Every huge artist has their "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

"For Those About to Rock" (the song) is like the ultimate victory lap, cannons and all. Like "Start Me Up," it's the rare late career definitive statement of purpose.

For Those About to Rock def seems like it has NJ credentials. See earlier discussion starting here: Every huge artist has their "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

One of my big takeaways from the later points of the thread IIRC was that some in the US see Hello Nasty as an NJ. Major point of difference here because it was easily their biggest album and only the second hip hop album ever to top the charts (after the NJ-ish Wu-Tang Forever). In fact their choatic UK chart peaks for each album are:
7 (Licensed to Ill)
44 (Paul's Boutique)
106 (Check Your Head)
10 (Ill Communication)
1 (Hello Nasty)

i'm from the US and wouldn't consider HN a NJ

it was easily their biggest album

Not even close. Yes, it went #1 in the US, but so did Licensed To Ill, and LTI has sold over 10 million copies; HN has "only" sold 3 million.

I think Westbury is talking about the UK (where HN apparently sold 3x as many copies as LTI).

Shit, you only have to sell 300,000 albums to go platinum in the UK. Those are, like, Canada numbers.

how many Myrrh did it go

"IMO it's not exactly a Fairweather Johnson but that late 80s/early 90s thing of well-promoted, very prolonged but now rather eclipsed follow-ups to still well-loved mid-80s albums, cf. The Seeds of Love, The Sensual World, Us, The Rhythm of the Saints et al."

That put me in mind of Yes' Big Generator, which came out four years after 90125 but didn't sell nearly as well. I honestly have no idea how it was perceived at the time though.

I have the impression most of the people who bought 90125 were only vaguely aware that Yes had been releasing records for years, and from their point of view Generator was just one of many unpopular follow-ups to huge 80s hits. Just like On Every Street up the thread - I've always assumed that most of the people who bought Brothers in Arms were only vaguely aware that the band had released music before that.

I learn from Discogs.com that Generator was recorded at "Lark Recording Studios, Caramati, Italy; Sarm East & West Recording Studios, London; Air Recording Studio, London; Southcombe Recording Studio, Los Angeles; Westlake Audio, Los Angeles; Sunset Sound, Los Angeles" so it obviously wasn't cheap. I assume each bandmember used a different studio because they were sick of each other. It was one of those enormous and probably cocaine-fuelled productions from a time when record labels had a lot of spare money.

I remember that the next album, Union, had something like nine keyboard players on it, in addition to Rick Wakeman, whose contributions were mostly mixed out. Why did they hate each other? I've never read a bad word about Jon Anderson, although he's prone to flights of fancy, and Rick Wakeman can at least put on a matey act. Bill Bruford seemed to genuinely enjoy playing the drums. Were they scared Trevor Rabin was going to put them out of a job? Was Chris Squire really mean? Was it Trevor Horn, taking revenge for being kicked out - but the band fell apart before he got involved. I just don't know.

"Love Will Find a Way" earned a lot of MTV play.

Bruford has been critical of Jon Anderson's business practices in interviews, saying that he liked making big money deals with the record companies that had negative consequences when chart success wasn't forthcoming (to the effect of "Jon is now trapped on the music business treadmill"). He suggested that when they were recording Union that they all paid more attention to the catering than the music.
Admittedly, Bruford also said that his middle-class concept of money differed from Anderson's working-class approach.

Anderson reportedly dodgy as fuck
Squire reportedly irresponsible as fuck
Howe reportedly a miserable git
Bruford reportedly a pompous ass
Alan White reportedly a nice guy
Ditto Wakeman, but with added ego
Rabin I dunno but it sure beat his floundering solo career

In reply to GM’s Freeek being possibly the first Channel 4 video premiere;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M-bxpuinMA

Ah I meant the specific Channel 4 strand, with its own listing in the TV guide and what not, but I'm not sure exactly when those started. The Tube went so far with premiering videos they sometimes went out of their way to help make them.

I’m sure ‘Thriller’ and ‘Blue Jean’ had separate premieres on Channel 4, not as part of The Tube. It was nearly 40 years ago so my memory is hazy.

YouTube uploads suggest those were both The Tube too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXMBBvQBIvI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TvNWVRxc8

Yes, but they were a special show dedicated to the premier of them and not just a strand within the regular show. See Tube Show Extra for Bowie on 28th September 1984.

Fair enough :)

I remember coming back from the pub early to watch it. Should have stayed out 🥺

I didn’t know Check Your Head only got up to #106 in the UK.

insulted that spotify thinks I want to celebrate 25 years of be here now, has it actually been reappraised as something other than shite lately or is this just marketing?

twitter suggests there are real people who exist who do think it's a masterpiece. takes all sorts

Have never been too sold on this as a total NJ (that's as I don't know what it's like in the US) but can any NJ deluxe 'beat' this..
https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/guns-n-roses-use-your-illusion-box-sets/

I read about that, and laffed / eyerolled at the fact that you still can’t just buy a basic package of the two CDs (maybe w/bonus tracks for each).

Nor can you just buy a basic package of all the good tracks from the two CDs without the filler.

Even better!

They actually made a single-disc Use Your Illusion album for distribution at Walmart back in the day, but it notably omits You Could Be Mine!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_Your_Illusion

Wow – it also omits "So Fine"!

