Guns N’ Roses
“I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word nigger. Why can black people go up to each other and say "nigger," but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down?” – Axl Rose
“Um…because he’s a white guy?” – Everyone
“Yeah, you tell ‘em, Axl!” – Michael Richards
“If you are an
old-school GNR fan looking forward to seeing your old hero in action, here’s
what you should do: take the hundred dollars you would spend on a ticket,
crumple it into a tiny little ball, and throw it down a sewer. Next, punch yourself as hard as you can in
the stomach. Once you’ve recovered your
wind but before the sickening pain subsides, go home, take out your old jean
jacket and tight pants from twenty years ago and put them on. Tie your bandana tight around your head,
restricting as much blood flow to your brain as possible. Put on Appetite for Destruction. Listen to “
Albums Reviewed:
Guns N’ Roses are a joke. Or, to be more specific (and to prevent whatever sad, pathetic soul calls himself a “diehard Axl fan!” from writing me a brilliantly written, scathingly clever piece of hate mail containing the words “fuck,” “cock,” and “suck”), Guns N’ Roses are a joke now, and anyone who even pretends to argue otherwise is only slightly less deluded than Donald “Well, if you fly over it, it’s not all on fire!” Rumsfeld. Before the “alternative revolution” hit in 1992 (of which, due to my age, I’ll readily admit I was a big proponent, so you should probably filter any opinions I have of this band through the knowledge that I had a poster of Kurt Cobain overlooking my bed for nearly the entire decade of the nineties) and thus made bands with the attitude, lifestyle, and grand pretensions of Guns N’ Roses almost entirely obsolete, this band was the last bastion of old-school seventies “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” that actually had an artistic leg to stand on, and no one with even a passing taste for hard rock can deny the band’s chops, charisma, skill, and power or the fact that Appetite for Destruction was a really good hard rock record (or at least three quarters of it).
So no, Guns N’ Roses were not always a joke. However, they started down the road of becoming one pretty much the moment Appetite blew up in 1988 and made them worldwide megasuperduperstars, and I shouldn’t have to tell anyone the reason (no, it’s not Matt Sorum). I have obviously never met the man, so for all I know William “W. Axl Rose” Bailey could be an incredibly nice, personable, and unpretentious man in his private affairs, but for some reason I doubt this. If there was ever anyone for whom it was a really bad idea to become a worldwide megasuperduperstar overnight, it was Britney Spears. If there was ever anyone else, it was this guy, a sociopath of the first degree and one of the most selfish, childish, and narcissistic figures in rock history. Of all the ridiculous things the man’s done over the years, including inciting riots at more than one concert due to refusing to play (most notably the one where James Hetfield lit himself on fire, followed by Axl’s coming out and playing for like 20 minutes before quitting), replacing Slash’s guitar tracks with those of a childhood friend without asking the permission of anyone, everything that’s happened to Guns N’ Roses after 1994, etc., this is a man who, while dating her, beat up Stephanie Seymour. I mean, christ, have you seen Stephanie Seymour? She’s not just “beautiful” or “gorgeous.” She’s beyond that. She’s a fucking extraterrestrial. A skinny white trash douche like this guy should have been kissing the ground she walked on. Axl Rose, quite simply, is a cock.
But, when he wanted to be, he was a charismatic, entertaining, supremely talented cock, and probably one of the best pure frontmen in rock history. And sure, he stole that slither-dance thing he did from the little British dude from the Monkees, but he still rocked it pretty good, didn’t he? And sure, his voice was only in peak form for like two or three years there, but what peak form it was, right? “Welcome to the Jungle” alone cements him in the canon of Really Awesome Rock Singers (hell, I think the last line of the song does by itself), and it’s not like this band was a one-man show either. Both Izzy Stradlin’s rhythm guitar work and the five-minute, max volume solo Slash inserts into every GNR song ever are things I respect deeply, and, um…Duff McKagan and Steven Adler are a fine rhythm section too, I guess. It’s really the Axl and Slash show in terms of flash and presentation anyway, and they were both top-notch at what they did, so sure. Plus, I mean, Slash is just the man, come on. Watching this band’s ridiculous videos for songs like “November Rain” and “Estranged” and the like more or less makes me want to vomit, but when Slash comes out of the church into the dirt field or climbs up the to the top of the mountain or floats on top of the water or whatever and starts ripping it up…I still smile. These videos are rock star pretension and excess taken to extremes so ridiculous that the arrival of Nirvana and their ilk was both necessary and inevitable, but you still get the feeling Slash doesn’t even know or care where he is. Just give him his guitar and a cigarette and let him wail. Plus he’s a self-described “Radiohead-Head” now, so that’s another brownie point. Cool guy, he.
