Guns N’ Roses: one of the most famous hard rock American bands, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985 with highly skilled musicians in the line up. 1) Axl Rose, the leader of the band with his characteristic nasal, hard rock aggressive voice and unique interpretation. 2) Slash, the lead guitarist who has become an idol for most of the guitar players. You may have noticed his picture on the windows of some guitar shops. 3) Matt Sorum the drummer who replaced Steven Adler in 1990 and has also performed with Tori Amos. The rest of the band members are Tracii Guns and Ole Beich. Their songs are still famous and time resistant and their sound is unlike anything else. Their influences are many and diverse and even the cover songs they did in the not very successful album ““The Spaghetti Incident” sound as if written by them. Unlike other bands G’n'R do not have a huge discography. Perhaps the circumstances drove them to producing few and meaningful albums like the outstanding “Use your Illusion I and II”, instead of many and mediocre.
Their first successful album was Appetite for Destruction (1987) featuring songs like “Sweet child of mine”, “Welcome to the Jungle”, “Paradise City”, “Nightrain”. It is one of their most aggressive albums, with some punk influences but very well-filtered by the band’s high performance and composition skills. It gave a uniquely attractive street – poser feeling to the whole band and quickly became very famous. In 2001 the Q magazine named Appetite for Destruction as one of the 50 Heaviest Albums of All Time. The Rolling Stone in 1989 ranked it as the 20th best album of the 1980s and finally the VH1 named it the 42nd Greatest Album of All Time in 2003.
The next album is an EP titled “G N’ R Lies (1988)” which was not the best moment of their career. It fails to sound as great as “Appetite for Destruction”, most of the songs have nothing special to say except for the wonderful ballad “Patience” and the “Used to love her”. However there are fans who still love this album but personally I consider it as a b-side and it gives the feeling that those were left-over songs that could not fit in the “Appetite…”. “We’re not getting away from hard rock. Our basic root is hard rock, a bit heavier than the Stones, more in a vein like Aerosmith, Draw the Line type stuff. We love loud guitars.” (Axl rose, Rolling stone 1989).
One in a million scandals:
The “Lies” album includes also one of the most contradicting songs of G’n'R, the unacceptable for some fans “One in a Million”. The song itself is a fairly interesting composition but the mention of the words “n….s” and “immigrants and f…s” in the lyrics, led to controversy and critics accused the band, and specifically Axl Rose, of racism and homophobia. There were several responses by Axl and I would like to spend a little time to clear up this misunderstanding. Let’s take as an example the following Rolling Stone interview.
Does it bother you that so many people think you’re misogynous, homophobic and racist?
It can bother me. But the racist thing is just bullshit. I used a word that was taboo. And I used that word because it was taboo. I was pissed off about some black people that were trying to rob me. I wanted to insult those particular black people. I didn’t want to support racism. When I used the word faggots, I wasn’t coming down on gays. I was coming down on an element of gays. I had just heard a story about a man who was released out of the L.A. county jail with AIDS and he was hooking. I’ve had my share of dealings with aggressive gays, and I was bothered by it. The Bible says, “Thou shalt not judge,” and I guess I made a judgment call, and it was an insult. The racist thing, that’s just stupid. I can understand how people would think that, but that’s not how I meant it. I believe that there’s always gonna be some form of racism — as much as we’d like there to be peace — because people are different. Black culture is different. I work with a black man every day (Earl Gabbidon, Rose’s bodyguard), and he’s one of my best friends. There are things he’s into that are definitely a “black thing.” But I can like them. There are things that are that way. I think there always will be.
People are afraid of things that are foreign to them.
It’s that way with everything, you know? It’s that way with people who are of the same race or same gender. Maybe now and then they’ll reach a point where something happens, and they bond, and they’re really close. But they’re always going to have their differences. The most important thing about “One in a Million” is that it got people to think about racism. A lot of people thought I was talking about entire races or sectors of people. I wasn’t. And there was an apology on the record. The apology is not even written that well, but it’s not on the cover of every record. And no one has acknowledged it yet. No one.
Another response:
The lyrics have incited a lot of protest, so let’s go over them line by line. Let’s start with one of the verses, “Police and niggers, that’s right/Get outta my way/Don’t need to buy none/ Of your gold chains today.”
