Great thread...too much to reply to at once...so here's a few things....

My understanding is that he hired brain because he played with a certain feel and he wanted that on the album.

That's artistic expression in the 'design' of the album. Was it sucessful? Well if you think it sounds like a drum machine then that means perhaps it didn't work. But that doesn't mean the artistic intent wasn't there.

It depends how you look at it.

The distinction I think is in what people mean by "has been". That implies that a person used to be famous but now no one cares.
IMO that is NOT the case with Axl or Slash. VR made a lot of noise about starting an album - but it was picked up heavily because people care
about them - due to their past works. If i made a big noise about starting a band I wouldnt get 1 billionth of the coverage. Likewise...Axl has a turbulent relationship with the media...but when he gives them something to work with..it tends to be widely reported...for good or bad.

I wouldn't say Tommy was a nobody in the same way one of us is, BUT his level of fame was massively below that of the VR guys in the pubic perception.
He might have some achievments that a number of people respect, but it's not on the same level as having worked on SCOM or PC or one of those
songs that almost everyone knows now from popular culture even if they don't follow the band.

I disagree with part of that:

I also feel CD is a great album but to me it's not astonishing, actually none of the events really surrpise me.

No disrespect to Axl or the band but a level of trouble has always been associated with every version of GNR, but the one constant in my mind is that if you can get through all the bullshit, Axl always ends up delivering great music...whatever else has gone down.

So I'm not astonished that CD is a good album.

Anyway...we're agreed in that I also don't think it's delusional for a person to prefer CD.

I'm not one of those people...i tend to like them all equally but I can see they can exist.

If you think about GNR as a whole...the only common element on each album is Axl. So then it comes down to comparing apples and oranges. Of course some people will prefer one guitarist to another. Some people prefer the kind of arrangments found of AFD, other UYI and other's CD.

It's all prefrences and a prefrence can't be delusional in that context.

LMAO...classic funny!

Not seen it in real life yet...but the trailers make it look bad ass...but then I'm a bit of a metallica fan boy cos of James' mad guitar work!

I feel this poll is like a lamb to the slaughter.