We had a collective crack at compiling a single-disc of the best cuts many years back

come and help make "the greatest rock record of the 90's" out of Use Your Illusion 1 and 2

Cool, thx – I'll post my tracklist over dere (I'm actually revisiting both albums right now & culling a playlist...)

(no way I'll be able to keep it to a single-disc length, tho... the long tracks are essential!)

(Unrelated to anything except my eagle eyes: At some point AMG have lowered II to a 3 while I is still a 4.5, the similar reviews remain, it's Sparkle in the Rain/Once Upon a Time all over again)

AMG be ripping off the fucking kids while they be paying their hard-earned money to read about the bands they want to know about

My dad has a story that the local's jukebox, when there still was one, used to play songs at random in the early 90s if no one was using it and once it played Get in the Ring as a coach of OAPs came in for dinner, who all promptly complained that they were being told to suck my [page missing] and suchlike. For this reason alone UYI cannot tick the NJ 'vacant retread of its predecessor' box.

I didn't end up cutting out enough "filler" to make my playlist notable (I really only knocked out a 3 or 4 tracks per album).

The bridge section of "Estranged," flowing into the next verse ("When I find out all the reasons..."), is so damn beautiful... it's such an wonderful piece of music.

The live version of “you could be mine” that’s just been released on Spotify is such a mess. I wonder why they even released it!

Gawd, these bonus tracks!

5. DRUM SOLO (Live in Paris – 6/6/92)*
6. SLASH SOLO (Live in Paris – 6/6/92)*
7. SPEAK SOFTLY, LOVE (LOVE THEME FROM THE GODFATHER) (Live in Paris – 6/6/92)*

i saw the UYI tour and still feel ripped off that Matt Sorum played an endlessly terrible drum solo when they could’ve played Night-Train instead

A while back when I was making the case for Run-DMC's Tougher Than Leather as a Veteran's Committee-level inductee into NJ status, I totally omitted one of its other links to the titlular New Jersey: Their bizarre inclusion of screaming comedian Sam Kinison!

Bon Jovi has him introduce their video for "Bad Medicine", while Run-DMC samples the conclusion of one of Sam's (multitude of) dial-the-homophobia-all-the-way-to-11 jokes in their otherwise great track "Beats to the Rhyme". I'm guessing he shouted his way into other artists' songs/videos, but I don't remember any of them, outside of an appearance with Poison during MTV's New Years Eve show in '88 (where C.C. DeVille had "SON OF SAM" written on his guitar, how hilarious).

Kylie Minogue sampled Kinison too

Were Guns N' Roses even any good live, back in their heyday? I never saw them, but I feel like they transitioned really fast from scary aggro hard rock to bloated showbiz monstrosity.

I have fond memories - G&R were very enmeshed in my high school years, and I think I was consciously enjoying it as our version of an overblown 70s rock experience- Dazed and Confused had just come out maybe? Anyway 80,000 kids making a rock pilgrimage to a Western Sydney racecourse seemed pretty epic.

Musically yeah there were too many dumb solos, self-indulgent ballads, covers and “quotations” (eg Wild Horses, the Godfather theme). Matt Sorum seemed to get off on inflicting his terrible drumming on the audience. Axl had about 5 costume changes. But he was still a great frontman and the Appetite songs and the better Illusion songs still sounded awesome.

But judging by that 1988 Ritz footage, the OG lineup was pretty great live.

I saw the original lineup twice. Once opening for Cheap Trick in 1986 at the grubby Fenders in Long Beach and again at the infamous trainwreck/clusterfuck show opening for the Rolling Stones.

Honestly, at the time I didn't think that much of them. There were a few moments that were thrilling, but like another band I was into that year (The Replacements) I couldn't deal with their whole "we know we're a great band, but we're intentionally going to fuck up and self-sabotage anyway." This was the same year of Master Of Puppets and Reign In Blood and these junkies can't even get an Aerosmith cover right?

too many dumb solos, self-indulgent ballads, covers and “quotations”

I remember seeing them on TV, and Slash playing the "Voodoo Chile" riff at about 75% speed over and over, and thinking, "this wouldn't even impress anybody at a guitar store, and you're playing it in front of thousands?

I don't think this has ever been mentioned: Clapton's From the Cradle?

Unplugged: acoustic classics and covers, goes at least 10x Platinum in the US, 4x Platinum in the UK. Mega big career reviver et al

From the Cradle: more stripped back covers, but this time it's purist electric blues. Buyer's good will takes it to 3x Platinum in the US and it's his only UK No. 1 solo album. It now feels very forgotten.

Pilgrim: inert album of new material only goes Platinum once in the US, reaching number 4. Number 3 in the UK. Again, very forgotten.

seems a bit different based on both of the first two albums you named being pretty high concept, but from a purely commercial standpoint you're onto something. There is definitely something fishy about the fact that I owned From the Cradle as a 12-year-old who most assuredly was not buying other blues albums

The bestselling blues album in America!

Good choice. It qualifies. Yet he still earns a huge hit with Babyface's "Change the World" two years later.

Doesn't feel quite like a New Jersey to me, but can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it's the "high concept" of From the Cradle (his first "pure" blues album--he's not doing a slowed-down acoustic "Sunshine of Your Love" or something on it)....or maybe it's the shape of Clapton's career--early "peaks," then like most 60s guys he just kind of never goes away, continuing to score top 40 hits and platinum/gold albums throughout the 80s.