WTF?  Are you reading and talking about the right thread?

Great post - Karma for that!

I agree with everything you said James all ships have sailed!  Even if he still thinks he has a ship that he can get on now it doesn't mean it won't sink!

The new members of the band are the ones that I feel most for out of this whole saga.  They have put in a huge amount of work and effort yet they simply have to roll with the punches and hope it turns out ok sooner rather than later.

By deciding to not communicate with the fan base any longer because of the negativity - to me it basically means that he doesn't want to be held accountable for anything that he or the GN'R camp says.

Lets be honest, they are in the business of making $$'s and running a successful business (which is really what Axl has turned GN'R into - a big business).  If that means you have to throw out a comment about a tentative release date to generate a buzz again to ensure decent ticket sales and placate a growing backlash, then you do it.

Now plenty of people clearly didn't understand or choose to ignore the word tentative.  So when the date passed a whole heap of fans whinged and bitched about it.  Personally, I didn't have a problem with them missing the date.  However, if he was completely honest about them aiming to hit that March date, then when it was missed you would presume that the actual date would follow shortly.  The fact that it didn't and we are now 9 months later suggests that the date wasn't never a possibility.

Unfortunately I think most of the small reactive snippets of communication we have had from them have been marketing ploys to keep the fanbase interested and the business ticking along.

At the same time I really think that the poor guy is in a fucked up position.  They have not communicated with fans much at all and have pissed so many of them off, that even now if they started some regular open and honest communication it really may make no difference because so many people are so jaded, they would just continue to pull everything he says apart and whinge and bitch again.

Until he gets this CD monkey off his back I think it's always going to be this way.  Problem is, to get it off his back he needs to release the album and have the public vote on it which means right there and then he is being judged - the enigma and mystique of Chinese Democracy is finally over (if it's not already).  Depending on how it goes down it's either the real beginning of "the new GN'R" or the death of it.  Because of the long running joke that CD has finally become, it can never live up to the hype so he risks a real backlash (if that's possible given the size of the current backlash) when it's released regardless of whether it's the album of the year/decade.  (personally I am sure it will be fantastic - but still not worth 15 years or whatever the wait is).  So this can't honestly look like an attractive thought to him so you continue to stall and preserve the status quo.

His only other "out" is to get the original lineup involved - and that ain't gonna happen.  So he either keeps stringing this thing out even further or releases it and comes back to earth as just another lead singer of regular current band and not the rock god that he once was (or still is or thinks he still is).