Guns N' Roses

One Liner:  One of the best hard rock bands ever

Wikipedia Genre:  Hard rock, heavy metal
Home: L.A.

Poster Position: 1

Both Weekends.

Thoughts: So, kind of like Metallica, when I first experienced Guns N' Roses, I thought it was some sort of evil music.  Not full on devil worshiping stuff or anything, but it was definitely the cutting edge of rebellious music to me.  One of my best friends from childhood had an older brother named Kyle, and that dude was kind of scary.  Just an unpredictable, rebellious, weird guy.  He had this shitty white car, like a Chevy Celebrity or something, that he had painted Scooby Doo on the hood of.  It smelled like Satan's butthole and was full of Funyun bags and Whopper wrappers and crusty Slurpee cups.  Anyway, he would absolutely blare GNR from it in their street while we were hanging out, and it made me highly nervous at the time.

So, that was my initial memory of GNR, and while I dug on the radio hits, I didn't otherwise really experience the band until Use Your Illusion came out and I then felt like I could try it out without immediately going to hell.

Start: The band was formed from two bands - Hollywood Rose (rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin and vocalist Axl Rose) and L.A. Guns (lead guitar Tracii Guns, drummer Rob Gardner, and bassist Ole Beich).  Apparently, after one show, Beich was fired and Duff McKagan was brought on.  Before they even released a song, Rose and Guns got into an argument, Guns left the band, and Slash was brought into the fold.  After the rest of his boys were gone, Gardner quit and Steven Adler joined to handle drums.  That new lineup, the classic one, began playing Hollywood clubs and touring on the West Coast, leading to interest from labels.

While the went into the studio to work on their first album, they released a four song live EP called Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide (no clue why it is called that), which later became the first four songs on the weird GNR Lies "album." 

Players: Before I get to the songs, a short discussion about the band members.  Axl Rose is the lead singer, and his real name is William Bruce Rose, Jr.  Born in Indiana, he moved to LA and jumped into the music scene.  He seems like a massive prick with control issues.  But, his dad was 20 and his mom was 16 when he was born, which already shows some issues, and Wikipedia claims that his own father allegedly molested him when he was small.  Which is fucked.  And then a step-father routinely beat him.  And his real father was murdered in 1984.  So, his background wasn't simple.

Slash is really Saul Hudson.  He was born in London, to an African American mother costume designer and English artist father, and then ended up moving to LA with them when he was young.  He was given the nickname slash by actor Seymore Cassel because he was always hurrying around and zipping from one thing to another.  Cassel was in several Wes Anderson movies.

Izzy Stradlin is really Jeffrey Dean Isbell.  Also from Axl Rose's small Illinois town, they actually started a band in high school.  He is the only original member of GNR with a high school diploma.  Duff McKagan is really Michael Andrew McKagan and grew up in Seattle.  Duff was a family nickname that he called an Irish thing.  He later played in Velvet Revolver, Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction, and other bands before going back to GNR.  Steven Adler is really Michael Coletti, from Ohio, but met Slash in high school in LA.

Appetite for Destruction.  1987.  Number one album.  Sold more than 30 million copies, and per Wikipedia, the seventh best-selling album in U.S. history with 18 million sold domestically.  I have contributed to two of those purchases, with one on CD and one on vinyl.  As I mentioned above, I didn't buy it back then, I just knew the major hits from the album.  And then sometime later I started enjoying harder stuff and got a copy - its a freaking amazing album.

The opening riffs of "Welcome to the Jungle," Axl whispering "oh my God!" before starting his banshee of the devil howl (that somehow lasts for like 30 seconds), and then the full band kicks in?  Freaking so great.  392.2 million streams.

THAT HAIR!  THAT DANCE MOVE!  And Slash in that freaking hat and hair combo.  Classic stuff.  Personally, there isn't a weak song on here.  I know that there has been some controversy about some of them - a friend told me the other day that the album re-release a few years ago left off one of the bonus tracks called "One in a Million," because it had some racist and homophobic slurs.  Its also a bad song?  But, that wasn't on this album anyway.