Anyway, the only really good album the band ever put out was Appetite for Destruction, and even that’s not the most consistent record ever launched on the general public. The fact that Axl deemed it necessary to infest a random stopgap fan-appeaser album like G N’ R Lies with the most racist, bigoted song ever written by someone not named Toby Keith (“One in a Million”) was the first warning that a) Axl was a cock and b) GNR might not have the 30-year career of kicking total ass that everyone expected of them, and the 150-minutes of bloat that was the Use Your Illusion double feature made both of these facts abundantly clear. Although only the band’s second real album, they had already switched drummers (Adler out due to his drug problems (by the way, how fucked up does your drug habit have to be for Guns N’ Roses to kick you out for it? That’s like Bravo’s not picking up a show because it’s “too gay”), Matt Sorum in) and added a crap keyboardist who weaseled his way into Axl’s good graces enough to get mixed higher than Izzy’s guitar tracks on the majority of the Use material even though that’s completely ridiculous (Dizzy Reed). This, as well as the growing realization that Axl was a gigantic cock, led Izzy to leave the band soon afterwards. Considering GNR has released a grand total of one original song since (some crap tune from the soundtrack to some crap Governator movie), it should be pretty obvious to anyone that Izzy was the real reason Guns were even as good as they were, which means his leaving the band was just about the final nail in the coffin.
Unsurprisingly, at this point everything went to shit. The band put out an album of punk covers in 1993 in what I suppose was a belated attempt to appear “hip” in the new musical landscape, but no one really liked it. Eventually everyone else but Axl left (Slash because of the aforementioned guitar track switcheroo, Duff I don’t know when, Matt Sorum doesn’t count, Dizzy Reed didn’t leave and is a cock as well), and Axl became a hermit for a while, going through guitarists (including Dave Navarro!) and producers (including Sean Beavan, whose EP Opener with his former band 8mm is reviewed on my Whore page!!!!!!) like Barry Bonds goes through needles and not granting an interview for like five years. A while back he had that performance on the MTV VMA’s with the “reformed” Guns N’ Roses, including but not limited to that guy with the KFC bucket on his head, on which he looked fat and bloated and botoxed and generally horrible, but then he crawled back into whatever hole he spends most of his time in and spent another two million dollars on not finishing his album. Supposedly Chinese Democracy is gonna come out sometime in 2007, but I’ll believe that as soon as I see George W. Bush boning up on his T.S. Eliot. In the meantime, Slash, Duff, and Matt Sorum formed Velvet Revolver with Scott Weiland and “random bald 5th guy” because they were tired of not rocking, and the Offspring (I mean, seriously, the Offspring?) made a great funny at Axl’s expense by naming an album of theirs Chinese Democracy before later changing the title because (supposedly) it had led to an inordinate amount of production delays. When the Offspring are scoring good material at your expense, I don’t think I have to tell you what you are.
In your picture above are, from left, Duff, Slash, Axl, Izzy, and Steven Adler. Axl is still a cock.
And, onto the reviews!
PS: A friend of mine, fellow grad-student in the department, and someone whose intelligence and general outlook on life I greatly respect is a huge Guns N’ Roses fan. Plus he’s British, so you know he’s smart. So no, not all diehard GNR fans are morons. All diehard Axl fans are morons. Important difference.
Appetite For Destruction (1987)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Welcome
To The Jungle”
Ah, the dreaded late eighties megahit rock album. Is there a single one of these that’s as good as the number of copies it sold? Without actually bothering to go through all the albums that could possibly fall into this category, I say no. And sure, like I said in the intro, I spent my entire middle school life obsessed with Kurt Cobain and this probably colors my impression of the whole era a little bit, but what the hell were Appetite and Joshua Tree and whatever else was that huge around this time competing against? Release this album fifteen years earlier or five years later and it’s a perfectly good, occasionally great hard rock album, not a worldwide megasmash of such absurd proportions that it turns the band’s lead singer into a raving sociopath who singlehandedly destroys everything that was good about the band in the first place (and writes fucking “November Rain”). Compare Bono, Axl Rose, and Lars Ulrich, consider when the commercial peaks of their respective bands took place, and then think about whether this is a coincidence or not.
