madagas wrote:

Anybody who has seen Bucket on a solo tour should know how much of a better player he is than Slash....it is too obvious. You can argue about their songwriting skills and contributions to individual songs, but there is no question about who has more overall guitar playing talent. That includes Blues, Shred, Metal, Ballads, et al....acoustic/electric...doesn't matter.

I agree with the first half and disagree with the second. Strongly. Slash beats BH in blues, classic rock and blues rock, simply because that's not BH's style and he can't control himself enough not to do 'some BH'. BH can play a lot faster, his playing is very precious, his stuff is very hard to play - but zillions of singers are better than Axl, yet I favour him for his talent, that, just like Slash's, comes from a really ancient instict. I prefer Slash's instinctive (I hope it's the right word) playing over trillion hours of practice (and a great asset of musical talent). Opinions differ.

My problem with BH isn't that he's not good enough. He is. My problem is not that he's not Slash, yet he plays in GN'R. Well, I don't like Axl's taking the name, but that's not the main problem for him. I don't think that BH wouldn't fit GN'R - to tell the truth, without him most of the new songs were unlistenably boring and uninspired. BH's crazy stuff is killer on the songs, he's the one who deserves the most credit for 'taking the songs to a whole new level'. My problem is that this level isn't too high, because the main ideas and concepts of the songs were so weak (with a few expections) that even BH's great contribution wasn't enough to make it a great album. Axl's great (with some lamer performance here and there, but it happens on past GN'R records, too), BH's great, but that's all. The guitar work in overall isn't that great, no memorable riffs, a few memorable solos, but the synths and the forced elements kill the music for me. Just fuckin' tell me, how someone with Finck's ability can play this much on a GN'R record

There is a guy who posts on another GnR forum who has contact with Bucket and his people.  Earlier this year he said something along the lines of "I wouldn't wish that on Bucket" when commenting on Bucket rejoining GnR.  But after the Dr. Pepper comment from Axl about sharing his Dr. Pepper with Buckethead, he said that he wouldn't rule out Bucket and Axl working together again in some capacity in the future