The Bo Diddley beat and shuffle start, and then kick off, of "Mr. Brownstone" is also a favorite.  The hand-jive ass middle section with Slash's guitar solos?  C'mon.  I mean, I know its about being hooked on heroin and all, but if you just jam the track and yell along to the lyrics, its a classic one.  

The third place track on the album is "Paradise City," and one of the things I recall about this one was the video showing an absolutely massive concert crowd.  Just over 361 million streams.

Great tune as well.  The first drum kick and hit is iconic.  And near the end, when they just devolve into an all-out frenzy?  Freaking awesome - best part of the song. The bass line is sick.  If they would play the whole tune at that pace, world peace would erupt and all unpleasant people would spontaneously combust.  Also, Slash's speed during that last chunk of that song is wicked.

I've sung bits of "My Michelle" in my mind just about any time I meet someone named Michelle.  I recall one time that I sang something out loud and a younger person had no clue.  I tried the Beatles track on her as well and she still didn't know it.  I have no clue how people skip over music in their lives.  How can you not know two huge songs that share your own name?  But the lyrics to that one are good tales of debauchery.  "Rocket Queen" uses more than just lyrics to showcase debauchery, including the vocalizations of a woman in the throes of sexual congress.  According to lore, those sounds were an actual sex act between Rose and a woman named Adriana Smith, who was dating drummer Steven Adler at the time.  They boned in a sound booth, with an engineer purportedly having to come in and re-position a microphone that had been knocked askew.  Regardless of any of that, its a great rock and roll tune broken up into three parts.  "It's So Easy" is all pure swagger and driving bravado, except for the cool interlude in the middle before it ramps up again.  And the lines in the middle "I see you standing there, you think you're so cool, why don't you just, FUCK OFF!" and "besides, you ain't got nothing better to do, and I'm BORED!" were very appealing to teen boy Jack.

The final major hit from this album is the biggest of all three - "Sweet Child o' Mine."  This is actually their only number one single in the US, which is interesting.  Slash has said that he created the song as a sort of joke at the time - he was doing a "string skipping exercise" to work on his guitar work, and the rest of the group started messing around with him as he noodled.  Rose heard the band from another room and fired up some lyrics to go with it.  Slash has said that he hated the song for a long time, which is kind of funny.  That lark turned into their most popular track, and one that is repeatedly listed on best song lists - #198 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Songs of All Time.  603.3 million streams.

Sheryl Crow did a cover version that I downloaded off of Napster back in the day, that has a slightly different pacing, and I used that version to sing this as a lullaby to my kids all the time when they were small.  It really does have sweet lyrics, on top of a great guitar solo, and an otherwise good track.

The original cover of the album had a "dagger-toothed monster" attacking a "robot rapist," but it was deemed too controversial.  The band tried to make up some weird crap about it being a symbol for how the industrial system is raping our environment, but c'mon man. 

There is no way you would look at that picture and think it had anything at all to do with the environment.  In fact, I'm not entirely sure I would call the robot thing a robot rapist.  What if the robot is the one trying to save the woman from the scary red tooth monster that is shooting out red sperm with skull n crossbones faces?  Huh?  Now what, tough guy?  But yes, that cover likely would not have found a comfortable place in a Sam Goodys in 1987.

Around this time, GNR went on tour as the opening act for Aerosmith, but by the end of the tour, GNR had become the bigger draw of the two.  "Tim Collins, Aerosmith's then-manager, remarked, "By the end of the tour, Guns N' Roses were huge. They basically just exploded. We were all pissed that Rolling Stone Magazine showed up to do a story on Aerosmith, but Guns N' Roses ended up on the cover of the magazine. Suddenly, the opening act was bigger than we were.""

