Shacklermyrye wrote:

In November of 1999 Rolling stone were played several songs from the Chinese democracy session's, they were also played an instrumental of Oklahoma.

Them being played just an instrumental, when they were played other songs that did have vocals suggests to me that none were recorded in 99 at all. The version that is out there is from March 2000 and obviously doesn't have any either.

But if you consider it was inspired by the bombing, (same week Izzy ect were writing Ocean ect) then that suggests the spark of the song came from Axl and not other members. That to me means it's likely he had a few lyrics for it but probably not all lyrics for it and just had not recorded them yet.

That he played it for magazines suggests he might have had more confidence in it than other songs they had at the time though, as I think aside from Atlas Shrugged all the other songs wound up on CD.

A few things to consider
1. We know by Dave Dominguez that Oklahoma was done lyrical very early in 1995-1996, So in my opinion it's a lot like This I Love a song with lyrics and vocals ready just needing the instrumental. Rembrandt This I love also didn't appear on the 19 village disc that we got. It's most likely on the others since it was intended to be used on the 1998 In What Dreams May Come.

2. Oklahoma is on rough mixes disc 3 but it's  take 10. So we don't know if the other9 by that date date had vocals.

3. When Rolling Stone was played the instrumental in 1999 it's possible that Axl wanted to tinker with it more to capture more of the sound of 1996 demo, So the version with vocals was not shared due to him wanting to redo vocals.

Just throwing out some of my thoughts.

Considering Oklahoma was a alt song at the 2001 hob show i think it was one of the first songs done.