ApPOLLtite for Destruction

man that's tuff

This Poll - 'It's So Easy'

cue underrated aerosmith: "these guys weren't any better than Black 'n' Blue!"

that old man is a real motherfucker

having the hardest time remembering how "Anything Goes" goes

a guy i knew in high school was a huge g'n'f'n'r fan, one night junior year he got busted rolling a house (and not even the house he meant to roll, he had the address wrong) and he got caught by the cops who gave him a stern warning and made him promise to come back the next day and clean it up and also like mow the guy's lawn or something. from then on until after graduation when we lost touch anytime we rode anywhere in his car he would play 'out ta get me' on blast and rant about how he had to be careful cuz the cops were out to get him etc.

voted 'rocket queen'

having the hardest time remembering how "Anything Goes" goes

MYYYYY WAY YOURRRR WAY ANYTHING GOES TO-NIIIIII-YIIIGHT.

In a vacuum, Sweet Child 'o Mine is an unfuckwithable classic and should run away with this poll, but we've all heard it 40 million times now and it's sonic wallpaper. I'm voting It's So Easy.

mr brownstone, but 'my michelle' gets points for the opening lyrics

Your daddy works in porno
Now that mommy's not around
She used to love her heroin
But now she's underground

Here I sit
Broken-hearted
Paid 10p

Great as this album is back to front, and with so many great album tracks, it feels lame to vote for "Welcome to the Jungle", but it really is the best.

Only song on here I actually hate is Paradise City.

ah yes thank you Johnny Fever

i think this is the last rock band i can remember adults i knew personally finding somewhat terrifying/disturbing/somebody think of the children instead of just amused/kids these days amirite. from here out the kind of hysteria was generally reserved for 2 live crew, nwa, geto boys, snoop (and before w/ run dmc, whose press i think young ppl would find hard to believe)(white america was TERRIFIED of run dmc, their tour w/ the beastie boys was covered like it was a mongol invasion).

i still love 'paradise city' but those bud light synths haven't aged well

uh Marilyn Manson

xp

my mom took my GnR pins away from me after she saw Slash wearing a Hard Cock Cafe t shirt :(

o yeah marilyn manson! by that point i was an adult so the adults i knew just generally had the take of 'ugh, stripper metal' but yeah parents were definitely scared of him and for good reason as obv he was responsible for columbine.

white america was TERRIFIED of run dmc, their tour w/ the beastie boys was covered like it was a mongol invasion

real life lol

when I got to college, one of my friends told us about a couple he knew that had "my michelle" as "their song"

voted "rocket queen"

As JF said, everything but "Paradise City" is ace. Always hated that song, and bummed it became a fucking template for all the bullshit on the Illusion records.

Voted "Mr. Brownstone"

Guns N' Roses' lead guitarist, Slash, states that the song was written in the back of a rental van as they were on their way back from playing a gig in San Francisco with the band Rock N Riders. He says that the band was in the back of the van, drinking and playing acoustic guitars, when he came up with the intro. Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin started playing along. Slash started humming a melody when Axl Rose sang, "Take me down to the Paradise City." Slash chimed in with "Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty." Axl sang the first line again, where Slash shouted out "Where the girls are fat and they've got big titties." Axl finished with "Take ... me ... home!" Slash preferred his second line but the rest of the band felt differently. He was outvoted and they used the first line. The band then expanded upon the rest of the lyrics in rounds. Finally Slash wrapped up by coming up with the heavy riff that drives the song.[1]

balls:

http://articles.philly.com/1987-08-15/news/26170302_1_run-dmc-rush-productions-rap-show

The rap on the street concerning the "Together Forever" tour has been def (that means "good"). Still, the 37-date tour that features the country's biggest rap acts, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys, hits the Spectrum tomorrow night having gone through a wringer of controversy at almost every stop.

Rush Productions, which manages both trios, knew that the summer tour would be something of a hot potato. The pairing of the black Run-DMC and the white Beastie Boys, all of whose members are in their early 20s, brought to an emotional head the fear of crowd violence. This fear, rather than any actual

violent incidents, has plagued rap shows since an August 1986 Run-DMC concert in Long Beach, Calif., was disrupted by gang violence that left 41 injured.

Consequently, at a spring news conference held in New York City to announce the tour, much time was spent detailing $500,000 worth of precautionary measures, including a five-man team to coordinate security at local venues and full-body metal detectors through which concertgoers would pass.

Not lost at the conference, however, was the fact that a tour featuring equally popular black and white rap groups was itself news. But the presumption of an equally integrated audience seems to have fueled the concern about violence.

Thus far, everything has been cool, but that hasn't stopped people from expecting the worst.

"Time and again," says Bill Adler, publicity director for Rush, "we'll

announce a date, the police and city council will get up in arms, and then we'll come to town and nothing will happen."

Early in the tour, a Seattle show was canceled amid controversy, then rescheduled after local police assigned 20 extra men to secure the event. The headline above the subsequent review in the Seattle Times: "Concert Wasn't Too Lively, But Boy, Was It Safe."

Rich Rabena, director of security at the Spectrum, consults promoters and managers to determine the needs for each show before it reaches Philadelphia. Similarly, Philadelphia police are notified of all major events in order to plan for crowd logistics outside of the arena. Rabena says he has no qualms about the "Together Forever" tour.

"For certain shows we beef up security," explains Rabena, who says the measures for a rap show are equivalent to those for a heavy-metal concert. ''Both types of music draw a different crowd, but they're both generally young, and with any show where there's that much energy, you want to be prepared."

Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys have achieved multi-platinum record sales by welding the big beat of rap to the electric crunch of heavy metal. Run-DMC's remake of the '70s Aerosmith hit "Walk This Way" was a smash on the rap group's Raising Hell album last year and introduced inner-city rap to the heavy-metal suburbs; the Beasties' "Fight for Your Right" party anthem and Licensed to Ill LP gave white teenagers rappers molded in their own image.

But the surprising mass success of these two bands and LL Cool J, with his grittier style and sexual allusions, has put rap under the scrutiny of groups such as Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Committee. "If rap had been confined completely to the ghetto," says Adler, "nobody would care."

In true generation-gap fashion, the images that endear the groups to their fans - Run-DMC's cocky assurance and the Beasties' determinedly obnoxious Animal House behavior - are precisely what makes parents and city fathers uptight.

"It boils down to sex and violence," says Adler. "Violence is linked to Run-DMC, because they are from the most despised minority in America - young black males. What's terrifying to people about Run-DMC is that they look an awful lot like the black underclass you see anywhere in America.

"The Beastie Boys like sex, they like rock-and-roll, they like beer - those are their big subjects. In that respect, they're absolutely mainstream. It just so happens that they're a little more explicit about their passions . . . so here in the era of safe sex, their most notable prop is a 21-foot phallic penis." (Rock scholars might remember that the Rolling Stones once made themselves look foolish with a similar stage prop.)

Although the Beasties left the prop at home for the summer, the tour has been dogged by the uproar from their "Licensed to Ill" concert swing, which concluded in the spring.

Following the trio's February performance in Jacksonville, Fla., for instance, a civil ordinance was enacted that would require "for mature audiences only" warnings on tickets and advertisements for concerts containing questionable material. The first show chosen by Jacksonville to require such a warning: Sunday's "Together Forever" concert.

(It's appropriate to note during "Elvis Week" that in 1956, after a Jacksonville juvenile court judge saw him perform in an afternoon concert, Presley was ordered to do the evening show without making any provocative gyrations. Presley complied, performed with but one twitching finger, and the fans went wild.)

Dan Macdonald, 29, pop critic for the Florida Times-Union and the Jacksonville Journal, took a couple of young teens to the February Beastie Boys concert in the name of research.

"I'm no prude," he said this week, "but I felt a little funny with these kids when the giant phallus came up. But the kids told me they liked rap

because of the rhymes and because it was funny. They weren't taking it seriously at all."

The Beasties, however, took the Jacksonville ordinance very seriously. On Aug. 6, days before their Jacksonville show, lawyers for the group filed suit against the city, claiming a violation of the group's right to free speech, and asking for a temporary restraining order, a permanent injunction, a declaratory judgment that makes the ordinance unconstitutional, damages and recovery of legal fees. A preliminary injunction against the warning requirement was granted the following day.

"The purest form of freedom of expression is getting up on a stage and saying something," says the Beastie Boys' lawyer, Ken Anderson of New York's Berger & Steingut. "Trying to restrain the content of something before it happens blatantly ignores First Amendment rights."

Adds Anderson, "We trust that people can discern the difference between bad boys and vile pornographers."

In Jacksonville, fewer than 5,000 chose to make that distinction first- hand, although the hall had room for almost 12,000. "I think (the controversy) deterred people from attending," says Cathy Pasullo, promotion director of Fantasma Productions, which presented the show. "The city made such a fuss about it, and made it out to be such an awful thing, that I

suspect parents stopped a lot of kids from coming."

Other factors could have affected attendance, however. Run-DMC sold out the same arena last summer when their album was hot, but their new record is not due until fall, when it will be released in conjunction with their movie, Tougher Than Leather. And when the Beasties came through town with a number- one album, they only drew about 4,000 fans.

As the "Together Forever" tour prepares to wrap up Monday evening at New York's Madison Square Garden, the Beasties' lawsuit lingers in Florida, reporters still ask about concert security and Adler laments that such issues have clouded the fact that "the whole concept of the tour was to combat racism by consciously seeking to draw an integrated audience."

As it turned out, the tour found Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys fighting a rock-and-roll battle at least as old as Elvis.

By the way, Appetite > Black 'n Blue's Without Love >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the rest of GNR's career

yeah, if you're not counting stuff on UYI that was already written prior to Appetite.

I was thinking more of production than songwriting, but how much of Illusion predates Appetite? "Don't Cry", "November Rain" and ...?

If Don't Cry had been on Appetite instead of Paradise City, it would've been perfect.

I agree.

xxp: I thought You Could Be Mine was earlier, but apparently not. The Garden was an early song, but I don't care for it much.

Panties 'round you knees
with your ass in debris

Add my hate vote to Paradise City for worst song on this record.

Always thought it was "your ass in the breeze".

• "Hkhuh!"
• "Yeah!"
• "Take that one to heart!"
• "Yowza!"
• "Yeah! Baby!"

voted Nightrain but could have easily been 4 or 5 others.

Requisite disclaimer about Axl being a wifebeating shitstain wankrag, but how on earth is this anything but Mr Brownstone?

Rocket Queen for funky bass in your face, actual fucking, and a coda that shines like sunlight.

Nightrain bothers me, but mostly because I think it should be spelled Nighttrain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ke-_nKHpDs

(Jungle but Brownstone is a close second)

nighttrain (haha that bugs me too) is probably my favorite, it's got that vaguely scary vibe that GnR never really recaptured after this album, and it hasn't been played to death like welcome or sweet child.

cue underrated aerosmith: "these guys weren't any better than Black 'n' Blue!"

