Question:

Is anyone considering that Axl may be actually planning to go away for a long time even retire after this run?

I say this because:

Axl seems relaxed and happy to be “the guy who sings Sweet Child O’ Mine”.
All of the old stated ambitions about taking fans to new places with GNR seem to have petered out.

Axl never mentions new music anymore. The furthest he has moved is to be looking at re-releasing CD, a four year old album.

The management team have been drawing from old band achievements more and more as the years have gone by so that now the band are following the nostalgia business model more closely than ever before.

The band are selling equipment on line while management is dumping tons of old merchandise onto the web.

The fact that Axl seems so content that it indicates to me that he has let some major things go in his life. The one main thing was his massive ambition for himself, his new band and their music. That cross he carried that seemed to torture him appears to be gone.

This is a guy who said to Bach that he’d pay VH1 two million dollars to leave him alone, yet he’s now happy to be a wedding singer (all be it at a stratospheric level).

His get out clause is that he can blame the collapse of the music business for the only partial interest in his work with other GNR line ups.

It may actually be cheaper and easier for Axl to manage his current msuic portfolio rather than pay about 13 people’s salaries and fight to get this band back onto the top of a collapsed business.

“Team Brazil” is a new idea from Beta’s crew. They are now publicising themselves as a real management unit. Maybe they know they will need to look for new clients in the near future?