I can’t imagine how cool it would be to be part of one of the biggest bands in the world. Many others can, but their reasons are all very pedestrian: girls, booze, drugs, dumpsters full of money, free gear, playing to 100,000 people at a time, etc. And while those things are all great, I think people are missing the point entirely. The best part is, in fact, none of those things; the best part is when you can tease an entire generation with flashes of musical brilliance, only to then nearly fail your fans immediately while simultaneously hinting that something even greater than what they’ve devoted their time, money and hope to is sitting idly by on a master tape somewhere in America.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to explain why Guns N’ Roses might just be the most brilliant band of all time, and for reasons that have almost nothing to do with music.
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Real men of drug-addicted, alcoholic, antisocial genius.
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Appetite for Destruction, for all its idiotic heroin references and juvenile obscenity, still stands 20 years later as one of the greatest rock albums ever created. This is irrefutable. You can argue this point, and you will lose. By no means is it perfect, and really it’s almost as far from innovative as anything before or since. Those things don’t matter. What matters is that Appetite contains every single important staple of rock up to that point in musical history, all done better than all but maybe a handful of other bands, if anyone at all.
Talkbox? “Rocket Queen.”
Cowbell? All over the place. Cowbell with a 1, 2, 1-2-3 countoff to start a barnburner of an idiotic rockfest? “Think About You.”
Tough guys singing a sensitive, timeless power ballad? “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
Blues boogie lamenting the dark side of the rock lifestyle? “Mr. Brownstone.”
Belligerent outro solo? “Paradise City.”
Pure and unfiltered sleaze? Every goddamn song. Even the sensitive power ballad.
Guns N’ Roses did nothing new with this album. Absolutely nothing. What they did do was marry every single element of great hard rock before them into 54 tasty minutes of the best Aerosmith, Stooges, MC5 and Led Zeppelin tributes on the planet. And this is okay. It’s not rocket science.
Metallurgy, perhaps. But not rocket science.
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The true genius of the twin follow-up Use Your Illusion albums was not found in any of the songs. In fact, neither of the albums is really any good all the way through and the sequencing at times seems to have been designed to make the listening experience as difficult as possible. You’d think 30 tracks’ worth of the band that perfected the hard rock formula would be the greatest creation in the world. It isn’t, but it comes close. So close that with some clever editing, a person could make an amazing album from the highlights of I and II. So close that by releasing two decent albums the band managed to leave the audience hanging on just enough that now people are still holding out hope for the 13-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy.
Why care about an album that can’t possibly live up to the hype? Why should Axl Rose even bother finishing an album that carries so much baggage? Why do we as fans, knowing full well that the myth of the next Gn’R album is probably a lot cooler than the content of the next Gn’R album, still clamor for it to see the light of day?
And aren’t these the same questions people were asking about the Illusions 16 years ago?
Think about that for a second: by taking the most erratic, psychotic and backwards approach to releasing albums imaginable, the band actually turned their most musically important album into possibly the least culturally important piece of their catalog. What Guns N’ Roses might do is, and always has been, more important than what they have done, and their key members were all fired a decade ago anyway.
Has any other band ever managed to pull off such a feat? In a word, no. And that is the best possible testament to the greatness of Guns N’ Roses: the just-good-enough music and the mostly-rumored-and-rarely-heard music that followed have kept people hanging on more than the gem that made anyone take notice in the first place. What other profession allows a person to get away with such nonsense?
Perfect crime, indeed.
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Postscript: The running order for my perfect version of Use Your Illusion is “Civil War,” “You Could Be Mine,” “Double Talkin’ Jive,” “Don’t Cry (Original),” “Breakdown,” “Perfect Crime,” “Right Next Door To Hell,” “The Garden,” “Yesterdays,” “Estranged,” “14 Years,” “Garden of Eden,” “You Ain’t The First,” “Dust N’ Bones,” “November Rain.” Eight from I, seven from II if you’re keeping score. And yes, it’s pretty awesome.
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- Chicago, IL / August 7, 2007