Finally pulling the trigger

Fans, critics alike anticipate the release of new Guns N' Roses album

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in four years. The Beatles released all of their albums in seven. Axl Rose has been working on the new Guns N' Roses record for 13 years, and while history will judge how his musical odyssey stacks up to those other creative efforts, the simple arrival today of "Chinese Democracy" - after countless firings, hirings, leaked tracks, false starts, and dashed hopes - rates as the rock 'n' roll event of the decade.

But what a different music world we live in now than the one GNR ruled back in the day. The band's last studio project, the simultaneously released "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion II," came out in 1991 - before the digital revolution exploded and the record industry slipped into a steep downward spiral; before Nirvana hit number one, ushering in a new era of alternative rock and rendering GNR's excesses and pretensions suddenly old school; before the notion of recording in 14 separate studios would seem a laughable relic of a time when budgets were as bloated as rock stars' egos.

Yet there is more than a whiff of the mythic about Axl Rose, Guns N' Roses' reclusive, troubled founder and the band's sole remaining original member. And "Chinese Democracy" - which will be sold on CD and vinyl exclusively at Best Buy and digitally at bestbuy.com and iTunes - is more than an album. It's a saga whose fabled dimensions transcend styles and eras, and the hype cuts both ways: generating frustration among fans as well as phenomenal anticipation, and boosting expectations for the music to epic proportions.

"Had this come out seven or eight years ago I think I would have cared a lot more," says Bryn Bennett, a 28-year-old guitarist in the Boston band Bang Camaro. "Right now I'm looking for a train wreck."

Others are more charitable.

"Great art takes time," notes Jeremy Mastro, 31, of Rye, N.H. "The songs Axl has written sound like nothing on the radio today, and I think people will gravitate to that."

And some see the project for the convoluted narrative it is.

"I love the new songs," says Bill Cooksey, a 28-year-old from Lynn who has three Guns N' Roses tattoos, performed in a GNR tribute band, and proposed to his wife during GNR's 2002 concert at the Garden. "The problem with the album taking so long is that Axl has built the expectation to such a high level that no matter how good it is, he will never be able to achieve that status."

Only two singles from "Chinese Democracy" have been released, but anyone with an interest in Guns N' Roses and a passing knowledge of computers has heard some, if not all, of the album in various forms of completion. In August a blogger was arrested for posting nine tracks from "Chinese Democracy," but songs have been circulating online for years. On Thursday the entire album began streaming on the band's MySpace page.

Diehard Boston fans gathered at the Hard Rock Cafe for the official Boston listening party on Wednesday, yet the air was anything but electric. People sat politely at tables, milled at the bar, and chatted as the songs blared. After the playback, WAAF midday host Mike Hsu asked how many in the crowd had not heard the entire album. Three, maybe four, hands went up.

"I don't know how it's going to do," Hsu said later. "I'm of the school that believes this isn't really Guns N' Roses, not without [original guitarists] Slash and Izzy and the other guys, and that's an obstacle. If people can let go of the old concept of GNR then they might love it. It is not boring."

Had Rose put out the album back in 2000, when rumors of a release began circulating, he wouldn't be dealing with the rampant leaks which, par for the course, will move some to snap up the album and others to spend their money on one of the other high-profile records (from Kanye West, Ludacris, and the Killers) being launched during Thanksgiving week, historically the biggest sales period of the year for music.

But arguably a far bigger factor than the leaked tracks is the fact that "Chinese Democracy" will be on checkout stands at every Best Buy in the nation - a savvy marketing move that produced tremendous results during the past year for classic rockers AC/DC and the Eagles, both of which signed exclusive deals with Wal-Mart and debuted at number one on the Billboard charts.

"Every family looking for a great deal on an appliance or electronics will be in that store on Black Friday," says Keith Caulfield, senior chart manager and analyst for Billboard. "Mom might think it's a great deal for dad because they listened to it together in high school. Somebody who loved 'Sweet Child o' Mine' will remember that they heard or read something about 'Chinese Democracy.' This entire project exists outside the normal universe of expectations about what something should sound like or what it should sell."

The album is so entrenched in rock fans' collective imaginations, and the band is still such a vivid part of people's music lives, sales are poised to be as impressive as the back story. Ten days prior to release, pre-orders at bestbuy.com had already exceeded those for any album in the store's history.

Bang Camaro's Bennett won't be buying it, but confesses that "our drummer said 'I've heard it, I hate it, but I'm going to be the first to pick it up.' I get that. GNR are icons. They were our Rolling Stones."

And then it fell apart. Long and mysterious story short: With the release of their debut album, 1987's "Appetite for Destruction" (which still sells briskly), Guns N' Roses became one of the biggest bands in the world, but over the next six years the group began to disintegrate. Rose, by all accounts, had become violent and tyrannical, and by the end of 1996 all the original members besides the frontman had left or been booted out.

Rose, meanwhile, had become a virtual recluse, grappling with legal and emotional issues, occasionally surfacing at his psychic's house in Sedona, Ariz., and spending more than a decade and a reported $13 million tinkering in the studio with a revolving cast of musicians. Songs materialized and vanished. Release dates came and went. Message boards lit up and went dark.

Why now? Who knows. Maybe it's because Rose's new powerhouse manager Irving Azoff started calling the shots. Maybe Rose's psychic saw a green light. But Billboard's Caulfield can't remember a rock 'n' roll soap opera quite like this one. He calls "Chinese Democracy" the Holy Grail of impending releases.

"Sometimes in pop music it's not just about what you're hearing, it's about being a part of something, investing in the legend and the lore. Buying the album," Caulfield says, "is like being able to read the end of the book."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.