If we don't see anything from CD in 2008 then i reckon Axl will have nowhere else to go except back on the reunion trail or into obscurity.

His personal finances would not robust enough to fund the marketing & distribution of CD on his own. This album was conceived by Axl around 1996 before the collapse of the music industry when putting $25M into GNR would not have been a stretch for a major label as the returns would have been so massive.

The album is at least 8 years too late and the industry model is collapsing. The days of the blank checks are over for Axl. He's a 45 year old nostalgia act (sadly his own doing), rather than being an aging but current rock giant like Bono. His pulling power is still impressive but it's built on old songs and old players. He is not in U2 country anymore.

I think CD will not be pushed as hugely as people around here hope. The will is not there in the industry anymore. Nothing Axl could have written will convince any music suit to risk angering his stock holders by taking a massive bet on a guy who walked away from the top 14 years ago and remains as famous for walking off stage as he is for singing on it.

I hate to see this great man in this position, I hate that the industry is run by commerce graduates and not passionate music visionaries but unfortunately that's the world Axl finds himself in now.

He will be under severe pressure to go back to the old band, book a tour and watch the millions flow in. It's all so much easier for a label to get their heads around than what is ahead for them in effectively launching the albatross that CD has become.

I would be really interested in what people like Mike Patton, Chris Cornell or Dave Grohl could get out of Slash. He seems to respond in a unique way to each singer he works with and that gets me pumped about him colloborating with new artists. Each of those guys are multi instrumentalists and accomplished vocalists so the jams would be mouth watering.
I hope it's done correctly and Slash is put with the right people. If he goes too old school it could be a stiff..

This could be killer. Just for sport let's list your dream collaborators:
'¢    Chris Cornell
'¢    Robert Plant
'¢    Lenny Kravitz
'¢    James Hetfield
'¢    Ian Ashbury
'¢    Dave Grohl
'¢    Mike Patton
'¢    Corey Glover (Living Color)
'¢    PJ Harvey
'¢    Eddie Vedder
'¢    Jerry Cantrell
'¢    Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees)
'¢    AXL

Slash probably misses Axl's wild talent but not the garbage that came with it..

I don't blame him for being really pissed about Axl not going on stage. That must be agonizing when you love the experience so much and you can see the fans waiting, primed, begging for you to get out there and blow them away.

Very few artists understood Axl's reasoning for abondoning his job as front man when he was needed so badly so many times. For most artists playing live is the pinnacle of the experience. I've been there on a tiny scale and a good gig is an out-of-body experience it rocks so hard.

All the former members were pissed with Axl for this and I'd say that kind of emotional brinkmanship could cause more booze and alcohol problems for the others as they tried to steady their frayed nerves.

When you're 23 years old and have 100 people depending on you for their paycheck and millions of people around the world paying big money to see you play and your singer cannot be trusted to show up no matter what logic is tried on him... that must be a pressure NONE of us can imagine.. What would you do to calm yourself when you can have ANYTHING you want to ease the nerves...drink anyone? joint? line of junk?