Anyway,
despite my bitter intro, this is actually a really good album, as well as the
only one on which Guns N’ Roses actually are
what people think they are: a kickbutt, dirty, groovy
rock and roll band. Hell, listening to
the first half of this thing sometimes makes me think they’re as good as they are famous, or at least marvel at
how ass-kicking they really were and both how quickly and how intensely fame
went to Axl’s head and screwed everything up. Seriously, except for the
still-decent-but-not-outstanding “Out ta Get Me,”
there is nothing that even approaches
a misfire on side A here, from the groovy bass intro to “It’s so Easy” to the
fantastic and genuinely intelligent drug tune “Mr. Brownstone,” and “Welcome to
the Jungle,” “Nighttrain,” and “Paradise City” might
be the three best pure rawk
tunes the band ever did. “Nighttrain” has some superb riffage
and a second half/solo section that absolutely kicks, and the last two minutes
of “
Yes, it was. Starting with side B. Now, I love the circling riff and everything else of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” as much as the next guy (I’d say it’s my 2nd-favorite song on the album, and thus of the band’s career, and it’s so badass to play on Guitar Hero 2!), but most of the songs surrounding it aren’t really up to snuff. They’re OK, though. Fine. Well, “Anything Goes” (Please, Slash, no Frampton guitar, OK?) and most of “Rocket Queen” (a girl having a fake orgasm…so adorable! And the last two minutes are just abominable) suck dick, but that leaves, what, three songs? Sure. All OK! Perfectly acceptable. I have a hard time buying the lyrics of “Think About You,” but surprisingly find the overlayed “sensitive” acoustic-sounding guitars in the chorus awesome, while both “My Michelle” and “You’re Crazy” just sound like generic early Guns N’ Roses songs, and while there’s really only half an album’s worth of material to establish what a “generic early Guns N’ Roses song” sounds like, that half an album’s worth of material has been so beaten in the public’s consciousness by this point I feel it does exist as a stereotype, so there you go. They’re generic early Guns N’ Roses songs.
This record was so appropriate to its time and place it’s ridiculous. Crap poofball hair metal’s ruling the day, and then here comes along this band from LA that looks like a hair metal band but actually is dirty and is dangerous instead of just pretending to be by wearing retarded makeup. Plus, they actually rocked! Real heavy guitars, nice classic rockin’ riffs, the whole thing. And a singer as charismatic as he was megalomaniacal. They were perfect. As such, there is simply no fucking way this album, when listened to any time after, say, 1992, is gonna hold up and sound as “fresh” and “vital” as it probably did back when it came out, and to me it just sounds like a very good hard rock album with a few fantastic winners and few crap songs tossed in at the end (you know, like most very good hard rock albums). And hey, I didn’t even make fun of Axl Rose that much! Yeah, that won’t last.
G N’ R Lies (1989)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Patience”
Stopgap miscellaneous album that no one writes more than a 50-word review for. If you’re expecting me to be any different, you don’t know me very well. The first side consists of an old live EP the Gunners released before Appetite unleashed Axl on the world, while the second contains four new tracks that find the band in a decidedly less “LET’S KICK SOME ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!” mode than usual. The live EP half is usually dismissed by everyone as “um…fine, I guess,” and again I’ll be no different. The cover of “Mama Kin” is so far and away the best song of the four it’s not worth discussing, though “Move to the City” works up a nice little groove with the horns in there. “Reckless Life” and “Nice Boys” are fast and loud and that’s all there is to say about them. Axl’s voice is really whiney and high-pitched and nowhere near as charismatic as it would become, although [insert random and useless Geddy Lee potshot that has to be on every one of my pages here].
The studio half is more or less “OK,” too, with the exception of “Patience,” probably the band’s best ever straight-up ballad. Well-written, tastefully arranged, completely un-cheeseball, supremely melodic, and even some great whistling to top the thing off. It’s just a shame the rest isn’t so hot. The groovin’ shuffle version of “You’re Crazy” is a big step up from the Appetite version, sure, but that still means we’ve only got three full-fledged brand new Guns N’ Roses songs on this brand new Guns N’ Roses album, and I have issues with two of them. “Used to Love Her” has a nice country-type vibe going on and would be a great song were it not for the ridiculous lyrics, which I wouldn’t mind so much if it weren’t for a) the fact that I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Rose to physically do this to whichever poor supermodel he was dating at the time and b) the way he introduces the song on the Live Era album, which is nearly vomit-inducing. Musically, though, a nice, snappy, laid-back country-rock time, and the guitar solos are especially excellent. Take the volume out of Slash’s game and sometimes he’s actually better (if only because he doesn’t have said volume to use as a crutch).
And that
leaves “One in a Million,” which I’m sure (I mean…I assume) Axl intended as a joke, but which
a lot of people didn’t take as such because he’s fucking Axl
Rose and he’s a fucking sociopath. Hell,
after hearing the Charles Manson song he stuck onto the covers album without
the permission of anyone else in the band even I wonder if he’s kidding here.
I mean, look at these lyrics: “Immigrants and faggots, they make no
sense to me. They come to our country
and think they'll do as they please.