Badlands wipes the floor with these dudes

sorry I'm late

aero, not Dangerous Toys?

My dad told me that Guns and Roses was a fad and that in 20 years no one would remember them. He was partly right. This record, however, has long outlived the band.

Badlands, good grief, a bandanna just appeared wrapped around my right thigh when you said that.

haha

Wait, was that Jake E. Lee's post-Ozzy band? And why do I remember that?

yeah - you probably remember because one time you heard their album and you were like "fuck, this is considerably better than Appetite for Destruction"

Could vote for any of these, I love them all. Voting for Anything Goes tonight though.

i think this is the last rock band i can remember adults i knew personally finding somewhat terrifying/disturbing/somebody think of the children instead of just amused/kids these days amirite.

listening to this as an adult i'm surprised my parents didn't take me to a priest to try to convert me from a pleasureless life of abject misery, guess they couldn't understand most of the lyrics either

I think I mentioned it on another thread recently, but "Welcome to the Jungle" is pretty amazing. You don't notice it because you've heard it a 100 million times, but pay attention and count how many parts the song has. There's like 17 or 18 distinct sections-- and they all rule. It's a far more elaborate song than most people probably realize.

ahem

A famous rock star once told me that she hated dancing to Appetite for Destruction when she was a stripper because they kept changing the time signatures and it made her feel awkward.

― Arthur, Sunday, October 21, 2001 7:00 PM (12 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe the arthritis was hard on her sha-na-na-na-knees

That has to be Courtney Love, right?

https://scontent-a-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1/1560486_660225817369562_1381512889_n.jpg

oh damn. Sorry about the size.

Braces on AMH skull are a great touch.

it's so easy

Paradise City ugh, so sing-songy and nursery-rhymey. Voted Mr. Brownstone but could have gone for several others easily.

My friends and I used to see Slash bumming around Hollywood when he was in high school and we weren't much older. He sold us Quaaludes a couple of times in the parking lot of the Starwood.

you got any left

Huh I like Paradise City

Adler's boom...cha....boom-cha snare kick in the intro rules

I loved it when I was 13, that version of me was the expert so I'll defer

rocket queen

i almost want to vote "think about you", that song is underrated

They played "Paradise City" at some dance I went to after the nerd-fest that was Model UN in high school. This was maybe c. 1992? Anyway, they cut it off before the fast part so that no one would mosh.

"Hooommmmmmmmmmmmme! //// Baby!" haha, what a messed-up edit that could be.

dangerous toys's 'scared' is one of the greatest songs of the hard rock era, top five easy. i voted 'rocket queen' but yeah, 'think about you' doesn't get nearly enough credit

the chorus of "think about you" is where it's at; is that what they call "chiming guitars"? jammisimo

oh man, that chorus. gives me chills practically. it's rare that a (mostly) upbeat, fast-paced rocker pulls at me in such emotional ways. this is one of my favourite albums of all time for personal reasons and this is probably a left-field move given my enduring relationship with it, but... today the honour goes to Think About You.

Impossible choices here, but something about abject sordidness of "It's So Easy," the pure bile and nihilism ... I think Duff wrote it, or co-wrote it, with a guy who co-wrote a few others with him before he inevitably ODd. But even on that front ... wow:

On May 30, 1997, West was found dead in his Los Angeles home. His management company said that Arkeen had been at home recovering from severe burns, and that his death was the result of an "accidental opiate overdose." West had returned to his home from a hospital intensive care unit where he was being treated for burns over much of his body after his indoor barbecue exploded 11 days before his death. He was 36 years old.

Two guys that I now know of dying from their indoor barbecue sets, Boston singer being the other.

I see you standing there
you think you're so cool
why don't you just
fuck off

http://www.billboard.com/articles/events/super-bowl-2014/5893962/red-hot-chili-peppers-unplugged-at-super-bowl-axl-rose

WAIT - has axl been regularly blogging??? has this been known? at the very least i'm happy i finally got to read an op-ed by w. axl rose w/ the headline 'in the name of science'.

Fwiw, I polled this once before: a molotov cocktail with a match to go: the APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION Poll.

I'm still voting "Welcome to the Jungle."

i almost want to vote "think about you", that song is underrated

― so so defheaven (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

that sound feels like it's about to go off the rails at any moment, in a good way

Chose quick with Mr. Brownstone but afterwards I keep coming back that I really love Nighttrain too. That songs got a cool riff and groove.

I got to say they should have gone with the more mid-tempo version of Your Crazy that they did on the EP thing a year or two later. I like it better than the crazy cocaine freight train version on Appetite for Destruction.

http://theleopardcoat.blogspot.com/2010/08/gnr-girls.html

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__JRSadFgL28/TGv_JIKydiI/AAAAAAAAAGI/vaZoAsKklnQ/s320/w32ebxljzwp8pwl.jpg

the rocket queen

According to frontman W. Axl Rose:

I wrote this song for this girl who was gonna have a band and she was gonna call it Rocket Queen. She kinda kept me alive for a while. The last part of the song is my message to this person, or anybody else who can get something out of it. It's like there's hope and a friendship note at the end of the song. For that song there was also something I tried to work out with various people—a recorded sex act. It was somewhat spontaneous but premeditated; something I wanted to put on the record.
—W. Axl Rose An Interview With The Gunners, Hit Parader - March 1988[1]

A credit in the booklet for Appetite for Destruction reads "Barbi (Rocket Queen) Von Greif", implying that she was "this girl" Rose mentions in the quote. Slash stated in his autobiography that he and Duff McKagan wrote the main riff to "Rocket Queen" when they first got together in the short-lived band Road Crew with Steven Adler, prior to Slash and Adler joining Hollywood Rose.[2] Slash states that, while Von Grief was only eighteen at the time, she had a notorious reputation and was "a queen of the underground scene back then. She'd eventually become a madam, but Axl was infatuated with her at the time."[3] She was also mentioned in the acknowledgments section of L.A. Guns' self-titled debut album.

hope and a friendship note, and a recorded sex act

Yeah, I imagine in the throes of sex Axl yelps and screeches like he does when he's singing.

