Blackstar

I mean the little joke "the general is a monster".

Also Fernando's quip and the two songs leaking together. We need to wait, I guess.

Yes, there have been other people's accounts about this. In fact there's one in the same Reddit thread the two stories a few posts above are from. This comment was in response to the person who said he met Axl before the show and didn't know it was him: I work at a venue he they performed at. The dude has a serious think about not being noticed and not wanting to see himself. He was probably excited that you didn’t recognize him and probably even more excited that you are there for the music and not to look at him. With that said he was a complete asshole about a lot of weird shit. Like having mirrors covered up and people not being allowed to look at him. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/14x1x1q/comment/jrnw11a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I don't think he's been like that so much in the recent years in relation to Axl (despite the autobiography) (This huge Axl picture in the background is like god is behind him, lol)

It didn't seem like taking the piss to me, because he usually grins when he does that (and he wasn't this time).

And also the MSL leaked alleged track list dates from early 2008, before Ashba was in the band.

This probably too much reading into it. I don't think Axl would talk about the subject matter so openly.

According to the credits and copyright registrations, GNR owns the versions of CD era songs that have been released by this lineup, not the label.

Going by what Slash has said combined with other sources, it seems that Axl initially rejected the songs. Then, at a later time and when It's Five O' Clock... was in the process of being recorded, he wanted to work on some of them, and that was most likely before Slash found a singer. But it appears that some of the tracks had placeholder lyrics written by Slash which were the basis of the lyrics Dover wrote later, and some other lyrics were mostly written by Dover.

No one knows. People have assumed that it could be "Lyrics" and "Vocals" but I doubt it, as we know that Atlas already had lyrics and also there's "lyr" after another song, which suggests that lyrics would be indicated differently. Another thought is that "V" may stand for "Verse", "Ch" for "Chorus" and "Br" for "Bridge", meaning that there was still work needed to be done for those parts. But then there's no explanation for the rest ("M", "H", "L").

He seemed to be in fine mood when they first played it at The Hollywood Bowl, so I doubt it was because of that (and I doubt that he hadn't been informed of the leak yet).

Very good quality recording of The General (not from the live stream): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqRVLPwJcw8 From the video above (and the live stream) It looks like he wanted to say more about The General but got pissed off about something (probably technical issues) before the song started.

From twitter and https://www.instagram.com/p/CzS61eyOpBg/

Posted by GN'R https://www.instagram.com/p/CzUwlbjPxjo/

Not many good pictures from this show https://www.instagram.com/p/CzS9xUwuKBf/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CzSxaQUO99T/

Slash seemed to be really into it during the first performance at the Hollywood Bowl. My guess is that they were just having issues with the organization of the festival. Yes, I don't think many people would mind if he talk-sang the outro with his low voice. It would just be a different delivery and the audience would be able to hear the words better, too.

I haven't heard of any such statement coming from Duff.

Yes. And if it's a goodbye (for now) it means that they won't attempt to write new music any time soon.

During the interview with Duff at Power Trip (around 9:20 minute mark)

Melissa's tech, probably. It was both he and the keyboard tech filling in at the other shows Melissa was absent.

Coma:

It sounded like Axl wanted to say more about The General, but something happened that pissed him off. He was ready to say something, then he stopped and said to someone "Can't hear a word you're saying". And then, "Alright, so this is a new song. I would like to tell you how it's a new song, but... whatever. Okay, so this is called The General.

He just knows that GN'R will not be touring for a while.

I thought that the ending of Coma sounded stronger than usual.