Wait, the re-recorded WTTJ leaked? When did this happen?

I'm not sure Robin would've worked as a rhythm player – plus he was explicitly brought on board as a lead guitarist, so a "demotion" to rhythm would've stung his ego.

Axl should've committed to two guitarists in 2000: a rhythm player and a lead. Either Huge/Finck or Huge/Buckethead, or Fortus/Finck or Fortus/Buckethead. And had whoever ended up taking the lead role re-record the extant guitar parts. No fucking about "honoring the material recorded by previous contributors," just make sure that whoever is up on stage is the person playing the relevant bit on the album.

With two lead guitarists you immediately create the impression that "no one individual can replace Slash," on top of which you end up with one of them standing around with nothing to do for half the songs (seriously, watch Think About You from 2002, you've got Buckethead playing chords ffs).

My own preference would be for a Fortus/Buckethead combo. As much as I love Finck, he's very much an acquired taste, plus the version of the album recorded with Finck doesn't have those extra flourishes that Buckethead adds. Basically: Buckethead is more than capable of playing the Finck solo in TWAT, but I suspect that the Buckethead solo would sound very different in Finck's hands. Plus Buckethead is an iconic figure; instantly recognisable in silhouette, the same as Slash. It's telling that all the interest in the band in 2001-02 zeroed in on Buckethead, and even years later he was the figure most associated with Chinese Democracy-era GN'R.

They could easily pad it out with covers, of course. Wichita Lineman, The Seeker, etc. Maybe get Duff to give the band a new solo track, whack a Slash solo on it and call it a GN'R song.

It still annoys me that Duff doesn't sing the backing vocals in the outro the way Izzy recorded them on the original studio version.

One of my favourite things about GN'R is how they vary stresses, emphasis and… syllabic structure? I'm not sure what you'd call it…

The outro to YCBM is a great example; most bands would just sing "You could be mine" over and over, same stresses and emphasis. But GN'R mixes it up; you have Izzy singing "Y'could be mine" while Axl's singing "Youcould be mi-e-ine." And then during the last bit of the song he's basically singing it every possible way you can sing it – singing "mi-e-ine" in an ascending melody, then a lower melody, etc etc. It's one of the things that makes GN'R more sophisticated than other bands, I think.

And he's doing it again with the chorus for Perhaps:
Got a lot more than I bargained for - 9 syllables, emphasis on the "got" and the "lot"

You forgot about the others you were fighting for – 13 syllables, cheeky little run of triplets at the start of the line

Sold out to the ones that you once ignored – 10 syllables, emphasis comes on the second and fifth syllables, "out" and "ones"

You used to be a little crazy, now there's so much more – 14 syllables, with this rapid quickfire run from "you" through to "so" and then a slower triplet.

I'm probably not using the right technical terms there, but what I like is that Axl's playing around with structure.