Like start some mini
Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Live And
Let Die”
Well, then. I don’t even know why I bother writing a review. You know what I’m gonna think of this. It’s set in stone, isn’t it? I could start this out by saying “if they had limited themselves to one 75-minute album, they would have really had something, and if they limited themselves to one 40-minute album, they would have really had something,” but, well, duh! Ofcourse there’s too much half-assed, underwritten filler sludge crap nastiness that sucks packed onto these two discs. This was a band that had up to now released one very good 50+ minute party hard rock album that had about 10-15 minutes of filler on there, then waited two years to release a couple new softer songs packaged with an early mediocre live EP, only one of which is really that good. So fast-forward to 1991, and Guns come back with what is, essentially, a quadruple album. It actually has Sandinista! beat by like 50-60 total minutes. And I’m a guy who doesn’t even think Guns N’ Roses are all that great in the first place. Like I’ll be slapping 9’s on these two things. Right. My ass I will.
I’m reviewing these albums separately because you technically buy them separately and because no one in their right mind could actually sit down and listen to all two and a half hours right in a row (if only because anyone who actually makes it to “My World” would literally die after hearing about 10 seconds of that abomination). Christ, I have trouble listening to either one of these monstrosities by itself, and I don’t think I’m alone, though I’m gonna go ahead and agree with the general consensus that the first one is slightly superior. Hell, the first half of the first one here is genuinely strong, and if you could just take the first seven tracks and then slap “Coma” on the end you’d have a pretty damn nice rock album right there. The opening “Right Next Door to Hell” is actually a totally sweet ass-kicking hard rocker that doesn’t completely pale in comparison with the majority of Appetite for Destruction (unfortunately one of only two on the entire two-album set), and a lot of the first half here consists of these nice, bluesy, boogie rockers like “Dust n’ Bones” and “Bad Obsession,” which is a genre I actually think the Gunners show some pretty nice chops in when they try. It’s not like these songs are great, but they’re fun and enjoyable, you know? Like some of the stuff on the 2nd side of Lies that would’ve been great if Axl’s lyrics weren’t so horrible (“Used to Love Her”) or the song was actually new (“You’re Crazy”). The piano licks on “Bad Obsession” are a good time, and Izzy’s vocals on “Dust n’ Bones” are a nice break from Axl’s megalomania (which seems to keep itself in check in inverse proportion to how good the song is, which may or may not be a coincidence). The slight, twangy Beggars Banquet wannabe “You Ain’t the First” is a winner, too, and who doesn’t like “Don’t Cry?” I continue to be amazed at how Axl Fucking Rose can continue to write sensitive ballads that are not only not overwrought and cheeseball, but good. Perhaps it’s because the band actually wrote this song years ago and only included it on an album now that it sounds more like “Patience” than, say, “November Rain,” but…actually, no, that’s exactly why the song is so good. Nevermind. And their cover of “Live and Let Die” is done nearly perfectly, is hands down the best song on either one of these stupid albums, and only misses matching the original McCartney version by the tiniest margin. Ofcourse, it is a cover. Let’s move on.
Between “Bad Obsession” and “Coma” you will certainly find a number of decent songs, a number of passable songs, but you won’t find anything I would actually describe as “good,” which is really a shame because this stretch alone is longer than any single Van Halen album with David Lee Roth (by the way, as a matter of perspective; the two Use Your Illusion CD’s combined are equivalent in length to roughly 4.5 early Van Halen albums, or three quarters of Van Halen’s entire output with David Lee Roth. Think about that for a second). Oh sure, you’ve got your acceptable riff-rock like “Back off Bitch” and your mediocre Alice Cooper duets like “The Garden,” but after a while all of Izzy’s riffs, Slash’s solos, and Axl’s vocals start to blend together into a mush that’s only distinguishable from itself when the song containing said mush just sucks out loud (e.g. “Garden of Eden,” a horrid “fast” track with haphazardly employed synths and no discernable structure or melody beyond Axl screeching as loud as he can. By the way, this song was also dug up from the Guns N’ Roses vaults and slapped onto this album. So are four other songs on this album (and by that I literally mean just this album. That’s not even taking into consideration whatever’s recycled on the other one). Why did you need two put out two concurrent 75-minute albums again, guys?). I would describe the three or four other “fast hard rockers” I haven’t mentioned yet, but I don’t remember anything about them. That’s generally a problem.
Finally, the two “epics.” I used to think “November Rain” was a really good song back when I didn’t know shit about music, and then I went through a stage where I thought it was one of the worst songs I’d ever heard in my life. Neither of those opinions is correct. “November Rain,” then, is a semi-decent ballad drawn out to an absurd length and given such ridiculously over-the-top production that it couldn’t help being a) a gigantic hit and just about the perfect vehicle for Axl’s massively overinflated ego and b) except for the fantastic coda where Slash says “fuck this, I’ll show Axl who runs the show here” and lays down the most overdramatic guitar solo in the history of music, after the production, a crap song. And why has no one commented that Axl’s vocals in it are crap as well? He’s warbling! It’s pathetic. I mean, though they’re not as strong as they were on Appetite, I generally still like the guy’s vocals on here, but they totally blow on this stupid song! Bah. They’re great on the ten-minute death fantasy “Coma,” though, the only extendo-track besides “Civil War” on the entire set that actually deserves its length. It’s also probably the only song on either album that can measure up to the quality of their cover of “Live and Let Die,” and considering there’s 28 original songs on here (OK, no, 27, I forgot that “Don’t Cry” occurs twice for no reason…OK, no, 26, I forgot that “My World” is actually the aural equivalent of vomit), that’s not so hot. The riffs rock hard though, and the whole prog-like, multi-part structure of the thing is shockingly intelligent and admirably complex coming from these guys. I especially both the random triumphant-sounding solo at about the 6:30 mark and Axl’s rapid fire vocals in the song’s last few minutes. They’re so ace. I could probably do without all the spoken overdubs in the background, but whatever.
