Blackstar

Thanks! Do you remember by any chance if what you heard was only Monsters or it was both The General and Monsters?

I guess if someone had it they would also have to wonder why it didn't sound like the phone recording at all.

Yeah, okay. But that doesn't change when it leaked for the majority of fans and, most importantly, about the fanbase being in the dark regarding which song it was.

I have a file with all the leaks from 2003 to 2018 and the date each one leaked, and the date for the leak of the cell phone recording is June 26, 2018.

The Evader version of "The General" that we know (with the reconstructed Axl vocals and speculated lyrics) is certainly from 2018 or a bit later. Maybe there was an earlier instrumental version based on the orchestral intros (even that though, if it existed, couldn't have been earlier than 2010).

I think Evader's version circulated in 2019 (at least that was when there was a thread about it on here), but maybe it had been out there since 2018 - definitely not earlier though, since the phone clip surfaced in 2018.

I guess @Mindray11 , who recorded it, can answer that. I'm sure he has explained it before.

Yeah, I'm sure Axl and most certainly Fernando were laughing at us all this time.

It's very funny how this confusion about the orchestral intro led to a chain of misconceptions, which in turn led the fanbase to years long "certainties" and "facts" that ended up being proven wrong: - The General gained mythical status after Bach's comments and Axl's vague statement ("you may have heard parts of it somewhere") intrigued fans even more. Fake snippets and lyrics started circulating. - Then came the hint in the GN'R tweet about the orchestral intro. The date of the tweet was Dec. 11, 2010, four days after the show in Adelaide where The orchestral piece from what we now know is Monsters/Soul Monster was used as intro seemingly for the first time during that year - before that, the orchestral intro that was played at shows was only from what we now know is The General. But the slight similarity of the two different pieces/intros, and maybe the timing of the tweet, led the fanbase to believe that both were part of The General. - In 2018, the cell phone recording from the Vienna party in 2010 surfaced. Fans with good ears recognized the orchestral part from Monsters, which they then thought was from The General, and Evader used it for his own reconstruction of the phone clip. So it was case closed that the barely heard song in that recording was The General and fans could get an idea of what it sounded like through Evader's version. - So, since we "knew" what The General sounded like, Soul Monster, the other "big gun", would have to be looked for elsewhere. And a year later, among the loads of leaks of rough mixes from Zutaut's storage locker, there was an instrumental titled "Me and My Elvis". The word "Elvis" in the title combined with the Sabbath-y vibe of it were enough for the majority of the fanbase to connect the dots with Axl's description of the song Soul Monster and jump to the conclusion that it was the same song, even though the earliest confirmed title of Soul Monster ("Leave Me Alone") left room for doubt. Many fans even renamed their downloaded track of "Me and My Elvis" into "Soul Monster", and the track started being shared with that title and not with the title it had in the Village discs. So it ended up being known as Soul Monster and some fans are still confused even now. And, once again, "insiders" didn't know any of this and had it all as wrong as the rest of the fanbase.

It's apparently a band (unrelated to GN'R) that performs dressed as Transformers : http://www.thecybertronicspree.com/

https://www.instagram.com/lias1229/

On Absurd I suppose she replaced whatever Ptiman played originally, maybe the bridge? I would think that Dizzy plays the main keyboard parts, since he co-wrote the song. Hard Skool, I have no idea. I didn't even notice there was a keyboard, then people pointed out that there is a keyboard low in the mix, but wouldn't it make more sense if it was Dizzy? I don't know about the drums on SOYL. I'm not good at noticing differences. But just going by what has been said (Steven said he didn't recognize his drumming on it and Frank, when asked if he was on it, avoided answering and just said "that's a question for management"), I'd say that it could be Frank.

I think he wanted to talk about the present in the "I don't believe you" line, but then he would have to say "Perhaps I am wrong" in the previous line and maybe that didn't sound good. As you say, he could have also said "but I don't believe you", though then he would have to replace "but" in the line that follows ("but how would I know...") with another word, because if there were two "but" starting two lines in a row it wouldn't sound good either. I have also noticed that although he says "But how would I know how it feels or what it is to be you", in the official lyrics in the description of the auto-generated video on youtube it says "... or what it takes to be you", which would have been better.

Absurd: There were no specific credits except for Brain on drums. But we know that Slash (of course), Duff and Fortus are on it and Melissa says on her website that she's on it, too. Hard Skool: No credits, but we know for sure that Slash, Duff, and Fortus are on it. The drums have been a matter for debate. Most people thought it was Frank, but according to Melissa's website it's Brain and she's on it, too. Perhaps: We have detailed official credits. Slash, Duff, Fortus, Brain, Axl on piano, Dizzy on keyboards.

It's not nobody from NuGnR. Brain has credits for The General and Monsters, Paul Tobias for Perhaps, and he and 3 other NuGnR members have small shares for Hard Skool. Regarding UYI, that's not exactly true. Read the thread I linked to for more details and explanation.

I'm not sure that it says "its soul burns out", but definitely in some lines in the chorus the last words are "burnt down" or "burnt out" and in some "it's over now", so it's not the same in all the lines. But even if the word "soul" is not on the chorus, it's in the second verse: "you stole my soul with the devil's romancing". We discuss the lyrics here:

That was "Daddy Can the Devil do Mommy and me?" He said he wrote it inspired by some segments from the movie that he saw: https://www.a-4-d.com/t5025p30-21-september-1997-november-1999-josh-and-tommy-joins-robin-leaves-live-era-is-released#21281 I guess it was something that he wrote for himself and didn't submit it to be included in the film score.

Slash and Duff have got credits for all the songs released by the NITL lineup, including these. Just read the link in my signature - or if you're on your phone and can't see signatures, click here (it's a long post, so if you're only interested in the credits for the new songs, scroll down to the end) and also here for more details about the credits for The General and Monsters..

It was two guys, the keyboard tech and Melissa's own tech.

Radio silence about the leaks, however the explanation from Fernando on Reddit and the subsequent apology about the delay by the band accounts on social media were after they knew that the songs had leaked.

No, we don't. But he didn't really rap with "GNR", it was just Dizzy and his friends (the so called "shadow band") and maybe Paul Tobias. And it was in 1997, before actual CD sessions started.

I have bookmarked this.

It's still 5 weeks until the official release and I dread to think how many more conspiracy theories people will have come up with in the meantime. And it won't end even after it's been released. The guitars will be the same, maybe there will be credits saying it's Slash, yet there will still be people saying that it's really Robin.

Yes, if they're going to play one of these songs live, it should be Monsters. I think that The General would be difficult because, in addition to Axl's vocal issues, it would be just awkward for him to sing these lyrics.

For me it's 100% (and I'm rarely that confident about something).