Dear Axl

essay by matthew webber

Dear Axl,

Your music is so awesome I can taste it in the air. I love your tapes. I play them loud. When I’m angry, they help me. It’s like you understand. And even when I’m sad and lonely and pensive(?), I listen to your music, especially your ballads, and it’s like you’re inside of me, screaming out and listening. I need your music now, and I’ll need it forever. I like it, I love it, I want it, I need it. I can’t imagine life without you and your gift. When girls I like don’t like me back, the times when I’m ugly and stupid and young, when everything ahead of me will surely be a failure, since everything behind me has already failed, and everything else is unspeakable, ineffable(?) – your music speaks out and explains, on repeat. Consoled, understood, even exorcized, really – I play your songs over and over again. I’m just about to graduate and grow into the world, and I can’t wait to hear what you’ll think about that. What will you write, will you sing, will you scream? What will it sound like? Who will we be? Hurry up, Axl, and make some new music. Not just for me, but also for the world, since a world without you is a world without me. I’ll probably never send this, so you’ll probably never read this, but time, all at once, seems fleeting, yet infinite. I think I can hear your new album already. It sounds like an element, not yet discovered. It sounds like a mythical creature, but real. And then it’s gone. If it was ever there. So get in the studio! Crank out some tunes! Don’t make me wait till I’m 30 to know them.

Matthew Webber (1996)

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Dear Axl,

Thank you so much for finally releasing the new Guns N’ Roses album, "Chinese Democracy," last year, seventeen years after your band’s last proper studio albums, "Use Your Illusion I" and "II," fifteen years after your band’s stopgap covers album, "The Spaghetti Incident," and nine years after your band’s stopgap live album, "Live Era ‘87-‘93." Thank you for letting me listen to it. Finally! It feels like I’ve waited my whole life to hear it! Anyway, I have some questions for you: How did those albums sell so many copies? Weren’t there, like, MySpace and iTunes back then? Is it true that your videos got played on MTV? Was Slash from Guitar Hero actually in your band? Have you seen my new movie, "The Secret Life of Bees" yet? My co-star Queen Latifah used to rap; I bet you knew that. Anyway, I hope you’re well. Thanks again for "Chinese Democracy"!

Dakota Fanning

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Dear Axl,

I flew past Best Buy on November 23, shocked not to see an unruly mob of metalheads (I almost typed meatheads, and really, what’s the difference?), but rather just a smattering of early-morning shoppers, braving the cold for some holiday bargains: plasma TVs (whatever that means), DVDs (is that a band?), and this space-age-looking iPod thing (I think it plays cassettes). Other than a cluster(fuck) of pasty, paunchy soccer dads, most of these people were not in line for you, which rendered the scene, and the world, unrecognizable. Remember when the lines used to wrap around the stores? The parties at midnight to celebrate the albums? The women you (not I) abused because of such rabidity, with everyone frothing, crazed for our bands? Well, I can’t forget; it was everything I hated. Everything spiteful, if not xenophobic. Everything shitty, like life and death itself. But now, a new album, and nobody cares? Corporate rock sucks, and everyone knows this? What the hell happened to you and the world? I wish I was alive to enjoy my vindication.

Kurt Cobain

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Dear Axl,

It’s cool that the record finally dropped. But yo, I’m dead, and I’m still making records. Plus, we elected a black man first?!?!?! What the fuck too you so long? Goddamn.

Tupac

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Dear Axl,

It’s me. I’m just checking in. What’s it been, years, since you sent me a message? Hey, it’s cool. I just wanna chat. I miss you, you know? Or at least I miss your music, the things it said, it did, it meant. The things it represented. The way it felt. I still play your tapes. They’re perfect to jog to! They’re perfect for my anger at world all around me. Fear and confusion and, I don’t know, badness. In fact, I should tell you, I’m still the same person, despite my older age and the fact that I’m skinnier, a scared little boy in the body of a man, or at least in the body of junior in college. The world is too big and too scary; you know this. So why you’d have to go and forsake me, you jerk? Why’d you forsake us all, you big asshole? It’s not just me, man. We all wanna hear you. Sorry for the anger, but fuck, man, we need you. Yeah, the world sucks, but it’s like you understood this. You somehow expressed this and made it okay. How’s the new album? You’re working on it, right? I’d like to review it for my underground paper. Don’t make me make yet another bad joke, the one that compares it to democracy in China, wondering which one will happen in my lifetime, if either one happens at all, that is. Diss! Don’t make me hate you for letting me down. Don’t leave us hanging for longer than you have to. Don’t let us down. No, don’t let me down. And hey, write back, when you get a spare moment! After all, I’m still your biggest fan. I’ll never forget how you saved me in high school. I haven’t moved on. I can’t move on. It’s easier to mock you than to deal with myself.

