Posted on 03/14/2009 6:04:51 AM PDT by terabyte
Nirvana didn't kill hair metal - Guns n' Roses did. With their explosive 1987 debut album, Appetite for Destruction, Guns n' Roses burst out of the Los Angeles glam rock scene and permanently carved a spot in rock history.
This music review places Appetite for Destruction as arguably the best album of the 1980s. From the opening delayed guitar riff of "Welcome to the Jungle" to the incendiary "Paradise City" the the almost 50s flavored ending of "Rocket Queen," the album captures the reality of life on the streets better than any before or since.
Lyrically, the band completely avoided all the traditional trappings of heavy metal. The eccentric but brilliant Axl Rose ensured that there are no Zeppelin-esque Lord of the Rings references, no pseudo-Satanist posturing, not even any of the party-all-the-time silliness of their contemporaries. Instead, there is nothing but a raw dose of five young men living a virtually homeless, penniless existence on the mean streets of LA in the mid-to-late 1980s.
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
I think they put that label on it because it was the first of the nonhair band and non-”I’m so bad because I sing about Satan” bands to break through the mainstream. Anthrax was a good band, but they did not have the success or sales that GnR had. I loved GnR (until Axl got all artsy fartsy) and think that AFD was a really good album musically too.
But if you asked me on another day, I might tell you that “Frontiers” was the best album. Which is nearly 10 years younger and in a totally different genre.
Heck, I’m just being nostalgic for GnR today I think.
You *do* know that the chorus of that song started as a joke, right?
Here’s a better example of Rose’s poetry. It didn’t get released until the Use Your Illusion albums, but it was written about the same time as AFD:
Just like children hiding in a closet
Can’t tell what’s going on outside
Sometimes we’re so far off the beaten track
We’ll get taken for a ride
By a parlor trick or some words of wit
A hidden hand up a sleeve
To think the one you love
could hurt you now
Is a little hard to believe
But everybody, darling, sometimes
Bites the hand that feeds
I think it’s funny that all these hippies’ gods did recognize how evil communism is. Dylan compares Selma, Alabama with red China. Now THAT’S funny. (Hey confederates: segregationism was big government!)
Add that to the Rolling Stones making the Bolsheviks the very personification of the devil; the Beatles’s preference for bashing the Tax Man instead of joining the Revolution; the Sex Pistol’s and Pink Floyd’s bashing on the Labor government;...
HA! Gonzo... good one.
Slash and the rest made GNR to me.
That’s why Chinese Democracy will never be as good as anything Velvet Revolver put out.
OHHHH YEAH.
Ok, I’m rethinking this. I forgot about alot of really good albums.
R&R Ping!
The last rock group that really talked about the dark side of that lifestyle was the Eagles (think Life in the Fast Lane). Sadly, many of the listeners of both bands never realized that the lyrics were a cautionary tale, not a bragging session.
Hey, I was a liberal then too. Just off a GNR high and voted for Clinton. DOH!
Negative.
You never know what music can do until you have to actually play a certain piece! People LOVE this song! As for the "Best" album of the 80's ...pleeeeeaaasssee!
I went to see Terminator 2 just to hear a GNR song in a Terminator context. It did not dissapoint. Neither did the movie.
Where to begin....
Funny... same here, except my last cover band, we thought about doing a U2 song. I graduated HS in 1990, and I utterly despised U2. Now, though twenty years later, I'm actually digging them.
Yeah, but that’s only because Iron Maiden helped all the hippies who teach English think they’re cool. “Run to the Hills” is a perfect example of a song where the author is trying to express his hatred for America by seeing us through the eyes of our victims, but ends up so condescending, he has to flip POV just to avoid complete drivel. “Oh, those evil white men gave us alcohol. Now come one college frat boys, drink up!!!”
All my English teachers under 50 loved that band too. And they were all hippy losers.
Not that it’s not a fun song... but the band’s lyrics are sorta like Hannah Montana trying to fit in with the commie click at a new school.
Rory Gallagher made Axl AND Slash look like pikers
Excellent choice. If you don't have it already, get the Operation: LiveCrime concert DVD. It's excellent.
Even though Steven Adler is still walking around, he killed himself decades ago.
Does that count?
Rory’s a great guitarist, no doubt.
i agree with this article.
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