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Reason suggests you're right, but Axl has wanted to put out a new album since 2008. He went as far as to suggest late 2009 in the Dexter chats. Big stepping stones have included, but not limited to, the deteriorating relationship with Azoff, the bashing Axl gave to the local branch of Universal soon after CD's release (messed-up booklet, et al), the non-eventful release and withering sales... Late 2009 soon became an impossibilty, because neither Axl nor the label were there.

However, late into the year Axl apparently made a break for it and at around mounting the Oriental shows, he started working with Pitman on those CD2 songs again. They got off the road in 2010, and went into the studio again. Only... something happened to Axl. It was similar to his blowback in 2009; again, he'd put in a good amount of weight since his last public appearance. Only it was worse.

Maybe it was the Azoff lawsuit, as it was decided Axl was obliged to tour Ticketmaster venues in the US, with Azoff getting a fair share of the spoils. Axl tells LA Times by the tour end that they'll release stuff  "as soon as we can figure out what our deal is with labels". He still needed someone to play the game on his behalf with the suits, and apparently, that ball was last touched when Azoff slamdunked a BestBuy exclusive.

Of course, the 2011 tour was a battlefield. Ron was coming down from his car accident, was on painkillers and drinking heavily. People had issues. When the boss of it all is phoning it in, underlings will follow. DJ's playing got sloppier, and while the fans cared, the band - less so. The album was a bit lost, per chance. Ron started to sound like Slash in '95, as in, "we need to get the band into a room and start working".

What they did manage to put together in 2012-14 was AFDem. It was a soft middle-of-the-road release - exclusively on Blu-Ray so they'd get good-looking headlines on how it topped the charts. More important must've been sussing out the works between Uni and Guns. There's all sorts of traffic that goes on in such transactions and AFDem hopefully ironed some post-CD wrinkles out.

After the 2014 residency and acquittal of the live band, Axl trademarked Stay of Execution and went into the studio with Pitman again. Fortus said Axl even recorded new vocals. He seemed to be in the loop, unlike Ron and DJ, and it's possible he's been in and out of Axl's studio, recording guitars.

Axl's played his hand on CD2 extremely close to his chest, enjoying its anonymity. It was a different story 20 years ago. The curiosity value had left, but also, the label was spoken for and work could be carried out in very small circles. Since CD, Caram has only AFDem to his name, which sort of implies he's been on retainer in the Guns camp all that time.

Of course, Pitman was pushed out early last year. Attitude. There's had to be a lot of ire and tension before that with Slash and Duff. CD2 was pushed back, because the re-boot of the live band was best served as another nostalgia tour. Then AC/DC happened and touring kept racking money.

It's as close as it always is.

Must've smelled like Teen Spirit.

Yup, the original Village crew, who took over from Beavan, Critter, et al @ Rumbo. French Eric, who came in from Joe Satriani's band. Next to him, the wunderkind Del Rey Brewer. He's roughly half of Axl's age, there. He did the awesome thing and left the project in the '04 diaspora to work with Buckethead. They wrote songs like Nottingham Lace together.

And sure enough, there's Caram. He did a lot of maddeningly detailed ProTools work, juggling so many audio tracks and soundbytes. A big deal in a project of CD's timeframe is personnel turnover. The Village move, for instance, was ushered by Bob Ezrin. He'd set the band up for a re-recording, but was not around to share his vision of 'good songs' with a confused Axl anymore. Caram was there, maybe since Day 1 at the Village. He'd follow Axl into the wilderness.

For sure, same songs, mostly. Let's say, a releasable product with the required pedigree. The RTB album was pretty much done, while the orchestrations commissioned by Axl are possibly the only bits of it remaining on CD.

Was played on 01/01/01, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO8s0oWGE00

Well, Ax and Pitman settled the suit.

"Pitman was owed $125,000 for more than a year's worth of work... Axl cried poverty back in 2011 -- and promised to pay Chris Pitman for services rendered ... down the road when he was more flush ... according to the docs. In the suit, he says that amount was supposed to be paid by Oct. 2012."

If Pitman's monthly pay was still around $7k, the debt would've suggested a year and a half of work. They could've agreed to a year-long IOU, meaning the deal was struck around Oct. 2011, before the tour. Pitman's engineering work may have begun in 2009, given the amount of touring in between.

"Another person who’s partied with Rose [in Feb 2010] says he’s working on a new album after last year’s disappointing “Chinese Democracy” — the first Guns N’ Roses studio album in 15 years — and has something to prove."

"We have what I call kind of the second half of Chinese. That’s already recorded. And then we have a remix album made of the songs from Chinese. That’s been done for a while, too." - Axl, 2014

It all points to Axl and Pitman messing about with the CD2 songs in between tour legs around 2009-11. This was when virtually every other band member talked about writing songs and working on stuff. In late 2014, Axl seemed to take on newer material, recording vocals (according to Fortus) and co-tweeting from the studio w/ Pitman.

Therefore, we could make a case that Slash killed CD2.