And strangely Slash questioned his “chops”. I think Tobias was more an enabler of Axl’s songs and direction of the band, more than an untalented player. Not unlike Izzy and Steven. Slash had a pretty strong hard rock sound on Spag Inc. You had to be pretty tough to tour and be in GNR.

Which brings you to Fortus, how he can satisfy Slash’s hard rock and potentially play anything Axl wants.

I’d guess Atlas and Perhaps have Tobias credits. For the most part Axl’s vocals are on Tobias or Pitman sounding stuff.

Might be why rec comp had no interest in releasing more CD era albums, they want the last album to be the Slash and Axl reunion album. But really how much money is in cd sales these days? Surely they don’t care that much. But there has been hints Axl is cautious over what is a GNR album. CD still had that big Queen element like AFD and UYI had, some of the Bucket leaks are more niche, maybe even the Brain and Bucket Zepp jams would still need to be put through the process. Basically on a 7 track side Axl will probably be very prominent on 3 - ITW, Twat, Catcher - Atlas, Perhaps, Soul Monster but then 3 will be more co-written, a Slash song, a Duff song. Basically Chi dem, Shacklers and Better are the songs where Slash and Duff will contribute. This is a black n white take and there probably will be cross over like on CD. But song writing wise there will still be these Axl songs, that no other artists really do. Slash will still want his pure hard rock out moments and Duff might enjoy his punk moments, hopefully Izzy is utilized to off set the seriousness and add depth and variety and make it fully GNR.

I think he wrote something on Shadow of your Love and Back off Bitch - Twat, Catcher, Prostitute, IRS?

I guess a release around 2020 will allow them to tour until 2030.

I remember something like in 2000 average rock records sold 4 mil. CD was expected to sell maybe a little more. But as Zutaut said the rec comp wanted to sell 20 million copies. There was always this back ground of getting Slash back. But also it was the Eminem era, GNR weren’t the biggest band on the books. My guess is the rec comp weren’t giving Axl’s new Guns a run of records. 1 record and sell 6-7 mil then do a reunion in 2004. When that didn’t happen Slash set off with VR. The whole industry was against Axl’s new band taking off. Even on release day Azzof was sabotaging it to get a reunion. Not sure if Axl was ever going to be Ozzy, maybe like a Diamond Dave, doing solo records and being seen as eccentric. GNR was kind of a creative prison for Axl, in a good way sometimes, but sometimes there’s a feeling of loss.