Chinese Democracy Tour of Europe was announced in December 2000 as a New Year's Day performance at the House of Blues in Las Vegas. It was also rumoured that the long-awaited "Chinese Democracy" would be released in June 2001, for which the scheduled European Tour would be promotional. Guns N' Roses – then composed of vocalist Axl Rose, lead guitarists Buckethead and Robin Finck, rhythm guitarist Paul Tobias (who joined in 1994 to replace Gilby Clarke), bassist Tommy Stinson, drummer Brain and keyboardists Dizzy Reed (still with the band since joining in 1990) and Chris Pitman (who joined between 1998 and 2000) –
Chinese Democracy However, plans fell through and only the "art edition" was released in limited quantities. By the time "Chinese Democracy" was released, only 3 of the 14 songs had not been leaked or played live. Music blogger Kevin Cogill streamed nine tracks of "Chinese Democracy" on his website Antiquiet for "an hour or two" in June 2008. Shortly after the leaked files were made available, the website server crashed because of the high volume of user traffic and the tracks were later removed. In August, the FBI arrested Cogill under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act for releasing copyrighted material. According