its all said in the link i gave you, i'll quote myself
"According to the book "Reckless Road" from Marc Canter there were 27 songs recorded at Sound City Studios in 1986. On page 278 it states all 27 songs:
.
.
.
10. November Rain (acoustic)
11. November Rain (piano)
.
.
those 2 we have on circulating unofficial media for years, acoustic ~5min / piano ~10min.
here is what Slash says about November Rain in one of the 1992-1993 MTV weekends:
[Slash_about_November_Rain__VCD_.mpg] (9054 KB)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4szfqf"....when it first surfaced.....it was way before Appetite for Destruction came out....we've been digging around with it for years...it used to be 25min long...........and when we finally decided to record it and we had an arrangement..."
Slash's book/page 151:
"....at Sound City Studios (1986)......we worked on demos of "November Rain", which was about 18 minutes long in its original version, so needless to say we really needed to sit down and focus on arranging it."
and demowise we fans have "November Rain (acoustic+vocals)", ~5min, demo taken from ".44 Caliber Horticulture Vol. 2" here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7ajccc [09 - November Rain I_vol2.mp3 - 192kbps]
and
"November Rain (piano+vocals)", ~10min, demo taken from ".44 Caliber Horticulture Vol. 2" here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/wrvvyi [10 - November Rain II_vol2.mp3 - 192kbps]
(Notes:
taken from ".44 Caliber Horticulture Vol. 2" silver boot CDs because that songlist kinda fits exactly the song order of the 1st half of the Sound City demo list given by Marc Canter in his "Reckless Road" book/page 278. so most likely this bootleg (and others) is(are) some incomplete lower quality copy of those Sound City demos 1986)
so this would back up my 1st reply in the topic on newgnr.com-forum:
"the ~18min NR version was [edit: "probably"] only a Jam when figuring out the final song structure, kinda like when you practise with a band you play 1-2 parts over and over so the other musicians can learn and add their part/thoughts to it [edit: "probably on some uncirculating rehearsal/non-studio-tapes only"]
i remember reading or watching an interview (slash?) that "the song never was that long" so i highly doubt they recorded it. then again what do we know whats all in the gnr vaults......must be thousands and thousands of unsurfaced audio and video."
Author