I dunno i think we need to distinguish between the leaks there. I think that's really true of the ITS, TWAT, BETTER leaks that really revatilised the fan base....paved the way for the 06 tour and really kind of got the ball rolling after the endless nothingness of 03-05 kinda time,

But isn't skwerl the guy who leaked all the other stuff, like prostitute, if the world...and Riad...that stuff came much latter on in the picture, at a time when we ended up being pretty damn close to the real release.

A leak of 4-5 songs was one thing, but when you have a 13 song album and we ended up with like 11 of those songs...it starts to get pretty damaging.

The inital leaks had their place from a PR point of view, but I think like any good thing, it went too far. It's one thing leaking and dowloading songs at a time when it seemed due to the lack of communication that the album was never going to happen, but it's a whole different thing when there's an offical date and release strategy in the works...and that's getting messed with.

Or another idea - which might be bad but it just poped into my head - would be like some kind of handicap for GNR tunes in the final round. Like they start from -5 or something.....to compensate for our GNR fandom...I dunno...

Have I missed something in this thread? So basicly you're saying that because the tour didn't start yet, and rehersals went 3 months, that the obvious reason for that is that DJ sucks and can't learn the material? Really? That's a massive leap. It's GNR! It's probably some kind of business or legal bullshit that's mananaged to come up and fuck with the tour, or maybe some personal reason, the kinds of things that, you know, delayed the album for year after year.

I don't want to sound hyper positive or anything, but like, really, I just don't see any real basis to assume it's got anything to do with DJ.

Well when rehersing they have to work around 7 people's schedules or something to find common times...which is probably quite hard...then he's got to learn probably most of AFD, and I'd guess a fair amount of CD too...(so they have some options) and a couple of tracks from UYI....then add in that the CD songs are pretty strange structures....and that the old songs have now got complex guitar ques where people play 1/2 a solo then someone else takes over for the rest of it.....add in maybe some general stage craft stuff, working  out balances and stuff, add in a few delays for whatever other reasons...keep at it until its at a level for a stadium tour...and I can easily see it taking a couple of months....

Tons.

And while I won't deny most people probably want him back in the band, it's also partly marketing that would have allowed its sucess.

IMO....general public people remember 3 things from GNR:

#1 the classic crossover songs (November Rain, Sweet Child, and a couple more less so),
#2 Axl in his illusion era outfits causing riots and so forth,

#3 Slash in a top hat,  smoking and playing.

That's the menta image that you get when you think GNR. The problem is the current marketing gave us NOTHING to replace those things - Slash is gone, and his replacements from a media perpsective were silent and characterless, and Axl is still around but not giving interviews and so on.

If slash was around there would have been interviews and stuff for months. He knows how to use the media. And I don't mean that as any kind of insult. But think of his solo album, - it's not even recorded yet - and we know some of the guest singers - we know some of the styles - excitment is building - and we know we'll be kept in the loop about it.

So to be fair - yeah a slash gnr album would sell more cos most people want slash in the band and its the real gnr etc - but it would also sell more because it would have been promoted and marketed in a tradtitional way.

It'd have been interesting if the band had done stuff differently. Like if the band had come out strongly in the media promoting their playing. If a bid deal had been made about how both bumble and bucket are on the album and how those guys are insanely good on guitar in ways normal people arn't lol.

If axl had given a ton of interviews, or even if he'd gone off on some kind of rant in a public way, if tours had gone on, or if there'd been some kind of other drama. or whatever. There's ways that this could have turned into a huge circus...but for whatever reason they choose not to do it that way.

Its up to GNR how they do things and that's cool - but from an ourside perspective, it's hard to think that both the band and the label going dead quiet straight after the release did anything but harm sales.

When so much about this release has been handled in a non-standard and frankly bizzare way, it's really strage to be blaming the music. It's not the music. It's the business that was fucked up.