misterID wrote:

I would bet you anything the only producers on Better were Axl and Caram. Perhaps Sean was there at its conception, but that's probably about it. I haven't seen anything that says RTB did jack in recording any new music.

RTB handled, at first, the re-recording of the Sean Beavan '99 album. It was a different beast altogether, Axl'd recorded it at Rumbo Recorders, and i doubt it's a coincidence that one other album called Appetite was done there, too. He was after that certain AFD vibe from the get-go, with the band recording an entire cover album - quite possibly even in the same studio space!

The Beavan album was apparently mastered, btw. Sp1at alumni gigger had an email exchange with the late mastering engineer George Marino and he said he did it back in the day (99/00). To me, that's the real Chinese Democracy, all the Brain/Bucket stuff et al should've been natural progression in lieu of a follow-up.

"I think [Interscope head Jimmy] Iovine put Roy Thomas Baker in the producer seat because he didn’t think the raw sounds were good enough. Then Roy came in and would try every Marshall guitar amp in a five-state area to find just the right guitar tone. And he wanted to do that for every single part on the album." (Tommy, 04/09)

""They had recorded a bunch of stuff and Josh Freese had recorded a lot of stuff. I think he recorded 90% of the drumming on the 25-30 tunes that were floating around. When I came it was right when they got [producer] Roy Thomas Baker. He was coming from Queen, The Cars, Journey, more the rock thing. He said we had to go re-record the drums because they sounded very industrial." (Brain, 10/12)

"Roy Thomas Baker drove us around L.A. in his Rolls Royce to try to find the exact drums that we wanted for the recording. We went to every company, and it wound up being a mash-up of all the best drums we could find around L.A. We pretty much gathered the most ridiculous kit you could ever have, to re-record Josh’s parts." (Brain, 03/09)

"There was no time constraints, there was nothing. I don’t think anybody was keeping track of it. I was going, ‘I don’t know who’s paying for this, or what’s going on but I don’t really care because I get to come here and f*** off in one of the best studios in the world with some of the best drums and some of the best recording gear, everybody talks s*** about Axl and Guns N Roses but this is killer for me!’" (Brain, 10/12)

In other words, RTB had set his gaze on the sound of the band and was poised to change it by shuffling them through all that gear. The aggravated spending would've come up at this point. The Bob Ezrin / RTB period saw them move to Village Recorders, and set Brain's drumkit in the attic for the next five years. There's the story about the '59 Les Paul having been rented and forgotten in a corner for a couple of years. There was no floor-level management looking after things, as RTB was just thrilled to have the gig, just like anyone else. They could always invent new things to 'improve' the record; Axl needed to be the one to say, 'Now it's good.'

Of course, RTB's work was eventually scrapped and the album was re-recorded for the third time with Axl and Constanzo producing. There were songs added in during RTB's time (Shackler, Sorry...), but also afterwards with Better, et al.

misterID wrote:

I have serious doubts there's some big Lebeis conspiracy preventing a reunion.

I always felt the low point was Beta threatening to 'quit' (what? Her role in Axl's life) in an LA Times article should the band get professional representation after post-Azoff managers Doc McGhee and, later on, Peter Katsis were shown the door. Azoff, the record company and other parties with financial interests over Guns were more keen on the reunion idea than Axl, and based on what people like MSL and Marc Canter have said about Beta, her opinion on Slash seems aligned with that of Axl's, in that Slash's cancer. The silly part in all that is, obviously, that Axl and Slash don't need to do business together to rekindle their friendship.