that
we can define a one and only universal purpose that could be relevant to each
and every different artistic undertaking, apart maybe from the need or the
desire to express oneself or something else (and these two enterprises are not
necessary the same, although artists like Axl Rose and many others express
themselves through the expression of something, and express something specific
in itself because of the need to express themselves). Therefore I don't think
that exorcising is the purpose of art in general: it's just that it can
sometimes be so and it surely is the case as far as we talk about Axl Rose, or
at least about my conception of what his work consists in.
On
another hand, to say that music, in order to achieve the process of exorcising
a "demon", would be the most adapted art is in no way my intention,
since I think that each and every form of art has its appropriate way and
relevance to do so, depending on what characterizes it and which way it reaches
people in. There are "demons" that are probably more easily reached
and more deeply exorcised as the artist who wants to face them makes the choice
to accomplish his task by exploiting the properties of one specific form of
art; but even then, that doesn't mean that if you take the time to work on
another form of art in order to extend its boundaries, you will not be able to
achieve your goal as well by using it in a particular manner.
Thus,
whether you want to exorcise a demon or whether your artistic purpose consists
in something else, each and every form of art can a priori offer possibilities to achieve your goal as long as you exploit it
properly.
Let's
just say that for the kind of demon that Axl Rose may have to exorcise, music
and rock n' roll (I take these two as different arts since you can't really
reduce one of them to the other) are probably the best artistic ways to go...
About
your last question, I am sorry but I fail to find an artist that would not be a
musician who I could really compare to Axl Rose. Maybe I will find somebody
later, but for now no name comes naturally to my mind...
C.L: How do you
interpret the fact that most of your answers will probably seem full of
disproportion compared to the idea most people tend to have of G n' R' music?
Considering that common judgment, do you sometimes wonder whether you are not
deluded by your fan(atic) attitude towards Axl and G n' R?
A.B:
I was just asking myself these questions after I told
you about my somewhat philosophical conception of what the art of Guns N' Roses
consisted in...
I can
clearly understand why most of the people and the other Guns fans who will read
this interview may find that this spiritual approach is over-intellectualized
or even irrelevant when speaking of a band like GN'R whose main purpose has
been to write and perform pure raw rock n' roll songs. Even Slash expressed at
several occasions how he did not feel there was any particular concept behind
the music and the attitude of the band, apart from a certain kind of absolutely
free lifestyle which the music was the reflection of and the fuel for...
But
if one takes the time to consider my comments closely, one may also find that
not only they are not at variance with that simple definition of what a genuine
rock n' roll band is all about, but moreover they eventually express and
explicit exactly the same phenomenon as it does. I really do believe that the
conception of the art of exorcising that I have conversed with you about is
eventually nothing else than a philosophical understanding of what the rawness
of rock n' roll is actually all about. You can consider that it is just a
verbal masturbation if you want, but I personally don't think so, and I would
tend to ask people to think twice before judging my statement too quickly.
Having
said that, I must emphasize the fact that this is just my personal point of
view on the subject and that I want in no way to try and dictate it as some
kind of "official philosophical truth" about what rock'n'roll music
is. I also want to make it clear that by expressing myself in such a way, I
don't claim to be representative of all the Guns N' Roses fans whose opinion
sure are various and very contrasted. I just speak for myself and I hope by
doing so to propound an original yet relevant interpretation of what the art of
Axl Rose actually consists in.
C.L: How do you
react to the constant postponing of the so long expected new G n' R album? How
can you live with that being such an addicted fan? What about the cancelled
European tour?
A.B:
Well, well, well... I sure can't deny that it has been
a real disappointment to learn about the cancellation of the European tour that
was due to take place in December and which had already been postponed earlier
this year. I am a Guns N' Roses fan since 1991 so I have waited a long long
time for a brand new album to be released and a tour to happen. I even planned
to go to Rio just to attend the enormous gig the new line-up have played there
during the Rock In Rio festival, but I ended up not being able to do so because
the circumstances were not right for me. As for the European tour dates, I was
going to travel to Arnhem and London in order to see them performing twice.
Therefore you can imagine that I was quite sad to learn that they could not
find a way to make everything work out fine... It is unbelievable how the
"GN'R camp" seems to be doomed: everything seems to have been going
on as if there was some kind of curse that was preventing them to achieve their
goals: was it the departure of the former members of the band or the recent
illness of new lead guitar player Buckethead (which has been officially said to
be the reason why the European tour was cancelled and the release of the new
album untitled "Chinese Democracy" delayed), there has always been
something that had to go wrong. Under these circumstances, it can sometimes be
hard to be a dedicated GN'R fan...
Nevertheless,
unlike many other Guns fans (whose attitude I yet understand), I don't feel as
if Axl Rose owed me something, and I only wish him to lead his life the way he
wants to, so that he can be at peace and so that he can achieve what it is he
wants to achieve the very way he believes it is right for him to do so. Sure
the world of Guns N' Roses seems to be confusing but I don't want to be the one
who adds useless pressure on somebody who's already pent-up more than enough.
As far as I am concerned, being a fan of a band and supporting them cannot be
compared to a commercial contract whose terms would include that the artist
owes the fan to please him by providing what it is he wants to be given: fans
who are looking for such contracts had better look for prostitutes. For me,
being a fan of an artist is just a question of love. I have a life of my own
which I lead the way I want to, and I only wish the same to Axl Rose. I don't want
to speculate too much about his private life since I know almost nothing of it;
but he has probably had a very complicated and depressing situation to deal
with and I believe he can eventually find a satisfying way out only if he does
things exactly the way he feels his own personal perspectives should be worked
out, despite what everybody else (including me) says or thinks.
As I
posted on a GN'R related forum when the cancellation of the tour was officially
announced, this situation is quite unpleasant to say the least but I think I
understand some of the reasons why Axl doesn't want to leave the studio to face
the world again before he has finished the work he has done on himself to
survive and to accomplish his artistic ambitions. He knows that once he will
have left his lonely place to present himself and his new creations to the
world, the fans, and the media, he will not have the time nor the opportunity
to stay that often by himself: he will be exposed and he'd better be ready to
be put in that situation. Axl probably wants to make the more accomplished work
he can out of all he has been trying and reflecting on during all these years
of gestation, so that this work may speak for itself and for him.
GN'R
fans ought to know that sometimes he needs some time on his own, and that all
we need is just a little (maybe a little more) patience...