Blackstar

Although I'm not one to easily jump to conclusions, I would think that this is not up for debate. But here we are, lol. It's beyond me how this can be questioned, but Me and My Elvis being the same song as Soul Monster was considered "fact" (despite the lack of further evidence).

I think it's much more than an educated guess. It's a "If it looks like a duck..." thing. But I edited the title so there's no misunderstanding that Beltrami said it outright.

He remembers working on Monsters. Isn't that enough confirmation?

Credit and many thanks to @D.. for emailing Marco Beltrami and getting this information. Although he doesn't remember the title Monsters had at the time, he clearly remembers working on it and that it was a separate song from The General. So since we know Leave Me Alone was one of the four unreleased songs Beltrami worked on and also that it was the early working title of Soul Monster, and considering that Monsters fits Axl's description of Soul Monster perfectly, it's pretty clear that they're the same song - which, of course, also means that the "Me and My Elvis" instrumental that was found in the locker leaks was not Soul Monster as many people thought. Edit: Here is what we know about the song "Soul Monster":

The school bell and the spelling bother me, too, but not to the point to ruin the song for me. I don't get why it's such a big deal. It's not like there hasn't been cheesy stuff on GN'R songs before. "Cool ranch dressing", for example - I haven't seen many people being so put off by that.

Yes, you're missing something. The instrumental you're referring to is not Soul Monster. * Maybe it would be a good idea if @D.. started a separate thread with the information from Marco Beltrami and his confirmation that Monsters is Soul Monster, because it will be lost in this thread and every couple of pages someone will ask the same questions about Me and My Elvis saying that Monsters doesn't sound like it etc.

Yeah, that was the sexual abuse part he talked publicly about (the context of the story he told has been confirmed from other sources, but not the sexual abuse itself, which would be hard to find evidence for anyway). But he also talked about being physically abused by his stepfather, which was from direct memory and not through regression therapy (there is also a separate sexual abuse claim, not made publicly by Axl but from someone who allegedly Axl had talked to about it, but the source is questionable).

Yeah, but during that time period they were using that specific studio. It's just that Zutaut didn't have everything on those discs.

Oh, I vaguely remembered I had heard this claim before. Supposedly Fortus said it during a chat he did on facebook a couple of months ago, but of course there's no evidence (link, screenshot etc.). It's very unlikely that Fortus would talk so specifically - and even if he was willing to talk about this stuff, he wouldn't remember these working titles. I guess the real source is the same as before

Yeah, some people have said that it's a possibility. Personally I don't think it's likely. Only addressing this (not the two vs. one song debate): This is not Fernando's job. It's the publisher's job, which for Axl is Universal. So if it's a mistake it's on them (I doubt it's a mistake though).

Two more things to be pointed out: 1. Since The General and Monsters share the same credits, and Monsters=Soul Monster, it's safe to say that Soul Monster came from the same Brain+writing partners sessions as The General and Seven. And The General and Soul Monster were not in Village discs in some early form, although according to Brain they were written in late 2000 and the later dates of the mixes in the locker leaks are from late 2001, iirc (so it's likely that Seven isn't there either, although there is this alleged Fortus comment). Which is further evidence that not everything that was worked on during that time period is in the locker leaks. 2. Pele has lost the bet

Yeah, so had I. And some of us had also questioned the forum "fact" that Me and My Elvis was Soul Monster. Thankfully, at least this case is closed now.

Axl talked about singing the bridge of Soul Monster and that's how the fanbase knew about a song with this title. When the Village discs leaked, many fans thought that Me and My Elvis was Soul Monster just because an earlier and longer title of Soul Monster had "Elvis Presley" in it. However, there was never evidence that they were the same song.

