Jaxlmorrison2 wrote:

AgesOfTheIce wrote:

IDK, on the AFD podcast after Brain talked about writing The General and Seven, he said "and I think Axl sang on The General". Not only did he not mention Axl singing on Seven, he wasn't even 100% sure about The General. Granted, this was in 2019 and his email regarding Seven was in 2010, but it seems strange he would remember so much about the individual parts of these songs years after being done with them in 2010 but then completely forget everything a decade later. I definitely view it as jest. According to others this is not the only email he would answer like this, he had gotten tired of responding and wasn't giving serious answers anymore.

Dude, absolutely. That “we wrote it while eating general Tso’s chicken” always sounded to me like he was joking with a hardcore fan, definitely tired of being asked so many questions. That “ball sack bridge” or whatever he said about “Seven” was another example.

I find Brain's General Tso's chicken story to be totally believable. It was a lengthy interview with the Appetite For Distortion podcast and he gave candid answers. He had no reason to lie about that.

Most of the titles of the instrumentals in the locker leaks seem to be just random titles the members who wrote them came up with - most likely inside jokes. And that was the case with the instrumentals written by Brain and his friends, like The General and Seven.

It generally appears that the earliest working titles were given by the band members in the case of tracks that originated from them and not Axl, whereas the tracks that originated from Axl and developed by the band had working titles that he gave them (e.g. Jackie Chan, Oklahoma).

Then Axl would either change or keep the same working title the band members came up with when he would start working on the lyrics. It looks like he sometimes used the working titles as inspiration for the lyrics (or at least the chorus), e.g. for I'm Sorry/Sorry - he had done this before, e.g. with Locomotive. Or the working titles would give him an idea for a lyrical concept/subject matter that is loosely connected with the title, e.g. Shackler's Revenge, and The General seems to be another case of that. And when he couldn't do either of that and just write lyrics that were totally unrelated to the working title, he would change the title.