I’m giving this album a 7 because the first half or so combined with “Coma” would probably get an 8 and the bad half isn’t quite bad enough to knock the rating down two whole points, but let it be known that I don’t really enjoy listening it. Once you get halfway through and the random, fast, soundalike rockers start coming fast and furious, only the promise of “Coma” at the end keeps me from slamming my head into the keyboard. And while the 2nd one is really where Axl’s douchebaggery comes front and center, it’s not like this record is lacking in it, like how in one of the random songs that sound the same in the 2nd half he goes “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!!!!.....alriiiiight that SUCKED!” at the end. I also find it interesting how the entire second half of the album, except “November Rain” and “Coma,” ends in exactly the same way, with Axl’s mumbling something stupid into the microphone while the band, completely unsure as to how to end whatever song it is they’re playing, fucks around for 10 extra seconds before stopping abrubtly as Axl gives a final yelp. It gets tiresome. I’ve never found myself actively hoping a band would just use a fadeout to end a song before, principally because I’ve never actually given a shit before. But I’m rambling. Let’s stop this right now. I’ve got a whole other Use Your Illusion album to review! Rawk!
Use Your Illusion II (1991)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”
And here we go again, with the added bonus that it’s not as good. Fantastic. And hey, the best song is a cover again! “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is done just about perfectly by the Gunners, just like “Live and Let Die” from the last one. I can’t imagine it being covered better than it is here. Even the should-be-retarded part with the phone call and massive number of backup singers works. So, superbly performed cover? Check. Token one song that totally rocks out? Check (“You Could Be Mine”). Token way, way overlong and absurdly overwrought, overproduced ballad with a hyperdramatic video straight from Axl’s ass? Check (“Estranged”). Actually, you know what? I kinda like “Estranged.” At least parts of it, like those tom-roll parts with the triumphant-sounding guitar solos that sound a lot like some sections of “Coma.” Those are cool. Not “I’m gonna completely ignore the fact that Axl thought it might not be idiotic to swim with dolphins in the music video” cool. But cool.
You know, I’m just now realizing that, despite these albums’ being written, recorded, and released at the same time and the subsequent stupidity of actually reviewing them separately, I don’t think it’d be that hard to convince someone they were released a year or two apart. There seems to be a natural progression from Appetite to Use I to Use II, although most of the reasons for this are decidedly negative. The percentage of “straightahead rock” tunes is most definitely smaller here than on the other Use album, and while the fact that most of the songs of this genre weren’t any good on the last one may cause you to jump for joy, that should stop once you realize they’re replaced by four songs that break the seven-minute mark, only one of which actually deserves its length (“Civil War,” which sounds a whole heaping hell of a lot like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” if you think about it), and one of which is just atrocious (“Locomotive”). So the band rocks less and writes more “pretentious” songs, which could be seen as a sign of artistic change if you didn’t know the albums came out at the same time. Plus, Axl’s voice seems a little weaker than before, although this is likely due to the preponderance of self-conscious “epics” and smaller number of fast rockers that, you know, actually suit his voice. And if you thought this band didn’t have enough keyboards, you’ll probably like this album, too, because that Dizzy Reed guy is all over the mix like Michael Jackson on nice little prepubescent white boys. Yeah, he was high up in the mix for a lot of Use I also, but there are songs on this one that don’t even need a piano, but nevertheless have the repetitive, two-chord boogie barroom tinklings of Mr. Reed as their loudest instrument anyway, like “Breakdown,” where the piano overpowers Izzy’s rhythm guitar to such a degree that you can barely even tell Izzy is there. No wonder he left the band.
