TOMMY STINSON - News GUNS N' ROSES Album Is "A Lot More Complex"
Special Report By Martin Popoff

TOMMY STINSON is best known for being one of THE REPLACEMENTS - start of the band to finish - but he's beginning to be a regular in the metal press given his now long-standing relationship with Axl Rose as part of the aggregate GUNS N' ROSES. If all goes according to plan (and there's no assurance that it will), the eon-awaited Chinese Democracy will be out this fall and GN'R will be touring "for the next year and a half or so."

Stinson was in Toronto recently to promote his new solo album called Village Gorilla Head, a collection of quirky hard and soft pop songs with an appropriately artsy, even Replacements-like flair. "I think the hardest thing was to just finely get it done," says Stinson of the lush yet emotionally edgy album. "I worked on it for about a year, toured a little bit in between, and I wasn't really under any pressure from anyone to finish it in any particular amount of time. But after awhile, after you've done all the instruments yourself, you start to burn out. You get to a point where you go, 'I really wish I were done with this now, because I'm kind of tired.' It got a little much. Because I was recording everything in my home studio, which is basically in my apartment, in my bedroom, in Burbank, California. So the idea of recording and living and sleeping and breathing all in the same three or four rooms was a little bit much after awhile."

Well, rest up, because it sounds like life is gonna get complicated soon. Tommy offers a few elliptical remarks on the looming Chinese Democracy opus.

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