A new bloom from GNR veterans

The Thorns? No Roses?

What would you call a new band featuring Guns N’ Roses founders Slash, Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin along with longtime drummer Matt Sorum?

That’s a question the four are pondering as they rehearse together, writing new material and auditioning potential singers.

GNR singer Axl Rose kept the Guns N’ Roses name for the new lineup he’s assembled. Though starting a North American concert tour on Thursday, his new GNR remains in limbo, with its “Chinese Democracy” album chronically unfinished.

The four ex-Gunners, though, are raring to go. They rehearsed a few months ago with former Buckcherry singer Joshua Todd but now seem set to tab Neurotica’s Kelly Shaefer as their frontman. John Kalod- ner, a veteran music executive who was key in Aerosmith’s ‘80s and ‘90s resurrection and has worked with many other classic hard-rock acts, has been advising the ensemble.

Plans are for an album of new material and a tour, presumably featuring some of the same GNR songs that Rose and crew are doing in their shows.

The rift recalls David Lee Roth’s exit from Van Halen in the late ‘80s. At the time, most pundits predicted that Roth would fare better, given his charisma, a prediction that proved dramatically incorrect.

But the circumstances are so different here that predictions are hard to make.

“The difference with Van Halen was that there was more continuity between the time Roth left the band and they brought in Sammy Hagar,” says Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for Billboard magazine. “This is almost a decade we’re talking about since the last Guns N’ Roses album.”

Mayfield notes that for all its legendary stature, GNR has not been among the top acts in continued sales impact. Only the 1987 debut, “Appetite for Destruction,” has been even close to a regular presence on Billboard’s catalog chart, and neither of the twin 1991 “Use Your Illusion” albums, huge sellers at the time, has even appeared on the catalog chart.

Meanwhile, Slash, McKagan and Stradlin all have pursued solo projects with little commercial success.

“They’ll have a leg up on other new bands in terms of getting publicity right off the bat,” Mayfield says. “But after that, as always, it depends on the music they release.”

A little something for the faithful

Advance copies of a live Bob Dylan album drawn from shows on his freewheeling 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour have what appears to be a Freudian slip in the packaging. The song “Simple Twist of Fate” is listed as “Simple Twist of Faith” -- an amusing mistake, given that shortly after that tour the Jewish artist made his own personal twist of faith with his conversion to Christianity.

But a source close to the project revealed that the spelling was done deliberately, a little bit of fun for hard-core fans. The source said that when the album is released Nov. 26, the title will be correct.

Small faces

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ first four albums, from before the L.A. band’s big breakthrough hits, will be reissued in January in special editions with previously unreleased bonus tracks. All four -- 1984’s “Red Hot Chili Peppers,” 1985’s “Freaky Styley,” 1987’s “The Uplift Mofo Party Plan” and 1989’s “Mother’s Milk” -- will feature new artwork, plus liner notes by bassist Flea. Among the more intriguing bonus titles: a demo recording of “Salute to Kareem,” a previously unreleased song honoring Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar by a group of devoted Lakers fans.

After a first volume featuring music by Aimee Mann, Bruce Springsteen and Suzanne Vega, among others, “Songs Inspired by Literature: Chapter 2” will include David Bowie’s “1984” (inspired by George Orwell’s classic) and Tom Waits’ “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (after the Flannery O’Connor story), plus contributions by Roseanne Cash and “The Tonight Show” band member Vicki Randall. The album, due in the spring, will, like its predecessor, benefit adult literacy programs and be released by Mann’s United Musicians.

After having engineered the Beatles’ “Revolver,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Abbey Road” and having engineered and produced dozens of albums by Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, the Zombies and many others, Geoff Emerick is doing his first-ever production of an independent act. He’s in L.A. working at Capitol Records studios with Pasadena-based band the Syrups on a debut album to be released by tiny Hollywood label Beck Records. Emerick was introduced to the band by its manager, David Carr, a British-born musician who has known the producer since they worked on an album together in 1973.