See, I didn't get into GN'R first time around. I was about 11 or 12 when UYI hit, and I just thought the lead singer was a shrieking twat; I much preferred Queen. And then the Freddie Mercury tribute concert happened, and I realised the shrieking twat was a raving Queen fan, and that he might be an okay guy after all. But I really got into them in about 1999, when Oh My God came out, and there was a lot of excitement about the new band - I was just intrigued by the concept of reinventing a band from the ground up, and sought out some of the old stuff to reappraise the shrieking twat. Found Civil War, was absolutely hooked, realised the shrieking twat was actually a bloody good singer/songwriter, and got properly excited when the Rio gig happened and we started hearing the new songs.

So really, I'm a fan of the new band in all its permutations. I think they missed a trick in 2002 - if Axl had trained up and got to his 2006-8 level of fitness and vocal ability in 2002, and released the album, Chinese Democracy would've been HUGE. But I don't begrudge the wait and the lineup changes, 'cause Bumblefoot improved every track with his contributions.

I hope Axl pulls it together and gets touring and recording again; I'm intrigued by what DJ can bring to the band, though I'm a proper Finck fanboy and feel he was a bit short-changed.

And I hope Velvet Revolver hook up with a singer with a decent set of pipes, so they can keep doing their thing, too - someone like Chester Bennington, who can belt out Paradise City and keep the old-school fans happy.

Ah, the 1999 IRS. The one thing that I miss on the new version is Robin's fucking cool choppy rhythm guitar from 1:38 onwards. It's there in the album version, but inexplicably Axl's stuck an effect on top of it and buried it in the mix. Should've been left exactly as it was on the 1999 version... damn shame.

This is lovely and all, but when the fuck is someone going to leak The General?

The plan isn't to isolate material from the Brian May version, though - it's to overlay the studio-quality material over the top of it. Axl's vocals are exactly the same on both versions, so (my guess) if you plonk the Axl vocal track from the album version over the (cleaned-up) Brian May version, you get album-quality vocals on the track. Do the same for bass, drums etc (but not guitars) and you effectively end up with the album version, with Brian's material in place. The only place where it gets tricky is during the skips at the end and the fast fade-out...