NEWS: Tommy Stinson Admits 'Chinese Democracy' Wasn't A "Huge Success"

The Guns N' Roses bassist – who joined the group in 1996, around the time they started work on the album – thinks frontman Axl Rose had some good, unique ideas for the record, but acknowledges when it was finally released in 2008 it was received as well as anticipated.

He said: "Axl was really trying to do something that no one had done or made a success out of before. Not that 'Chinese Democracy' was necessarily a huge success, but I think in a lot of ways it was, because it came out and, you know, people bought it."

Before joining Guns N' Roses, Tommy had been a member of the groups The Replacements, Bash & Pop and Perfect, but admitted he never really considered joining Axl's band as a long term project.

He added in an interview with Delaware Online: "I never really was thinking that's where I'd want to go necessarily. It was almost sort of like the best thing for me at that time. I really just wanted to play bass for someone for awhile and take the stress of being a lead guy off myself, and also it seemed like about the most punk rock thing I could get involved with at the time."