Anyway, what I was trying unsuccessfully to say in that paragraph is that all the problems that we saw on Use I are not only present on Use II, but a whole fuckload worse. Axl’s ego is absolutely out of control, for instance, culminating in quite possibly the most asinine and childish song ever recorded, “Get in the Ring,” in which Axl calls out several of the magazine writers and editors who had written unflattering things about his band (using their names and employers and everything) and challenges them to a fucking fight (no, I’m serious). “Bob Guccione at Spin, what, you pissed off cuz your dad gets more pussy than you?” Sure, Axl. Bob Guccione at Spin one day thought to himself “you know, my dad gets more pussy than me and this makes me angry. I think I’ll write something bad about Guns N’ Roses to get back at him.” I’m sure that’s exactly what happened. Because Bon Guccione at Spin is a COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD, right? Ass. Everyone (justifiably, ofcourse) rips into this song, though, so I’ll leave it be and instead move onto the following “Shotgun Blues,” because no one seems to mention Axl’s clever little aside at the end: “think anyone with an IQ over 15 is gonna believe your shit? FUCKHEAD!!!” No, seriously, he really says that! Right in the song! And Axl wonders why people with brains and taste don’t take his more “artistic” (read: long) songs like “Breakdown” more seriously? These are the rantings of a 10-year-old. It’s ludicrous. Tasteless and disgusting sex abuse songs like “Pretty Tied Up” don’t help either. “Cooooool Ranch Dressing!” Great. That’s another sickening thought it’ll take weeks to get out of my head, right along with Axl fucking a girl at the end of “Rocket Queen” and every single goddamn bigoted word from “One in a Million.” Thanks, Axl! I still can’t believe this asshole wrote “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” “Patience,” and “Don’t Cry” while being a complete raving sociopath. Seriously, how does that happen? You know if he ever stumbles across this website I’ll get called out somewhere on the 5th disc of Chinese Democracy when it’s finally released in 2026.
Still, Guns N’ Roses could write some great damn songs when they wanted to. “Civil War” is the best extendo-song they ever did besides “Coma.” Superb dramatic buildup, use of dynamics, etc., and as hard as it is to buy Axl Rose doing social conscience songs (much less having a conscience), I completely buy this one, even if Dizzy’s keyboards at the end get a little ridiculous. “You Could Be Mine” is the best pure rocker on either one of these albums, with a fantastic Izzy riff and Axl’s probably providing his best vocals on the entire two-record set (I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence, then, that song could be slapped into the middle of Appetite without anyone noticing…right, nothing but a funny little coincidence…). “14 Years” is another enjoyable Stones-like piano blues groove rocker like “Dust N’ Bones” or “Bad Obsession” from the other album (it even has Izzy vocals to complete the laid-back boogie effect!). I’ve already mentioned “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and the parts of “Estranged” I like…hmm, what else is there? Oh, “Don’t Cry!” No, that song was on the other album, too (by the way…fneh?). I’ll give them parts of “Breakdown,” too, I guess, especially the “funny how everything was roses when we held onto the guns!” line, which is actually really clever. That’s about it, though. And I know “Yesterdays” is on this album, too. It sucks, sorry. “Get in the Ring” is pretty cool musically and would be a good song if it weren’t the most idiotic thing ever written. “Locomotive” is a horrid mess, and Duff’s vocals on “So Fine” are so weak they’re almost funny in their badness. There’s actually less random “fast” crap on this one, if only because they were too busy with all the extendo-tracks, so that’s nice. Oh, and “My World” is probably the worst song I’ve ever heard in my entire life, but anyone else who’s heard it knows that already.
So that’s that. And now, let me try to construct a 45-ish minute album out of this two and a half hour monstrosity. Start with the two covers and “Coma,” which is twenty minutes right there, so we’re already like halfway done. Toss in “Civil War,” “Right Next Door to Hell,” “Don’t Cry,” and “You Could Be Mine,” so let’s see…what’s that, 40 minutes? 41? Something like that. Hey, I’m done! Doesn’t that album rule? What, you say the boogie and/or roots-rock angle needs some representation? OK, I’ll bite. Let’s go with “Dust N’ Bones,” “14 Years,” and I gotta throw on “You Ain’t the First,” too. I dig that one. Hell, we’re over 50 minutes now! Like 53 or something. That’s almost as long as Appetite. And our album still rules!
See, it’s not that hard, guys.
“The Spaghetti Incident?” (1993)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Raw Power”
The oft-maligned covers album. It’s really not that bad (any album with a top-notch cover of “Raw Power” maintains at least a minimum level of quality), but it’s certainly not good either. My favorite part is that a bunch of this material is actually leftovers from the sessions for Use Your Illusion (at least so says Wikipedia), meaning some of it wasn’t good enough to crack the TWO AND A HALF HOURS that made the cut, which should be all you need to know right there. Also, Izzy’s out and replaced by someone named “Gilby Clarke,” which means Gilby Clarke and Dizzy Reed are now providing a good portion of the musical chops for this band. Fantastic. And whether the title refers to some horrible act performed on a groupie (like the Led Zeppelin mud shark incident, except 1,000 times more gross because Axl Rose is involved) or Steven Adler’s being pissed that someone stole his spaghetti, the fact remains that both the title and cover are among the worst in the history of recorded music. It’s a question. It’s in quotation marks. The background is a plate of Chef Boyardee. Nice.