G N' R Lies.  1988.  A year later, the band released G N' R Lies, a kind of weird EP/album thing with four live songs and four studio songs.  I had never tried it out until a few years ago when a guy in my neighborhood was hanging out at the house for a Halloween party and we got to discussing GNR, and he was beside himself shocked that I had never heard the album.  The next day, his copy of the CD was in my mailbox (complete with a receipt from somewhere awesomely classic, like a Hastings Records in some small town, although I can't remember exactly where).  I threw it into the car player and tried it on loop for a while - its a'ight.  The live tracks aren't that great - raw, wild, nothing memorable really.  The worst part of those live tracks is that they aren't actually live, they are just demo tape versions that the band then dubbed with fake crowd noise.  Which is soooo lame.

But, they scored another massive hit from this album, with the complete left turn of "Patience."  Going from hard rock, electric shredding band to acoustic guitar/ pretty whistling band is a little wild, but its actually a beautiful song.  114.3 million streams.

Still doing the sway dance at the mic.  I appreciate the love of that silly signature move.  I also have to compliment Axl on the power of that whistle.  I'm a pretty solid whistler, but he really keeps his tone and key clean and nice.  Something about that loose and cool guitar part right at about 4:30, running down the scale in a super chilled way, has always struck me as rad.

This album also has the track I mentioned earlier as unfortunate, "One in a Million," with very uncool lyrics like "police and n*****s, that's right, get outta my way, don't need to buy none of your, gold chains today" or "immigrants and fa**ots,they make no sense to me, they come to our country and think they'll do as they please, like start some mini Iran, or spread some fuckin' disease, they talk so many goddamn ways, its all Greek to me."  Uh.  Yikes.  Axl defended himself saying that he just uses the N word to mean "someone who is a pain in your life, a problem" and that the N word doesn't necessarily mean black.  But that song is super gross now that I really listen to it.  Also, Slash's mom is African-American!  Definitely not a good look for old Axl.  And he never really seems to have apologized, just said that he had dealt with some "aggressive gays" before.

And another from that disc, that is much less controversial in my mind, but apparently got people frothed up back in the day.  "Used to Love Her," with the lyrics of "I used to love her, but I had to kill her" and "she bitched so nuts, she drove me nuts, and no I'm happier this way" got people angry about casual abuse and murder and whatnot, but by now, after people like Eminem have been in popular music for a while, it seems quaint to worry about those lyrics.  Not a bad album, but certainly not worthy of my neighbor's undying love.

Next was the event in 1991 when they released each of the Use Your Illusion albums, separately, but on the same day.  So, instead of an actual double disc, you just had two totally separate albums you had to buy to get all the tunes.  They released at midnight on September 17, 1991 - I feel like I remember the hoopla around that, but can't be sure if I really do.  I can guarantee you I was not permitted to be in line to buy them right then.  These albums didn't fully leave behind the hard rock edge of Appetite, but they definitely added in some new sounds and flourishes, like blues rock swagger, classic rock, or even a string section.  They also replaced their drummer right about here, with Steven Adler leaving because of heroin addiction and being replaced with Matt Sorum from the Cult.

Use Your Illusion I.  This is the yellow and red one.  The covers of these albums have always confused me a little bit.  The background has a guy who looks kind of like he has been at a bar for too long and needs to rest his chin on his arms, but the bar is too tall and he's wearing robes for some reason.  Then in the foreground, you have a drawing of a guy with a red line in his hair who is cutting his leg with a cheese slicer, probably because his leg appears to be coming out of his right shoulder.  Wikipedia says that this is a painting by Raphael called The School of Athens, but when you look at that painting, you can see that the guy I thought was cutting his leg is actually writing in a little book with a quill.  I have always thought that the cover depicted a cutter.  So, that's weird.

The album opener, "Right Next Door to Hell," is a great power jam to kick in the feeling for the whole disc.  "Perfect Crime," "Double Talkin' Jive," "Garden of Eden," this disc has a bunch of hard rockers.  In fact, I think of this as being the harder of these two albums, but in actuality the top tracks from the album are the ones that are a little softer.  The first of those is the nine minute operetta of "November Rain," which managed to not only be a rockin' song while also having extended chill bits (and violins, which felt like sacrilege to metal fans everywhere), it also had a fantastic video.

