This is a nice moment for Steven and the fans.

This is the last lineup of Guns N' Roses.

I suppose an Izzy guest appearance once or twice is possible but I really doubt it.

It seems to me that Izzy doesn't want to work for Axl, end of story.

Why put up with it? Not worth the grief.

It's a complex situation.

Like any divorce, there were waves and waves of building tension that ultimately lead to the separation. Marc Canter held that the reasons for the split came down to a miscommunication. I think that's probably a sort of "you didn't put the dishes away, so I'm leaving you" reductio. In the 90s, you have an unstable, megalomaniacal Axl combined with a substance abusing, dishonest, and publicly hostile Slash. If cooler heads were to prevail, GN'R would have gone on hiatus with both receiving aggressive treatment, and maybe the union would've survived.

Have the core issues been addressed and resolved? Unlikely.

It doesn't matter for all intents and purposes. Everyone's making bank and the public gets their happy (see: completely fabricated) ending.

Axl won the war. He's the boss. The other guys will do what he says. He's a completely different guy, I would wager, because he's getting loads of cash and attention and getting his toes licked by desperate young blondes. At the end of the day, despite any other pretension, Axl is someone who relishes attention and by proxy, approval. He wanted the validation of being seen as the mastermind behind GN'R with CD, and he was, but that ship sailed, so now he's come to cash in on his nest-egg.

It comes down to they both need each other again and Buckethead and Robin, like Izzy, told him to fuck off.

I like "This I Love" but I'm not in love with Axl's vocal take. I would've preferred that both that and "Madagascar" were sung straight up with no theatrics or rasp.

I get the "why" for both of those decisions but just think that they're both majestic beauties and deserve that subtle touch. That's why I love the "Catcher" demo. Everything about it is just so subtle and sublime and effortless.

And even if you don't like "This I Love" lyrically or vocally, listen to it instrumentally. It's really beautiful.

Then again, it's not 3 power chords, so I guess it's bad. Fuckin' pussy that Axl. Feelings and existential dread and shit is the stuff of squares.

You're spoiling the winning formula: Take new GNR stuff, dumb it down, and have Slash play it and it's "the greatest".