Don't forget that Used To Love Her, is essentially the Stones Dead Flowers with different words too.  Hell, Izzy even flat out admitted it early on.

Being that I'm also a "smalltown whiteboy" from a tiny midwestern town, I can see where he's coming from with the song to an extent.  If you'd have plopped me into the LA Greyhound Station at 18 I might have had some similiar thoughts because I didn't know any better/hadn't experienced anything else.  At times in my childhood I heard crazy amounts of racism/homophobia from people who had probably never even considered having a conversation with a black or gay person.

That said, Even then I'd have had issues with actually using the language.  What's really strange to me about it is that he, as sort of an outcast or at least outsider, in that small town wasn't acutely aware of the problems with the thought process.

For me, the first time as a young teenager that I was in a bigger town (one that actually had black people) and my cousins and I hooked up with some black kids on a ball diamond because neither of our groups had enough to play was that moment.  It blows my mind that Axl apparently never had a similar moment, or the clarity to apply what he learned in those moments before releasing the song.

I read Duff's book not long ago, it wasn't only Slash.  One of Duff's siblings (I don't remember brother or sister)is married to a black person.  He wasn't cool with it either as he had a bunch of half black nieces and nephews by that point.  He basically made it sound like both he and Slash just didn't want to tell Axl what to write, because they didn't want to interfere with his artistry. 

I would wager there was also a lot of not wanting to deal with whatever the temper tantrum fallout of telling Axl what to do with his lyrics might be.

Thanks for the heads up. 

I never downloaded the last song because I was hoping for an album coming, but if they're just coming out one at a time like this I'll probably pull the trigger and download them both.

A friend of mine is a Vault member and explained a bunch of it to me. 

No matter what you might think about Jack White the fucker should be giving symposiums on how to run a fan club to other artists.

From Soundgarden's Facebook:

Soundgarden is filming the official music video for By Crooked Steps today with the man, the myth, the legend Dave Grohl at the helm. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for a behind the scenes look all day: @Soundgarden

I guess that means Grohl is directing the video?