Could you do a version minus Finck's guitar bits during the bridge? As much as I like 'em on the demo they kinda clash with what Slash is playing...

He, er, does that anyway. Standing around being "deactivated" and then springing into life to shred is kind of the keystone of his stage persona.

They probably could have released a Bucket-less Chinese Democracy in 2000 or whatever, but I doubt it would've landed. I mean, I like Robin Finck (probably more than most) but I don't think he's a full-fledged replacement for Slash; he's just too different. A tone monster rather than a lead guitar hero in the Slash mould (though I would love to see him in a Queen/Zeppelin-style band where he's the only guitar player and his unique tone is able to shine through).

The fact that Axl seized on Buckethead when he first discovered him shows that Axl, at least, was aware of that. Buckethead was, as others have pointed out, Axl's Randy Rhoads. A guitar prodigy who could do the twiddly technical stuff (better than Slash, if we're being honest) but could also do soulful material like Mrs Beasley. A stage presence, with an iconic silhouette; it's no wonder the press seized on Buckethead as the face of "new GN'R" and kept doing so even after he'd left the band.

And then Axl made the frankly baffling decision to bring Robin back in, and proceed with a three-guitar line-up with two lead guitarists. Immediately, to the press and the wider public, you're implying that Slash was such a towering figure that you need not one but two lead guitarists to replace him. You're belittling your own hires.

Axl should've committed to a two-guitar line-up, with a lead and a rhythm player. Either Robin and Huge, and release the thing in 2000/2001, or Bucket and Huge (or Fortus) and release it in 2002/3. You could conceivably make a case for Bucket and Robin (which would've been... interesting but would still have been effectively two lead players competing with each other).

Axl's argument that "you need three guitarists to play all the parts" never held water. The older GN'R tracks worked fine live with two, and the fact that they're now playing Chinese Democracy tracks with two guitarists gives the lie to the idea that those songs ever needed three guitarists.

They should've gone with Chinese Democracy minus the intro, or Better as the first single. A solid, catchy rocker. Then followed up with TWAT, to prove that the new band could do big November Rain style epics with guitar solos played atop a mountain as well as the old band.

The problem there, of course, was that TWAT's big outro solo was played by someone who wasn't in the band anymore. If Axl had managed to win Bucket back around, or if they'd launched the album in 2002-3 as they should have done, though...