On TV, on radio, in newspapers, I’ve been hearing/reading a lot lately about how you can live like a rock star.

What does this mean?

What do rock stars live like? Is it understood that somehow most rock stars live a life different from you and me?

Different food, different clothes, different hours, different aims?

Since when did living like a rock star become a concept?

Most people I know who might be described as rock stars are musicians. They struggle to pay the rent. They do the mundane things like drying dishes or taking out the garbage.  Many of them have day jobs. But they are creative and so songwriting or playing an instrument is a compulsion. It’s something they have to do. I’ve never met a musician who wrote a song thinking it would make them rich. I’ve never met a musician who figured their guitar playing would land them in the Hall Of Fame.

A few of them know that when they are on the stage, they become larger than life. They know to project. A few of them know they are playing a role and for the time onstage are larger than life. Is this being a rock star?

I was thinking about this when Axl Rose finally released his Chinese Democracy.  Axl might be the ultimate rock star. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but for the details you’d have to ask Axl. That is, if he allows anyone near him.

Axl seems untouchable to me and that might be why he is the ultimate rock star.

In case you aren’t aware, Axl fronts the band Guns N’ Roses. They sold millions of their first album, Appetite For Destruction, in 1989. Had the audacity to release two albums simultaneously, Use Your Illusion One and Two. Both of the latter are ok and predictably would make a helluva single album, but they do point out a grand, or deluded, vision. GNR remained enormously popular even as, from 1991, the original members were sacked by Axl.

He then set about writing and recording what became Chinese Democracy. He went through numerous studios, numerous producers, numerous musicians and numerous re-writes of the songs. Along the way, Axl never changed his habit of being late for a show or not turning up at all.  This habit caused riots but did he care? No, because he is a rock star.

After 17 years and about 17 million dollars, Chinese Democracy was released in November, 2008. Its release had been delayed so many times, people thought it would never come out. I started comparing it to the Great Canadian Novel. Just as that book wouldn’t be written, I suspected Axl always would find something at fault and would make the necessary change, but never be happy. That there is a Chinese Democracy stands as a tribute to Rose’s vision and stubbornness. That Geffen has stood by him, despite many misgivings, I’m sure, is testament to how valuable he must be to the label. That the public is buying the record, though not in the numbers that must have been hoped, is endorsement of GNR’s amazing popularity.

As someone pointed out, new countries have formed, wars have been won and lost, there have been astonishing breakthroughs in science and medicine and the arts in the time it took to make Chinese Democracy. Does Axl care? No, because he’s a rock star. 

Don’t we wish we could spend millions of dollars to make one album? Would we? 

During the 60s and 70s, recording acts struggled to achieve artistic freedom. This meant writing their own songs, developing their own graphic imagery, fashioning an identity, free of record company interference. In short, but after many years, the acts achieved those things that Rose apparently takes for granted. He’s not to blame for taking advantage of that freedom and for testing its limit, but it also appears an abuse, a corruption of power.

That’s a weird balancing act and is a dangerous game. Maybe that’s what living like a rock star is about. If rock and roll has become living by your own rules, flaunting authority or conventional wisdom, that’s Axl Rose and Chinese Democracy. But if he and it fail, the recording industry, if it still exists, will be justified if it squashes artistic freedom, if it counters with rules of its own.

I might be naive in this. Rose might be an extraordinary exception but I don’t think a record label will make this mistake again. It will want to exert control from the beginning, and any aspiring recording act still wanting to sign with a large label will have to comply. Then again, if Chinese Democracy recoups and Axl Rose emerges the untouchable rock star, the balance of creativity and commerce will shift again. And then Rose will have to make another record.