Showtime

In late October, GNR were finally announced to play live.

"Roberto Medina, head of the Rock in Rio festival, told Brazil's Globo television network on Wednesday (October 25) that reclusive GN'R frontman Axl Rose has agreed to play the massive South America event Rock in Rio 3 in January with his new lineup." (MTV, 10/26/00)

"According to [Medina], after 6 months of negotiations, last Tuesday Axl signed the contract with the organization of the show." (Dust N' Bones mailing list, 10/26/00)

The players themselves were subject to change.

"Axl called me when he had the plan to play Rock In Rio. I don't believe that he hoped to reform the group as a whole because I am the only one that he called, but, in any event, I declined the offer." (Izzy, Guitar & Bass Magazine, 2001)

"Guns N' Roses' management company, Big F.D., has officially confirmed that Buckethead and former Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck are handling noodling duties for the band." (Allstarmag, 10/30/00)

Therefore, Axl might've considered Izzy to play with Buckethead and Robin.

"O Globo reports that the group's decision to perform at Rock in Rio ties into their desire to launch the album in January. There was much talk about the album being finished in time for release this summer (fueled by Rose coming out of hiding to talk about it with both Rolling Stone and MTV), but it never materialized." (Rolling Stone, 10/27/00)

Once again, Axl was spotted at a rock show.

"Axl Rose turned up at a benefit gig put on by System of a Down on the weekend to raise money for Armenian Genocide recognition. Members of the band thanked the audience, which included Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose, for their support in this cause that is very personal to all four band members, who are all of Armenian decent and lost family members in the Armenian Holocaust." (Radio Undercover, 11/10/00)

A warm-up gig was now being planned, and the band begun to rehearse as an eight-piece in early December (or a seven-piece, as Axl admitted in the warm-up show that he'd sung his first set with the lineup on 12/28/00).

"I think we rented out the Sony [lot], where they did the Wizard of Oz. It was this huge lot. And [Axl] wanted the whole stage set up that we were gonna have at Rock in Rio, so we had to go there, because they had to mark it out." (Brain, I'd Hit That, 02/15)

"This band has played only been together for six weeks before Rio." (Axl, Rock & Pop FM, 01/22/01)

"We rehearsed for probably two or three months without Axl." (Brain, MusicRadar, 10/22/12)

"First of all, you need to switch your whole schedule around... Rehearsals started at midnight...  We rehearsed the set for a month. He didn't show up. We'd always get that call at 4 in the morning, saying, 'Uh oh. He might come.'"  (Brain, I'd Hit That, 02/15)

"The bassist, Tommy Stinson, worked very well taking the band through the rehearsals." (Axl, Rock & Pop FM, 01/22/01)

"It was the day before the gear was supposed to leave... The crew had been there since 8 in the morning, setting up. They have to break it down and the gear has to leave, literally the next morning. ...We rehearsed the set, two and half hours... It's probably 3 in the morning, now. Axl calls from Malibu. He's coming. And he wants to see the whole set again. He wants to watch the show. Everybody's like, OK.

...We're on this big soundstage and [they bring] a little couch next to the soundboard, right in front of the sound guy... Well, an hour goes by. 'Is he REALLY coming?' The road crew, everybody's asleep by now, next to their gear. 'Yeah, he wants to come, but the problem is, he wants to see the WHOLE show, pyro and everything.

So, we're like, 'Wait. I think, each time the pyro guy hits the fuckin' thing, it's like $300,000 for each bomb that's gonna go up. But, we're going to do it on this soundstage, and in order to make that happen, they got to get the fire department down here.' Now the fire department comes down, but I think they're digging it. They're thinking, 'I get to watch Guns N' Roses rehearse, so whatever.' They show up.

Now, it's probably 5AM... We're playing [the set], we've been up since 12 o'clock, the road crew has been up since 8AM, for 24 hours. [Axl's]'s in the chair with his arms crossed, just watching. Bombs, fireworks, everything's fuckin' going off... I'm playing November Rain. They have the curtain of sparks bouncing off my cymbals, burning my face, getting on my shorts and shit like that. The door opens - it's DAYLIGHT! You see people coming to work.

We end with Paradise City, doing the fuckin' shuffle thing [in the last part of the song], they blew the confetti shit... And dude, I'm not joking, it's like 7.30/8 in the morning. It's the most surreal moment. In my mind, I'm just going, 'Who's gotta fuckin' clean the confetti? What are we doing? Some poor guy has to sweep fuckin' six inches of confetti.'

We hit the last note. [Axl] gets up, walks out. Never said a word, didn't see him. We just get up, everybody goes home and the next time we saw him was in Rock in Rio. That's sort of Guns in a nutshell. The chaos and what happens." (Brain, I'd Hit That, 02/15)

Axl agreed full band rehearsals happened at a very late stage.

