Duff Mckagan

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by Axl Rose and other members of Guns N' Roses to try to prevent Geffen Records from releasing a greatest hits album by the hard-rock band. The album will be issued as scheduled on Tuesday, according to a record company spokesman. Rose had patched up differences with former GNR guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan enough to join forces in the suit, filed last Friday in U.S.

It's a split personality week at the top of the U.S. pop charts: The new No. 1 seller is rapper T.I.'s fifth album, "T.I. vs T.I.P.," a title that he says he refers to the internal competition with his alter-ego, which he calls T.I.P. "T.I. vs T.I.P." sold a robust 468,000 copies, the second-best debut-week total this year, trailing only the 623,000 mark set by Linkin Park's May release of "Minutes to Midnight." L.A. rock band Velvet Revolver's new album "Libertad" debuts at No.

There's nothing approaching an interband love song in the acrimonious missives shooting back and forth between Scott Weiland's current and former bands. After the singer's announcement this week that he plans to revive Stone Temple Pilots for the group's first tour in seven years, the other members of Velvet Revolver, the band he's been fronting in recent years, declared their intention to keep going without him. In turn, Weiland has dissed his Revolver cohorts as "a handful of discontents who at one time used to call themselves a gang," according to Billboard.

The manager of Guns N' Roses testified Friday that ex-drummer Steven Adler was put on probation to help save him from a deadly heroin addiction, not to cheat him out of money. "I tried for a year and a half to get him clean, and we decided we had to do more," Doug Goldstein told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury. "We had to clean him up because he'd wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars" in worthless studio and rehearsal time, Goldstein said.

"Beauty and the Beast" was playing Saturday night at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, but this version wasn't rated G. Beauty was Sebastian Bach. Lithe and handsome, with flowing blond tresses that women might well covet, he is the heavy-metal pinup boy (rated R for language) who fronts Skid Row. The Beast was Pantera, a growling Texas hard-core metal band made up of shaggy, bearded scruffs, except for singer Philip Anselmo, who is a shaven-headed scruff.

Just weeks after a Guns N' Roses greatest hits album stormed onto the national pop charts at No. 3, some former Guns members have captured the No. 1 spot with their new band, Velvet Revolver. That's all the more impressive when you consider that Guns leader Axl Rose isn't in this new band.