Ahh but the label still wouldn't like a GnR album that didn't sound like Guns N' Roses.

In this scenario I'm painting Axl retains FULL CONTROL but the rest of the band just doesn't walk out. So he still wants to make a NIN record or whatever. But the others hang in there Dizzy Reed style.

So he was still free to take Slash's guitar parts and ignore them, or bring in a bunch of guys like Fink or Bucket to use as well. Slash getting more and more dejected probably doesn't even do his best work once characters like Bucket are brought in to redo his parts.

So Axl turns over an album to the label that still sounds kinda like the "1999" demos.

To me the ways we get our GNR superband is:

1. Axl never gets full control - so is forced to compromise - and at the same time the band never breaks up - so he's not able to outright reject stuff like Snakepit1 and Duff's stuff of that era.

2. They do break up - but the reunion like we have now takes place much earlier - prior to VR - you'd still waste Snakepit 1 (which was an AFD in the making if Axl had been on it as far as I'm concerned) - but you'd salvage CD, Contraband and Slash's solo works.

Interesting topic.

The key statement there is "what they COULD have done together".

In a perfect universe they would have rekindled their chemistry and the best of the solo , Snakepit, Slash, VR, and Chinese Democracy 1-3 material would be full GNR songs and maybe some new organic material we can;t even imagine. We'd have at least double the GNR catalogue we have. That might have happened.

Then again. Maybe it doesn't go so well. Maybe the sort of inactivity and crippling anxiety that characterised the CD era would have occurred anyway. Maybe the creative differences would have increased, maybe the tension at gigs would push Axl to a worse mental health outcome, maybe we still would have only got 1 album but also now wouldn't gave any of the side projects. It's impossible to say.

The current reunion wouldn't be a big deal, they'd just be another oldies band on the circut. We would have got some killer proshots in 2006 though!

I think he's glad to be back for sure...but as for regret ...I have no doubt they regret giving Axl the sort of control he has, but do they regret leaving once he was already in power?

I dunno - I look at it and I see Slash leveraged his success in GNR to be the media darling he is, the guitarist of his generation, and leave an incredible legacy....had he stayed would any of that happen? Maybe GNR would have gone from strength to strength and their best solo records would be GNR records....but maybe also they'd have disappeared into another Chinese Democracy silence anyway.

I hope so. I'm just a bit nervous cos I see word on the forums is that there's potential dates in talks for most of next year.

I guess the album was mostly done, and Slash could add stuff in like a day or two realistically....so it's still quite possible.....

Just I could also see a world where they tour out this cycle until mid 2018 and then Axl starts to think about an album...and negotiations stall with the label and it all goes back onto the back burner.....

I agree that it's not going to happen....

But some of those did do it that way - Crue put out 2-3 new songs with a hits package as the first step in a reunion. Ac/Dc went back to the classic line up after 8 years on silence by dropping Black Ice then touring....pretty sure Black Sabbath recorded 13 then launched the reunion tour in support of it.

Yeah....in a world where Slash nails the TIL solo and Axl is rehersing Slither it's not as zainy an idea as it sounds on face value....

Imagine the epic set you could do with all the guest performers and stuff.....the main event could be the current band or whatever...but I'd love it if they bust out all these characters for the occasional song...or let them do stuff as warm ups acts and so on.

It would be so good.