Pirating Axl Rose's Record
I have Chinese Democracy. This is the Guns n' Roses album that lead singer Axl Rose has devoted himself to working on for 14 years, the same amount of time it took to carve Mount Rushmore. More than $13 million is reported to have been spent so far to make it, way more than any other album ever. It still has no formal release date. Every few years Rose assures his fans that it's about to be released, and then it isn't. It's gotten so ridiculous that the album title is used to mean something that is long promised but will never happen, like "That marriage proposal is total Chinese Democracy. Move on, girl."
I got the album June 18, a few hours after a political breakfast at which I met the girlfriend of a guy named Skwerl. It was, as you might guess, a Democratic event. After the breakfast, Mrs. Skwerl, mistaking me for a metalhead (must condition hair more), informed me that Skwerl had just posted Chinese Democracy on his blog at antiquiet.com and gave me the tracks. I have never been this excited about having an album. I play it all the time, everywhere. This is despite the fact that I don't like Guns n' Roses or heavy metal. Which is far outweighed by the fact that I really like having things that everyone else wants.
The nine tracks Skwerl put on his site were pretty exciting (you have not fully rocked until you've heard Axl Rose give it to Hu Jintao: "Blame it on the Falun Gong!/ They've seen the end, and you can't hold on now!"). But they weren't as exciting as talking to Skwerl. Until our conversation, I didn't really understand how piracy worked. Unfortunately, before he could explain, I had to interrupt to get to the bottom of this "Skwerl" thing. After bottle-nursing an injured squirrel back to health in high school and taking it in as a pet, Skwerl was given some other hurt squirrels by squirrel-loving kids in Philadelphia, and then some squirrels saw his generosity, and he soon had a small squirrel army. And when you have that many squirrel responsibilities on top of school and rocking out to Guns n' Roses albums, you don't have time for spell-check.
Skwerl, 27, is in a punk band and used to work for Universal Music. Now he works for a Web marketing company. "Among my friends, I'm the guy known for getting things no one can get," he says. "I'm just that rabid for information." Skwerls are the people who make the Internet useful. To everyone but record companies.
When blogs reported in April that Rose had finally delivered the album to his record company, Skwerl implied on his blog that he'd post the tracks if he got them. So someone who works for the record company sent them to Skwerl, and Skwerl threw them up on a player so people could listen but not download (though, of course, they found a way). The traffic crashed his server in 10 minutes. Within the hour, someone from Rose's camp called. "He was pretty cool. He seemed to be kind of like a warning-shot thing," says Skwerl. An hour later, he got an e-mail from the band's lawyer. "I've gotten cease and desists before," he says. "I sent back a very professional e-mail saying it's down, sorry for any inconvenience, and tried to do damage control." After 14 years of waiting, the record-company execs were not planning to launch the album with 10 minutes on a blog. I'm guessing they wanted to get Axl a whole hour on The View.
On June 23, two FBI agents were waiting for Skwerl in his office lobby and then checked his computer, hoping to find his source. While that makes Skwerl a little uncomfortable and he feels a little sad that Rose, his favorite rock star, is probably angry with him, he still thinks he did the band a favor. Now people know that the album isn't just a myth, that it's coming soon and that people who've heard it are saying it's good. And other than some increased traffic on his blog, Skwerl didn't profit from his stunt. "There were posts on Craigslist saying 'I'll give you $1,500 per track if you just play it for me.' I'm not going to say I'm the most morally virtuous person around after yesterday, but I didn't go that route." He also didn't go the route of driving all the way to someone's house to learn that there's no way any Guns n' Roses fan has $1,500 lying around.
Even if piracy seems unfair, megafans aren't going to stop themselves. Record companies will have to learn that giving music previews away--just as Google gives away its searches--in exchange for ads, sponsorship and merchandise is the new business model. And if I wasn't sure of that before, I was when Skwerl told me that as we were speaking, a live version of one of the songs appeared in his inbox.
But I don't need it. I have enough tracks to send to friends and feel the outlaw glow that I could never have experienced before the Internet. I might even go to a gop breakfast next week. There's got to be some long-lost Lee Greenwood album people are jonesing for.
Extra Democracy For Joel Stein's track-by-track review, go to time.com/gnr
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