Maybe they all had microchips installed in their asses and not only pick up the frequencies of their instruments but get Direct TV and the internet too! Like Google Glass... Google Ass! They could be "Scientific Pioneers!" Like Buzz Aldrin and shit! True (pardon the pun)ASS-tro-nots! Or like Superbowl crash test dummies for bands kinda like those cars that drive themselves!

really enjoying Axl's Robert Benchley phase

I don't remember Jaws having all that much ass in it.

ROCKET QUEEN

of course, then

mr. brownstone
paradise city
it's so easy
sweet child
welcome to the jungle

the best album tho

Only song on here I actually hate is Paradise City.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, February 3, 2014 8:26 AM (2 days ago)

wait, who the fuck are you people? i thought i knew you.

I've said it before, but I hate songs that begin the transition to fast jam with a ref's whistle being blown. (Also see "Fool in the Rain").

whistle < ROCK

no, i couldn't make "whistle" any smaller

I got to say they should have gone with the more mid-tempo version of Your Crazy that they did on the EP thing a year or two later. I like it better than the crazy cocaine freight train version on Appetite for Destruction.

― earlnash, Tuesday, February 4, 2014 10:11 PM (Yesterday

gonna slot this into appetite and see what happens

it's weird to me that Paradise City has a synth in it.

Think About You is a decent song, but I always felt that seemed very out of place on AfD. The chiming guitars especially.

Think About You and Anything Goes are about as close as this album gets to "deep cuts."

xxp: I didn't realize that it had a synth in it for a couple decades! I guess I was just so blown away by the awesomeness when everything all kicks in that I didn't stop to think about what was contributing to the sound.

I could have sworn I just had the same realization about Kickstart My Heart, but there's nothing about synths in the album credits on wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Feelgood_%28album%29

Oh, nevermind. "Keyboards".

I love Paradise City, though objectively I can understand that it's cheesy and all that. But I grew up near a town called Tamarack City where the girls were always presumed to be shitty and this song allowed everyone to express that easily so this might skew my opinion a bit. Plus the video had Axl in a white suit which helps.

The best thing I can say about "Paradise City" is that it was the end of side 1 of the cassette, so when it started I could just fast forward to the end and not miss a thing.

Yep.

I remember when the video was an MTV World Premiere in 1988, though...Axl's white leather jacket seemed cool to me at the time.

i've always been impressed with the lyrics to Paradise City, which surreal and vivid. except for the chorus, it doesn't really read like the lyrics of a 22 year old with low-to-average intelligence.

lol that's so generous to axl

"Paradise City": Chorus blows in a Poison-y "give the masses what they want" kinda way, presages the shitty arena rock that was to follow. Riff and half-chanted double-time vox for the verses is pretty ace, as is the "so far away" bridge bit with the arpeggiating licks in the background, tho the whole song is overplayed & I never wanna hear it again. Maybe if you took the chorus to "Rocket Queen" and subbed it in there it would have achieved the same intentions with less suck. Or maybe he coulda just squealed "gimme some reggae" & skipped around like he was trying to avoid a loose rodent, there we go, prob solved.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view5/2203866/paradise-city-o.gif

Sweet Child O Mine. Killer riff, no one's mentioned it yet.

'Paradise City'.

The opening bars of 'Sweet Child O Mine' tend to make me wanna roll my eyes in "oh god, this fuckin' song again" way.

sadly burnt out on Paradise City, Sweet Child and to a lesser extent Jungle. acknowledge them all as undeniably great songs, however.

You ppl are weirdos learn how to rock and jam out in paradise city

Paradise City is about as close to Bon Jovi as they got on this record.

Maybe Axl's hair in the "Jungle" video.

Bon Jovi had some jams
It's a nice balance to the record, a big singsong arena tune.
Also the verses are killer

things i have noticed about appetite for destruction, a dave q memorial

0. the opening lines of 'my michelle' have got to be some of the most callous opening lines ever! imagine how different it would sound if it were about michelle in the third person instead of addressing her. but since you hear it as 'you' for a moment, you can get the full force of axl's contempt for the ingenues he uses up before it becomes more of a black/mordant character study of how easily users sell false hope to desperate people: 'honey don't stop tryin / and you'll get what you deserve'. but what is up with that interjection: 'but most of all this song is true!! case you haven't heard'??

