Guns n Roses: Critical Rehab

"You never act the way you should" -- Bret Michaels likes his girls slutty, but he knows that it's not the way they should act.

If some guy told me I wasn't acting the way I should, I'd fucking smack him. But it's entirely possible I'm not attuned enough.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I consider fag-bashing a sexist act -- against men not acting the way they should.

Ah, but he doesn't say that!

(I meant no sarcasm with "It's entirely possible I'm not attuned enough" BTW.)

So how come the critical makeover stateside?

I always remember them being somewhat critically acclaimed back in the late-80's, early 90's (positive comparisions to the Stones and Dolls, Slash as a highly praised guitarist, considered to have made a "credible" power ballad, etc.), so I don't see this critical "makeover" yr talking aboot. The only reason they lost their critical backing after UYI was because Nevermind came out the next week. If anything, I think they've fallen out of favour with critics over the last 12 years because of Axl's Hughes-like disappearence for years, and Shields-like inability to create a follow-up album.

What I mean is that even if you can argue for more blatant examples like the Crue's "Girls Girls Girls" as not having explicitly sexist content within the lyrics themselves, mentally it's hard to separate the song from the images of going-to-seed Vince Neil ogling chicks doused in water.

But charges of sexism may be disingenuous coming from a man, so I'll say no more on the subject. Just throwing the idea out there.

More importantly, whatever your feelings about GnR's style/songs/media profile, the problem with comparing them to Bon Jovi, Loverboy and Poison is that those bands didn't/couldn't rock, and Guns 'N' Roses, at least on Appetite, did.

I remember GnR having a near universal appeal in 1988: Jane's Addiction fans, pop heads, Nietzsche-reading hipsters all loved them. As a highschool senior, I remember seeing a GnR tee shirt (on a metal girl in Madison, Wisconsin) that made me shudder: an illustration of a woman who's just been gang-raped (wasn't this the original cover art for Appetite?). But by the time I was a college freshman in D.C. the same year, I was having long drunk argumenents with new friends about which was better: Appetite or It Takes a Nation of Millions. Both were consensus picks in dorm rooms across the country.

I don't know that this is a defense of GnR using that image, but I'm almost completely sure it was a pre-existing work of art by Robert Williams that Axl picked for the album insert. I'm no expert, but a lot of Williams' stuff is similarly ugly in theme. There was contraversy at the time, and the image was pulled from subsequent pressings, I belive.

This may betray some of my cultural prejudices at the time, but the painting just screamed YAY RAPE! to me when I saw it connected to a heavy metal band. Now I don't know what it screams. I do remember being turned on by the metal girl wearing it...

Of the bands I listed BOC's the only one I really care about so I won't press the comparisons. (And Agents Of Fortune blows away Appetite while getting 17% of the press IMO - Does it rock as much? I don't know and don't know that I care.) All I wanted to say was that I don't think Guns'n'Roses was unique for an 80s hard rock band in terms of the breadth of their influences. I don't hear much other than bad Aerosmith.

Read this.

this is even funnier that that recording guy's journals! (except i guess it's not)

Granted, the tide of good press retreated almost as soon as Axl put out an album with bigoted lyrics, though the Use Your Illusion albums got pretty good reviews and sold well.

Again, where's the revisionism? There is definitely interest by the mainstream press to cover a band that sold tens of millions of records ten years ago, but that's a perfectly legitimate story when the context of what has happened publically to the band. Just giving this incarnation of GnR a lot of press is NOT revising the critical assessment of their music. If that's being done, I haven't seen it.

(I live in Montreal, and am from Boston, so I'm not coming at this from a European sensibility). All the coverage I see of them this in this day is how Axl has a band together made up of various odd parts, and he doesn't quite know what he wants to do with it (Industrial? Moby producing?). And before he did those live New Year's shows a few years back, all the talk was "Does he still have it? Is he really fat and bald now?" I don't think this is critical rehab (unless you consider 1993-now critical rehab for Michael Jackson).

I'm saying this from the topic question "So how come the critical makeover stateside?" doesn't make any sense, because they were always held pretty high in the press ("Sure Axl comes to the stage three hours late, but is there a better album intro than 'Welcome To The Jungle'?"), and someone else, since I posted, put up examples showing this.

Point taken, and I wasn't trying to confuse things. My statement just came from the fact that I personally don't see "GnR as genre synthesis" among their main strengths, although others have furthered that argument. I'd agree at best their style is largely a straight Aerosmith rip, maybe bringing in the Stones and Zep (the two bands Aerosmith was a rip of anyway).

