There’s rock-n-roll excess, and then there’s Guns N’ Roses.
My first experience with GN’R was the single for “Paradise City” in 1988-89. It had, as a B-side, “Move to the City” from “GN’R Lies,” and it was in rotation for me as I went through middle school, and started to form my identity in terms of the music I liked.
Until I became a soundtrack junkie in 1993, I never gravitated towards a particular genre of music. Artists, however, were a different story, and there were a few. I think in middle school, M.C. Hammer was probably the most regular part of my rotation, along with Vanilla Ice, “Paradise City” and “Born in the U.S.A.” In high school, however, things changed. It all comes down to one night in August 1992. That was when there was a Lassiter trombone section party. It was there when I got my first, real experience with Jimi Hendrix. As my family transitioned to CDs by the end of the year, a 2-disc collection of Hendrix was one of the first purchases, and my interest in rock increased.
In April 1992, the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert took things to another level. Queen became a regular part of my rotation, buoyed by “Wayne’s World’s” use of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Guns N’ Roses re-entered the chat. I had already become a fan of their cover of “Live and Let Die,” but their performance of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” took things to a different level. By the beginning of the summer, both “Use Your Illusion” albums were a part of my collection, and in heavy rotation.
At this point, I want to mention John Settevendemie. He was the father of one of the scouts in my Boy Scout troop. When I started to get into rock music, whether it was Guns N’ Roses, Bruce Springsteen or Hendrix, we would trade tapes of albums we wanted to share with one another. At this point, I also got into Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, as well. Couple that with an appreciation for classical music that increased with high school and band, and my musical ear developed tremendously. It really isn’t a shock that “The Crow” soundtrack hit me so hard, when you think about it.
The “Use Your Illusion” albums were part of a run of amazing albums that came out in 1991. They included Metallica’s Black album, Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” Pearl Jam’s “Ten,” Red Hot Chili Peppers’s “BloodSugarSexMagik” and U2’s “Achtung Baby.” All of them would find their way into my collection. None got more play from me than Guns N’ Roses’s double album, released separately. Listening to them now, there’s an epic quality to them that probably connected with me, and made sense as I leaned more into film soundtracks in high school. There’s also a level of musical excess that is absolutely on brand for whom Guns N’ Roses was, at the time.
Four tracks in particular point to that epic feel, and they resulted in three of the most extravagant music videos in the history of the medium. The narratives and images of “Don’t Cry,” “November Rain” and “Estranged” would get eye rolls from any serious movie critic if they were short films at a festival, but the lyrics by Axl Rose in each of these songs capture a sense of longing and mental strain for happiness if you listen to them in succession that is haunting just as the music moves between epic rock aesthetics and power ballad choruses. The videos are pretentious, but the images have never left me, whether it’s the band playing on top of a building in “Don’t Cry,” Slash leaving a church to do a guitar solo in “November Rain,” or whatever is going on with those whales in “Estranged.” But I said four tracks at the beginning of this paragraph. The video of “Don’t Cry” had the version of the lyrics we hear in “Use Your Illusion I”; “Use Your Illusion II” has a version with alternative lyrics- I actually prefer that one.
Me preferring “Use Your Illusion II” is actually a pretty consistent thing. If you take both albums as one, 30-song musical journey, I think it is pretty staggering. If you look at them as separate experiences, I think “Use Your Illusion II” is very clearly the stronger experience. Song titles like “Right Next Door to Hell,” “Back Off Bitch” and “Don’t Damn Me” just didn’t sit well with me in 1992, and even now, the songs aren’t really ones I want to return to on the orange-and-red “Use Your Illusion I.” “Dust N’ Bones” is a good track, and their cover of “Live and Let Die” is a good back-to-back compliment to “Don’t Cry,” “You Ain’t the First” is a terrific showcase for the singular voice and sensibilities of Izzy Stradlin, and I love the slide guitar of “Bad Obsession,” but “Perfect Crime,” while a good listen, is just not terribly memorable, especially when you have a much-better speed rock track closing out the front nine of the album with “Double Talkin’ Jive.” Starting with “November Rain,” the album almost races to the finish, with Alice Cooper raps highlighting “The Garden,” and a good acoustic-electric vibe going in “Dead Horse” before closing out with the bombastic “Coma.” I’ve already mentioned my dislike for “Don’t Damn Me,” which is bookended by the incomprehensible “Garden of Eden” (which is their answer to Iron Butterfly’s iconic “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”) and “Bad Apples,” which is fine. Of the 16 tracks on “Use Your Illusion I,” I count ten that are ones I either love or don’t mind listening to on a regular basis. Not bad, but when you consider “Appetite for Destruction” in practically a perfect record in terms of constant playability, this is a letdown. You swing for greatness, though, you can expect to have some strikeouts to go with the home runs.
With “Use Your Illusion II,” this great experiment of Axl’s seems to hit its stride. The album kicks off with “Civil War,” which features some of Slash’s most riveting guitar licks as we get an aural exploration into Axl’s societal disillusionment given how many significant world events he’d lived through at the time. It is an example of what great rock music is- entertaining, but also capable of protesting against the problems of society.
You can definitely tell each album has their own identity. “Use Your Illusion I” is more hard rock/metal in the vein of what we got with “Appetite for Destruction.” “Use Your Illusion II,” though, is a bit more like what rhythm guitarist Stradlin would do with his terrific solo album in 1992, and is akin in musical style to an electric continuation of their acoustic EP “GN’R Lies.” “14 Years” and “Yesterdays” feel like the band exploring personal memories before going big with their cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” After that, the first half of the album wraps up with a hard rock track in “Get in the Ring” that might have been more at home on the first album; a speed rock track in “Shotgun Blues” that has an energy that is hard not to appreciate; and “Breakdown,” which starts off with some whistling, much like “Civil War” does, but also introduces some prominent piano, which will set the stage for what’s to come in the second half of this album.
The back seven of “Use Your Illusion II” starts off in rip-roaring fashion with “Pretty Tied Up” before moving into one of their most propulsive tracks in “Locomotive,” the first of two tracks on this album that tips the scales at 8 minutes-plus. “So Fine” slows it down in a lovely way before getting to this album’s epic centerpiece, “Estranged.” While “November Rain” is the iconic song from these albums, there are times where I think the audacity of structure and Axl’s vocal stylings, which transition into howls of pain, are better suited to the band’s creative energies. “November Rain” is Axl doing his own “Stairway to Heaven”; “Estranged” feels like him trying out some of the ideas he would eventually build “Chinese Democracy” out of.
Next up is “You Will Be Mine,” which would have already been in people’s brains thanks to “Terminator 2: Judgement Day.” It’s one of their best songs, and is always easy to listen to. The next-to-last song is the alternative lyrics version of “Don’t Cry” before it finishes up with a weird blast of “What the Hell was that?” in “My World” that, honestly, ends the album with a whimper.
“My World” aside, there really aren’t any duds or songs I can’t imagine “Use Your Illusions II” being better without having on there. It’s like the band decided to lure people in with the straightforward hard rock of the first album before deciding they were going to morph into something more harmonious and challenging with the next one while remaining defiantly themselves. That’s ultimately why, I think, I like “II” more than “I”- it’s a band challenging themselves. Both albums are the band going big, and asking us to go with them, or telling us to go home.
Going with them was probably one of the best choices I’ve ever made as a fan of music.
I wrote about “Chinese Democracy” finally getting released back in 2008 here.
Thanks for listening.
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
