I think, going on previous interviews, there were 36 songs recorded during the CD sessions, and dozens incomplete.

Interesting read. Here's a clip of Axl 2009 interview with Billboard about the record company;

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What are your thoughts on how Universal has handled the album?

Unfortunately I have no information for me to believe [that] there was any real involvement or effort from Interscope. I'm not saying there wasn't. But in my opinion, without [Interscope Geffen A&M chairman] Jimmy Iovine's involvement, it doesn't matter who anyone talks to or what they say -- virtually nothing will happen from their end.

I do know [that] I've been asking for a marketing plan for over five years and still haven't got anything. We've asked for a complete breakdown of promotion expenses and efforts from all parties but unfortunately I've received very little information, if anything, so far. On another note, the draft booklet leaking and, I believe, the early shipping of preorders and the inclusion of the early draft booklet for the release was through involvement with Interscope, which was a mess. That's not to say they don't work for other artists and make things happen. I feel they work very hard for whatever it is they truly want to sell, whether it's good or …

I can say how the band feels, and that is that to a man they hate the record company other than Universal International with a passion. And that's with me talking with them about the record company negatively hardly ever, if at all. They're not blind: They hear the talk and see the results. Our involvement with Interscope has been more than frustrating for them. It's not like anyone here wants to have any negative views, impressions or opinions. They don't go around bitching about things all the time and they don't let it get in the way of whatever they're supposed to do here, but it is what it is.

Here's how things worked until they were no longer involved-that is, until recently. Jimmy [Iovine] and whoever would come down to the studio. Things would be good for a month. Then, according to whoever was involved at the time from their side, someone above Jimmy would start putting pressure regarding us on him, Jimmy would start pressuring others at his label [and they] would begin doing the same with us. We get that it's just how business -- and perhaps especially this business -- tends to work, but after a month of this the whole thing would get ugly and extensively interfere with getting anything productive done, and near the middle of the third month we'd arrange for Jimmy to come down again. They'd go away happy and the entire process would repeat itself over and over and over.

[Former Interscope Geffen A&M president] Tom Whalley brought in Roy Thomas Baker to produce and [A&R executive] Mark Williams suggested Marco Beltrami, among others, to play strings on the album. And Jimmy had an idea for low guitar in a track and the EQ on a drum part. That's it as far as I'm aware. They were all good things, but in all sincerity, that's it. Now, what efforts were made to help keep Universal or Vivendi off us for as long as possible could very well have been extensive, and in that regard either would have been or would be most appreciated. I like Jimmy, but I've never understood him in regard to us or this album. Everything's always been, "That's easy," or "We can fix that, no problem," but unfortunately rarely added up to any kind of reality for us until [he found] Bob Ludwig for mastering.
We'd love to have their and Jimmy's support after this. But to continue at this juncture feeling as we do, keeping things so behind the scenes, unfortunately feels like the same 'ol same 'ol for all of us and, at least momentarily, a bit much to digest. Jimmy did point us in the right direction for mastering, and I believe he's sincere in his appreciation of our record but still for whatever reasons gave up pretty early in those areas.

We feel that, unfortunately, we've never been really anything all that much more other than a throw it at the wall, see if it sticks, no real ground work, something to take advantage of, last quarter, cook the books, write-off, fuck this headache, hoping to get lucky scam. And, unfortunately, for all their nice words and assurances, nothing that's happened since the week or so before the release has shown us much of anything to the contrary. So at least in regard to the U.S., for the most part I don't look at it like we have a record company -- I look at it for the most part like we have friendly but otherwise cutthroat loan sharks, and we were lucky to get what we got but feel we could have done more if they were at least, especially with some of their backgrounds, a bit more involved creatively. So in light of pirating and the mess the major labels are in, I have no sympathy for the record companies, based on our experiences in the U.S.

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And from Tommy Stinson in 2011

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"At first we were in there a lot. We were working on the writing aspect of it, but it just kept going on. We had Jimmy Iovine intervening in a not-so-productive way, and we had other guys coming and going with nutty ideas. My summation of the whole thing is that Interscope, when they took over Geffen, really led Axl to believe that Jimmy Iovine would be involved, and would help get this record done and make it happen. But basically what he did was let it completely fall apart. Then he had this great idea to bring in [producer] Roy Thomas Baker to make it sound better. All he did was re-record everything three or four different times, trying to make it sound like something it didn't need to sound like, and spend $10 million in the process. My two cents on the whole thing is that I really think Jimmy Iovine f*cked the whole thing up."
"It was a bummer. Most of the songs that are on the record now were done 10 f*cking years ago. But all the talking heads in the mix were saying, Make 'em sound better! Make 'em sound better!' So we kept redoing this and that. And it ended up coming back down to the same f*cking songs that they were 10 years ago, except that now they were a super-dense mishmash of a bunch of instrumentation."
"That whole era pretty much sums up what happened to the record industry. Those kinds of people, making those kinds of decisions and not really helping the artist."

Again, Brain's comments from this year about the song

"It’s funny because how ‘The General’ came about was we were supposed to, you know, this was like building up to that show. Everybody was like “Hey if anybody has songs or shit you can bring them in. So that song, ‘The General’ was a song that from when [inaudible] and [inaudible] and I, when I wasn’t doing Guns stuff would just jam in my living room type of thing. I had a pro tool setup, we were jamming, we were trying to come up with songs for Guns and we had this song called, well we called it ‘The General’ because we were eating general’s chicken. Yet, when I turned it in to Axl [Rose] he thought it was called ‘The General’ because I was making fun of Tommy [Stinson] and Tommy was kind of the band MD, he was the musical director when we would have rehearsals and Axl thought i was kind of poking fun at Tommy like a general. Like sort of a ‘hey we’re rehearsing at this time’ and that kind of shit. I was like ‘no dude, it’s because we ate general’s chicken."

Completely agree

I posted it for reference as we can now hear what he heard at the time