I remember all of that being such a big deal - the piano, the strings, the weird model-marriage-cake-destruction-scene.  Why did he jump through that cake?  It's just rain, man.  Just walk to the indoors!  Freaking relax.  Ooh, and the guitar hero action in front of the desert church!  So windblown!  His stance is so wide!  Don't you think it felt super weird to be out there by himself, with an unplugged electric, pantomiming the moves that would make those sounds if he had actually been plugged in?  Gotta be strange. And once she dies and the music gets all serious and then the Slash searing solos kick in - great stuff.


The guitarwork in "The Garden" freaking rules.  Slash is so damn good at what he does.  The ten minute long "Coma," that ends the album, was also always a favorite for me.  One would think that a ten minute rock and roll opus would be overkill, and I can see that, but it tells a story through the protagonist's suffering, as it swings from quiet to raucous to spacey coma brain time to searing guitar recovery.  And when the devil voice is saying things like "shock the son of a bitch again," 14 year old me got the feels.  I think it is cool.  The track is apparently about Axl and Slash's drug overdoses, which is neat.

"Double Talkin' Jive" also has great guitar parts.  The end of "Don't Damn Me," when he yells "allllright!  That sucked!" always made me giggle as a kid as well.  "Dead Horse" was cool in that it starts and ends with acoustic, but the middle portion is classic rock and roll full of guitar fire.

Use Your Illusion II.  This is the blue one.  I could have sworn that the big hit from this album would be "You Could Be Mine," because that song rules and when I was like 14 and I got to see Terminator 2 (or maybe all I saw was the trailer, it would be out of character for my parents to have allowed 14 year old me to see Terminator 2) and that song came on as John Connor and his naughty red-head mullet friend were barreling along on that dirt bike and blaring ROCK AND ROLL on a little jam box.

I 100% waited by the radio to record that song on cassette tape so that I could own it before I was able to go out and buy the CD, because it fucking rules and the video starring the Terminator also fucking ruled.  OK, now that I watch it again, that video is a little cheesy, with the Terminator targeting systems being all like BEEP BOOP DECIBEL OVERLOAD! to show how hard these guys rock.  Whatever.  Don't ruin my memories.  But the start of that song rules, the buildup of instruments, the driving drums - its like an EDM drop before there was an EDM drop - because when it kicks in I need to fight Ivan Drago immediately.  Also, 14 year old Jack very much liked being able to sing the lyrics "witcho bitch slap rappin' and yo cocaine tongue."  Very confusing but cool words to a prepubescent kid who read waaaay too much.

BUT, I was actually wrong about the most popular song on this album.  "You Could Be Mine" is only in fourth place!  63.7 million streams.  What is wrong with people!  Somehow the "Don't Cry" with alternate lyrics is #3, which is honestly BS.  I find those alternate lyrics to be jarring and unpleasant.  Sounds like someone translated a song from a different language and tried to fit the lyrics into that tune.  Then second place is "Civil War," which is actually a pretty good song.  I had it in my head that it was another cover - its just such a weird song for GNR to have written, but it is good.  79.5 million.  Instead, the top track on this is the cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," which I am shocked by.  228.5 million streams.  That's a buttload of streams!  It's not a bad song, but definitely not my favorite thing in the GNR catalog.

I actually really like "Get in the Ring."  Its a ridiculous freaking song, and one of the least streamed on the album, but the Slash guitar work is freaking fantastic - he fires out an almost constant barrage of solo squiggles and plays something that sounds vaguely patriotic when it comes time for people to actually get in the ring, which I dig.  And its such a petulant song - this is one of the biggest bands in the world, at the time, and yet they're singing a song where they actually take the time to call out rock magazine journalists by name to whine about bad reviews or whatever.  It's kind of amazing.  And I truly love the sing-song harmony bit of "I don't like you, I just hate you, I'm gon-na kick your ass!"  Makes me giggle every time.

