Guns n Roses: Critical Rehab

yeah if you put a guitar in my hands it's pretty safe to bet that sooner or later you're going to hear bits of "somebody knocking" and/or "shuffle it all"

cf that keef thing

if I played guitar that's how I like to think I would sound too

or I'd try really damn hard to sound that way, lol

The Wikipedia entries on Use Your Illusion are amazing!

The Use Your Illusion albums represent a turning point in the sound of Guns N' Roses. Although they did not abandon the hard-rock tendencies vivid in their first album, Appetite for Destruction, Use Your Illusion I demonstrated, for the first time, more or less, elements of blues, classical music, heavy metal, punk rock and rock and roll classic. For example, lead singer Axl Rose plays piano on several tracks of both albums. This fact is evidenced by the numerous music videos produced in conjunction with these albums.

Plus:

See also:

List of best-selling albums in Argentina

i don't really like any of GNR's post-appetite albums ('lies' does have some great songs) and even appetite itself has plenty of uninspired moments but it never fails to amaze me how good 'welcome to the jungle' is. the riffs, the lyrics, the perfectly timed opening and build-up -- even axl's voice, which sometimes bugs me now, is crazy good here. for four minutes they really were the best band in the world.

IMO the whole "what if UYI was one album" thing isn't quite true cuz these are all necessary:

don't cry 4:44
double talkin' jive: 3:24
november rain 8:57
Dead Horse 4:18
Coma 10:13
civil War 7:42
14 years 4:21
Yesterdays 3:16
Breakdown 7:05
Pretty Tied Up 4:48
Locomotive 8:42
Estranged 9:24
You Could Be Mine 5:43

little too much for one CD

yeah I started thinking between november, civil war, coma, and estranged that's almost a whole disc right there lol

i don't agree w/ those picks, but the fact that people can't really agree on what the ideal single album version should be is generally the best argument for a double album staying a double (xpost)

I totally hear "Coma" as a Bowie song. In much the same way that I'm convinced that "Ghostbusters" should've been performed by the B-52s.

wait which version of 'don't cry' gets saved? surely not the one with 'honey!' and 'sugar!' haphazardly (and rather cynically) tossed in.

original version has "honey" and "sugar" and is far better than the alt. lyrics one w/o them

yeah I go with "original lyrics" version. Best version is the Appetite-era demo though

UYI knockin' on heaven's door is pretty good but it pales so dramatically in comparison to live versions that I barely listen to it

YOU GOTTA MAAAAAAKE IT YOUR OWN WAY BUT YOU'LL BE ALRIIIIGHT NOW SHUGAH

the best

u guys are craay-ay-jay!

GIMME SOME REGGAE!! xxxpost

lol mule otm

AND PLEEASE REMEMBER THAT I NEVER LIED
AND PLEEEEEEEEEEASE REMEEEEEMBER HOW I FELT INSIDE NOW HUUNNNAY

Reasons to not cry:

1) I never lied.
2) I have awesome wiener.

3) there's a heaven above you BAYBAY

4) axl still luvs u

5) knows how u feel inside

did GNR ever perform 'one in a million' live?

6) MAYBE SOMEDAAAAAY

GNR really doesn't have one song that is not hilarious in some way or another

Best band ever. Sometimes.

Velvet Revolver would have been a thousand times better with Izzy & Duff doing vox vs stinky Scott Weiland.

I can attest I would have at least listened to a song or two if this happened

Sebastian Bach was in the running for a while as well, if I'm not mistaken. Could have been interesting as well.

kinda like Jane's Addiction in that regard. They're either AMAZING or all kinds of wtf

did GNR ever perform 'one in a million' live?

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, October 29, 2012 10:51 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, at CBGB's

Would have been great if the almost-existed Izzy/Duff/Slash band had called themselves 'N.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAveatgFyPs

Another mindblowing Wikipedia fun fact: The first half of Appetite is the "Guns" side, where all the songs are about drugs, violence, and city life. The second half is the "Roses" side, which is all about women and sex. Never noticed that!

wooow slowburner.gif

Oh wow! I used to know that (but I threw out my cassette tapes)

Another mindblowing Wikipedia fun fact: The first half of Appetite is the "Guns" side, where all the songs are about drugs, violence, and city life. The second half is the "Roses" side, which is all about women and sex. Never noticed that!

― Poliopolice, Tuesday, October 30, 2012 12:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^from those same sessions, but never released, is a rock opera based upon Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason"

haha

^from those same sessions, but never released, is a rock opera based upon Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason"

Was eventually released as "My World" on UYI

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2012/10/30/axl-rose-on-gnr-music-more/1669329/

Supermodel girlfriend Stephanie Seymour and original Guns guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan "did more damage to my ability as a writer. To those three, it was all crap. It beat me down so much. At the time of the (Use Your Illusion) tours, Slash and Duff said, 'You're an idiot, you're a loser.' I didn't write for years. I felt I was hindered for a very long time. I was also trying to figure out what I wanted to say, when it's right to be venting and when you're digging a bigger hole. Lyrics on Chinese took a long time."

I have my doubts.

Axl bought a zoo!

i don't have any doubts that the lyrics took a long time. every account of making the album was like 'we worked on the basic tracks for that song for years before we heard axl sing on it.'

That quote is a weird thing to say too, because he has a number of songs on the UYI albums in which he was the only credited writer, including at least 3 (Dead Horse, November Rain, Estranged) that were released as singles. xxxpost

oh, and "Yesterdays" too!

I think the discussion was more like "Hey Axl these are great lyrics but do we really need an overdub of 'Cool Ranch Dressing?'"

Yeah I have a feeling it's more that Axl has a weird way of interpreting feedback/criticism of any kind. Or conversations in general. Dude is hella paranoid in that regard, it seems.

Like you see versions of conversations repeated by different band members and Axl's always the one interpreting it as 'they all said I sucked so I fired them' and the parties are like 'we just told axl he should keep working on the lyrics, what he had was a really good start'

poor axl!
http://imgur.com/Sjycm.jpg

HAHA

from the way Slash's book told it, it sounded like Axl kinda holed up and did most of the UYI vocals away from the rest of the band and they didn't really hear much until the album was done and mixed. so if they were insulting him on the following tour it was probably because he was delaying every show for hours.