Artist: Guns N' Roses
Label: Geffen Records
Released: 1987
On July 21, 1987, a heavy earthquake hit downtown Los Angeles. Nothing unusual, you’d say, quakes are fairly common in that city, but on that very same day another “quake” rattled the foundations of Los Angeles – “Appetite For Destruction” came out, the key hard rock album of the late eighties and without a doubt one of the ten most important rock’n’roll albums of all time.
It will probably remain an eternal mystery how five more-or-less “doped-up” homeless punks recorded such a gem of the scene, but it definitely didn’t happen without help. After making a name for themselves in the Los Angeles underground as the most dangerous band since Mötley Crüe, not a single label dared to sign them. So it was only logical that they were taken under the wing of Tom Zutaut, the man who was also responsible for the rise of the aforementioned Mötleys. After a hard struggle to find a producer, and after a live EP came out, the guys quietly cut the record in the studio that put them among the immortals of rock’n’roll forever.
Even the very first riff of this album is different, strange. Some tension-building fooling around with a Les Paul and echo blossoms into the delinquent revelry of the classic Welcome to the Jungle. The peak of the track is the middle section, where Adler manically pounds out a “tribal” rhythm and Axl hysterically screams: “You know where you are?You’re in the jungle baby, you gonna die!” A classic! The jungle barely ends before the opening bass line of It’s So Easy grabs us tight, a perfect lyrical continuation with its graphic depiction of the prostitutes, drunks and delinquents of the City of Angels. Things keep rolling on unstoppably, and here come the alcoholic Nightrain, about the beauty and power of the cheapest “liter” (even though Slash called it, at a gig at the Ritz, NY, 1988: “This song is basically about a walk in the park.”) and the schizophrenic Out To Get Me, where Axl expresses for the first time the inner rage that haunts him, while Slash spices this goulash up with a truly venomous solo. The legendary Mr. Brownstone is a song that, in the eighties, when nearly everybody was getting high, from Ronald Reagan through Madonna all the way down to the last bum, spoke almost unheard-of yet honestly about the downsides of drug use, heroin in particular. Contrary to public belief, Axl, unlike the other members of the band, was never hooked on illegal drugs. Paradise City is the pearl of the album. The glitz and misery of “hair metal” Hollywood were never described more beautifully than in this very song. A killer chorus, a razor-sharp solo section and great lyrics finally crystallize all the potential these guys represented 21 years ago. The track has remained, and remains to this day, a classic of every rock party and will forever be etched into the hearts of outcast rockers all over the world. My Michelle, yet another one about the misery of street life, of washed-up models and groupies on the streets of L.A., is followed by a twist – the lyrically tender (but still not overly sugary) songs Think About You and Sweet Child O’Mine. The first is considered the lost pearl of the album, since it’s musically quite strong, even metal-flavored, and as for the second, there’s no point wasting words on it, since most of the Western world between the ages of 10 and 70 knows it. We’re nearing the end of the record, and You’re Crazy and Anything Goes are the most average songs on it. What drives them is nothing other than the band’s once again tried-and-true formula: “sex and swearing”. The first of the two works much more convincingly in its acoustic version, released on the “Welcome To The Jungle” vinyl single, and the same goes for yet another version of the song, found on the album “Lies”. This wouldn’t be a monumental record by any means if the closer didn’t deliver one more proper, authentic piece of sex-filth called Rocket Queen. Even though Axl Rose himself gives the song its stamp with a witty, wordplay-heavy approach, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler really stand out here, creating a deep, uniquely penetrating “groove” that brings the song to life so intensely that its sound stays in your ears long after the record is over.
25 million copies sold (and the number is still climbing steeply), three eternal rock’n’roll hits, countless votes for best hard’n’heavy album of all time – they all prove that with 53 minutes of recorded sound Guns N’ Roses built themselves an eternal monument that’s hard for anyone to overshadow, and the label “the dirtyest pearl in rock’n’roll history” sticks like glue. Appetite for destruction swept through the whole music scene 25 years ago and enthroned Guns as the undisputed kings of rock. Over the rest of their career young and old listened to them, and they became such powerful pop icons that kids still walk around the world in their t-shirts, even though practically nobody has seen them anywhere for 15 years. The record itself has inspired, and still inspires, countless lads and lasses who break their fingers trying to strum those first chords; it laid the foundations of sleaze metal, which has only now, 20 years later, sprouted anew in the north of the old continent, and last but not least, it gave us one of the best-known and most overplayed guitar intros of all time
Glory to it!
Lineup
Axl Rose: vocals
Slash: guitar
Izzy Stradlin: guitar
Duff McKagan: bass
Stevena Adler: drums
Production
Mike Clink
Tracklist
1.Welcome To The Jungle
2.It’s So Easy
3.Nightrain
4.Out Ta Get Me
5.Mr. Brownstone
6.Paradise City
7.My Michelle
8.Think About You
9.Sweet Child O’ Mine
10.You’re Crazy
11.Anything Goes
12.Rocket Queen
Album length: 53.26
