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Ulrich Schnauss Launches Lawsuit Against Guns N' Roses

8:57 a.m. · October 6, 2009 · by Nick Neyland

Guns N’ Roses' Chinese Democracy was a notorious flop, and the news surrounding the album just gets worse for frontman Axl Rose. It seems the track “Riad N’ the Bedouins” borrowed portions of two songs by experimental German musician Ulrich Schnauss, and now his European and North American labels are suing.

Schnauss is signed to Indipendiente in the U.K. and Domino in the U.S., and the labels are seeking around $1 million in damages from Rose. “Riad N’ the Bedouins” begins with an extended ambient passage that the labels are saying bears a strong resemblance to two Schnauss tracks—“Wherever You Are” and “A Strangely Isolated Place.”

The idea that Rose might have spent an extended period of the past decade listening to Schnauss’s music is bizarre, although he certainly had plenty of down time. The two Schnauss tracks can be heard below, and Rolling Stone has already claimed there isn’t much resemblance between them and the Guns N’ Roses song.