Guns N’ Roses Guitarist Claims New Album Will Be “More Evolved” Than “Chinese Democracy’

Big thanks to our awesome subscriber Ben! He’s the same subscriber who got Richard Fortus to give us a shoutout in our intro video. So he went to Fortus showcase event in Chicago recently and asked a question about the next Guns N’ Roses album. I’ve included his email below.

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Wanted to send you some Richard Fortus news in case you wanted to do a video on it! I attended another Richard Fortus guitar showcase event yesterday in Chicago – last time was when I got you the video clip of him saying “You’re watching GnR Central”. This time was at Make’N Music to showcase his new Paoletti guitar. He came into the shop and basically sat in a living room setting with about 20 people and just chatted about his life with Guns N’ Roses, his new guitar, and answered a number of questions. The following is some of what he said about GnR:

– I asked him if the new GnR album would sound more like a classic GnR album, something closer to a Chinese Democracy sound, or if it’s even evolved into a more modern sound than that. Fortus said the sound will be even different and more evolved than Chinese Democracy.

-Fortus mentioned that with the band’s in-ear monitors, Axl has a channel that the audience hears, and a channel where he can communicate to the band. Sometimes while band members are performing solos, Axl will be telling jokes to them.

-The upcoming tour dates for 2019 are still sort of part of the NITL tour, but are essentially “Add-ons” to the tour.

-Fortus played a brief riff of “Rock N’ Roll Ain’t Easy” by Dizzy Reed, that he performed the guitar part for.

-When asked how Melissa Reese joined the band, Fortus explained that she used to date Brain, which is how the connection was made. GnR needed an auxiliary keyboard player, and so they added her onboard. He praised her for her talent and great background vocals.

I photographed him too after the event, showing off his new Paoletti guitar which he will use onstage too! Hope you found the news interesting!