Great to see some of you fine veteran fans still  talking to each other.
I think a Chinese Leftovers Album could be interesting.  Sure what else is there? I'll do my best to like Slashs new album with Myles too and who knows... we could have 2 hours of quality rock tunes to chow down on soon.

We're all in the same boat essentially.
There was enough peace and good will around to be really brave and generous and try to get the old crew out again.
But it didn't happen.
Old gripes and politics and a hefty dose of greed obviously got in the way.
I believe we are all the lesser for it, including the apparent "winners" Axl, Duff and Slash.
No history is being written by these men, no great human story (which always came with music) being told for us to remember them fondly by, its all just big business and on display is all the inadvertent emptiness a purely $$$$ driven enterprise has.

Axl will do an AC/DC album with mega tour where he and Angus will pocket vast sums of $$$.
In the meantime Slash & Duff will probably do their fall back projects.
BUT we can still hope that they work up the back cataloge of Axl's tunes

GNR were in an almost identical position to U2 after they released Rattle and Hum; turned on by the media, described as rock dinosaurs, behind the musical zeitgeist, arrogant, over blown and out of touch.

U2 had a very rough beginning to their Acthung Baby sessions culminating in Edge giving Bono a punch, but "One" materialized after much work together and gave the band the sonic imprint they were looking for.  They were off to the races after that, the music came thick and fast.
U2 did have a rule however that the band stays together no matter what, but they knew they had to change and stayed at it until they did.

Axl always said that Slash wouldn't change and update, but we know he had it in him. If he'd shown up with Contraband in 1993, Axl could have made a stunning hard rock comeback album that would have seated them at the head of the modern rock movement of the time. But how far off that kind of sound was Slash in 1993? Did it take him falling all the way back to bar band status with his solo work before he would listen...this time to Scott Weiland (who spoke of rejecting what he thought was horrible music that sounded like Cheap Trick). Slash then wrote more modern style riffs which subsequently brought him in. I know this was 2003, 10 years after GNR ended for Slash but its not like Slash wasn't listening to AIC and others that he publically stated his admiration for.

Interestingly, its pretty obvious Izzy wasn't too keen to change things up too much either (his material is consistently good but sonically quite safe, even forgettable).. where would that have left the original line up if they had managed to survive the UYIs as a unit?

Matt and Duff seemed to understand the need for change but they were either too quiet or too far down the pecking order to help drive Axl & Slash into a new direction together.

With all of this you can see why Axl was doing what he was doing but you'd wonder if he just got in a room with these guys and worked hard instead of just trying to replace people, could they have had their eureka moment like U2 did with One and come back together better than ever?

remember when Ashba was doing the same thing at soundchecks.
How quickly that guy was forgotten!