We had been on a nice run of four
star albums, but all good things must come to an end.
Disc 778 is….Use Your Illusion I
Year of Release: 1991
What’s up with the Cover? This is a tiny detail pulled out
of the famous Renaissance painting by Raphael called “School of Athens” which
features a bunch of philosophers. I have always loved the full painting - here it is:
I have this picture on my office wall at work. A print, mind you, not the
original; that’s at the Vatican and the Pope simply refuses to part with it.
How I Came To Know It: I really liked the earlier two
Guns n’ Roses album, so I bought this one when it came out as soon as I could
afford to. Then a couple years later I sold it for beer money. Four or five years
ago, I bought it again since I now have enough money to buy both beer and CDs.
It is truly a golden age.
How It Stacks Up: I have four Guns ‘n’ Roses albums
and “Use Your Illusion I” is the worst. I put it fourth.
Ratings: 2 stars
In 1991 Guns N Roses were so big that they were able
to pull something as ridiculous as releasing two bloated albums on the same day
and have them both go to #1 even though neither one is very good. “Use Your
Illusion I” is the crappier of these two overhyped and underwhelming records.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Molly Hatchet lately
and for the most part I’ve enjoyed it. There are plenty of songs on “Use Your
Illusion I” that remind me of Molly Hatchet, just not as good. Not as good as
Molly Hatchet is not good, my friends. This record is bloated, self-absorbed
and overblown but more than anything else, it just has too many songs and
hardly any of them are memorable.
“Use Your Illusion I” is sixteen tracks and over 75
minutes of music, and remember the band still released a whole second album at
the same time. Among the music on the first volume are two monstrosities in the
form of “November Rain” (9 minutes)
and “Coma” (10 minutes).
I used to enjoy “November
Rain,” but hearing it almost 25 years later I think it is mostly tricks of
production. It has a pretty string section and Axl Rose’s signature vibrato.
Other than that it is a pretty boring song construction that hides this fact by
taking forever to get going and then ends with a three minute fade out/guitar
solo that ends in the sound of rain falling. As a guitar player Slash has a
nice tone, but all of this stuff is just a trick to mask a song that’s best
feature was the short-skirt wedding dress of Axl Rose’s girlfriend in the
video. As for “Coma,” I never enjoyed
that song and still don’t.
In fact, the best song on “Use Your Illusion I” is their
cover version of Wings’ “Live and Let Die”
and that just shows that Paul McCartney is a genius, not Guns N’ Roses. It is a
pretty sweet cover, and I think I like it as much as the original, but the best
song on your album shouldn’t be a cover song unless you’re doing an album of folk
standards.
Other highlights include “The Garden” which is driven by fine guitar work from Slash and some
sweet vocals from Alice Cooper. I wish this song was on an Alice Cooper album
featuring Slash, rather than the other way around.
I also really like “Don’t Damn Me” which is Axl Rose at his spitting and angry best, as
he dismisses all the haters out there for the umpteenth time. Sure this is an
old routine with Axl, but he is a master at getting righteously indignant. “Don’t Damn Me” has a visceral energy
that hearkens back to the raw genius of “Appetite for Destruction.”
Beyond these high points, this album is mostly a
hodge-podge of forgettable songs played loud in an effort to make them better.
When I first bought this album and its sister record,
“Use Your Illusion II” I figured there was enough good music to boil down to a
single record, but nowhere near enough for two. I’d call that album “Use Your Illusion 1.5”
but for it to be more than an EP, “II” will have to be a whole lot better than “I”
turned out.
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