"Thursday night [12/28/00] was the first time I sang a set with these guys... The first time I sang a set in about 8 years." (Axl, Las Vegas, 01/01/01)

"Our first show’s Rock in Rio and I thought, ‘Wait, what’s it going to sound like with Axl? Where is Axl? Oh here’s his helicopter coming in.’ The first time I ever played a real show with him was in front of 250,000 people! I was thinking, ‘How’s this song supposed to start again?’ Because some he was supposed to cue but we never had a verbal conversation on whether he would or I!" (Brain, MusicRadar, 10/22/12)

"It is still very new for them to play together as band, with Robin (Finck) and Buckethead. That was a surprise. Obviously, that was the correct decision to make, but it was not originally planned to have three guitarists." (Axl, Rock & Pop FM, 01/22/01)

"Originally it was gonna be a two-guitar player group. I split forever so I thought and went back to Nine Inch Nails. In my absence they were looking to replace me and Josh Freese, the drummer at the time, had brought Buckethead in to essentially fill the slot I had left. They really liked him but he's kind of a stunt guitar player. He does a very specific thing and he has a real genius sensibility about him. But he rarely plays the same thing twice ever and when you're trying to cruise through "Nightrain" that just makes it a little (laughs) too different. So they needed someone to anchor the songs. They kept Buckethead to do what Buckethead does and they needed someone else to play alongside. ...  I think especially with Guns, I was more of a soul player than a soundscape artist." (Robin, Ultimate Guitar, 01/17/14)

"This band did not come together by a bunch of guys meeting each other in a bar or down on a corner in their old neighborhood, so it's taken a long time to pull these guys together and then have them develop a chemistry with themselves. When we did our first show in Vegas, Robin and Buckethead didn't know each other at all. You've got two lead guitar players trying to kill each other with their abilities. [...] I think they can be cordial to each other, that whole kind of thing, but when they're actually playing, it gets that kind of alpha male thing going, like 'Who's the real lead guitar player?'" (Axl, WRIF, 11/21/02)

Buckethead and Robin in a moment of harmony.

"Seven years after their last live performance, Guns N' Roses are expected to debut songs from their perpetually in-progress new album at a Las Vegas New Year's Eve concert, according to organizers." (MTV, 12/06/00)

"According to HoB's Senior VP of Entertainment Kevin Morrow, the show is confirmed and tickets go on sale this Saturday. The House of Blues had already booked the Goo Goo Dolls into the venue for the New Year's Eve show, so when reps for Guns n' Roses called, the HoB had to improvise. 'To tell you the truth, when they first called, I thought it was a joke. I said to myself, 'There is no way this can be real,'' Morrow said. Morrow contacted the Goos, who were more than willing to share the spotlight with the fragmented Los Angeles band." (MSN, 30/12/00)

"But the show - the first for the band's current lineup - will most likely focus on Guns N' Roses classics. 'I heard them in rehearsals... [The old material] sounds substantially more powerful,' GN'R manager Doug Goldstein said Wednesday (December 6). 'With two lead guitars, it just sounded so powerful. [...] We've been rehearsing and recording - we just wanted to blow some smoke,' Goldstein said. 'What better place to do that than New Year's Eve in Las Vegas?'" (MTV, 12/06/00)

A tour and record release were also in the cards.

"According to the official Rock Am Ring site, GN'R will be playing at the German festivals next summer. The festivals take place June 1st-3rd." (Rock Am Ring official site, 12/11/00)

"[The] early "wish-list" of organizers [of Ozzfest 2001, ranging from June 8th to August 12th] not only includes Ozzy Osbourne, but is also said to include the new lineup of Guns N' Roses [...], so says a source within one of those groups' camps." (Allstarmag, 12/08/00)

"On Monday (Dec. 11th), Guns n' Roses manager Doug Goldstein of Big FD Management told listeners on Los Angeles radio station KROQ that Gn'R's long-awaited new album, Chinese Democracy, could be available as early as next June, to coincide with a summer tour." (Rolling Stone, 12/12/00)

You could say that again...

Just occured to me that there's an unreleased track called Shackler's Revenge by Bucket, which was allegedly for a film soundtrack.

Therefore, that track might've been written by Bucket, Brain and Pete Scaturro. B&B would likely be around for a revamped version, to which Robin wrote additional guitars, and Caram Costanzo stirred the melting pot to put everything together. Axl did lyrics.

Now, if the GNR version of SR dates back to 2002, the original Buckethead track was brought in between '00 and '02. Now, what's curious is that Axl requested the demos Izzy and Duff made for the band in '95 to be worked on by the new band in sometime 2000/01.

And if he resurrected an unreleased Buckethead as a rocker for GNR, he was seriously fishing for material in '00/'01. After two-three years of songwriting, Bob Ezrin's comments hit a nerve, it seems. Three good songs and Axl needs an album he's comfortable with. Solution: Pillage everything and forge completely new songs, which would hopefully replace the ones written and worked on excessively between '98-'00.

As in finished to a form recognizable as the song featured on Rock Band 2, I take it. Which would make it a possible B-list song on the RTB/Tom Zutaut album they worked on in 2001; B-list as in not completely fleshed out as of yet.

A lot of songs are now at least 9-10 years old. They've just gotten more bells n' whistles as time's passed. New stuff was written starting from late 2000, and in 2002, I understand most songs have been rounded up. They have the everpresent B-list, which could probably be digged for additional material, if needs be.

All Mysteron said was that he's never seen the list.

Funny how that'd make it bogus alone.