The main takeaway from what Marco Beltrami said is that it's now 100% confirmed that Monsters is Soul Monster. As far as the two Vs. one song debate, in addition to what Marco Beltrami confirmed, the two songs were clearly still separated at least at the time of Axl's chats in 2008, as Axl seemed to refer to them as two different songs. The confusion arises 1) from the fact that they have been registered as one song in credits databases and moreover the takedown notices for Monsters said that it was due to illegally uploading The General and 2) from the fact that parts of the orchestral intro can be heard on both songs. Regarding the orchestral piece that was used as intro at concerts, I think it's possible that it was its own thing and a mashup of Beltrami's work on both The General and Leave Me Alone/Soul Monster. And then maybe, at some point after 2008, the two songs were paired together, not necessarily to be made into one song in the form of Rocket Queen, but more like a "suite" of two songs that are linked thematically. I think @WhazUpis on to something about Axl's original idea being to have them back to back on an album. Bach said that Axl told him that The General would be on a post-CD album because it was connected lyrically to other songs that would be on that future album as well. So now, since these songs are not being released as part of an album, Axl probably decided to release them as a song that has a Pt. 1 and Pt. 2.

Awesome, thank you! Besides the four unreleased songs (The General, Leave Me Alone/Soul Monster, Seven and Thyme), Marco Beltrami is credited on CD for orchestral arrangement on Street Of Dreams, TWAT, Madagascar, This I Love and Prostitute (on four of them in addition to Paul Buckmaster). I assume he worked on the songs that made CD at a later time, since from his 2003 interview is evident that the four unreleased songs were his first work with Axl. So maybe the long song he remembers could be just TWAT or Prostitute?

Why un-GN'R? The majority of GN'R songs are 3-5 minutes long.

When was that?

Yeah, some people can't cope with the idea that CD era songs have guitar work that they like and it's Slash, so it can't be, it must be Bucket or Robin

Yeah, that press release was retracted eventually.

Yeah, it will be interesting to see if it will be AFD style (credited to the band and each one getting near equal share of the publishing), UYI style (credits to individual writers but blanket deal according to each one's contributions) or CD style (credits to individual writers and Axl getting a minimum of 50% of the publishing). Currently is a hybrid of AFD and CD (credited to the band but the publishing is split as I described in the previous post). My guess is that in the case of a new album of original material it will be a hybrid of AFD and UYI style.

Judging from Absurd and Hard Skool (we don't have this kind of information for Perhaps and The General/Monsters yet), it seems that it doesn't and Axl gets ~50% of the credits for lyrics/melodies/production and more if he wrote part of the music, as on CD. It also looks like that there's probably a blanket deal for a combined 15% for Slash and Duff on all songs as a whole, but which may be higher or lower than that on each song separately, depending on how many other writers there are besides Axl. For example, on Absurd Slash and Duff's combined share is 21% (with Dizzy having 30% and Axl 49%), whereas on Hard Skool Slash and Duff's combined share is 11.5% and another 11.5% is divided between Tommy, Paul and Robin.

A better example would be Think About You and Don't Cry. Aside from the solos, there are no significant differences between the versions with Tracii Guns and Rob Gardner (that can be heard in the 1985 interview) and the released versions - they were the same songs as far as structure and arrangement. However, Slash and Duff (and Steven in the case of Think About You) got credits. Same with Hollywood Rose songs that became GN'R songs (probably with the exception of Anything Goes and maybe Back Off Bitch). I see what's happening with the credits now as a repetition of that.

I hear "it's all burnt down" too.

Axl was also in the cusp of releasing CD in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2006, but the album was eventually released in 2008 (and, according to Tommy Stinson, Iovine grabbed it from Axl's hands, so if it weren't for that it would have probably have been released a year later). And since he didn't release CD2 until 2014, there's no guarantee that it would have happened in 2015 or 2016 if it weren't for the reunion. The odds for that to happen were the same as before. These songs should have been released when they were recorded featuring the musicians who co-wrote and played on them. It's not Slash's fault that they weren't. So the way things turned out, NuGnR fans should thank Slash and be grateful for the threeunion instead of complaining about it, because otherwise we probably wouldn't have gotten these songs yet. The threeunion may be a "nostalgia cash grab" touring endlessly, but at least the songs that comprise the vast majority of the setlist are played by some of the people who wrote tehm, and we got some new music (even if it's rehashed CD era songs), plus two archival releases. Vs. the nostalgia touring and zero releases of the pre-reunion NuGnR lineup.

With all that, and most importantly if they were not a hybrid of "new" band and and AFD cover band, they would have done better than they eventually did. But they would have never had the impact and success the original band had, because of the name. Axl would have had a bigger chance to succeed under another moniker (I'm not saying as a solo project because I don't want to start another debate on that in this thread), provided, of course, that he didn't fuck it up too hard.