I don't think there will be an AFD 5. For the simple reason that they opened the door for that in 2016. We already know they won't let Adler play more than a few songs and apparently not willing to pay Izzy what he wants even for a single show.

An AFD 5 tour could make bank, but a single show or a handful is not going to make much of dent when they play 50 shows a year. There is no way Adler is up for that even if they would let him and probably not Izzy either. Also they are all getting old as fuck.

Yes, but then where are all these superior songs. You would think they would be a priority for the stuff Slash and Duff worked on. The only songs I would call A-list from those are Hard School and the General. Stuff like Perhaps and Atlas feel more like b or c material. Scraping the bottom of the barrel type stuff.

The only outlier is Monsters.

Well I think he can both reward loyalty and also be a shitty band leader. Axl doesn't seem to be a money grubber so I doubt incidents where people don't get paid is him trying to stiff them. More likely a chaotic organization where things don't get solved or miscommunication. Also if he feels slighted in any way he can become really difficult and dismissive. He also lives in a bubble where all his yes men are feeding him information through a lens of "this is not your fault" so his perspective is probably warped.

Getting back Buckethead didn't seem to be an option. The band treated him poorly, but that is not exactly Axl's fault. Once he left, Axl took the position of "fuck you", like he always does when people disappoint him, real or imagined.

I don't know what actually happened with Goldstein and the tour fiasco. But I think we can agree that Doug was a yes man of limited competence. If he screwed up something I can see Axl taking that as a slight. Then you probably have Merck and Sanctuary pissing in his ear that Doug wanted out, agreed to it etc.

And the CD thing wasn't him refusing to release it, it was the failure to get the label to promote it the way he wanted to. It took Azoff to secure the Best Buy deal for that to happen. Apparently Axl was not satisfied with that, which is sort of fair, it was a cut your losses type thing. But he also should have realized that the gig was up at that point and move on. Nobody was going to invest serious money into a failed project. He is also basically sitting on his ass in this time period regarding new material and still is.

He can be a trainwreck but I don't think loyalty is something that he lacks. The Frank thing might very well have been Duff and Slash setting him up, and him feeling bad about it is proof of his loyal nature, not the opposite.

He can bend to peer pressure. Axl was the last person to sign off on Adler being thrown out, despite having a lot of reason to ditch him. Frank had to go because he was a poor fit and Slash/Duff wanted somebody else badly. He is not going to jeopardize the reunion for a replacement drummer.

Matt and Pittman acted out of line. That is a big no no.

Only exception is Gilby. Apparently Axl just viewed him as a temporary replacement and when he did not live up to expectations let him go.

Axl will reward loyalty unless special circumstances forces his hand. He values the opinions of Slash and Duff. With Frank he may have thought "alright we gave him 20 years, he's not really up to snuff, he did not prove himself sufficiently". Similar to Gilby in that sense. But even in that case Axl was loyal to him for decades. Somebody like Angus or Gene Simmons would not hesitate to ditch a player at the first opportunity.

Slash never cared about Axl wanting to do industrial stuff. It was just payback for Axl embarrassing him by taking over the name. Dumbest move Axl ever did. Completely unnecessary. Alienated his most valuable player, which in the end forced out Matt and Duff too.