2008.10.DD - Chris Pitman Website - Music: Guns N' Roses

Guns N’ Roses

Since the time of Lusk, I became involved with the numerous publishing companies here in LA that would pair songwriters together for recording projects, these included EMI, Rondor/Famous music, Sony and others. I was writing songs for a few artists like Jezef C. as well as writing the single for Blinker the Stars record for Dreamworks. In fact it was at Ocean Way Studios with Jordan recording 'Below the Sliding doors' when I got the call from GNR. This was May 1998, and I had a friend who was working with Guns at the time.

Several months earlier, I had been invited down to their studio to meet and hang out with the guys, the purpose being, as he explained, they were looking for a producer or collaborator, and someone to bring some 'modern' sounds to the mix.

He said that Axl was a fan of LUSK and was really into the weird guitar sounds, and Orchestration we did. There I met Axl, who was very gracious, respectful dude with that larger-than-life persona he's got, and would make you feel like you had been part of the family for years. We sat in the control room all night listening to tons of songs and jam tapes that they were working on. Axl, along with Paul Tobias and Dizzy Reed were the core writers of the band at the time, and were writing some incredible stuff, you could tell they were in the right place exploring and reaching for the stars, so to speak.

There was a good vibe there, a creative atmosphere, and enough can't be said about the good people that Paul and Dizzy are.

Axl was playing a lot of lead guitar and experimenting with sounds, and was a damn creative player. Occasionally he would pipe in 'you hear that Lusk guitar there?!!'

Being from the Kansas City myself, we shared common midwest stories and blunders, not to mention he has a million jokes up his sleeves, he would just leave you gutted. We had a good time hanging out, and spirits were quite jovial at the time.

At the end of the night, or morning shall I say, Axl piped out "you know... I've already got a full band, but would like to figure out some way of working you in" "cool, sounds good, give me a buzz!"

About a month later I got the buzz, 'hey, me and Sean are just finishing up putting a studio together up in Axl's guest house, and he wants you to come hang out", "yeah...and do what exactly?!" "you know..just do what you do, recording, playing whatever!" "cool....when do you want to do this?" "you can come up tonite if you want to hang"

To Be Continued

Soulmonster wrote:This is interesting, and a bit confusing.

It means Chris was involved with the band already back in 1998. But I still don't really understand the chronology of the story. He was contacted in May 1998, but had at that time already spent months playing with them. Why did they contact him in May, then? Had he just been hanging out with the crew up until that point, and then in May he got a call to come hang out with Axl? He is talking about Paul and Dizzy being the core writers at the time, this fits quite well for May 1998. Tommy had likely just been hired or was in the process of getting hired but likely not yet heavily involve din writing music, Josh was probably hired but also not involved in writing.

Then a month later, in June 1998 (?), he got a call from Sean (Beavan, presumably) and got invited to come work with Axl at his house? This would mean Beavan was involved in the project a bit earlier than I knew, but it still works time-wise.

I assume the next blog entry has not been saved at web archive?