All I know is, I went to see Guns live back in November with 9 others and every one of them said Axl sounded fantastic.  But apparently that means nothing.

Bh was totally not a worse case senario...in contrast it was a step in the right direction. The original GNR was popular because of everyone, but a large part of things was Axl's voice and Slash's guitar. The loss of slash left a hole in the guitar department, the addition of bucket brought in a guitarist that was clearly at virtuoso level and thus a guitarist that could be respected by guitarist type fans.

While I agree that immage is everything these days, BH's image serves to make him more memorable to a non-guitariast than the other guitar masters such as Gilbert. So i think people see him as "that freak with the deadly guitar skills"...sure he cops a lot for it...but at the end of the day he can back it up in playing. I'll grant it wouldn't have helped but I think more of an issue for the 2002 line up was Axl's change to the urban gangster look, and Robin's variation on the solos and general apperance. For whatever reason circa 2002 Axl's voice appeared to have different qualities too, and I don't think that would have helped people dig it as GNR. You have a new band, with a new style voice, new style of guitar parts, and a host of different unexplained appearances all at once. Tough for the mass market to handle.