True that. Forgot Loaded.

But my point remains that Loaded is a smaller act than VR, and doesn't come burdened with the GNR legacy. GNR and VR were day-job bands, Loaded's a fun band. It can go on and off the same way Snakepit used to.

Maddy's more cohesive than myself today (I blame the fever), but we're sitting on the same fence here.

In retrospect, '06 comes about as Axl's 'do or die' stand against Universal, trying to put up a buzz to force a contract for a release. Of course, Uni decides to call his bluff, and we all know how the story ended. That's partly why Axl's lying low this time around, letting Azoff & Gould deal with Universal. He'll talk, tour and all that once they have the record company on their side. Then there will be buzz, because some of the best and brightest of the industry will join in to push CD to the masses.

It'll be an interesting thing to follow, but I reckon I'll mostly steer clear from any 'official' msg boards and whatnot. How much Axl antics can one man take, really?

Here's a Classic Rock article on the Sisters, which goes with the pretext:

Is Andrew Eldritch the Axl Rose of Goth?

Try giving it a read for the hell of it, if nothing else, it should give a little bit of perspective to how Ax's camp handles things.

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...Knew you'd be pleased, von.

Sorry, I'm late.

But you're correct.

One internal cost analysis from the period pegs the operation's monthly tab at a staggering $244,000. It included more than $50,000 in studio time at the Village, a more modern studio where Mr. Baker had moved the band. It also included a combined payroll for seven band members that exceeded $62,000, with the star players earning roughly $11,000 each. Guitar technicians earned about $6,000 per month, while the album's main engineer was paid $14,000 per month and a recording software engineer was paid $25,000 a month, the document stated. - NYT

Breaking it down a bit:

$50,000 for the Village Recording Studios/month

$62,000 to be divided between 7 players (with Bucket and Brain(?) earning $11,000), the average paycheck for a band member was nearly $9,000/month

$14,000 for main engineer (Caram Constanzo or Eric Caudieux)

$25,000 for Pro-Tools man (Caram Constanzo or Eric Caudieux)

$6,000 for guitar techs

Notice that if we assume there are three guitar techs on monthly wages, the sum of Leeds' descriptions reached $169,000 - So there's still $75,000 to be accounted for! That's the kind of money they somehow managed to blow into various expenses, as 50K for the rental of the studio space should allow access to all the toys in the said space.

In May, 2000:

Whether Axl's emotional and legal troubles contributed to the demise of the original GN'R is open to interpretation. There is little dispute, however, about one thing they did cause: a massive delay in finishing Chinese Democracy, which is in reality an Axl Rose solo record. This work has been six years, a roomful of studio musicians and a rumoured $6 million worth of Interscope/Geffen's money in the making. It is still not finished and probably won't be anytime soon. - RS, 2000

In May, 2001:

But the tour has since been pulled due to illness - "internal haemorranging" suffered by Slash replacement Buckethead. Chinese Democracy, too, has been postponed for the umpteenth time - until autumn at the very earliest - pending adjustments by, possibly, its sixth producer, Queen veteran Roy Thomas Baker. To date, the project is rumoured to have cost a mindboggling $8 million. - Q Magazine, 2001

When the plug was pulled in February '04, the costs got around $13 million. Three years with another $5 million, around $1,66 million a year. The costs for the Sean Beavan album (and likely the aborted '96 album) can be rolled into one, which means studio work from '94 to '99 equaling $6 million. Subtract the $500,000 advance Axl took from Geffen from the overall costs, add up the most insane period of studio activity and it was actually rather cheap, considering.

So, you know...

Village Studios from early '00 to early '04 equals $50,000/month, assuming for 48 months. The Village tab ends at roughly $2,4 million. Ease up the aforementioned $6 million and the Village tab from the overall $13M, and you'll get $4,6 million for personnel costs et al in between 2000-2004.

If you'd get 7 guys on a monthly paycheck for 48 months, the overall costs of payment would be a little under $3 million. Since Finck re-joined the band in the fall of '00 and Brain was in called in June/July '00, it slides a little. But I'd say around $2,5 million for band member paychecks alone in between 00-04 is a reasonable estimation.

Add up the potential overall wages of Caram Constanzo and Eric Caudieux and you'll end up closing in on another $2 million mark.

That's part of the reason the project is so expensive. They were all professionals there, and they were well-paid.

Depends.

I believe Duff left a week before his daughter was born (08/27/97). The band had gone through a transitional stage of picking up the pieces from the Zakk Wylde-jams in January '95 and the Slash/Paul Huge -jams in August '96. They'd been trying to figure out how to flesh out the half an album they'd done with Slash, and plans to release it with various guest guitarists filling in were gradually abandoned. Robin had signed on the dotted line to become the lead guitarist on 08/01/97 and had naturally jammed with the remains of the so-called band at the time.

When Zakk Wylde arrived at the Complex, where Axl was rehearsing, he was slightly surprised. "There were never any melodies," Wylde recalls. "There were never any lyrics." - RS, 2000

Zakk on the '95 jams.

When the Sex Pistols were rehearsing for their 1996 reunion tour, Pistols mainman John Lydon claimed to have heard "some folky nonsense" emanating from the next room, only to discover it was actually Axl and co hard at work. - Kerrang, 1999

Likely Axl, Dizzy and Paul, working on the songs for the proposed studio album worked on by the SFTD-lineup in August '96.

There was no sound. There was no nothing. We didn't play. We tried. Matt and I did play. It was cool when Slash joined for a week. Even when Zakk Wylde and Slash played together, there were a couple of songs in which there was a natural progression and they were very rocking. You can imagine, they were really hard songs. As hard as I like them, yeah! But I can't tell you what they sounded like, there was not a definite sound. - Duff, Popular 1,  2000

The album Duff'd been working on (along with others) was slowly growing into something tangible, but was still well up in the air when he walked out. Therefore, it may be said that only the most fundamental elements of the songs worked on at that point may have survived the several years of lineup changes and overblown producing.

Songs like Prostitute, This I Love, Oklahoma are from the post-UYI period. OMG was written when Duff and Matt were still in the band. IRS may also be a song offered to Slash during the Fall '96 sessions and re-recorded with first Robin and then with Bucket, when Axl realized Robin couldn't do the exact things he'd learned to expect from Slash.

But still, the remaining bits of those songs should be credited to Axl, Dizzy and Paul Huge more than Slash, Duff or Matt.