But again, like I said, while it’s easy to look at and dismiss for all these reasons, the rock involved will at least provide you with an acceptable time, and lord knows it’s nice to hear a bunch of simple, dumb, head-banging rock songs from these guys after sitting through both Use Your Illusions. Most of the covers are by old punk and proto-punk bands like the the Damned, the Dead Boys, the Misfits, Johnny Thunders, the Stooges (hence the fantastic “Raw Power,” which admittedly is just about impossible to fuck up), etc. The punk edge is completely gone, ofcourse, but they still rock pretty good as they are, and the New York Dolls one in particular is a hoppin’ good time. I’m gonna throw some kudos to the bloated heavy metal dinosaurs that were these guys in 1993 (by the way, good job only taking like 5 years to become dinosaurs. Real smooth.) for tossing on a vaguely self-deprecating (in Guns’ hands) Soundgarden cover (“Big Dumb Sex”), since Soundgarden completely wipe the floor with Guns N’ Roses and all. Except for “Raw Power” and maybe the New York Dolls one, none of these really rise above “decent,” and a few are pretty weak indeed (Axl’s faux-British accent in the UK Subs’ “Down on the Farm” is downright embarrassing, for instance), but hell, not awful I guess. Duff’s vocals (which are present on a full third of the songs, including “Raw Power”) don’t even sound too bad.
Ofcourse, then Axl has to go and stick a Charles Manson cover on the end as a hidden track against the rest of the band’s wishes. What an ass. It’s fitting that he’s off being the laughingstock of the entire rock world while 3/5 of his old band is out making both relatively respectable rock and serious bank with Scott Freaking Weiland, who, despite my appreciation for a good chunk of the Stone Temple Pilots’ material (heck, Purple is better than anything Axl’s stupid little band ever released! And so are three different Soundgarden albums!), can’t hold Axl’s jock as a frontman when he’s on his game. I like how Axl is such a flaky, egotistical sociopath that Weiland’s been in drug rehab like 15 times and suddenly he’s “dependable.” Axl, you’re a fucking joke.
Live Era ’87-’93 (1999)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Mr.
Brownstone”
Cash-in live album only slightly less predictable than my spewing chunks every time Star Jones appears on TV. Except for a few isolated monstrosities (“Pretty Tied Up,” “Rocket Queen,” a rendition of “Move to the City” where the band decides to turn into some sort of adult jazz quartet for a few minutes) and a totally out of the blue Black Sabbath cover (“It’s Alright,” a piano ballad from Technical Ecstasy……wait, what?), most of the songs you’d hope for and expect are here, so in that sense it’s at least useful in that you don’t have to sit through all the dreck on the Use Your Illusions to get to the good songs (although I still hate “November Rain” and “Yesterdays”). The performances are theoretically taken from all over the six year period in the title, but I’m pretty sure the bulk comes from the Use Your Illusion tour, which means you’ve got a whole lot of Big Bloated Stadium Rock Band with keyboards and backup singers and all the trimmings coming at you. As such, a number of the more kickass songs from early on sound a little sluggish to me (christ, when did Slash forget how to play the intro to “Sweet Child o’ Mine?”), with the notable exception being the pretty rock-solid and kick-ass version of “Mr Brownstone” on the first disc. Oh yeah, this is a double album totaling two hours and fifteen minutes. At least it’s shorter than Use Your Illusion.
This album is so blah to review. Most of the best Guns songs are here (I don’t see “Civil War,” “Coma,” or “Live and Let Die,” but the rest of my favorites are present accounted for). They’re played really, really straight and barely divulge from the studio versions at all (and the few times they do, it’s because they’re just not playing the song very well). As a greatest hits collection it kinda works, but as an interesting live document it certainly doesn’t, though the quality of tuneage and proportion of rock is at least enough to garner a highly respectable 7. I’d love to have a bunch of sociopathic Axl stage banter, but all we’ve got is the douche’s suddenly getting all concerned over people in the front getting crushed (this ofcourse coming from a guy who was personally responsible for several riots back in the day by refusing to play), a quite frankly disturbing introduction to “Used to Love Her” in which he labels the song a “fantasy” before going into a detailed description of just how he’d like to torture his girlfriend (lovely), and a short, sarcastic introduction to “Estranged.” I’ve read that there are a bunch of overdubs (vocals especially) on this thing, but I’m not all that inclined to listen carefully enough to figure out whether or not that’s crap. I’ll give Axl credit for his charisma here. The man’s got talent. Too bad he’s a cock.
