Guns N’ Roses came into being in the summer of 1985 after the merging of two Californian groups - L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose. Very quickly getting themselves noticed, the band’s early songs ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ and ‘Sweet child O’Mine’ made the album Appetite for Destruction (1987) a benchmark recording. But Slash and Adler were constantly under the influence of drugs and progressively abandoned rehearsals and touring. In 1990, Adler was replaced on drums by Matt Sorum and the keyboardist Dizzy Reed also joined the band and rediscovered his creativity. The result was the double album Use Your Illusion. With Rose again in trouble, the founding member Izzy Stradlin decided to quit GNR. Rose thereby became the only ‘survivor’ of the original band and the Guns N’ Rose leader tried to poach the Vandals drummer and Robin Finck. In 2006, a remark made by Slash seemed to suggest that the original Guns N’ Roses might reform... And this turned out to be the case in 2008 with the Chinese democracy ‘project’. What with all the years spent in production, hiring recording studios and enduring the comings and goings of the stars, this album was quite a long time in the making. And it is said to have been the most expensive record made in music history! In order to speed up the release of the album, Dr Pepper decided to give them a little nudge by promising to send a can to every American if the album came out before the end of 2008. The record came out on 24 November 2008, accompanied by the first single ‘Chinese Democracy’.