This was one of the most eye-opening things I saw since the RNRHOF. I never thought anyone would find a reason to trash Izzy. It's not that I don't see their arguments now that they've been made, but just that they never even occurred to me before.

Izzy, to me, is about as cool and non-polarizing as George Harrison was to The Beatles.  Which is to say, very, on both counts.

So I'm a huge CD fan, but I also think that some of the material for overworked. I think CD was better without Frank, with Ax singing low with no double tracking, "like if your ass was your head you could tell". I think the long ass intro is great for opening an album but doesn't do much for the song.

I think The Blues was better as The Blues, that some of the earlier Robin-driven versions worked better at driving the emotional dynamic that Axl is so great at writing and that Slash was so great at realizing.

I think that for some unknown (to me) reason, the Prostitute we got leaked was way more powerful than the album. Wish I could put my finger on it, but that song should have been one the world talked about and instead it's never mentioned.

So while im not trashing CD, I do think it was a case in places of an artist needing to pit down the damn brush. This hasnt stopped me from listening to it on a weekly (daily!) basis since 2008 (2005 if you count the leaks). It is by far the mosy listened to thing on my playlist.

Also, I wish some of these arguments could take place without people getting so dug in thatthey need to dig up reasons to shit on the other person's band member. Its plain bizarre to see people defending Axl by shitting on Slash ( and Izzy etc) and vice versa. Before I really started following Axl' s post UYI lineup I used to log into gnr msg boards in 2002ish. The same convos were going on then. And we still pick them like open sores. Its just weird sometimes. Unless you truly hate one guy or another, there's no good reason for propping up your 'pro' arguments with 'anti' ones if that even makes sense.

Without sounding like I'm coming down on the "it's a mess" side of the argument, you have to admit that's a pretty thin slice of music consumers that are ever going to hear CD properly, if that's truly the way to do it.

There's no friggin question in my mind that Axl's voice could come back to 06 levels. I'm not claiming to know anything special, but my gut is that it's entirely a matter of a hardcore training regimen.