Right, and he's basically bitching about the producer pushing him too. I can picture him being annoying to work with in that regard. But hey, they guy has earned the right to have an ego and the right to run his own show, so more power to him I guess.

Ya that was really intriguing to me. I don't know why he is so adverse to recording with an additional guitarist. You can certainly see why, then, he would be so upset about Axl bringing in Huge, Wylde, etc.

Personally, I think it really shows that Slash does all the guitars on his albums...but not in the most positive ways. The rhythm work is generally bland and I think having a strong supporting contributor would be good for him.

I just don't understand how it hurts. I'm not saying you need 3 guitarists and 2 keyboardists but I think it could certainly help his writing to add another dimension.

Axl gets a lot of shit for wanting to go in the industrial/electronic direction, but really, I think he was right. His timing was just off by a decade. You look at bands like White Zombie, Korn, and Manson...that's where rock music was (this era gets a lot of shit but I quite like the music). The songs may have been infused with industrial flare but at their heart they were just good rock songs. I think GNR could have very easily (even with Slash) done a late 90s modern sounding album and been successful. But had they released a Snakepit like album in 1999 would it have been received as good as the Illusions? I don't think there's a chance. Blues rock just didn't exist.

Some bands were able to sustain from the early nineties into the new millennium - Pearl Jam is the only one I can think of off the top of my head that didn't dramatically alter their sound to do so. Bon Jovi had a hit with It's My Life which is unabashedly adult mainstream "rock," and certainly a change in dynamic for the band. The Smashing Pumpkins actually were quasi successful going the electronic route with the Adore album. Red Hot Chili Peppers were able to do it. But again, none of these bands were releasing straight-forward hard rock in the vein of Guns. They would have had to make adjustments to remain successful, and I think Axl was generally right in the debate.

Just bought it. I think, like almost all Slash songs, it's easy to listen to and at any given moment you can get into it, but it's largely the same stuff. That's not necessarily a bad quality - take ACDC for example, but I'm going to guess by the time the album drops we're going to be wondering why they didn't just pare the album down to 12 tracks and have a bonus disc. I doubt the 17 songs are album worthy.

Don't get me wrong - give me the 17 songs every 3 years versus the output of his GNR counterpart any day of the week, but obviously a byproduct of that is going to be somewhat generic output.

So ya, I like the song alright, but I'm not going to seek it out to listen to because I'm in the mood to hear 30 Years to Life. It'll come on shuffle when I'm running or while I'm listening to World On Fire and that's good enough for me.