Guns N' Roses: Is their new album worth the wait?

There is little more tantalising to the music lover than the notion of the lost album. These are the greatest albums never made, the ones that have been dumped, destroyed or delayed beyond reason. Pop has always been as much about myth-making as music and, like the rock star extinguished in his prime, an unreleased album signifies unfinished business and myriad what-might-have-beens.

The circumstances of an album's non-appearance can range from the prosaic to the downright bizarre. Meddling record companies, egotistical musicians, money, drugs and death have all contributed to LPs being lost. In some cases, it's probably for the best that they don't see the light of day. In the world of pop, one fan's tortured genius is another's musical nemesis, and even great artists have their off-days.

Tomorrow, Guns N' Roses will release Chinese Democracy, a mere 17 years after the band's last album – so you'll be able to make up your mind, finally, whether nearly two decades of rows, rumours, walk-outs and false dawns have been worth it. Nevertheless, irrespective of its contents, Chinese Democracy has become the stuff of legend. Below is a guide to it and other albums that have been abandoned, resurrected or simply lost in the mists of time.

'Smile', the Beach Boys

Started 1966; released 2004
Masterpiece rating: 8/10

The most mythical unfinished pop album of all time, Smile was meant to be the Beach Boys' glorious riposte to the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper. Instead, the album signalled the band's troubled composer Brian Wilson's descent into madness. While writing his so-called "teenage symphony to God", Wilson's fragile mental state prompted him to have a giant sandpit installed in his living-room so he could feel the beach under his feet. At his studio he started a fire so that the musicians might draw inspiration from the smoke. The demos were met with incomprehension by the rest of the band, who thought they should stick to happy-clappy surf music. Eventually, Wilson pulled the plug and retired to his bed where he stayed for the next three years, only leaving it to check the mailbox for daily consignments of cocaine.

This is where the story might have ended, except that 38 years later, buoyed by a series of comeback performances, Wilson dusted off the master tapes and, with the help of his new backing band and the original lyricist Van Dyke Parks, finished the album. The result was better than anyone dared hope.

'Lifehouse', The Who

Started 1971; released in various forms from 2000
Masterpiece rating: 4/10

One of the greatest problems faced by any band is how to follow a hit. After 1969's unfeasibly successful Tommy, Pete Townshend (below) agonised over what should come next. Having immersed himself in Indian spirituality and science-fiction, he eventually dreamt up a sci-fi psychedelic rock opera set in a post-industrial totalitarian future. Lifehouse was originally envisioned to combine a film, album, and interactive live performance but, like Brian Wilson's Smile, the concept was lost on Townshend's bandmates and the project was shelved. Some of the songs were salvaged for the album Who's Next, a work some consider to be the band's finest.

The music was finally exhumed and assembled in 2000 into a mammoth six-CD package named The Lifehouse Chronicles; that same year it was broadcast as a radio play. In 2003, Lifehouse was performed as a stage show at London's Sadler's Wells with the London Chamber Orchestra and, four years later, was released as a piece of software. (Rumours of a Lifehouse theme park and clothing line are yet to be confirmed.)

'Homegrown', Neil Young

Started 1974
Masterpiece rating: 2/10

No stranger to the concept of the lost masterpiece, Neil Young has shelved at least four albums throughout his career. Yet from the start of his post-Buffalo Springfield solo career in the early 1970s he has managed to maintain a prolific output, his album releases representing a modest proportion of his recorded work. Homegrown, an acoustic album chronicling his break-up with the actress Carrie Snodgrass, was finished in 1974 and the cover art completed. But after inviting friends over to celebrate its completion and listen to the album, Young deemed the finished article too depressing. On the same reel as Homegrown were demos for the marginally more upbeat Tonight's the Night, and all present agreed that he should release that instead, so he did. Over the years many of the songs on Homegrown appeared on subsequent albums, though the album has never been released.