Other top tunes on here usually feature the best Slash work, like "Locomotive" or "Estranged."  I never liked this album as much as UYI 1, but the numbers seems to actually back up that this one was the bigger disc.  #1 only got to #2 on the charts, while this one took the top spot.  Wikipedia says both went 7x platinum.

Oh, and the last track, "My World," might be the worst song ever.  A very bad attempted copy of Nine Inch Nails or something, made with a basic Casio beat, and Axl screaming/squealing/bloviating over the horrible beat while some lady makes sexy sounds in the background.  Truly horrific.

During the touring for these albums, Izzy Stradlin abruptly quit the band after a second sem-riot at a concert.  Stradlin had apparently gotten clean, and trying to hang out and play with a band of people dealing with drug addiction was more than he could deal with.  Sounds right to me.

The Spaghetti Incident?  I honestly don't think I had ever listened to The Spaghetti Incident?, ever, until just now.  It's a disc of punk and glam rock covers that the band put together during the Use Your Illusion sessions and released in 1993.  The title references a weird story.  Apparently, drummer Steven Adler used to store his drugs in the fridge next to the band's food takeout containers.  Adler's code name for his stash was spaghetti.  In Adler's lawsuit against the band, his lawyer asked someone from the band to explain the "spaghetti incident," and the band thought that was funny.

The album opener is horrible.  "Since I Don't Have You" is a big whiny pile of blues rock schlock that should have stayed on the cutting room floor.  The song is by The Skyliners, who I have never heard of before.  Some of the other songs have good guitar licks and underlying rhythm jams, but they aren't great - seem like ones I've already heard from older GNR tracks.  Axl also "baaaaaaahhhhh"s like a sheep at one point, and there is kazoo playing at another point.  Like, this album is bad stuff.  You can see that maybe they were trying out a bunch of covers, and only "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Live and Let Die" made the cut.  One bright spot, the small section of Soundgarden cover of "Big Dumb Sex," and the Nazareth song "Hair of the Dog."  Most of these are obscure bands or old punk groups that broke up many moons ago.  I would not suggest this album.

They also found controversy again with this album, in that it includes a song by Charles Manson.  Slash claims it was done naively, with a little black humor intent, and that they didn't realize it would be such a big deal.  They apparently ended up giving proceeds to charity funds for those affected by the Sharon Tate murders, but the whole thing is just weird.

Chinese Democracy.  From 1994 on, the band's people would claim that new music was coming, that a new album was ready to be released, etc.  And then members started dropping like flies, with Stradlin's replacement (Gilby Clarke) leaving in 1995, then Slash was replaced in 1997 (with Rose sending a fax to MTV to notify them of the departure, which is amazing).  Sorum was next, also in 1997, after complaining about the replacement guitarist who was hired.  A few months later, McKagan was gone as well.  The band never officially broke up, because Rose apparently owned the rights to the band, and he just brought in shitty replacements to take over each part.  Rose apparently kept working on the new album, with weird other bandmates like people from Nine Inch Nails, Primus, Psychedelic Furs, Buckethead, and even rumors about Moby being in on the production.  Seriously, I stopped trying to track all of the people who joined and left the band when reading this section of their Wikipedia.

Multiple concerts during this period (from about 1994 to 2008) were cancelled when Rose failed to show up.  Buckethead quit, and the band went on hiatus.  It was a very dysfunctional time and it seemed like the end of the band.

The album was re-recorded multiple times, and at the time it was finally released, was the most expensive rock album ever at approximately $14 million.  After more than a decade of release dates and broken promises, it came out in November 2008.  It debuted at #3 in the Billboard charts, but performed relatively poorly.  I assume I listened to it, but honestly can't recall.  My first impression is not a good one - more Nu Metal than hard rock.  "Shackler's Revenge" has some Marilyn Manson-ass guitar laden with effects, a disco drum beat, and way too many layers.  "Street of Dreams" has violins, but it just comes off as cheesy, not operatic.  "If the World," so help me God, has synths and, like, a porno soundtrack bass line.  Sounds like the theme song for the worst porn James Bond knockoff of all time.  I literally just reached over to forward the song, before realizing I need to hear the rest of it for posterity and this isn't intended to be a pleasure listen.  Most of this sounds like bad stuff that came out when Limp Bizkit was popular.  Also, it feels a little bit of a bummer that they go back to the Cool Hand Luke soundbytes again on this album - that was cool on Civil War, but re-using it already?  Along with quotes from MLK at the same time?  Feels kind of gross.

