To better remember what happened 15 years ago around now I went looking for Skwerl’s article about the 2008 leaks on Antiquiet and it seems that site is gone? Eventually it turned up here:

https://steveleeds.wordpress.com/tag/guns-n-roses/

This part is interesting:

“The story I got from Steve was that a year prior, a friend of his, a courier of some kind, walked into Jimmy Iovine’s office, and walked out with a CD. Ten tracks; these nine, plus another version of Better that I never bothered to get from Steve.”

Oh, and this:

“Jarmo from the GNR fansite Here Today… Gone To Hell came across news of the leak. He immediately notified Fernando Santos, who checked it out, and then did a Whois lookup on Antiquiet.com to get my phone number so he could talk tough to me.”

And this, which suggests that THE BAND TAKES ACTION ONLY WHEN LEAKS OCCUR:

“Chinese Democracy was finally released on November 23rd, 2008, exclusively at Best Buy, about 20 weeks after my leaks. That’s from no concrete plans, to going up on shelves. Pretty quickly, especially if we’re talking about the poster child for album delays. What did we know about that deal? Best Buy paid a large up front sum for the exclusive, at least seven figures, by all reports. We obtained evidence showing that the value of that exclusive was determined largely by the media hype my leaks had created. UMG had shown Best Buy charts of Google traffic for Chinese Democracy that started spiking in June, and was riding high. The iron was hot, so to speak. And before Best Buy got on board, the only heat source was the fire under my ass.

We started noticing a peculiar trend. Maybe it was all coincidence, maybe none of it was, or maybe something in between. But every time there was a major development in my case, there was a promotional event that seemed to capitalize on it. I would attend a scheduled court appearance, and a single would drop. Or the album art would be revealed. Or there was a tour announcement. I forget what lined up with what; at the time, I wasn’t sure if it was calculated, or our imaginations getting out of hand. So I wasn’t paying very close attention to that thread, but it was one that David and our PI would point out regularly.

What I do believe is that UMG used my leak to their advantage.”

Consider what happened with the storage locker leaks preceding the “Absurd”/“HS” single.

Which suggests that if we do want to hear “The General” …

A leak may indeed be what takes to get an official release.