Photo composite: Wireimage; Courtesy of Cadbury Schweppes
Dr. Pepper Would Like to Buy the World a New Guns N’ Roses Album
We’re not the sole proprietors of a local beverage-distribution concern, but we’re going to guess that there’s a simpler way to get your hands on a can of Dr. Pepper than to have a superstar metal band spend about twenty years and $15 million on a long-rumored album that likely will never appear. However, if the looooong-awaited Chinese Democracy by Guns N’ Roses finally does show up anytime in 2008, Cadbury Schweppes cannily promised this week to give a free can of Dr. Pepper to every citizen of America. Axl Rose, the band’s creatively dreadlocked and creatively deadlocked frontman, issued this response yesterday: “We are surprised and very happy to have the support of Dr. Pepper with our album ‘Chinese Democracy,’ as for us, this came totally out of the blue. If there is any involvement with this promotion by our record company or others, we are unaware of such at this time.†(Other things Axl Rose is unaware of at this time: When this damn album will be finished; the current president of the United States; the time.)
Thirsty would-be-Peppers might be heartened by Rose’s assurance to MTV that the album “will come out this year,†except for the fact that fans previously have been promised the record would come out in 1999, 2001, 2002, 2006, and on March 6, 2007. So if you’re hankering for a Dr. Pepper, you’re better off visiting your local vending machine. —Adam Sternbergh
Dr. Pepper issues challenge to Guns N’ Roses [Billboard]