2008.02.04 - The Pulse Of Radio/Blabbermouth - Billy Howerdel Talks About His Work On 'Chinese Democracy'

A Perfect Circle Guitarist Talks About His Work On Guns N' Roses' 'Chinese Democracy'

The Pulse of Radio reports that Ashes Divide, the new project fronted by A Perfect Circle guitarist Billy Howerdel, has launched its own YouTube channel. An initial group of interviews between Howerdel and MTV personality Matt Pinfield has been posted at the site. In the exchanges, Howerdel discusses his musical upbringing, recording with A Perfect Circle, the assembly of the Ashes Divide touring band and the inspiration behind some of the project's songs.

One little-known fact about Howerdel is that before forming A Perfect Circle with Tool singer Maynard James Keenan in 2000, he spent several years working on the still-unreleased Guns N' Roses album, "Chinese Democracy". Howerdel told The Pulse of Radio what he contributed to the record. "I came in there initially to program some guitar sounds, and then wound up hitting it off with Axl, and then my job kind of migrated into the computer guy. I don't know what you would call me exactly. I kind of was there all night with Axl as he would work. The band came in during the day with a producer and would work most of the day, and then I would come in ten o'clock at night, say goodbye to those guys, Axl would show up later on, and then we'd do our thing all night and then do it the next day."

Ashes Divide's debut album, "Keep Telling Myself It's All Right", is due out on April 8. The first single is called "The Stone". Howerdel sings and plays guitar, bass and keyboard on the album, which also features A Perfect Circle's Josh Freese on drums and Maynard James Keenan's 11-year-old son Devo on cello.

https://archive.blabbermouth.net/news/a-perfect-circle-guitarist-talks-about-his-work-on-guns-n-roses-chinese-democracy/

Brief mention of GN'R in this interview, Ashes dIVIDE TV, Jan. 31, 2008:



Howerdel: It [=working on The Perfect Circle album] was definitely a year-and-a-half, kind of similar to Ashes Divide. It’s a similar kind of way, as in trying to kind of like figure out what you’re doing. It’s good and bad when there’s no parameters set. You can spend a lot of time tinkering - working on the Guns N’ Roses thing, there was, you know, a lot of tinkering going on. And it kind of was a way of, “Okay, I don’t want to go forever.” At that point, it felt like forever, you know, “This is long enough and it got to come in to something.” It was a good time for Maynard, things were working out… […].