I’ll keep my post semi short because it echoes a lot of what has been written.

I find the “what was said back then” vs what actually happened interesting.

This was never a re-imagining or a new era of Guns N Roses (the CD era).  It was basically just Axl Rose doing a solo record or project .  His end game was always reunion.  I suspect they had just gotten tired of one another and just needed a break.  Slash for his part fucked it up by leaving.

I forgot who it was but someone complained (pretty sure it was Buckethead or Finck) who complained that they were doing way too many classic GNR songs and not enough CD material.

Axl just fucked up the A to B step .  Which is get the album out of your system and then reunite.  Personally I think he underrated the power that the name still had on different counts .  I don’t think he knew the power of the Slash-Axl partnership and how that was set in stone.  I think he knew Slash would be difficult to replace ; just don’t think he expected the backlash.

The other part is that the public wanted new Guns N’ Roses (or were receptive to it) and that well even if it failed , it wouldn’t really effect the reunion status and the ticket sales for that.   Bands routinely survived bad new albums (Van Halen, Motley Crue) and got the reunion train and bag anyway.

A real manager would have gotten this thing started way earlier .  We probably lost maybe another album worth of tunes.  This part is really important for them because their freaking back catalog is thin as fuck and well it’s always to play stuff from another album instead of what they usually do.

No one can tell me that the manager aspect there  isn’t Team Brazil’s fault .