Never should have ever had three guitars if you ask me.

Given CD songs were rare live I would have put Richard on rhythm and had all leads played by Buckethead (and subsequently Bumblefoot after Bucket was driven out).

If we wanted to keep robin around for his CD leads - then have him on Rhythm instead of Richard and just let him do the occasional solo (like how Slash does with Richard now).

One of the main problems with the CD era band was the under-utilisation of bumble/bucket - GNR is a guitar oriented music for a good part of their catalogue and it just wasn't done justice a lot of the time with Robin.

I would expect this case to get settled with an absolutely massive payout to Kat, but band takes ownership of her GNR pictures, no admission of guilt for Fernando, and mutual agreement to never speak of this again.

Behind the scenes I would guess Fernando works to maintain his marriage, Axl becomes angry at Fernando for shaming the band but forgives him because they are family.

Slash and Duff register their disgust but do not rock the boat because you don't break up GNR a second time and they know Axl considers him family.

To avoid a future re-occurrence some sort of token structure is implemented - perhaps fernando is officially demoted but more likely he is given an assistant with proper professional experience maybe some Slash/Duff work with as an underling but who will keep stuff on the straight and narrow.

Everyone saves face, Kat gets the payments due to her plus a little extra for the harm this does to her reputation (after all other bands not keen to hire someone who sues), team brazil continues on as Axl's surragate family and general managers all be it with a little help now. And the main band retains its structure and can go dark for a time before re-launching the next cycle in a couple of years - be it a new album or more likely some type of aniversary or farewell era tour.

Just guessing of course.

I would like to hear this song with guitars as I think the vocal melody is cool. Original vocals with the screams would be best though!

I think it's them being non-confrontational mixed with not wanting to spend time/money retooling. And a bit of "old man has already proved himself" about them.

The band broke up trying to write music in the past, Axl has worked on this song for almost 3 decades, if he gives you what he's done and it's too short - what do they do about the drums - get rid of the brain part and have frank make it longer or what. How will Axl respond to these ideas. It's easier to just cut the song where it cuts even if that doesn't give you time to solo.

It's frustrating to me though, as the ending is warming up for epicness, like Axl going into that passionate scream, slash building some speed on the outro shred, them starting to interact melodically, then it just stops dead...it badly needs another 45 seconds or something to me. Give it a locomotive or breakdown outro.

You go back to early GNR and Slash was clearly hungry to prove himself. The way he added the big fuck off solo to SCOM even when it's a ballad. The way tracks like NR and Estranged and Coma are just dripping with awesome guitar, even smaller deep cuts like The Garden and he's putting monster licks in them - setting himself up as one of the rock legends. Same with his early guest stuff too - like on "Fields of Joy" by Lenny Kravitz - he's not fucking around.

But I feel his recent solos don't seem like he has as much to prove to us all, I guess he already conquored enough. Now and then you get a Wicked Stone or an Anastasia where he seems to bring his A game, but a lot of his appearances he just plays whatever. As he is slash his whatever is still good - but I don't sense the hunger he used to have.

I've watched a few of his reviews of songs - sometimes he has some musical insights with his guitar like he will go over key changes or parts that are hard to sing or something. Didn't really cover much with it here I admit but it's sorta his process. I like that he reviews stuff from a positive angle in general (whole internet is largely negative), and also with a performers take on things.

I think he was obviously being diplomatic here though due to being a fan and/or knowing the band. For example, putting Axl's vocal issues down to running around/lack of confidence in the way the song was landing - which while maybe factors do not really account for the fact his modern voice almost always exhibits these symptoms. I also noticed he was clearly itching for the song to break into more - like maybe a huge epic outro or a big fuck-off guitar solo and it just doesn't come yet didn't really complain about the abrupt ending, other than mentioning he prefers the AFD to CD era musically.

Darkness is a "sometimes food" band for me, I love some of their stuff but it can be a little much at times  for my tastes too. Saw them live in his drug era and i must say was a hell of a good show despite the mess of his lifestyle at the time. Anyways he aways comes off as a good guy in these videos and I find him quite insightful usually, I wish he had talked more about this song musically this time and less about the specific peformance.