"November Rain is an all-time classic song... but why on Earth did Matt Sorum play the SAME EXACT fill every 4 bars? (23 times to be exact!)"

Two days later, former Guns n' Roses drummer Matt Sorum responded by saying:

"That fill was [singer] Axl's [Rose] idea as a musical phrase that carried on through the trilogy, Don't Cry and Estranged. Those albums, 'Use Your Illusion' [parts] 1 and 2 have sold 20 million combined. Remember, kids, drumming isn't all about fancy drum fills and splash cymbals. Ask Charlie Watts, Ringo [Starr] and Phil Rudd."

According to Blabbermouth, Matt defended the musical drumming in a 2009 interview with Music Radar. They got the idea from an Elton John song called Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me:

"Axl goes, ‘Do you hear that?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I love Nigel Olsson, man’. He says, ‘Do that on the song we’re going to record tomorrow!’ We’d rehearsed it but I didn’t have all the fills and stuff, it was just a groove."