Idolator

Last night, Blabbermouth posted an item claiming that it had found new Guns N' Roses-related artwork, and that said art was intended to accompany either the "Shackler's Revenge" digital download or—gasp—Chinese Democracy. But when I clicked through from my RSS feed to the post this morning, I found that it had since been removed. Cached posts scattered around the 'Net revealed that the item quoted "writer Erin Fox" as having found the cover from Microsoft, who I guess would have distributed the cover because "Shackler's Revenge" is going to become commercially available via the forthcoming video game Rock Band 2. (Just in case you're wondering, that explanation makes no sense to me, either. And I have no idea who Erin Fox might be.)

While trawling the Internet for further information on this mysterious bit of art—naturally, I wanted to see if Blabbermouth had removed the post because of pressure from the band's very hands-on management or because it wanted to wipe bits of egg off its face—I found a thread on the GNR forum GNRevolution that not only revealed it as fan-made, it teased a lurker out of the woodwork who went by the name of "azoff." As in Irving Azoff, the band's manager? Well, not quite—but that doesn't mean my curiosity wasn't piqued by his cryptic posts.