Guns N' Roses respond to sample claims

Guns N' Roses have responded to claims that they plagiarised music from two songs by Ulrich Schnauss on last year's Chinese Democracy.

It has been claimed that the track 'Riad N' the Bedouins' features ambient noise samples taken without permission from Schnauss's 'Wherever You Are' and 'A Strangely Isolated Place'.

The band's manager Irving Azoff said: "The band believed when the record came out and still believes that there are no unauthorised samples on the track.

"The snippets of 'ambient noise' in question were provided by a member of the album's production team who has assured us that these few seconds of sound were obtained legitimately."

He added: "Artists these days can't read the minds of those they collaborate with and therefore are unfortunately vulnerable to claims like this one.

"While the band resents the implication that they would ever use another artist's work improperly and are assessing possible counterclaims, they are confident this situation will be satisfactorily resolved."

However, Schnauss's attorney Brian Caplan told Rolling Stone: "The band and the record company are ultimately responsible for copyright infringement.

"I can tell you that there is no paper trail authorising the use of these songs and nobody from the plaintiff's side authorized the use of this song."