Matthew Webber (2000)

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Dear Axl,

It looked like a mirage to me, a dream, something fictional. Sitting on a shelf, in a store, to be purchased. My brain was like, what? And my mouth was like, holy! And now my dumb fingers are scribbling to the bone: “'Chinese Democracy?!' Really? No way!” Followed by a string of (expletives deleted). Even in my hands, when I took it to the counter, it didn’t feel real, but fake. Made-up. Heretical. It wasn’t until I got it home, and opened it up, and put it in... and played it once and twice and thrice... and came to know the lyrics and the melodies as memories... as songs my heart was awaiting, forever... exceeded hopes and realized dreams... better than mirages and fictions and fantasies... almost angelic, but no, that’s heretical. Hymns, I guess, you’d call them, right? My ears were like, wow! And my mouth was like (asterisks)! Two months later, I’m still... bemused? But mostly, I’ve accepted its reality as fact. The album exists. In truth. In actuality. There’s nothing to be nonplused about. Right? Nothing requiring magic, or prayer? Nothing requiring divine intervention? I wish I could say I always believed. I wish I could say it and mean it, I mean. And even though I doubted you, I’ve always doubted miracles. Anyway, Axl, your scream is... holy? Your range remains... canonical? The way you make music is... sacred and profane? I totally feel you; I hear your wounds. Please don’t doubt my flattery. Amen.

St. Thomas

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Dear Axl,

So I copped the album. I had to, right? To hear for myself how badly you’d blown it, how much you overthought and overworked and overmurdered it: a great band’s chemistry, a fan base’s hunger, the whole world’s patience (pardon the pun) to tolerate your douche-itude and wait and wait and wait. (Douchebagosity? Douchebagination? Simple douchebaginess? You tell me.) You think you’re so special, so talented, so tortured. So damn unique in your overreaching brilliance. A self-proclaimed genius, a world-proclaimed recluse, challenging the notion of rock ‘n’ roll itself. What is a song: the performance, or the record? What is a band: the members, or the memory? And what the hell is this, this album you released? What the fuck is this "Chinese Democracy"? Where’s the blues-rock stuff that helped Duff feed his family? Where’s the dumb and easy stuff for crappy bands to imitate? Where are the buzz saws that cut you to the bone, the jet trails that linger as evidence of flight? Where’s that wildcat scream of yours, that feral growl, that snake dance? The panic, the danger, the terror, the guns? Actually, fuck, man, where are the roses? After one listen, I can’t say I hear it: you, Guns N’ Roses, rock ‘n’ roll, music. Noise, I hear. Production. Sterility. But melody? Beauty? Majesty? Greatness? Anything transcendent of short, sorry lives? What a waste of time and money. Not just yours, but mine, all mine. Who’s gonna play this album twice? Who’s gonna buy it, to play it once? Who’s gonna... shit. My iPod’s on repeat. What the fuck is happening? I’m starting to hum? Still no Snakepit, but wow, not bad. Way the fuck better than Velvet Revolver. But still, you shoulda had me play. I totally woulda rocked it. Wanna hit the Chinese buffet with me sometime?

Slash

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Dear Axl,

The album’s what it is; it’s what it had to be. Your vision. Your truth. Your legacy. Fuck ‘em. It took too long? It’s overproduced? It doesn’t have Slash? What are you, an asshole? No, you’re a genius. They can’t understand. You’re Axl Rose, bitch. And don’t you forget it.

Axl Rose

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Dear Axl,

I’ve started this letter a dozen different ways, as if you’ll ever read this when you’re Googling yourself, as if you’ll ever know me, or understand, or care. The thing is, Axl, I don’t know myself, and I don’t understand me, much less what I’m writing. But I do care, Axl, beyond all reason, about your music, about all music, about this thing so close to God it’s blasphemous to listen to, to try to sate my appetite for – no, for damnation. I can’t explain it, at least not in words, or else I would’ve done so either here or somewhere else. Lord knows, I’ve tried to. Lord knows, I’ve tried. Forgive me for failing. Father, forgive me. But here I am, trying my hardest. Believe me. I’m 30 years old, and I’m meeker than Jesus, and here I am writing a goddamn epistle, but not about faith or family or love, but no, about music, about Guns N’ Fuckin’ Roses. For seventeen years, I waited and wondered – What will it sound like? What will I think? – and now that it’s here – The Album is here! – what can I say to encapsulate this lifetime? Nothing, that’s what. Or at least that’s what I’ve said. To say any more would, like, obfuscate the truth. (I still like my thesaurus, so that hasn’t changed.) A mere five months of listening is nothing but a blip. A dot on a timeline. A page in a biography. I’ve actually listened to Chinese Democracy. I actually own it. It’s sitting on my shelf. I woke up that morning and sped to Best Buy, infusing every moment with meaning and memory, bracing myself for the letdown – but hoping. Don’t be a disaster. Don’t be a disaster. Oh, Axl Rose, reward me, release me. Well? And? So, what do I think? Review it already! Describe it! Prescribe it! I like it, I think, and I might even love it – but what will I think in seventeen years? Will I still need your music, or music at all? I think I will, but of course, I don’t know. All I can do is take it on faith. But Jesus, I hope so, or my life has been a waste. Anyway, thanks? It’s far from a fiasco. And I haven’t even mentioned that voice of yours. Yowzas! Plus, there’s that ballad... those solos... that sheen... Your music is so awesome I can taste it in the air, even today, as ever before. I still play it loudly. It’s what we both want. It’s what we’ve been waiting for, now and forever. Your music is so awesome I can never finish writing...

Matthew Webber (2009)

For more information, visit the author's website at matthewwebber.net.