Must be earlier. I registered in that month and the site was already off the ground then with a fair amount of threads, and it was still called ROV.

I thought I registered in 06. Can't believe I stuck out with Jarmo's bs for that long.

On a side note, does anyone remember Regal94 from 2000 Intentions forum? He's the guy who inspired me to make my first thread way back. A real jester.

He needs the labels approval to release a single. He's not going to do it without a push from them to support it. Is that not what Azoff managed to do? Make a release of the album financially acceptable to the label? Of course they did dick to support it but they managed to cash in and close the account.

That was imo always the problem of CD, being funded by mid 90s money and becoming too expensive to adequately release under the Axl & Friends brand GN'R had then become. I think the label were holding out for and encouraging a reunion in order to make it financially desirable for them to conclude on a 14m investment. That was the reason for the deadlock that Axl complained about. He was not ready to go back to Slash.

If I'm not mistaken doesn't the whole delay of CD boil down to its cost and a contract made in the Slash era? Axl was ready to go around 2000 but the label didn't think the material justified the costs? In that respect 2006 was likely Axls attempt to convince the label he was capable of staging a credible comeback and get them to invest in an album launch. His "I don't know if soon is the word" makes sense in that context. Merck too was stringing people along hinting at a release, perhaps in the hopes it would actually materialise. I'm not sure why Axl got the blame for this delay when there seems to have been sufficient material long before 2006 for a release.

Ron suffered from being "not Slash" and "not BH". There really was nothing he could offer that would satisfy fans at that point. All people heard was that his live solos were not as impressive as BH or as genuine as Slash. A man between two chairs.

I do like most of his work on CD though. I'm not sure how many songs he featured on, but I like his guitar on Chinese Democracy and Catcher. The best stuff from BH and Robin was also untouched so I don't think he ruined anything like fans feared.

I think many also felt he turned into a perpetual whiner after his car accident. Harsh to say considering all his struggles, but it seemed like every interview with him had a touch of "poor me" after that.