It blew me away on the first listen too. That opening melody..i got that "holy shit" feeling you get when you know you're listening to something pretty special...

Well recording in a few takes can be magical. Slash recorded the guitar parts and solos to the Alice Cooper song "Vengance is Mine" in one day, and I think they're  perfect for that song.

But that doesn't mean it's right for everyone to work that way. Axl seems to be a deep thinker and it could easily be that he finds giving his ideas time to gestate yeilds superior results to what he might pen improvisationally.

Everyone has their own creative process, and I endorse them doing whatever works in the end for them. In my opinion, somewriting wise,  the CD songs are brilliant songs and amongst Axl's best work, so while the process was frustrating for fans, I'd say it was sucessful on an artistic level.

So i wouldn't recomend Axl change his creative process, but I'd love to see some of the business side of things run differently. In the past it sounds like a lot of business stuff and legal issues have got in the way of Axl doing his thing and the band moving forward, and I'd love to see the GNR machine streamline imn that regard. Hopefully azoff or whatever will see that happen. It certainly seems that since he took the helm things have impoved (comunication has increased, an album is out, signs point to a tour). I'd like to see things get even more "traditional" - like new merch for this band, and I  know I say it in every thread, but shots of Axl and Bumble and DJ and the guys together, couple of photo shoots would be awesome. Stuff like that. But I guess as Axl says...he doesn't work for me...so we'll have to see what happens.

Yeah I know what you mean, although i'm more likely to experiment on a recording than live, live I want what I always use and know exactly how it will react. I think it depends on the songs too...like if you have songs with a bit of variation in them, it can be fun to mess around, expecially with rhythm parts to get different effects.

It probably depends on the players too. I mean Slash always sounds a certain way and so you'd expect him to stick to tried and true gear (although he did mess around a bit with Libertad I read), whereas someone like Tom Morello that uses lots of different textures and effects is more likely to show up with a trailor of shit.

I'm somewhere in the middle...for some tones...especially lead guitar...i'm from the school of "If it ain't broke don't fix it"...but then again...sometimes taking the effort to do things specially really makes recordings amazing. I remember watching a doco on Metallica's Black Album and seeing all the different stuff going on in those songs, different instruments, placement of mikes, amps etc etc, and it really sounds pretty amazing what they came out with.

Although I think you can go too far as well, at the end of the day a lot of tone is as much in the touch as it is in the gear. That said, I really wanna get that sound of the solo in "If the World", i think it's bucket....sounds amazing when it kicks in.

Yeah i used to wonder that too...but then I thought maybe they do it intentionally to avoid confusion...like if Matt and Slash and dave were to record some album together people start going like "is duff out of the band" or soemthing like that?