I'm curious what the critical consensus was.  Pitchfork gave it a 5.8, and mentions that the album involved 18 musicians (not including orchestra players) plus more than 30 who provided engineering and ProTools help.  Great quote: "Fans deserve better than hearing Axl trying to fight with post-NIN nobodies like Stabbing Westward and Gravity Kills for ideas."  Rolling Stone actually gave it four stars, which seems like something they should want to take back now.  Consequence of Sound gives it a B.  On Metacritic, it gets a generally favorable review at 64.  Fascinating.  But I also wonder if these reviews are because in 2008, the top rock songs included Puddle of Mudd, Disturbed, Shinedown, and 3 Doors Down.  So, it was a different time.  Or maybe I'm just out of touch, but this album sounds bad and dated to me.

Post Album Time.

In 2009, Axl said there was no way he would ever agree to a reunion with Slash.  Then he fired, re-hired, then fired their management team.  In 2010, they headlined a few festivals, but repeatedly showed up late and failed to fit in their biggest hits.  In 2012, the classic lineup was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  But Axl refused to attend, writing some weird apology letter to the City of Cleveland that asked questions about who decides the voting for the Hall and who is "rock" enough to be included.  Everyone else showed up and played a four song set, with the guy from Alter Bridge doing vocals.

After that, "they" (meaning Axl and his cast of weirdos) played some smaller venues on tour, and then did two Vegas residencies.  Which sounds so depressing.  The group of a million people who apparently belong in the band now have been hinting at new music, but basically saying that it will be released when Axl says so.

BUT, in 2016 the band announced a new tour (the Not in This Lifetime Tour) with McKagan and Slash added back into the fold.  During a warmup show, Axl fell off a monitor and broke his foot, so he got to use Dave Grohl's Game of Thrones guitar throne for a bit.  The tour featured a handful of guest vocalists on some tracks, like Angus Young from AC/DC, Dave Grohl, and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.  The tour was huge, grossing more than $550 million, making it the second-highest grossing tour of all time (behind U2).  Now, in Feb. 2019, Slash said that a new album is in the works.  Which would be wild.  But I guess they all made up!


Finally, the question will be what we are going to see in October.  First, it appears that the lineup continues to be Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan on bass, Dizzy Reed on synths, and then some other people on rhythm guitar and drums.  No Izzy Stradlin, no Steven Adler or Matt Sorum.  Which is too bad, it would have been cool to have the classic lineup, but I also think that so long as Axl and Slash are there, it will feel right.

Their setlist for the past two shows (both in 2018) has been identical, so I think this is what we can expect:

• Starts with something called Introduction Presentation, which I REALLY hope is a weird powerpoint that Axl has put together about why Chinese Democracy is actually a good album.
• First two are "It's So Easy" and "Mr. Brownstone" from Appetite, which is cool.
• Then "Chinese Democracy" is played.  And I will be sad.
• But then "Welcome to the Jungle!"
• Total stats: 9 covers, 7 from Appetite, 4 each from the UYI albums, 3 from Chinese, 2 from GNR Lies.  The covers include The Who, Soundgarden, Jimmy Webb, Pink Floyd, Misfits, and of course Wings and Dylan.  And a Velvet Revolver song (Slash's other band for a while)

I think we will have to suffer through some Chinese Democracy stuff, but we'll get to hear all of the important songs.  I'm in, for sure, to see this happen.  I'll be skipping Tame Impala, which is a big deal in my mind.  I hope they still sound good!