rocknroll41

The locker discs didn’t have many guitar solos, apart from the ones that Brian May did. The Antiquiet versions were better, but the rhythms and such that Bumble eventually added to the Final Cut are interesting, at least.

Live albums are always “touched up.” In some cases the touching up is minimal, but in other cases it’s extreme (Kiss Alive, GnR Live Era, etc.). I recall a Duff interview from 2000 where he said he spoke to Axl on the phone a few weeks prior but that it was a little awkward. Sound like Axl and Duff were still in touch from 1997-2000 and may have seen each other every now and then during that time. Duff’s departure was not as ugly as the others.

I think those final “dead engine” notes your talking about are cause he’s most likely playing the solo (or at least parts of it) on a fretless. Bumble’s Riad Solo is on the final version of the song. The demo version is a mixture of Robin and Bucket.

So I’m confused about something: If Tom Mayhue has been Axl’s mic tech since the beginning, then what did he do during the “dark ages” of 1993-2001 when there were no shows? Is he a studio mic tech too? Did Axl keep him on the payroll that whole time just for the fuck of it? Also, if his brother is McBob, then why was Axl cool with keeping Tom around during the NuGNR vs VR days? Axl knew that McBob was with Velvet Revolver, right? That must’ve been kinda awkward (especially for the two brothers caught in opposite sides of the war).

I think he meant after all of this year’s tour dates.

It wouldn’t have fit on the End Of Days soundtrack though. Axl was trying to be all NuMetal at the time.

I saw it. It’s nowhere near as good as the classic three, of course, but not the worst thing I’ve ever seen either. I think I like it better than Crystal Skull, at least (but I don’t mind that one either).

If I had to guess, in his mind, Hard Skool EP = Album.

Yeah but then he did a total 180 after VR fired his ass.

He was referring to General Tso’s Chicken. Not kfc. That was another piece of evidence, yes. Supposedly Buckethead was also considering coming back in 2006 if Duff was in and Stinson was out. Bumble was a last-minute edition. Robin and Fortus even reworked the songs to fit with just the two of them, in case neither Slash, Bucket, Bumble came on board. The 2006 lineup went thru a lot of trial and error. Same with 2016.

Actually, a 2006 reunion did almost happen. Both Scott Weiland and that famous photographer whose name I can’t remember confirmed as much. It’s why we had the hybrid logo that year and a two-disc greatest hits that got canceled and whatnot. Eddie Trunk also implied that he heard whispers of a reunion almost happening that year.

That’s because in a separate clip the guy said “they recorded 29 songs back when they did AFD and now they’re finally finishing the ones that didn’t make the original album.” Mind you, I think he misspoke, or confused AFD with CD or something, but that’s what he said.

If it’s true that we are only getting six cd2 songs at most and then after that they’re moving on to leftover AFD/1996 material, then I wonder which cd2 songs are gonna remain in the vault. My gut is starting to tell me that they’ll never finish songs like Tonto, Mustache, etc., which is kind of a shame. Hopefully we get those on a boxset, at least.

I would hope you’re right, but they didn’t seem to eat up Absurd/HS.

Not only that, but the song itself is 23 years old, and doesn’t seem to have changed much in that entire amount of time.

Pretty sure all those songs got turned into Prayers for Damned/ Blessed by Sixx AM. Maybe!

I agree that he’s probably confusing AFD for CD or the 1996 sessions. Either that or he’s talking about songs like Crash Diet, etc.

Yeah now that I think about it, it’s probably best that things happened the way they did. The final album that we got in 2008 is being looked back on fondly now (as Bumble predicted). Had we gotten two, less-layered albums in say 2001 and 2008 instead, who knows if they woulda aged well? Sometimes less is more.

No, they woulda never been as big as the original band, regardless of how many albums they did or didn’t put out.

For some reason the image was removed on the last page but it was just a pic of a tape that said GNR Demos - 1999 and listed like four songs. I believe they were IRS, Catcher in the Rye, TWAT and Hardschool.

All this talk of when these songs were written just further enforces for me that maybe the album should’ve just come out in late 2000, with songs like: ChiDem, The Blues, ITW, Catcher, Riad, IRS, Madagascar, Prostitute, Hard School, Atlas, Perhaps, Oklahoma (assuming it really did have full lyrics by then, as the HOB setlist suggested) And then by 2008 or so we coulda gotten a second album with songs like: Shackler’s, Better, TWAT, Scraped, Sorry, This I Love, Silkworms, The General, Soul Monster, Quick Song and whatever other songs probably had vocals by then like Zodiac, Ides of March, etc. And then by the time the RHOF induction rolled around in 2012, Axl probably woulda been more open to going… Oh, well… Was the snippet from the soundcheck? Or was it the locker leak?

I kinda remember hearing about Pitman showing Axl the horn sound specifically and then Axl immediately started playing the Maddy riff. I also vaguely recall Axl saying that Maddy was his first time writing lyrics since the UYI era, so that kinda fits too. Someone shared a screenshot here a few posts back of the 1999 demo tape. It says “Hardschool.” For Tommy talking about Riad and Brain talking about The General, look up their appearances on Brando’s podcast. He posts clips of that stuff on his YouTube page. I think Voodoochild is right though that when Axl asked Brain “hey why is it called The General?” it must’ve been at the Joint/Hard Rock gigs in Vegas in LATE 2001, and Brain simply confused it for House of Blues.

My mistake. Either way, Atlas had to have existed in 1999 cause Brian May also worked on it.

Nice effort! But a few things are off: OMG was being written when Duff and Sorum were still in the band in early 1997 (as confirmed by Axl during the song’s press release). Madagascar began life as soon as Pitman joined the band in late 1997. Dave Dominguez says Ides of March was already being worked on (and almost done, funny enough) in 1998. Atlas and Hardschool were on the same 1999 demo tape that had IRS, Catcher, TWAT and Prostitute. Riad also comes from 1999 cause Tommy confirmed that Brian May did a solo for it. I could be wrong about this one, but I’m pretty sure Brain said he started writing The General before the House of Blues gig (so late 2000). Though Dizzy implied that the song comes from 2004. Timeline is confusing for that one.