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.