1. the chimey guitars on 'think about you' are there because it is wistfully remembering the 'you', if i knew anything about the smiths i would suspect a smiths allusion at that point

2. axl barely sings any lyrics for like the last HALF of 'sweet child o'mine', although he vocalizes and later later does the 'where do we go now' bits, what a weird structure for a classic rock superhit

3. the guitar lead that threads through the beginning of 'sweet child' sounds like robert fripp! or at least randy rhoads if he was copying robert fripp

4. if you sub the 'lies' version of 'you're crazy' it breaks up the 'world' of the record but it also makes a starker contrast between that and the like three preceding songs that are all about the lost sheltering painful love

5. seriously, there are three songs in a row wishing he could go back to the / a girl who reminds him of what sure sounds like his mother protecting him from what is presumably not happy circumstances, but stylized like super classically like axl was reading wordsworth or keats or something, only maybe more like coleridge, because even though axl is in the dumps he doesn't seem to be confident that the one he's thinking of could really bring him out of it, he can see that it's a fantasy of paradise, so what gives him momentary happiness is mostly just imagining that the absent one he's addressing will be safe from harm, because pretty soon axl's violent oscillations between wistful pensive recollection and antisocial sybaritic revelry will give way to...

5. once axl has rejected her for her craziness he falls into a weird hedonistic version of egalitarianism where 'my way' and 'your way' are just as good (even if that obviously should be hard for him to imagine since his previous dissolute adventures usually imagine him in the position of the user, not the used—a clear sign that if he's saying 'your way' he's losing it!)

6. do you suppose that when they practiced they would talk about a 'train groove'? because they're good at sounding like a train.

7. i am nursing a theory where all the bitches in all of the songs are really axl, and axl is really axl's image of axl doing to women what he had to suffer at the hands of others. somehow in the theory i am imagining that skinny little william bruce bailey came to the ferocious jungle city and got a little in over his head and had to do some things to survive and got taken advantage of, so that the whole album is kind of like an unrepentant st. augustine's confessions (so maybe it is a rousseau's confessions) of a life of abjection. in the revised video version the shot that would go with this reading would be the part in 'boogie nights' where marky mark hits his low point.

Jesus, if you start listening to this record like it's a concept album along those lines, why, it might be the greatest thing ever put on vinyl. The late-80s metal answer to Zen Arcade.

"i am nursing a theory where all the bitches in all of the songs are really axl, and axl is really axl's image of axl..."

since it's Axl we're talking here, i think this theory could be 100% correct.

J., that was awesome..

Yeah epic post

made me wanna really listen to appetite for the first time in years

After this poll, we should come to some ILM consensus on shaving "Use Your Illusion" down to one kick ass CD instead of the poor flowing sprawl of the 2CD version.

step one: throw away all of Use Your Illusion and pretend Guns stopped after Lies
step two: kick back

after Lies track 7

There are four tracks on Lies. But you can just count Patience if you want.

come on sic, did you own an original pressing of live like a suicide or something?

I have Lies on vinyl! It's super-duper clear about "Lies" being the four 1988 tracks, and the 1986 material even at the time was publicised as being effectively free bonus tracks.

"i am nursing a theory where all the bitches in all of the songs are really axl, and axl is really axl's image of axl..."

Except for the fact that he did actually do it, repeatedly, and in real life, to the actual "bitches" he dated, married and had it documented in court. Come on, let's be real here.

If we can, quite rightly, go to town on Chris Brown, we can quit conveniently forgetting that this stuff all happened.

I'm not saying this is a bad record, it is a weird and compulsive and amazing record made by a deeply flawed human being, whose flaws have created some genuinely amazing and compelling art. However, please can we stop pretending like the "bitches" who get beaten are some metaphor for Axl's internal state, and not flesh and blood human beings.

That's why I appreciated the above link to all of GNR's "bitches,' because it's like peeking at a photo album of horrible, mutually enabling junkies at work. Like the subject of "My Michelle" (inspired by hearing Elton John's "Your Song"!) asking for a song, then actually liking Axl's horrifying results, or strippers trading sex for booze/drugs, or the girl Axl and Izzy both dated, who Axl ended up having tattooed on his arm, or Izzy's other stripper/junkie girlfriend. Just a gross, bad, but very real scene in this one infamous time in this one infamous place, which the album captures as perfectly as any journalistic outlet would have. A lot of that Sunset Strip stuff was about having a good time. "Appetite" is like an album about having a bad time, snapshots taken at some flophouse party. It's ugly and dangerous and sleazy and dirty and mean, like junkies often are.

NSFW, but I feel similarly about this album as I do about this photo essay an (ex-addict) friend of mine posted:

http://viiphoto.com/articles/the-ninth-floor/

This is like "Appetite" minus the LA glamour.

My god, that photo essay left me speechless.

bb, who's pretending? in reality, they're not a metaphor. but what do they become in a song, an album? that's the question.

Despite loving this record, I have so many problems with this record, because of these exact questions.

Similarly, from Lies, "I Used To Love Her" is a funny, wink-wink joke which is hilarious because it's really secretly actually about Izzy's dog, right, and that's hilarious, all these PMRC people getting upset about a song which is about having your *dog* put to sleep? Until the reports start coming out about Seymour and Everley and minor court details about Axl throwing a woman down a flight of stairs because she wouldn't sleep with him, and suddenly you realise, actually, no, the joke is on *you* for believing it was about a dog, because you wanted to be able to laugh at it?

On one hand, listening to Appetite is... it makes you realise Axl's power as a songwriter and a performer, that you can hear all of these songs about dirty, fucked up, desperate people, and he makes it sound glamourous and exciting and amazing, and you want to be there, too. But it is also glamourising some severely fucked up shit, even as he is portraying the dirt and the drugs and the beatings. And I was a stupid, impressionable teenager who fell for a lot of that glamour, even if I moved to NYC, not LA.

