Magnum Opus
The Unbelievable 15-Year Saga of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy
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Magnum Opus
Narrated by:
Christopher Ragland
Buy Now for £15.67
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Ragland
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By:
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James Greene Jr.
By 1993, Guns N’ Roses had hit practically every benchmark possible for a rock n’ roll band.
Their eight-year journey had included an explosive and game-changing debut record, a self-indulgent but even more successful double album release, a handful of raucous global tours, and various front-page controversies over their lyrics, band members’ drug addictions, and lead singer Axl Rose’s rattlesnake temper.
The most captivating part of the Guns N’ Roses story was just beginning, however. A fifteen-year saga was about to unfold over the creation of the group’s sixth studio album, Chinese Democracy—a perverse and jaw-dropping tale that would come to involve not only a small nation of diverse musical talent but also several figures from the world of professional sports, a multinational soft drink company, and the FBI. Cultural critics couldn’t agree if the resulting work was unprecedented genius or a criminally mediocre.
Magnum Opus: The Unbelievable 15-Year Saga of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy recounts in engaging depth and detail the long and often ludicrous road to the last mythic rock ’n’ roll album of the 20th Century. Of course, Chinese Democracy was not released until well into the 21st Century, and Magnum Opus assembles a thrilling narrative of the mishaps, detours, and near-death experiences that accompanied the long journey to its release. Combining outrageous facts and never-before-told stories from as many direct sources as possible, this is the definitive story of a famously troubled album that will allow rock ’n’ roll die-hards to finally separate truth from fan lore and outright fabrications.(P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
Magnum Opus is a Guns N’ Roses book that deserves to be in the library, for research and historical preservation purposes—a scholarly tome you reference when the internet, AI, publicity machines, and social media algorithms fail us. This is, as it should be, a political-historical study on one of the most intriguing subjects in the history of popular art: Chinese Democracy (and why we never got it, and probably never will).
Raw and brutally honest storytelling behind Guns N' Roses' most turbulent record.
Colossal self-delusion. Olympian egos. Obscene wastes of talent, time, and money. Incessant bickering and backbiting. And that’s just the part about the record label — wait till you read about what happened in the recording studios! James Greene, Jr. ably guides us through the mind-numbing 15-year slog that was Chinese Democracy. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. And you’ll better understand the decline of the once-mighty music industry.
Greene’s writing has an affectionate irony … [It] avoids simplistic judgments but also doesn’t try to mythologize the story any further. What remains is the portrait of an artist who — perhaps unknowingly — created one of the greatest cautionary tales in rock history.
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