Former Guns N’ Roses Manager Slams ‘Chinese Democracy’ As ‘Boring’ and Blames Axl For Band’s Split

Alan Niven, who managed Guns N’ Roses during their pivotal years from 1986 to 1991, has offered a scathing assessment of the band’s later output and the reasons behind the disintegration of their classic lineup. In a recent interview on the “Appetite for Distortion” podcast, Niven didn’t hold back his opinions on the Chinese Democracy era and the events he believes led to it.

Niven described both 2008’s Chinese Democracy, an album famously years in the making, and its 1993 predecessor The Spaghetti Incident as direct consequences of a “coup” he attributes to his successor, former GN’R tour manager Doug Goldstein, and lawyer Michele Anthony. He downplayed Goldstein‘s role in the band’s early success, stating (as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar): “Goldstein was the tour manager. He had nothing to do with forming the marketing strategy that I employed. He was the tour manager. He makes some rather extravagant claims of his significance, and the one thing I will say was, yeah, you were significant as the tour manager. You did a good job as a tour manager. And I could ride on the bus getting to the next gig, knowing he was on it.”

Niven asserted that the shift in management ultimately altered the band’s identity. “So, Doug is a tour manager. That’s what he’s good at. And let’s get something else straight, because this is not an opinion. It’s a matter of history we can all look at. And because it’s history, it’s incontrovertible. The fact the matter is, once he and Michele Anthony pulled their coup, what do we get out of Guns N’ Roses? We get The Spaghetti Incident, [and] an Axl solo record masquerading under a GN’R logo.”

His strongest criticism was reserved for Chinese Democracy, an album that featured only Axl Rose from the original lineup. “And you know, to me… The biggest sin of the record was that it was boring; that Chinese Democracy was a boring record. But calling it Guns N’ Roses was not honest. It was totally a solo record, and that’s all it has been since 1991. So, you have to look at it, and go, ‘Well, Doug, Well, Michelle, that worked out really well, didn’t it?’ All those years were lost. Who knows what that band could have done had it stayed together; had it kept its chemical dynamic… Who knows what they would have written in those 10, 20, 30 years?” Niven‘s perspective suggests that the album’s failure wasn’t just about its musical content, but about its departure from the essence of what Guns N’ Roses once was.

Furthermore, Niven pinpointed a singular reason for the unraveling of the classic Guns N’ Roses. “There is only one reason why — Axl got control of everything.” He claimed that tensions between Axl Rose and other band members were present even in the band’s early days. Niven recalled a telling anecdote attributed to former rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin from their first tour with The Cult in 1986: “My joy in making rock and roll pretty much came to an end in September of ’86, when I signed the contract with GN’R, because from then on, it was pressure, anxiety, and stress, all the time. We’re in Toronto, second or third day on their very first tour with The Cult.”

Niven vividly remembered Stradlin‘s distress: “I could only get to the third show, and I just dropped my bags on my bed, and there’s a bang on the door. I go to the door, and there’s Izzy, and he looks frazzled. He pushes past me, goes into the room, and flops onto the sofa. I go, ‘Izzy, what’s up? What’s wrong?’ ‘That fu**er makes us fu**ing miserable every fu**ing day.’ It’s a quote I will never forget.” This early account suggests that the internal dynamics within the band were fraught with tension long before the eventual lineup changes.

Ultimately, Alan Niven‘s commentary paints a picture of a band whose trajectory was altered by internal power struggles, resulting in an album that he views as a disappointing and inauthentic representation of the Guns N’ Roses legacy.