(And a lot of my feelings about this album are tied up with the insane, out of control, abusive yet beautiful redhead that I was in a relationship with at the time, and how entwined that record is with her and that deeply abusive relationship, and seeing this fucked up shit in songs and thinking it was normal. Was I attracted to the situation because of the songs? Was I attracted to the songs because of the situation? I can't tell you, but it still leaves yet another layer of being very uncomfortable with these songs.)

he makes it sound glamourous and exciting and amazing, and you want to be there, too.

Your mileage may vary. I don't think it sounds glamorous, and I'm glad I wasn't there. It's exciting in the horrifying way a car crash is exciting.

bb otm

Favorite line and moment on the album: "I never learn."

OK, "you" in those paragraphs = "I, my girlfriend, my sisX0r, a bunch of our stupid fucked-up teenage friends". I know I cannot blame music for the poor life-choices I made back then, but I can certainly question the glamourisation, even it only existed in mine own mind.

you should question everything if it only exists in yr mind

...or in teenpop magazines or in videos or on MTV or all the other places that GNR were shown as being really fucking glamourous...

i'm talking about the much larger issue of yr sanity here. seek help.

Fuck you.

Branwell Bell ... BB ... Bruce Bailey ... W. Bruce Bailey ... W. Axl Rose!

;)

i know it can be hard to ask for help but seriously when the inability to distinguish between reality and yr own mind leads you to make choices that hurt yrself and others it's time to seek professional treatment.

Sure, there probably wasn't much hope for me already, as I was a teenager who idealised and idolised the Velvet Underground and even Sid fucking Vicious before I ever heard GNR. I would have sought out danger and oblivion and thought it was glamourous in whatever form it was offered. But I do still think that it is evidence of Rose's skill as a lyricist to portray this shit in a way that looks both dirty/desperate/fucked up, but at the same time plausibly romantic and exciting, even if only to dumb fucked-up kids.

Balls, seriously, go fuck yourself with a running chainsaw. You know nothing about my life or my reality.

LOL, Josh, I was always more of an Izzy fan.

'yr reality' again. there's no stigma bb, seek help. stop hurting yrself and more importantly stop hurting other ppl.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GMCRdY_Yn_s/UL94SJNOqvI/AAAAAAAACIA/49DoG_EgfDU/s400/tumblr_lgtpwm0znJ1qb3ttco1_400.gif

here's axl glamorizing therapy - will you at least speak to a dr now? tell them how nobody knows yr reality?

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/6216/axlrosenirvanahatgunsnr.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW7Z20fJH6I

Balls, I was in and out of mental hospitals 3 times by the time I was 18. My first spell in rehab was at the age of 22. This is the background against which my GNR fandom occurred. Your concern trolling itt is cute, but really fucking patronising, and you are only making yourself look like an asshole. Good day to you, sir.

i know it can be hard to ask for help but seriously when the inability to distinguish between reality and yr own mind leads you to make choices that hurt yrself and others it's time to seek professional treatment.

-sampled 1950s instructional-film voice sampled in the original intro to "Welcome to the Jungle"

you ever seen shutter island?

I agree that axl is a spoiled, awful jerk but I disagree that he was able to make any kind of art that transcended that.
(I tried very hard to like this record)

philip nunez otm

i'd call appetite a glamorous album. like all the best seedy, sleazy, stones-style rock, it romanticizes the wasted life it depicts. nevertheless, the extent to which we really buy into that glamour is more down to us than the band or even the culture that sells and consumes them. it isn't the music's fault that it's dead sexy; dead sexy is the job description. i suppose this is a "guns don't kill people" argument...

glamour doesn't have to be pretty, right? it can be sick and ugly and cracked-out, more a matter of vibe and swagger than surface polish. and, to extend the earlier point, it doesn't really exist outside our perception of it. if we think the dirty diamonds sparkle, then they do.

i remember hearing appetite for destruction for the first time in the summer of 87, stoned in some oly wa punk house, back to back with REM's document (punk as fuck, i know). i'd been an REM fan for some time, but it was clear in that moment that they were beginning to suck and that guns fucking ruled. appetite sounded like cigarettes stubbed out in the carpet, stove hits, bruises and blow. "everybody i know has a box of baking soda in the kitchen." like rock & fucking roll. cheap, dirty, desperate and (not coincidentally) cool as hell. aks royal trux. black eyes are part of it, even inseparable.

i'm not talking about the reality, of course. rich, misogynist assholes guys beating up their hired wives and girlfriends, but rather the dimestore image, the received idea of someone else's garbage life. sid & nancy, pete & kate in a magazine.

Sid & Nancy projected the aura of an old, retired, married couple complete with nodding off and medication

never understood the appeal of paradise city at all. always sounded like filler to me, elevated only by sheer-will of the band to turn it into an anthem.

I'll tell you the appeal: whistles.

lol

You people.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/bacab556d04529d42f1dab0f4bba0834/tumblr_mnb8ecxaht1s0jqp3o1_400.gif

i remember hearing appetite for destruction for the first time in the summer of 87, stoned in some oly wa punk house, back to back with REM's document

I was on a road trip once where the discman broke and these were the only two tapes we had for 16 hours of driving and it was a long time before I wanted to hear either again.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I started this thread and I still don't know what to vote for.

anything goes. it's so easy.

Rocket Queen.

I cast my vote immediately and then came up with three or four songs that I like better.

I finally voted for "Welcome To The Jungle." Sometimes the obvious choice is obvious for a reason.

