"Why doesn't he rant, why doesn't he say anything?" - Axl, Rock In Rio-Lisboa, 05/27/06

Has anyone noticed the man who mastered CD?

Bob Ludwig. Credits include:

Led Zeppelin II & Houses of Holy
The Rolling Stones (complete Virgin + ABKCO records catalog)
Jimi Hendrix The Cry of Love 
Bruce Springsteen Almost Entire catalog
Nirvana Entire catalog (re-issues)
Pearl Jam Most catalog

And a TON of other albums. The dude's a legend.

Ok, so how does it go?

Let's see...

This was in late '99.

"[Axl expects to get] another record out of the hours and hours of material he's committed to tape, possibly one that's even more industrial and electronica-influence than Chinese Democracy." (Rolling Stone, 01/00)

"We've been working on, I don't know, 70 songs. [...] The record will be about, anywhere from 16 to 18 songs, but we recorded at least two albums' worth of material that is solidly recorded. But we are working on a lot more songs than that at the same time..." (MTV, 11/08/99)

"Most of the stronger songs that ended up on A-lists when I was there were huge rock songs, built for the masses, really guitar-driven." (Robin, Wall of Sound, 05/00)

"I think we worked on thirty-five songs or something." (Sean Beavan, Antiquiet, 08/13/08)

"There's a whole album of vocal parts [in late '99]. In fact, there's two albums worth that they've got there, at least." (Brian May, Radio One Rock Show, 05/10/00)

"'As far as I can tell,' says GnR's manager Doug Goldstein, 'we are now 99% musically done and 80% vocals done [in November '99]. I see the record being done Feb or March for a summer release.'" (Rolling Stone, 01/00)

In late '99, there were 35 or so songs on the A-list, most of which contained vocal parts. That's nearly 30 songs with Axl's singing on top. The B-list had various loop, ideas and sketches without lead vocals, and it contained around as many individual songs.

Out of those 35 A-listed songs, we're now getting 9-10, depending whether Rhiad was around at that time. OMG and maybe Silk Worms also fall into that category, which pushes the total amount to 11-12.

So there's around 20 unheard songs with lead vocals dating back to the Beavan era. Some former B-list tracks - or entirely different, later songs [Sorry, Scraped, Shackler] may increase the numbers as they are.

Regardless, we're still looking at a huge backlog, filed under '99.