Fucking awesome find!! Thanks!

I loved Snakepit 1....does anyone know what Eric Dover or whatever his name is does now? I wish he'd join VR - would be awesome.

"Its Five O'clock somewhere" is an awesome album I recon...to me it sounds like AFD would without axl...like the guitar is back to his AFD riffing roots with killer solos....sometimes i fantasise about hearing it with Axl LOL...but the truth is it was still pretty killer as is...I think a VR with Dover...Slash and Duff would be  really something special!

LMAO....the lifted  LOTR footage is obvious...not sure where the dragon shots are from...is it "Reign of Fire"?

The more i think about it the more I think his voice is higher these days. Listen to some of the boots from the less good shows. Whenever he sings something and it sounds bad its ussually cos he hit a note higher than the melody used to go.

I'm not having a go at Axl. I love him. I'm just saying theres golden performances and less good. And when its less good that seems to be whats happening.

Maybe he didn't mean tuning in the musical sence..but tuning like fine tuning a car?

I don't think there is a vision.

This is how I see it:

Axl has an incrediable unusal singing voice, is a talented lyricist and composer. Slash has  distinguishable and emotive guitar skills. Izzy is a gifted all rounder, and Duff is a talented back line player. Together (with Steven/Matt) they formed an unsually gifted and talented  line up.

Axl is also a smart guy. He looked around himself one day and realised that time at the top spotlight is limited, that you're only young once, and that what is easy come can easy go, that he and much of the band had drug issues, them worse than his at the time, and that continued success was dependant on relationships with these people, many of whom looked at the time as if they could sink the ship. Not to mention he had emotional quirks at the time (stephanie etc, and going on late), legal issues (riots)  and could be seen as one day going to be removed from the band! So i expect this is what it looked like to a smart guy.

He then did what was necessary to protect his interests. He took steps to ensure control of the name, and legacy. The fact that he wanted this control, along with his emotional problems at the time causing the need for delays etc eventualled caused his relationship with the entire old band to fall appart.

The only master plan then became how to rebuild something that was.

The problem is - the original GNR was an unusally talented mix. He still had his own tallent - but you could spend a life time (as he has done) trying to recapture that kind of lightening in a bottle in relation to the rest of the band.

So he's found session players that are ok to have zero say and take orders (Richard). He's searched the globe for other guitarists that are iconic and amazing in their own right (buckethead), and found people who seem to have a lot of soul to their playing (Robin). And perhaps some of these line-ups have been pretty amazing...and he's been recording what they do...searching forever to regain what had to be sacrificed to ensure GNR's existance. The whole thing has turned into the biggest case of thorwing the baby our with the bathwater ever. To protect his future with GNR he had to destroy it and rebuild it from the start. But that's an incrediably hard thing to do. Even with Axl's talent and resources.

So he doesn't have a master plan or vision. He just does what he's always done. Write grand (and fantastic) songs when they come to him, then seek the imput of the talented musos around him. When he wrote NR he had Slash. When he wrote TWAT he had Robin, it wasn't complete sounding so he passed it on to bucket. And likewise work with those people's riffs and songs. Once it was Izzy bringing him Browstone, now its robbin with Better.

He will go on forever trying to recreate a GNR that's worthyof what he had to destroy. And if he ever gets to a point where he thinks he has done it. Then we'll get to hear an album. Its taken 17 years, millions of dollars and tens of the worlds best musicians. But we may be close from what they're saying.