While I’m randomly listening to a
particular album as per CD Odyssey rules (newbies see sidebar) I am usually
grooving on something else on my ‘spare’ time as well.
This week it has been a
combination of indie band The New Pornographers (I am really digging their 2007
album “Challengers”), early LL Cool J (both “Bigger and Deffer” and “Walking
With A Panther”) and most recently Salt N’ Pepa’s “Blacks’ Magic” and “Very
Necessary.”
None of these remotely prepares me
to write a review about this next artist. At least Salt N’ Pepa uses the abbreviation
‘n’. I guess that’s something.
Disc 609 is…. Appetite For Destruction
Artist: Guns ‘N’
Roses
Year of Release: 1987
What’s up with the Cover? The ingrate-full
dead? Here we have the band represented as skulls (with hair) on a Celtic
cross. In addition to being a pretty cool cover, it is heartening to find that
while you can’t take most of your possessions with you into the afterlife, hats
and bandannas are allowed. Like the devil himself was going to pry-bar Slash’s
top hat off his head.
How I Came To Know It: I’ve had this album so long I can’t remember how I
heard of it. I didn’t buy it immediately when it came out – I probably got it in
late 1988 or early 1989 (then on cassette) – I think the song that sealed the deal
was “Paradise City.”
How It Stacks Up: I have four Guns ‘N’ Roses albums (what’s with the
‘n’?). Of those four, “Appetite For
Destruction” is my favourite.
Rating: 4 stars
In 1987 hard rock and heavy metal
were in a bit of a crisis. Bands like White Lion and Poison had sucked the edge
out of the music I had grown up with and while stalwarts Iron Maiden and Judas
Priest were still rocking hard they were starting to fade. Warrant’s “Sweet Cherry Pie” was just around the
corner. Yikes.
Grunge would soon sweep out the
trash with a new approach to sounding hard, but it handed really landed yet
with any force. Even if it had, I wouldn’t appreciate how good it was for
another ten years. Fortunately, in between all the mascara of hair metal and
the moping that was grunge, there was an album that refused to surrender the
keys to rock and roll. With “Appetite For Destruction”, GNR refused to open up
and say aah when they still could draw breath and unleash a primal scream or
two.
This album is filled with the
visceral energy hard rock needs to work. Unlike horses, it is OK to ride rock
hard and put it away wet, and that’s what GNR does here. The music is fast and
furious and yet punctuated in places with a surprisingly sweet and mournful
guitar played by Slash (who, ironically, had been passed over to be Poison’s
lead guitar years earlier).
Slash isn’t one of my favourite
guitar players, but he has his own distinct style; a strange cross between
crunchy rhythm and the aforementioned soulful melodies. The most famous of
these is “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” which
has a guitar riff so well known it is instantly recognizable twenty-five years
after this album first landed. In addition to once again reflecting GNR’s
general refusal to spell whole words, “Sweet
Child O’ Mine” was also criminally overplayed both on radio and video. That
despite all of this I still enjoy listening to it, is a a testament to what a
pretty song it is.
“Welcome to the Jungle” hasn’t aged quite as well, and like a few
tracks on “Appetite For Destruction” it seems a little desperate in its
angriest places, but there is no denying it is and always will be one of rock’s
most recognizable anthems, warts and all.
The third big hit, “Paradise City” is the one that inspired
me to buy the album, and I still think the best of the three. Unlike later
records, there are no ballads on “Appetite” but the beginning of “Paradise City” comes about as close as
you can. That is until it is overrun by the boundless energy suffused
throughout the whole record and transforms into yet another furious rock
anthem. Axl Rose sings the chorus over and over again, faster and faster, as
Slash lays down a perfectly complimentary guitar lick on top of the mix.
There are plenty of good tracks on
“Appetite” apart from the three big hits, however. “Mr. Brownstone” is a gritty little track about heroin with a grim
downscale moving guitar riff that mirrors the song’s descent into the wreckage drug
addiction makes of your life. “Nightrain”
(which again, could use another letter) is another fine deep cut, complete with
energetically played cowbell.
Axl Rose has a classic rock front
man’s screech, and more than anything his vibrato is what gives the band its signature
sound. Also, who among us has not tried to imitate that cobra-sway moves he
does while singing, It is like he has no spine and his head is trying to free
itself from his shoulders and float away. They used to play “Sweet Child O’ Mine” at clubs all the
time and the dance floor would invariably be loaded with young guys trying their
best to pull of the Axl-sway. Sometimes they’d
be lucky enough to be holding onto a girl and sometimes they’d just be holding
onto themselves.
“It’s So Easy”, “Out Ta Get Me”
and “My Michelle” all work really hard
to show how angry the band is. It occasionally seems a bit forced but most of
the time it just seems like Axl is genuinely furious and furious makes for good
rock and roll.
The album has warts, for sure, but
I don’t think you can make an album like this without warts. Weaker compositions,
like “Anything Goes” and “It’s So Easy” are weak in the right way;
they feel a bit raw, but that helps keep the raw vibe of the record alive.
Also, no one can say, “You think you’re
so cool. Why don’t you just…fuck off!” quite like Axl Rose. He is a
classically trained Vulgarian. Axl swears like Barry Sanders scores a
touchdown; natural and easy, like he’s done it before and he’ll do it again.
For Guns N’ Roses, it was pretty
much downhill from here, but “Appetite For Destruction” got them started so high
up that there was still plenty of good music left in them before they finally
grounded out. But I’ll talk about those albums when I roll them.
Best tracks: Welcome to
the Jungle, Nightrain, Mr. Brownstone, Paradise City, Sweet Child O’ Mine,
Rocket Queen
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