ELO, James Bond, blaxploitation, and Double Talkin Jive as the GN'R seed/reference

Fuck if I know the influences on this one

Axl said he wanted "The Blues" for another song.

Seeing as Axl's a big Elton John fan, I wondered if it was inspired by "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues".

A cheap observation, perhaps.

This thread is older than Moses but I'm bored.

It's pretty obvious Skwerl and the leaks were used as a bargaining chip to secure the Best Buy funds.

Skwerl's first blog post was June 6th 2008 and the leaks were posted June 18th 2008, a grand total of 12 days later. If you take into account human nature, it's doubtful someone would so quickly pass along the goods unless they had a hard-on to shoot their wad. It's too neat.

The 2006 negotiations failed to finish because the album wasn't "ready". The only way you have access to these files is if you're Andy Wallace, GNR, at Axl's party in 2006, or the record company. No interns or guitar techs or DJs or public venues. So either Skwerl's source "Steve" sits on the Wallace mixes for 2 years or "Steve" was the buffer between Skwerl and whoever actually wanted to songs public. Gin up a little plausible deniability and voila. Game on. The files were even transcoded (and labelled!) to WAV so no one could look for the digital fingerprints.

We know executives were playing the thing for magazines in 2007 (RTB's), the negotiations with Best Buy started circa November 2007, the album was finally officially done as of November 2007, Azoff joined in March 2008, and negotiations were at a standstill.

The leaks escalated the release and reinvigorated fan interest. Shit or get off the pot, Axl and Best Buy.

(Incidentally Prostitute, If The World, and Riad, all located on the 2006 setlist were chosen for the job.)

The real mystery to me is the true completed number of songs.