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. I don’t like boundaries of any kind. I don’t like being told what I can and what I can’t say. I used the word nigger because it’s a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word nigger doesn’t necessarily mean black. Doesn’t John Lennon have a song “Woman Is the Nigger of the World”? There’s a rap group, N.W.A., Niggers with Attitude. I mean, they’re proud of that word. More power to them. Guns N’ Roses ain’t bad … N.W.A. is baad! Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason we put these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy and we’d sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why’d he put us in his skit? We don’t just do something to get the controversy, the press.
How about the next verse? 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-Iran or spread some fuckin’ disease.” Why that reference to immigrants?
When I use the word immigrants, what I’m talking about is going to a 7-11 or Village pantries – a lot of people from countries like Iran, Pakistan, China, Japan et cetera, get jobs in these convenience stores and gas stations. Then they treat you as if you don’t belong here. I’ve been chased out of a store with Slash by a six-foot-tall Iranian with a butcher knife because he didn’t like the way we were dressed. Scared me to death. All I could see in my mind was a picture of my arm on the ground, blood going everywhere. When I get scared, I get mad. I grabbed the top of one of these big orange garbage cans and went back at him with this shield, going, “Come on!” I didn’t want to back down from this guy. Anyway that’s why I wrote about immigrants. Maybe I should have been more specific and said, “Joe Schmoladoo at the 7-11 and faggots make no sense to me.” That’s ridiculous! I summed it up simply and said, “Immigrants.”
Now that you understand, if you hear that a man is gay how does it make you feel?
People can do whatever they want to, but I’m more pro-hetro. I’m not knocking it — I have friends that are gay. It’s just that it’s not my cup of tea, l guess. That’s all. People can do what they want. l can sit and watch the Madonna movie and enjoy it very much and feel I’m learning something, and then I have other friends that can’t handle it at all.
From all the above we see that Axl is definitely not a racist person. However, the way he points out the arguments sound still dangerous but as some could say, “it’s only words”. His actions were never racist or homophobic. On the contrary his band mate Slash, an originally English musician from Stoke-on-Trent moved to Los Angeles as a child (something like an immigrant one could say) and his mother, Ola Hudson, was African. If Axl was homophobic he would not have performed with Elton John in the Queen tribute (and also he considers Queen as one of his basic influences). The question is: Can you be anti-racist by mentioning race-related words? Yes, however it is preferable to be anti-racist without using insulting words and find other ways to promote anti-taboo theories. The whole situation clearly shows that he wanted to provoke in order to attract more audience even using a dangerous way. I do understand his point of view but these matters are very sensitive and can put the band’s reputation at risk that is 1) to loose fans or 2) to become an idol of foolish haters and racists. Fortunately nothing like that has happened. And if some people are so much annoyed about this song, why do they not try to stop “hate groups” and other supremacists instead of bashing Axl?
Back to the album history of G’n'R. After the “Lies” come two albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II both in 1991. These lps are considered as the most successful and important station of their career. Indeed there are only a few songs that I reject from these albums like “Coma”, “Get in the ring”, “My world”. “So Fine”, sung and written by the bassist Duff McKagan, is a tribute to the deceased punk rock musician Johnny Thunders” (Wikipedia). “November rain” was composed for the death of one of Axl’s wives. In an interview Tracii Guns, said the following: When we were doing that EP for L.A. Guns, like ‘83? He was playing “November Rain” ? and it was called “November Rain” ? you know, on piano. The guitar solo is amazing. Way back then. It was the only thing he knew how to play, but it was his. He’d go, “Someday this song is gonna be really cool.” And I’d go, “It’s cool now.” “But it’s not done”, you know, he used to say. And, like, anytime we’d be at a hotel or anywhere, there’d be a piano; he’d just kinda play that music. And I’d go, “When are you gonna finish that already”, you know? And he’d go, “I don’t know what to do with it.” “Estranged”, is a very emotional song written under depressing circumstances suggesting to the audience to always look on the positive side of things. “Civil War” one of their best compositions, and one of the most important anti-war songs in the music history, politically charged, it has an entire verse about President Kennedy’s assassination. It deals with the Vietnam War and the battle for civil rights in the US. On September 27, 1993, Duff explained where the song came from in an interview with the radio show Rockline: “Basically it was a riff that we would do at soundchecks. Axl came up with a couple of lines at the beginning. I went in a peace march, when I was a little kid, with my mom. I was like 4 years old. For Martin Luther King. And that’s when: ‘Did you wear the black arm band when they shot the man who said: ‘Peace could last forever?’. It’s just true-life experiences, really.’ Other songs like “Don’t cry”, “Yesterdays” today are considered timeless hits songs.
Let’s see what others have said about these two historic albums: “Axl Rose sings on “Estranged,” from II, “but I’m only twenty-eight.” Like Aerosmith in the classic “Dream On,” they realize that to go on, you’ve got to have faith. During the fifty-three and a half minutes of Appetite, the guitars antagonized, the drums slammed, and Axl howled about their savage lifestyle, the perils of drugs, the glory of booze, dreaming of Eden, wide-eyed romantic love, their oppressors and sex. During the seventy-five and a half minutes of Use Your Illusion II, the guitars antagonize, though now with more dexterity, varying in tempo and mood; the drums slam, though now at the hands of new band member Matt Sorum; and Axl of course howls, but he also whispers, croons, talk-sings and plays piano like he did back in Indiana, up in his room, idolizing Elton John. (Cristian Wright for the Rolling Stone). “Was Use Your Illusion I worth the wait, the traumas and the onstage tantrums? Yes, if only for “Don’t Damn Me” and the album’s ten-minute closer, “Coma,” a locomotive parable about suicide dreams and troubled resurrection. A few tracks (“Live and Let Die,” the weird art-metal nightmare “The Garden”) could have stayed on the outtakes shelf and no one would have minded. But the Gunners’ anything-worth-doing-is-worth-overdoing spirit is a bracing slap at the reigning fascism of studio perfection” (David Fricke for the Rolling stone 1991). It looks like Use your Illusion II is more important than the first, however songs like “November rain cannot be compared with anything else.
These two albums have similar studio production with the second being cleaner while the first sounds more compressed. The second sounds more melodic while the first is more aggressive. They have a lot of similarities (like the piano that is used a lot in both) however they have different characters and comparing them does not make sense. There are no words to describe the Slash solos, Axl’s interpretations and the changes from heavy to soft, the amazingly beautiful clean with a soft touch of hardness guitars and the Axl’s voice that once becomes clean and then it changes to a nasal screaming that is so unique.
The following album “The Spaghetti Incident” contains cover songs and was recorded mostly alongside the “Use Your Illusion” albums. Personally I think that it is one of their most underrated albums. The interpretation of the song “Ain’t it Fun” is something that I very much appreciate and the aggressiveness together with the unique G’n'R feeling make it sound like a typical G’n'R song. The timing was probably the only wrong thing in this release. By the end of ‘93, grunge and alternative rock was becoming more an more popular in contrast to the old-school rock music. Despite that GnR still had an enormous fan base, the album was regarded as outdated as most of the cover songs it contains are from the 60’s and 70’s. Apart from that, most of the fans would expect one more typical “Use your Illusion” album which did not happen.
The tracks “Since I don’t have you”, “I dont care about you”, “Down on the farm” and “Ain’t it fun” are the most interesting as they display the bands remarkable ability to adjust the melodies to their own style.
A thirteen- year-long gap separates the Spaghetti Incident and “Chinese Democracy”. For a while Axl’s trails dissappeared and nobody knew about him while the other band members were involved in other projects. Slash decided to start a solo career with “The Slash and Snakepit” project. This album was first announced a long time ago and it was finally released in 2008 while once again there are mixed feelings about it.
As for the “Chinese Democracy” I reject those who support that it is a bad album just because it does not sound like a typical Guns and Roses album, or because Slash is not a member of the band anymore. Breaking up is not good news for the band but it does not necessarily mean that without them a good album cannot be achieved. Apart from the songs “Street of dreams” and “This I love” that sound closer to the old GnR sound, the rest have nothing to say except for some good lyrics. A good description of the album can be found in this BBC article. In overall it was a good attempt and I appreciate Axl’s comeback but considering that he had all these years to get prepared, he could have given us more interesting songs. Can we expect a miracle album in the near future? Can we have a positive surprise? We keep hoping…
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Official "The Fox"
September 5th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I did not really like the Chinese Democracy. A lot of dodgy songs that have nothing to say except the “This I love” and “Street of Dreams”. Very mediocre.
September 5th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
well.. they are the legend of rock music.
but how’s everything with their Chinese Democracy albums?