GoodOlJohnnyK

That’s kinda what happened. This reunion has gone incredibly well. The band seems to be getting along. They’re playing consistent shows, starting on time, making a lot of money, making a lot of concert audiences happy (moreso on the nights Axl sounds semi-decent). And all of this is because Axl is running the show. Slash and Duff divorced themselves from the band in the mid 90s and it changed their perspective on it. In 1993, Slash and Duff were probably willing to fight for control with Axl over this stuff because at the time it was still *their* band just as much as it was his, in their eyes. They were still on a journey that began when the band got together in the 80s. It was still their imperial phase. Fast forward 20+ years, after playing mostly theaters and clubs on their own, and their attitude is probably “hey, I left. This is Axl’s band now.” Of course, they wrote the songs with him. Of course, Slash and Duff are just as much a part of Guns N’ Roses as Axl is, in terms of the band’s history and songwriting and even legally with regards to the older work and artwork, etc. But logistically and operationally, this is Axl’s band and that was probably made clear to Slash and Duff before they rejoined. That’s why they’re playing with Axl’s drummer and rhythm guitarist. That’s why there’s a second keyboardist/sampler in the band. It wasn’t a 3-man decision, it was Axl saying “this is who we’re rolling with, you guys good with that? Oh, the drummer isn’t to your liking? Work it out with him and get on the same page. See you at rehearsals.” It’s similar to someone leaving a C-suite position at a large corporation but maintaining a seat on the board. That’s Slash and Duff - they sit at the table, but Axl is the CEO. I would even argue that perhaps Beta and Fernando have more sway than, say, Slash. And a lot of that, again, is down to Slash and Duff being cool with it. Again, they have perspective: they left and went off on their own. In 1995, Slash still felt he had to protect his band, his legacy. 20 years later, he’s a legend. An icon of music. He probably doesn’t *care* about when Guns is releasing new music. It’s more important for him to be friends with Axl and Duff and play these songs to adoring audiences in large venues than it is to fight with Axl again over the direction of new music. What once was important to Slash and Duff simple isn’t anymore. Their priorities have shifted.

I also keep hearing about The General but, in all my years coming here, have never heard it. Has anyone *actually* heard this song? Is it available online *anywhere*? It appears all evidence of it is anecdotal - similar to Cuban Skies or one of the other songs that people here claim to know all about because some guy said he was at a nightclub with Axl and Axl played it 15 years ago or something like that. Why does it get counted as one of the “complete” songs like Atlas and Perhaps? I understand there’s a video where someone’s flipping through a song list and it’s in there, but wasn’t The General allegedly used as intro music for the band on a previous tour? Couldn’t that song list be a production list for the audio/video/lighting guys? And it just never got taken out in case they need to use it or reference it again? Wouldn’t that be a more reasonable conclusion than “The General is getting released soon!”

I do have to say: I love this forum. The Guns N’ Roses fanbase is so unique among any other fandom I’m a part of. It’s endlessly entertaining. Why does everyone take every piece of information so literally? Mayhue mentions the new recordings are “Appetite-oriented” and some of you have turned that into “there is an unreleased song from Appetite that they’re working on now.” It’s mind boggling. Especially when the math being used is based on a guy who got the number of tracks on Appetite wrong (there are 12, not 11). And why did he get the number wrong? Because he’s just speaking off the top of his head, like a normal human. To Mayhue, unlike some of us here, this isn’t some holy grail of unreleased music he’s been waiting for forever. It’s just part of his job. His day to day. It’s like when Slash described the new songs as “epic” and people started going on about how we’re going to get another long intricate song, when in reality Slash could easily just using “epic” as a synonym for “cool.” Not everything should be taken literally - especially with this band! There’s no new album - at least not yet. Slash *told you what to expect.* They are the recooked ChiDem songs and they will not feature new vocals from Axl. I’d bet money on it. We got Absurd and Hard Skool. We’ll get Perhaps and maybe Atlas and SOG, depending on how long this band goes on for. When will we get them? Likely around the time of any upcoming North American tours because that’s where the band can use a push selling tickets.

While the lyrics aren’t Shakespeare, they’re no more cringey than anything else on Chinese Democracy, which has some shockingly undercooked lyrics, especially for a lyricist as gifted as Axl. The entire title track doesn’t have a whole lot going on lyrically. If The World is middle school caliber generic heartbreak sentiment. Scraped is the kind of self empowerment nonsense that you can read on a wall in a high school gym locker room. Riad is complete nonsense. The less said about IRS the better. Even This I Love, written back in 1993, is really poor lyrically. But it doesn’t matter, because in most of these cases, the songs themselves were good. Hard Skool is a good song, lyrics notwithstanding. The same can’t be said for Perhaps.

Music, of course, is subjective. But I could not disagree more. Both Absurd and Hard Skool at least have some energy to them and Hard Skool is catchy. Perhaps is dull, mid-tempo mud that never goes anywhere. The only nice thing I have to say about Perhaps is that it’s not as bad as Atlas Shrugged.

Exactly, and thank you for your honesty. It’s not a coincidence that his voice is high in the mix when he’s singing in his lower register, and then gets buried when he hits his midrange in the very same verse. He’s not singing as hard into the mic - and not very hard at *all* - when he slips into the Mickey midrange voice, which is why you can’t hear it - because there’s not much there to hear! I *love* Axl. One of my favorite singers and frontmen. And I think, so far, he’s done okay on this tour. But all the “Axl sounds *great*! Fucking idiot sound guy doesn’t know how to mix for TV” stuff just confuses me.

Two notes: I hear a lot of people giving the TV audio guy a hard time, but I think most of the issue is Axl, rather than the mixer. Axl doesn’t sing loudly when he’s in his Mickey falsetto. The volume coming from him is probably half of what it is when he’s singing in his chest voice or when he’s hitting the high notes. So he’s basically depending on the mixer to adjust for him when he’s in his midrange, which is extraordinarily weak. It’s hard to expect a TV audio engineer to go “oh right, let’s down the vocals up for the second half of this verse, etc.” Axl’s all over the place, vocally. Slash was the absolute MVP of the show. He really put on a tour de force, was playing great, and is rightly getting his credit online. But I’m still shocked at how little gain he uses live with Guns these days. Either that or his volume knob is rolled off a bit much for my liking. C’mon Slash, just a bit more gain will make those notes sing a bit more!

I wouldn’t put too much stock in the “classic GNR” description. People say that about everything. “St. Anger” was described by many reviewers as “back to the classic Metallica sound” simply because a lot of the songs were fast. Besides that, it bore no resemblance to classic Metallica. I imagine this will be the same. Besides, we’ve heard the songs already. We know more or less what they sound like.

As I said way back when, when everyone was still calling the Spotify customer service line and asking about algorithms: They’re releasing 1 or 2 more Chinese leftovers to build hype for the North American leg. The band sells tickets in Europe easily. North America’s a bit of a tougher sell without something keeping them in the news. My guess is, obviously, Perhaps and, eventually, second track that already had vocals from the Village Sessions (Atlas or SoG). It’ll be a very similar roll out to Absurd and Hard Skool. Slash is probably adding/tweaking some guitars (hence the “he can really play!” comment. Unless that was just a commentary on the track playback.) The problem here, of course, is that Perhaps *sucks* and so does Atlas and SoG. I’m sure they’ve been reworked and Slashed up, but I’m not sure if even Duff and Slash can Polish those turds. We’ll see.