Izvajalec: Guns N' Roses
Založba: Geffen Records
Izid: 1993
1993 was a watershed year in rock music. “Hair” metal had been stomped into the deepest oblivion for good, even Metallica got their hair cut, “grunge” took over (“little did they know” ), and the only truly relevant survivor of the eighties American rock scene was the notorious and already pretty feuding “Guns and Roses”, who, as is more than obvious today, put a mercy shot in their own gut with this album and sent the roses to the grave. That was a decade and a half ago. So how does the album sound today?
In one word: excellent! Apart from the opening and closing numbers, Axl’s nonsense Since I Don’t Have You by the Skyliners and the provocative idiocy of Look At Your Game Girl, written by mass murderer Charles Manson, this is a collection of covers of rock and punk classics by the likes of Iggy Pop, Sex Pistols, The Damned, UK Subs, T.Rex and New York Dolls. Every single one of them is bursting with unbridled rocker energy, and that green, grimy slime of street rock oozes from the edges of each. With this record, the Gunsi showed once and for all, in the wake of metal’s decline, that their roots aren’t to be found in early heavy metal classics à la Black Sabbath or KISS, but in punk and glam rock. So you can see that the bold claim that GN’R are what Hanoi Rocks should have become a few years before them isn’t all that far-fetched.
Now, on to the tracks. The first truly bombastic moment of the record is the cover of UK Subs’ Down on the Farm, which snarls at you wickedly after a few seconds, grabs you by the balls and headbutts you right away, then pisses on you nastily and leaves you lying in the dirt. A great studio cut, but true GN’R diehards, don’t forget to dig up the live version, which they played only once, in 1990, because that one is even nastier! The second gem of the record is Ain’t It Fun (originally by The Damned), fantastically sung as a duet by Axl and Michael Monroe, a member of the aforementioned Hanoi Rocks, with Slash’s guitar raising hell all the way through. Also worth mentioning is Attitude, the only track from this record that was played regularly live (throughout the entire Use Your Illusion tour). It’s a punk rock party with Duff on vocals, and the whole thing comes off like a track by NOFX or Green Day, except the Gunsi were playing it a year or so before those youngsters. The blond bassist shines even more in You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory, with which he pays tribute to his idol, the protagonist of the legendary glam rockers New York Dolls, and on the acoustic ballad he handles all the guitar, bass and vocal lines himself, and on top of that plays all the percussion too. You can also hear the energetic Raw Power (originally by The Stooges), Hair of the Dog (Nazareth), which “hair” metallers Britny Fox also recorded decently before them, and the track Buick Makane/Big Dumb sex (originally by T.Rex and Soundgarden), on which even Slash appears on vocals for the first time.
“The Spaghetti Incident” sounds better 15 years after its release than it did on the day it officially came out, when it was quite a shock for the dwindling number of eighties metal fans, who were turning into true Paleolithic dinosaurs in the mindset of the “grunge” generation of the day. One more reason for the commercial “flop” of “The Spaghetti Incident”, if we can even call it a “flop” with more than a million copies sold – the peak of wet dreams for most artists today – lies in the utterly unfortunate first “single” Since I Don’t Have You, since, despite a fairly decent video, a syrupy ballad was the last thing that would have sold a record in 1993. If only Ain’t It Fun had been released instead. However you slice it, the record remains “untouchable” and out of reach for most of today’s quasi-rockers à la Franz Ferdinand, because it features a band that, despite incredible success, was still hungry for real rebellious rock. And given that “cover” albums of classic rock bands are “the In thing” today (Def Leppard and Poison are telling examples), none of those can compare to “The Spaghetti Incident”. One more reason to shed an extra tear of mourning for the legendary Pištole.
Lineup
W. Axl Rose – vocals, keyboards
Slash – guitar
Dizzy Read – piano
Duff McKagan – bass guitar
Matt Sorum – drums
Production
Duff McKagan
Track list
1. Since I Don’t Have You
2. New Rose
3. Down On The Farm
4. Human Being
5. Raw Power
6. Ain’t It Fun
7. Buick Mckane
8. Hair Of The Dog
9. Attitude
10. Black Leather
11. You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory
12. I Don’t Care About You
13. Look At Your Game Girl