Which isn't to say I could justify most of the rest of the album.

Hell, it would be hard to pick the WORST song on this one as well, though I would probably go for "Paradise City" because ti seems so formulaic to me, but it's still a great formula.

WHich isn't to say I COULDN'T justify most of the rest of the album.*

Which isn't to say I COULDN'T justify most of the rest of the album.*

I want to add that Alex In NYC just questioned me calling this album genius on my Facebook page. He prefers Faster Pussycat. :)

That is a misrepresentation (although GN'R never wrote anything as catchy as "Don't Change That Song").

I'm just not a member of the GN'R hallelujah choir. Yes, I bought APPETITE when it came out, but I just don't think the word "genius" is really applicable here. Maybe I have too much respect for the word.

the first LA Guns record goes hard in the paint IMO

That all said....

SLASH HONORS THE FIRE:

http://www.alicecooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DSC05440-650x300.jpg

lol

there's no way slash would be down with killing joke in 1987

Why not? Duff was in Seattle's Fartz. There are CB's and TSOL shirts in the vid for "Sweet Child..." Axl may be an idiot, but the other gents in the band certainly knew their music.

the phrase 'honour the fire' seriously brings on some waves of old-ilx nostalgia.

Metallica covering "The Wait" introduced Killing Joke to lots of ppl myself included

Slash honoured the fire while shitting on Axl from a great height.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

well, well, well

Nice turnout on this one!

why is Wayne Newton in that pic upthread

It's So Easy was robbed. beautiful sleazy simplicity.

this thread makes me want to start a swans the seer poll called "the aPOLLstate"

'nighttrain' deserved better

there's no way slash would be down with killing joke in 1987

there's no way he wouldn't have been, that band was very well-loved among LA punks in the 80s and Slash knew a lotta LA punks

Yah in Carducci's book he talks about Naomi Peterson from SST being tight w GnR

i don't care how many times you've heard it the answer is still sweet child and shame on me for failing to vote

Out Ta Get Me is pretty awesome. Wasn't robbed, but the zero votes makes it sound like it sucks, when actually it perfectly encapsulates the Axl Rose persona.

My grade 7 art students have been doing an assignment where they turn corporate logos into personal logos by replacing the names of the the companies with their own. I noticed that one girl was using band logos instead. I'm blanking out right now, but one of the four was the Guns N' Roses logo. I asked her if these were bands her father liked (no), or if she knew any of the music herself (no)--she just looked them up online arbitrarily. So I said "Okay, I'll play you a Guns N' Roses song off YouTube," and played "Sweet Child O' Mine."

Hardly any reaction from anyone in the class. A few watched, most continued on without looking up at the screen. I was going to talk a little bit about what they were (or weren't) watching--"The guy in the top hat there, he was a big deal at the time"--but there didn't seem to be any point, so I didn't. I could have been playing Steely Dan, or Herman's Hermits, or Guy Lombardo--I think it's all more or less the same to them.

Not complaining. I find such moments interesting.

maybe play the terminator 2 promo video for "you could be mine" where arnold goes "targets: GNR, waste of ammo"
i think that would resonate across generations?

wasn't "welcome to the jungle" used in games like "guitar hero" and in the add for the previous GTA ?
surely the kids know these games !

I saw a nu-GNR concert a couple of years ago in a small club, mostly contest winners in the crowd. A lot of standing around waiting, obviously, but it got the crowd commiserating. Then one bored dude started quizzing these two girls there, and he discovered that between the two of them they could name a whopping one - one - GNR songs, Sweet Child O Mine. He shook his head sadly, because those two girls were taking the place of superfans. I should have challenged him to name a song from Chinese Democracy.

I might be wrong, but I don't even think Guitar Hero means much to the 12-year-olds I'm teaching now. They'd know about it, but more as something played by their older siblings. Their sense of the past stretches back to whatever Imagine Dragons single came before the one that's out now. (I'm exaggerating, but not by much. And again, I'm fine with that. An interest in the past comes along later, in high school and university.)

yeah. as a 12yo, I guess I didn't care for much more than the contemporary hits and a band from 20 years ago didn't mean much to me...

It's all about the moment, ie now, ie the total narcissism of youth.

Like, I've heard my daughter sing that lame Frozen song a million times. When she saw the movie itself, months ago, it made no impression. And she barely remembers when she and her friends were singing some lame song from Twilight again and again last year. She did hear that Dynamite song the other day, and recognized it as something people were singing two or three years ago.

a band from 20 years ago didn't mean much to me...

27 years ago!

weird al won the culture war. suck it, axl. welcome to the bagel, baby, you're gonna schmeaaar!

yeah my gf's 29 and gnr doesn't really mean much to her. she knows november rain from karaoke, like wanted dead or alive, and she recognizes the sweet child riff if I play it. for a 12yo these guys might as well be buddy holly.

I remember me and another high school class of 1992 guy arguing with a couple guys who we knew through college radio and were maybe 8 years younger than us. They saw GNR as exactly the same as Poison, Warrant, Cinderella, and the other 80s hair bands and we were all DON'T YOU SEE THEY WERE DIFFERENT and they weren't having it.

they probably think nirvana killed hair metal

for a 12yo these guys might as well be buddy holly.

ahah, exactly !
I still think "welcome to the jungle" was used heavily in a GTA add so it MUST be familiar to the kids !

that gta was ten years ago

ahah, really ? oh well...

"chinese democracy" was still a myth then !

