Guns N'Roses

Arrogant commentators on urban desolation, in a dark hard-boiled style reminiscent of Chandler’s detective novels, Guns N’ Roses were at the center of one of the most spectacular commercial scoops in the history of hard-rock. Their debut album, Appetite For Destruction (Geffen, 1987), and its two anthems, Welcome To The Jungle and Sweet Child O’ Mine, shot to the top of the charts. Genuine psychopathic animals—with particular predilection for sexual violence, vandalism, and heroin—vocalist William “Axl Rose” Bailey (a small-time delinquent from Indiana), guitarist Saul “Slash” Hudson (born in the UK), second guitarist Jeff “Izzy Stradlin” Isabell (born in Lafayette, Indiana), bassist Duff McKagan (car thief), and drummer Steve Adler, all drug-addicted and alcoholic, embodied everything negative commonly associated with rock, in open defiance of the humanitarian causes embraced by many rock musicians. In doing so, Guns N’ Roses gave a new voice to the fatalistic “lived-in” tone that has pervaded rock since the Stones, gaining the approval of California’s most reckless and delinquent teens. Axl Rose was their spokesperson, with his anti-heroic singing performance, a mix of shrill declamations, Steve Tyler-like mewls, lascivious cries, light crooning, exaggerated musichall-style diction, seductive whispers, and solemn sermons. The album opens with the sinister strikes of Welcome To The Jungle, a song of charon-like salesmanship and a depiction of Hollywood decadence. It marks the beginning of a maniacal journey through the moral miseries of the metropolitan “jungle”: the brazen machismo of It’s So Easy, the anthem to heroin addiction Mr. Brownstone (a music-hall nursery rhyme over a Bo Diddley riff), the cry for freedom in Out Ta Get Me, the parodic sarcasm of My Michelle (a prudish virgin daughter of a pornography boss and a heroin addict), the erotic ritual of Rocket Queen (first arrogant, then tender, finally poignant), and epic infernos of incandescent blues-rock such as Paradise City, a hurried anthem with the solemn pace of a condemned man. In these tracks, Slash’s inexhaustible soaring solos inject the raw violence of street life, often opening the songs with martial strikes. The most epileptic deliriums are found in the thrash-punk of You’re Crazy and the funk-boogie of Anything Goes. The only moment of redemption is Sweet Child O’ Mine, a tender serenade in the vein of Lady Jane. Welcome, Paradise, Michelle, and Sweet Child O’ Mine stand among the masterpieces of youthful frustration. Following their staggering debut came Lies (Geffen, 1988), mostly acoustic, featuring nervous and mature ballads such as Used To Love Her, One In A Million, and Patience. Drawing from speed metal and the rebellious ideology of punk, yet embracing vocal harmonies, catchy choruses, and Californian rock guitar virtuosity, Guns N’ Roses revived the ethos of self-destruction and outrage-rock of the Stooges and Aerosmith: socially irresponsible, macho, and amoral. The sudden and enormous fame of Guns N’ Roses, forerunners of the hyper-realistic rock that would dominate Los Angeles throughout the 1990s, translated into the staggering success of Use Your Illusion (Geffen, 1991), selling over two million copies in a week with hours-long lines outside record stores. Accompanied by reputations as racists and chauvinists, drunks and vandals, drug addicts and troublemakers—echoing, in some ways, the provocative misadventures of the early Rolling Stones and Sex Pistols—Guns N’ Roses exemplify how rock careers can merge art and life, amplifying their reach to massive numbers of young fans. The double album is monumental, sweeping across an enormous range of styles. The six members (by then keyboardist Dizzy Reed had joined, and drummer Steve Adler was replaced by Matt Sorum, formerly of The Cult) form a perfectly cohesive musical unit, directed spectacularly by composer Izzy Stradlin. Axl Rose, second guitarist Slash (the true master of their instrumental escapades, disciple of Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys), and bassist Duff McKagan are not virtuosos, yet they never hit a wrong note; in fact, they never “waste” a chord, attacking every note voraciously. Reed’s boogie piano and orchestral synthesizer add a simultaneously classic and raw touch to the arrangements. The genres they explore span much of rock history and its pathologies: the titanic “damned” anthem (the masterpiece Right Next Door To Hell), existential ballads of dark tones (Dust ’N’ Bones, Dead Horse, and especially 14 Years), melodic serenades (Don’t Cry), Stones-style raucous rhythm & blues (Bad Apples and especially Bad Obsession), passionate Faces-like soul-rock (Yesterdays), obscene and explosive AC/DC-style heavy metal (Back Off Bitch and especially Shotgun Blues), interspersed with several thrash mutations (Perfect Crime, Garden Of Eden). Even when the music veers into loquacious tracks (numerous inconclusive songs over eight minutes long), their skill as seasoned entertainers restores meaning, as violent and frenzied as ever. Both Double Talkin’ Jive and Don’t Damn Me live solely on the demonic effect of performance. While the therapeutic value of these songs may be questionable, their capacity to polarize emotions has become an art of suggestion in itself. The lyrics uphold their program of continuous brawling, alternating barely concealed hostility with treacherous rancor, thus feeding the myth. If Pretty Tied Up, a sort of raga-infused heavy metal hybrid, constitutes the harmonic apex, the melodic and emotional peak of the album is the symphonic suite November Rain, featuring another grand Slash solo, now fully in kitsch territory (as with the equally elaborate Estranged).

Authentic rebels and natural musicians whose talent springs from their social backgrounds (Rose, for example, endured a childhood of sexual abuse), Guns N’ Roses had nonetheless reached the extreme limit of instability. Stradlin, the Brian Jones of the situation, who had left the band in the middle of recording sessions, then went on to write Ju Ju Hounds (Geffen, 1993) on his own. But despite Somebody’s Knockin’, it was an embarrassing failure. Only the band’s next move would reveal the true internal dynamics. And indeed, for Guns N’ Roses, the abyss seemed bottomless: The Spaghetti Incident? (Geffen, 1993) was a collection of punk covers—a sort of (somewhat hypocritical) homage to their roots. Crocodile tears. After all, the band now seemed to have more success with covers than with originals. Slash released It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere (Geffen, 1995), an awkward album. Stradlin released 117 (Geffen, 1998). Bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum formed the Neurotic Outsiders (Maverick, 1996) with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols and John Taylor of Duran Duran. Permeated by sexual and death impulses at a level of manic, subgenital intoxication, their artistic trajectory, far from freeing them from reality, increasingly cast them as natural candidates for sacrificial offerings. Rose and Slash struggled stoically within reality, giving the impression of being trapped in their claustrophobic world, their masturbatory fantasies, and their Freudian complexes, and, ultimately, of being imprisoned—hostages to an apocalyptic vision of the human condition.

Axl Rose was the only surviving original member when (2000) he began work on Chinese Democracy, but the album was never released. Rose reformed the band with guitarist Buckethead and Primus' drummer Brian Mantia, but the line-up was still unstable.

Slash, McKagan and Sorum then formed the supergroup Velvet Revolver with vocalist Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots and rhythm guitarist Dave Kushner of Wasted Youth. They released Contraband (2004) and Libertad (2007).

When Chinese Democracy (2008) finally saw the light, it was indeed a competent hard-rock collection (Better, Street of Dreams, There Was a Time), albeit by a different band (Rose was the only survivor of the original line-up). That it is not the same band is emphasized by Catcher in the Rye and This I Love, that channel grand emotions into classy adult rock formats.