'The Black Album', Prince

Started 1987; released 1994
Masterpiece rating: 3/10

The jury's still out on whether The Black Album, Prince's intended follow-up to the hugely successful Sign O' the Times, was a genius exercise in self-promotion or a sign of an artist in crisis.

Initially, it was to be called The Funk Bible but Prince (opposite) decided instead to make an album with no title and no artist credit. It was to be a down-and-dirty funk album replete with tales of wickedness and sexual depravity. Promotional copies came swathed in black, with only a list of songs and a catalogue number betraying their contents.

But days before the release date, the album was withdrawn under Prince's instructions. Rumours abounded as to why, one of the more persistent being that God had appeared to Prince in a dream and, appalled by its explicit contents, told him not to put it out.

Whatever the real story, the last-minute removal of the recording guaranteed its mythical status. Bootleggers went into overdrive and The Black Album became one of the most pirated LPs of all time, allegedly shifting half-a-million illegal copies. Finally, Warner Records released the album in 1994 as a limited edition, to a generally under-whelmed response.

'Power of the Dollar', 50 Cent

Started 2000
Masterpiece rating: 9/10

Say what you like about "Fiddy"(above), but he sure knows how to make an entrance. Two months prior to the release of his acerbic debut album Power of the Dollar, the 25 year-old crack-dealer-turned-rapper was shot nine times during a video shoot, allegedly by a rival rapper who himself was gunned down a few weeks later. 50 Cent – aka Curtis Jackson – survived the shooting, the bullet that lodged near his mouth creating his trademark slurred flow.

Eschewing the tradition of the get-well card, his record company Columbia responded to the shooting by shelving the album and releasing their new signing from his contract. Less than a year later, Jackson returned to the scene with a self-released single, "Guess Who's Back?", and was swiftly signed to Eminem and Dr Dre's label Shady Records. His official debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin', became the fastest-selling debut in American chart history and turned 50 Cent into a superstar. Meanwhile, his unofficial debut, Power of the Dollar, became a favourite among bootleggers.

'Chinese Democracy', Guns N' Roses

Started 1994; released tomorrow

In 1991, Guns N' Roses were the biggest band on the planet. Four years after its release, their swaggering debut album, Appetite For Destruction, was still in the album charts. The band set a new record with Use Your Illusion I & II – two albums released simultaneously – when they went to number one and two in the US charts. Seventeen years on, four of the five original members have gone and the story of the band's singer, Axl Rose, his monstrous ego, and his attempts to finish the most expensive album of all time have become legendary.

Described by The New York Times as "the recording industry's most notorious white elephant", Chinese Democracy is Guns N' Roses' long, long, long-awaited follow-up to the Use Your Illusion albums. Due out tomorrow, it's been 14 years in the making and has run up a reported £7m in studio bills. In that time Rose has hired and fired four managers, eight producers and at least 20 musicians. Chinese Democracy was originally due to appear in 1996 but was delayed, according to Rose, due to the departure of long-standing band-mates Duff McKagan and Slash. Rose claimed they left of their own free will, they said Rose began treating them like session musicians.

In 2000, Rose invited Rolling Stone magazine to his Malibu mansion to preview a dozen new tracks and a release date was set for later in the year, but nothing materialised. In 2004, the band's bassist Tommy Stinson said the album was "almost done"; Rose told fans on his website they'd be better off waiting for the resurrection of Christ.

So great has been the feeling that the album would never see the light of day that earlier this year the soft-drink company Dr Pepper promised a free soda for everyone in America if Chinese Democracy was released before the year was out. Whatever bright spark came up with that one will no doubt be clearing their desk in the morning. The musical landscape has been transformed since Guns N' Roses bestrode it like a tattooed, leather-trousered Colossus. Television talent shows now dictate what's in the charts; the record industry is facing extinction; hard rock has been in, then out, then in again. In making the world wait for 17 years, we could yet find that Axl Rose has timed it to perfection.

'Chinese Democracy' is (finally) released tomorrow on Polydor Records, and reviewed in the main paper, The Critical List