New Guns n' Roses Leak: "Shackler's Revenge"

After a mess of leaked GN'R tracks popped up a few months back, another new cut has apparently popped up online. "Shackler's Revenge" (which was supposed to have its premiere on the upcoming sequel to the video game "Rock Band") opens with a deep-voiced Axl gradually building towards his characteristic yowl, and features guitar noodling that is very likely the work of the man called Buckethead. The song's low crunch sticks with the album's long-stated industrial leanings, and again, layers upon layers of Axls create a particular sort of demented choir. We're getting thirsty for some Dr. Pepper.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter