2017 - August 29 - Sweet Child O' Mine

Ahh - to be 15 again and experience Appetite for Destruction for the first time. It's been 30 years since the album was released, although I think I might have turned 16 by the time I heard it for the first time. Back then, I only appreciated it for the straight forward unabashed rock'n'roll it provided, but this weekend I was reminded of another quality of the album: how incredibly smart and well played it is.

Today's song, Sweet Child O' Mine, showcases the brilliance of the band more than anything - and Slash and Duff McKagan in particular. The intro guitar riff started as a guitar warm-up exercise for Slash - and his signature guitar tone is all over it. Then, the magic first starts happening when Duff comes in with his warm bass tone, playing a nice little run on top of the guitar figure. The bass is all over this song, providing some great lines all the way through, showcasing just how much Duff McKagan has a great ear for melody - it isn't technical as much as it is exquisitely tasteful, and I will take tasteful over technical any day of the week.

THEN... When Axl Rose starts singing "oh oh oh sweet child of mine" you have to ignore his voice and listen to Slash's guitar with the same tone as the intro. It is mixed in the background, but he starts playing around with the guitar figure, inverting it a little to fit the chord structure, yet building tension before it is released by a return to the initial figure once Axl is done with his singing. Beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. And the solo - the slow, searing guitar that burns its way through your eardrums and etches itself onto your soul. That is the solo that was cut from the video. That should be criminal...

The final breakdown takes the song from sweet to menacing and turns things on their head. The song is brilliant, but I was not aware of that when I started listening to it 30 years ago. Back then I just liked it, but listening to it now, I hear so many more layers. It is so clear to me that GnR was a band that loved playing music. They still do, even though it's not the same band anymore. With Slash and Duff back, I am actually interested in seeing them, but not at any price...

There are three autobiographies written by members of GnR: Slash by Slash, My Appetite For Destruction by Steven Adler, the only member of GnR kicked out for doing too much drugs (that should tell you something), and It's So Easy and Other Lies by Duff McKagan. This trio of books are great reading for anyone interested not just in GnR, but in any music from this era - and it provides interesting and differing points of view for the band's history. Duff McKagan's is easily the best written one - he has become a columnist in addition to a musician these days, and it shows - but the other two are great as well.

But for today we are back to those days of 1987, when Sweet Child O' Mine was all over the radio and Guns'n'Roses ruled the world.

August 4 - Welcome To The Jungle

In 1987, Guns N' Roses released their debut album, but it wasn't until a year later they really broke through with the Sweet Child O' Mine and it became impossible to escape them wherever you went. I remember seeing an early MTV taped show of theirs that really showed the ferociousness of their concerts - way before they became the bloated band they where just before they turned in to an Axl Rose solo outfit. But today is all about their debut album, Appetite for Destruction. And what a debut it was. Looking at the track list, there isn't a single filler track on it - it is simply put one of the strongest debut albums ever. The opening teasing guitar notes from Slash before the descending riff starts... Then it builds and builds until it settles into a fairly unsettling groove. It rolls on with vocals that focus more on rhythm than melody before the chorus sets in and releases some tension. Of course, there is a quiet break in there as well, just before Slash unleashes his guitar solo. It is a great song to open a great album. When I first heard it, it was my friend Geir who taped Appetite for Destruction on one side (spilling over onto the second side) of the 90 minute tape - and with David Lee Roth's Skyscraper on the other side. While Skyscraper isn't a bad album, it is rarely listened to now - but I still pull out Appetite for Destruction when I want to listen to some really good balls out rock and roll, and it all starts with Welcome to the Jungle!

March 12 - Civil War

So far I have avoided the two bands who moved what in most of my teenage years had been fringe music into the mainstream in 1991. Metallica, who only 5 years earlier drew next to violent reactions removing them from the tape deck when I tried playing Master Of Puppets at parties, and Guns'n'Roses, who continued their mainstream success, both released albums in the fall. Metallica delivered a single, concentrated dose of their signature riffs, but with a more melodic approach than before, whereas Guns'n'Roses indulged Axl Rose in a sprawling double double album release (Use Your Illusion I & II were both double albums and released on the same day).

I was lucky enough to discover GnR when they were on their way up. My friend Geir had bought Appetite for Destruction, and I taped that along with David Lee Roth's Skyscraper on a 90 minute tape that I pretty much wore out. I also watched an early live concert that was broadcast on Sky Channel that further cemented my admiration for the band, and I was eagerly awaiting GnR's new albums in the fall of 1991.

I have said it before that if Guns'n'Roses had employed a producer that helped them narrow their songs down from two double albums to one single album, they could have made one of the best, if not the best, rock album ever. Instead they did too much, and the majority of songs were not really all that good at all. However, since the republicans currently are trying to get us back into a civil war, Captain America is also taking us there in the movies, and Guns'n'Roses are bringing the lineup that offered some of the best sleazy rock'n'roll of the 80s, I thought that the song Civil War could be a good song for today. From what I understand and have heard on various bootleg recordings, GnR was one of the best live acts of the late 80s and early 90s until they finally imploded over a period of three years, from 1994-1997 (although they really were over following their recording of Sympathy for the Devil in 1994).

I spent the summer of 2012 peering over three books that chronicled Guns'n'Roses from three different perspectives. Slash, Duff McKagan, and Steven Adler had all written their own accounts of what had happened. Adler got himself ousted from GnR for drug abuse. How messed up is that? Slash and McKagan were in it for the music, got caught up in the drugs, but came out on the other side (supposedly - although I actually believe it is the case for both of them). The books are interesting, and they all have in common that they talk about Axl Rose's incredible ego. I am not a fan of Mr. Rose, but I think the band he had behind him was top notch, and it's a shame it ended the way it did, with him continuing to use the band name. How good the band was can be heard in Velvet Revolver, where most of GnR teamed up with another junkie as a singer, Scott Weiland, although his voice and charisma completely outshone Mr. Rose. Unfortunately we did lose Scott Weiland last year.

Anyway, today's song is the last song to feature Steven Adler, who was replaced by Matt Sorum for all other songs on both Use Your Illusion albums, and it is an epic song that is well worth a listen still today. Here is Civil War.