I was trying to shift things toward "rock bands are supposed to rock; that's what GnR did and did well." It's fine to like the lite-weights you mentioned better, but there's a category in which they can't even compete with GnR. BOC did rock. I've not heard Agents (perhaps I'll have to pick it up), but as you've admitted you're comparing very different bands from different eras. Not that one can't do that; BOC just seems to be a random choice that doesn't really get to the heart of whatever's at issue here.

Side note: I came down on the side of "It Takes a Nation" in the "Appetite" vs. "It Takes a Nation" debate. Keep in mind, I had all sorts of weird debates in college, especially with the AV guys who listened to Bill Laswell nonstop and filed pot under "p" in the office. They hated L.L. Cool J's "Radio," the first CD I ever bought. Too minimal.

PS I see Steve Perry is coming back to the CP. I always liked him.

While I wasn't too impressed it did have 'Sweet Child of Mine' which in my opinion is classic.

BOC was chosen just because they strike me as a more interesting band in hard rock history who don't get nearly the same level of attention. That it seems like a random choice is part of the point.

I agree with you that GnR probably appealed to people's rock-conservative/ traditionalist instincts.

On the other hand, as much as I honestly don't want to prolong this, and I'm sure I'll be pushing my ILM cred into the negative numbers (oaf! rockist!)...

Genre synthesis has nothing to do with it. In no way are the two things mutually exclusive. Bon Jovi, Loverboy or Poison could not possibly rock. Not even in their dreams.

And country or pretty much any other pre- or non-rock genre, if pitched correctly and played by musicians with any sense of rhythmic interplay and proclivity for the hard stuff, can be integrated and made to, um, rock.

Hold on, examples: How about Fugazi's integration of dub and Gang of Four-derived funk? I'll probably get hanged for this (and their shtick certainly got old/repetitive quick), but how about Rage Against the Machine's integration of hip hop into Sab-style classic rock riffing? Dare I mention Soul Coughing smushing jazz, hip hop and avant material into music that definitely rocked? Can we go back and count Buffalo Springfield and its spinoffs as successful and rocking integration of country?

(I know these examples are all over the place.)

However dreadful you find the music any of the above-mentioned (I don't), in the physical/ rhythmic sense they all tear the roof off the mother.

Later I was on the school bus and a metaller recommended a tape to me - it was a bootleg of the Guns and Roses tape not yet released in New Zealand - with a label printed on orange tape from a labelling gun. Everybody thought they were fantastic - fantastic enough to make and distribute bootlegs of their tapes, which was very rare.

I saw the video for 'Sweet Child O' Mine' on TV yesterday. Axl Rose looked cool - it was before he ever wore bike shorts, obviously - and Izzy Stradlin definitely looked Johnny Thunders. I suppose you could say Keith Richards but that would be giving in to him. He was wearing a black jacket with thin lapels, dark aviator glasses, good cheekbones, and had longish black hair cut in the European style.

Numbers:

1) It just pains my Inner Hesher to hear a Loverboy>GnR formulation.

2) Either praise or attack on GnR based on their ability to combine genres seems beside the point to me.

3) "Genre synthesis," as I clumsily put it, does not preclude physically compelling music.

And with that I shut up. Please hold your applause.

didn't they cover it's so easy ?
can't remember.

"My Michelle" and "Mr Brownstone"...good heavens, those are dreadful songs

I think so, too, but not in the way you mean. They actually cause dread in me. I recoil in horror at the blatant misogyny, the filth. But isn't that what they want me to do? I don't mean to excuse it as morally acceptable, but it's emotionally affecting as hell. Appetite may not be a great record, and I'm not especially interested in the technique of the playing on it, but it's an honest record. It's honestly fucked up, and a little disturbing. It's not just a show. Axl comes off as a real person on that record -- not a pleasant one, but a real one all the same. And it's really something.

everything kenan says here = completely OTM. i don't know if GNR are the best metal band ever, but they're certainly the most INTERESTING one i can think of.

has he recorded anything since the juju hounds album? i love that so much

lord help me but I might go to this reunion tour

xpost I wasn't kidding, he's released 11 solo albums!

I'd go to a JuJu Hounds reunion.

I wish Izzy had joined the G N' R reunion - maybe then folks would finally admit the Ju Ju Hounds album is no better than any random Ron Wood solo disc.

Ju Ju Hounds album has at least two really excellent tracks and a handful of pretty good ones. If I could count on that from a Ron Wood solo disc I'd be delighted.

Izzy's 117 Degrees, which was his last album on Geffen, is even better than the JuJu Hounds record. There was a time (GN'R pun intented) you could find it for a dollar at any FYE in America.

Not many people bought Izzy's albums, but everyone who did formed a band that sounded a little like the Faces.