GNR was nothing more than an MTV product. It was all packaging with zero substance.
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 wholeheartedly agree.
eh, opinions are like aholes, everyone has one. I disagree. In fact, this album was out a long while before people caught on. Not saying the album is bad but hype has something to do with it. As for Nirvana, having been a fan of theirs PRIOR to their selling out, I’d say their first album BLEACH is their best. It’s classic grunge. They abandoned it with Smells Like a SellOut which does have some good songs on it.
But some of the best albums of 80’s come from THE REPLACEMENTS.
I’m waiting for Pissant and Razorboy to chime in and proclaim GNR the most influential band in rock and roll history.
Hell yeah!
1984
This ought to be the Obama camp's new theme song. They can play it at his rallies.
Yeah. The first Black Sabbath with Ronnie Dio (heaven and hell) was the real deal.
I think I preferred Anthrax’s Among The Living (or anything they did in the 80s) over GnR. I used to hate GnR, but gradually grew to tolerate them. Just because it was a popular album, does not make it “best”. Its really a stupid idea to put that label on one out of hundreds of thousands of CDs that were released over a ten-year span.
I absolutely agree with the first sentence. The moment Axl Rose and Slash appeared on the scene, Bret Michaels and the rest of the hair metal scene suddenly looked like a bunch of nerds, sissies, and lame-asses. What, you need to raid your aunt’s makeup desk to rock?
But best album of the 1980s.... Hmmm.... The Joshua Tree was pretty damned good.
Best 80's album? Man, I'll be thinking on that one all day.
Nah, I take it back... That was my opinion then, but I can’t say I’d picture having a mood come over me where I’d really need to listen to Joshua Tree. Appetite for Destruction, hell yeah. (Come to think of it, I was a liberal then, too...*)
(* Hey, cradle conservatives: don’t pick on me for having been a liberal. I’ve made an intellectual decision to adopt each plank of conservatism.)
"Eve of Destruction" [Bob Dylan]
The eastern world it is explodin',
Violence flarin', bullets loadin',
You're old enough to kill but not for votin',
You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin',
And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin',
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Nn, Can't you feel the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin',
I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin',
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
Handful of Senators don't pass legislation,
And marches alone can't bring integration,
When human respect is disintegratin',
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin',
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China!
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama!
Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space,
But when your return, it's the same old place,
The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace,
You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace,
Hate your next-door-neighbour, but don't forget to say grace,
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. mmm, no, no.
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
“Take me down to Paradise City,
Where the girls are green
and the grass is pretty”
>> In fact, this album was out a long while before people caught on. Not saying the album is bad but hype has something to do with it. <<
I’m not sure that supports your argument. Successful hype usually means that the album is plastered all over Wal-Mart while people are still scratching their heads, asking, “who?” The truth that the record companie’s original pitch to lead with “Welcome to the Jungle” kinda flopped only supports the notion that the band made it on its own merits.
In a wierd way, the early flop helped them: DJs started picking up on “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Ordinarily leading with something like that would make a band uncool to the headbanging core market, but I can just hear all the kids saying, “no, dude, they’re a real metal band; remember that song, ‘welcome to the jungle?’ That’s them too and their album has some real rocking stuff.” (OK, they don’t sound like such dorks in my head, but I’m keeping it family friendly.)
Then they RE-released “Jungle” and it, too, became a smash.
Or was THAT just brilliant marketing?
Exactly. That's why I think of it as the most influential album of the 80s. Warrant, Def Leppard, Poison, Loudness, Racer X, Whitesnake, Autograph, Krokus... they all died the Sunday night that MTV finally played "Welcome to the Jungle" at 3:00am.
Here's something no other band can take credit for: the single handed resurrection of an iconic American corporation, Gibson Guitars. In 1987, you couldn't find a Les Paul in a music store. It was all pointy-headstock superstrats with Floyd Rose whammy bars, preferably in a neon pink or green, or with some goofy graphics. Slash & Company, not Henry J, are solely responsible for keeping Gibson out of bankruptcy. When GnR happened, suddenly it was COOL to play Les Pauls again. I got my first LP in 1988 (a 1974 Deluxe, I paid $400), and I play one to this day.
The irony that Slash was playing replicas of Gibson guitars and not actual Gibsons is a topic for another thread, though.
That was a rock anthem song.....
Not supposed to be deep
I have heard their basic themes in many bands before them. Yeah, they boozed, drugged and partied but until your drummer or lead singer kills themself then you are a lightweight group of posers
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.
I don’t know, I love Iron Maiden, but that Number of the Beast song seemed to be ‘selling out’ to the “superbad Satanists” trend of the time.
I was 15. My best friend played Welcome to the Jungle for me in the hallway after school and I remember thinking, "Everything just changed."
Sang better than Axl too
I am a class of 90 too.
Although Appetite for Destruction really is a seminal album because it was just such a gut punch to the pretty-boy hair metal genre. The first time I heard “Welcome to the Jungle” left me a little stunned...I’d never heard anything that hard on the radio before. Then I got the album on cassette and proceeded to wear it out blasting it in my car.
You bring up a great point about Operation: Mindcrime though. It’s really underrated IMO.
}:-)4
Hey, I was turned into a conservative by the end of my freshman year at college. My hippie school teachers made liberalism out as if it were all about freedom, and I get to a state university and find no free thought allowed, all speech must be approved by the PC police, the separation of church and state crowd was supporting theocracies like Syria and Iran, and the “my body, my choice” crowd was hating pregnant women for causing overpopulation.
And within a month, the Soviet Union fell, and they were all crying about the terrible tragedy of it all. And the next day, the newspapers changed their tune from “Vote Republican and you’ll all die in a nuclear war,” to “Vote Republican and you’ll all be killed by the ozone hole and global warming.” And I said, “You know, that Morton Downey, Jr. guy had some interesting ideas on his show.”
Isn’t that terrible? All the cool neo-cons (as in, born liberal, became conservative... not at all what the liberal press makes that word out to mean) thank William F. Buckley, Rush Limbaugh, etc. for setting them on the path to conservatism. The horrible, deep dark truth is that before I read the National Review or found EIB, it was Morton Downey, Jr. who amused me.
Why? For all his theatrics, he actually heard what his guests had to say.
Barry McGuire sang it like a rangy Bob Dylan.
Cheers!
2)Don't really like the song, although the colonists, especially the Spanish conquistadors/Pequot War of the English settlers, were brutal towards the native population.
3) The song was from the Number of the Beast
4)Again, least favorite song by them reaching the annoying level everey time I hear it.
I didn't think it was Dylan, but that's what the web site I copied said; I should have checked. Thanks for the correction.
GNR? Perhaps you need a musical 'taste' check up...
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