OK, if I listen to any more of this stuff I think I’m gonna strangle my supermodel girlfriend (Ha! Like I have one…), so I’m turning off the album and ending this review. It’s a cash-in live album that nobody needs, but it’s pretty decent and the song selection is superb, so sure. Whatever. I’m going to bed.
Chinese Democracy (2008)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Catcher In The
Anyone surprised at the fact that this album isn’t any good should just stop reading right now and go find another amateur music review site to peruse. You’re in the wrong place, and how in god’s name could you actually think that the sociopathic shut-in that Axl Rose has become was capable of producing something worthwhile without the input of anyone else who was originally in Guns N’ Roses? No, the lack of goodness contained in this record album is not the world’s greatest shock. What’s surprising, however, is the level of mediocrity that Axl has somehow managed to achieve. Really, I’m genuinely impressed. I’ve never listened to an album so thoroughly devoid of material to recommend or shit on, so full of songs that blend together to such a degree at such a level of mediocre mush that one can listen to it twenty times and still not realize when one track ends and another begins. What he’s done here is historic, you see. I didn’t think it was possible to make something this nondescript and this mediocre and this average, but I guess I’ve been proven wrong. This is mediocrity without precedent. This album is prestigiously mediocre. And it only took him fifteen years to do it!
I defy even the most fanatical Guns N’ Roses supporter to listen to this and love it and even the most dyed-in-the-wool Guns N’ Roses hater to listen to this and despise it. This album contains the kind of mediocrity that could build bridges of understanding and heal centuries-old cultural rifts if only musical mediocrity were the tool with which such wonderful things were accomplished. To talk of individual songs is useless to a degree I’ve never encountered before because I’ve never had a harder time distinguishing what songs are better than others on a particular album. I’ve nominated “Catcher in the Rye” as best because Axl’s voice sounds better on this record on the ballads than the rockers, and “Catcher in the Rye” is the only ballad with more than two or three seconds of material that I’m able to remember after I finish listening to the album (it has, like, five). The averageness of this album is simply flabbergasting. Each song is a five-to-six minute piece of perfectly crafted and honed mediocrity in which both all badness and all memorability have been sucked out by fifteen years of studio overdubs designed to make whatever song they were applied to sound exactly like every other song on the album and nothing else. There are isolated moments of badness contained herein, which usually involve some sort of misguided electronic/disco/ethnic/whatever-may-have-been-hot-at-whatever-time-in-the-last-fifteen-years-it-was-recorded introductory bit to one of the rockers (case in point: “If the World”), but never fear! These moments are, almost without fail, quickly enveloped by the heavy-but-not-really guitar riffage that plays the same handful of chords in every song, accompanying horn and string overdubs, mediocre solo by unnamed hack guitarist #47 (or possibly Buckethead!), and ProTools-assisted assimilation of what Axl decided his voice should sound like in whatever song said intro comes from. Nothing here will offend or excite your ears, don’t worry.
If you think that I’m just writing a vague and over-general review of this album without mentioning specific songs as a way to avoid having actually to listen to it, you’d be wrong! I’ve listened to this like 20 times! Ask my roommate, he’ll tell you. He hates Axl Rose, too. And you know what? I still look up halfway into “Shackler’s Revenge” with the thought “Hey, I don’t remember ‘Chinese Democracy’ being this long.” This album is almost completely undifferentiable from itself. The only good thing I will say about it is that Axl’s voice for the most part sounds the best that it has since Appetite. Of course, he did have fifteen years to do as many takes on every one of these vocal tracks as he wanted and then manipulate every vocal digitally to make it sound exactly like he wanted, so we probably shouldn’t be surprised there. The only instance of classic Axl stupidity comes from the bit in the middle of “Madagascar” with all the audio clips from Martin Luther King Jr. and everything, which I’d be willing to overlook if Axl didn’t prominently feature the “what we’ve got here…is…a failure…to communicate” thing that he used to open “Civil War” seventeen years ago. Ass! You can’t re-use the same audio clips. People still have copies of Use Your Illusion, butthole, even if they’ve stuffed them really far back in their closet so no one will know it. They know. Trust me, douchenozzle, they know. Fuckhead!!!!
If you want more from me concerning this monumental release that faded completely from the public’s consciousness roughly one week after it came out (which, apparently, was just enough time for the initial “Wait…you mean that album actually came out? Really?” shock to wear off, after which everyone remembered Axl Rose is about as culturally relevant as Christopher Cross at the moment), you’re not gonna get it. First, I stand by my statement that to discuss individual songs on this album is an exercise in total futility due to the never-before-seen mediocrity of the thing, and second, I kind of enjoy the idea of writing an uninformative, underdeveloped review of a record Axl Rose spent fifteen years working on. Call it karma. Right now I’m too busy hating the Killers (who have now managed to make Coachella jump the shark almost singlehandedly) to give a shit about Axl Rose. Fuck him and this album.