GnR *were* part of the whole Bon Jovi/Cinderella/Warrant/Poison/Motley Crue scene, why do you think they're different?

because because uh goddamnit siegbran

GnR *were* part of the whole Bon Jovi/Cinderella/Warrant/Poison/Motley Crue scene, why do you think they're different?

Axl's charisma - none of those bands have a frontman on his level though several of them wrote much better songs

The simple answer to that question is that they might have had a similar visual appeal, but their music was much harder and came more from blues and hard rock traditions than glam.

Cinderella was more bluesy than GnR really

for starters bon jovi wasn't even part of that scene

Also, Guns was a much BETTER band, with more intricate and interesting music. I wouldn't lump the Beatles together with Herman's Hermits.

No one asked, but what if it's 1988 and you can't choose between ersatz Slash and ersatz MCA?

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/metalmcbackcover_zpsaafade35.jpg

Also, Guns was a much BETTER band, with more intricate and interesting music. I wouldn't lump the Beatles together with Herman's Hermits.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130707032321/amnesia/images/5/52/This-icon.jpg

I think the main difference is in having the propriety to not play drums upside-down (which to me is not a point in their favor)

Also, Guns was a much BETTER band, with more intricate and interesting music.

I don't believe quality of a band should delineate genre because that is what led to elitists insisting late era Emperor "wasn't black metal" because they thought it "sucked".

I don't think GNR had much in common at all with Poison, Warrant et al because their music was much more raw. At least on Appetite, there were no bubble-gummy chorus, overprocessed vocal harmonies, and also on that album, no overblown ballads. Not all hair bands are made the same of course; later-Cinderella isn't that far removed from GNR circa 1987. But I also think GNR had a little bit of a punk influence that was missing in many of the hair bands of the day.

No one asked, but what if it's 1988 and you can't choose between ersatz Slash and ersatz MCA?

ersatz JD Samson pls

I don't think GNR had much in common at all with Poison,

But I also think GNR had a little bit of a punk influence that was missing in many of the hair bands of the day.

― Neanderthal, Thursday, February 20, 2014 1:55 PM (Yesterday)

yeah, g'n'r painted themselves as more street, butch & working class/rocker "ordinary" than their peers in the sunset strip hair metal crue. the music was a bit rawer & tougher, too, with roots in punk-tinged, dolls-style glam & 70s stones swagger. looking back, those distinctions seem a matter of fine degrees though...

I'm sure sheep don't look alike to the shepherd, either.

They weren't that different

But they sure felt different when you were 13

Well enough in common for Slash to audition for Poison early on (granted, he didn't like the make-up).

― Siegbran, Friday, February 21, 2014 7:51 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Buckethead auditioned for GNR and RHCP but those two aren't exactly the same

But they sure felt different when you were 13

ehh, i had gnr, poison, and def leppard tapes (alongside my vanilla ice and mc hammer tapes!). i don't know how much fine stylistic discrimination young j. was doing.

I was more discerning

with your elbow patch jacket and your cocaine tongue

W. Axl F. Buckley

But what I really wonder is whether anyone would be comparing GNR with Poison if they wore their hair short, had polo shirts, and came from Canada.

You're acting like we're comparing Sweet and Mahavishnu Orchestra or something

idk i'm pretty sure i prefer too fast for love to appetite

The argument is getting convoluted here. Despite the fact that I do think that GNR was coming from a fairly different place than Poison in terms of influences, I'm not necessarily disputing genre so much as I'm disputing the rote and lazy comparison to Poison/Kix/Trixter/whoever. It's a move that doesn't seek to illuminate so much as to quickly categorize in order to negate differences.

Again, we can say The Beatles and Herman's Hermits were both 60's rock (or whatever you want to call that genre), but it is inherently unfair to the Beatles to write them off as "just another 60's rock band." Their influence, scope, and vision was much bigger and more important than Herman's Hermits-- and their songwriting was much better too-- so to say that they're basically just like Herman's Hermit is dismissive and paves over how they truly stood out from the crowd.

henry viii is classic and catchier than any beatles song. why you gotta hate on hermitts?

The difference in popularity between the Beatles and Herman's Hermits is a lot bigger than between, Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi and GnR, plus that the Beatles covered a lot of stylistic ground while Guns N Roses (like their peers) were very comfortable staying within the established template of punky hard rock, acoustic ballads and later, Meatloafesque epics.

GNR didn't wear makeup or spray their hair up big, did they? At least not for long. They were never "glam," and always owed more to classic rock raunch than the likes of BJ, Poison, et al., who definitely focused more on image. I remember when they opened for Aerosmith, who seemed like a good fit. For all I know Bon Jovi, Poison, the Crue and those sorts opened for Aerosmith, too, but it seems less apropo. Like, when Skid Row popped up, they also seemed to have, by design, more in common with the likes of GNR than those other sorts of acts, too.

they would've fit right in in Decline of Western Civilization Pt 2, let's be real

slash and slash's mom in a pool would have been a less downer scene i bet.

Guns N Roses (like their peers) were very comfortable staying within the established template of punky hard rock, acoustic ballads and later, Meatloafesque epics.

― Siegbran, Friday, February 21, 2014 10:51 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that wasn't an established template at all

10 minute long epics weren't exactly hot at the time.

nightrain deeply undersung here

also out ta get me damn yall

I'M FUCKIN INNOCEENNT

MAH WAY YER WAY ANYTHING GOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWES TONITE

27 years ago!

― (D1CK$) (sic), Wednesday, February 19, 2014 3:47 PM (1 year ago)

sob