Twenty years later,I still have an Appetite For Destruction

We have a subscription to Rolling Stone in my house(a free one,thanks to online shopping at certain websites who gladly hand them out like candy with your purchase)and the latest issue arrived yesterday,with Guns N' Roses on the cover. It's been a long while since GNR was newsworthy but it turns out that the lead story was about this year being the 20th anniversary of their first big album,Appetite For Destruction.

As many of you know,I'm pretty much a Greatest Hits kind of music lover(and yes,I even have Guns N' Roses Greatest Hits as well) but AFD is one of the few albums that I have actually played all the way thru to the end. I don't remember if I bought the cassette or my brother(who was quite the metalhead back then)did,but I certainly took control of it and had to go thru the pains of Rewind and Fast Forward on my Walkman to groove on certain favorite tunes of mine.




Appetite For Destruction was a vicious combo of rock and raunch,with Axl Rose strutting his wicked lead singer self and Slash lumbering beside him in "too cool for school" guitar god mode. The band never pretended to be choir boys and indulged in the usual musicians on the highway to hell pitfalls(sex,drugs,booze),not to mention controversy as the original album art that was removed from the cover and slipped inside with the liner notes.


When you look back at AFD now,it still holds up as some of the best raw edged rock of the day. Also,it's fun to go back and enjoy GNR in their prime,before Axl started making music videos with dolphins and digging Manson lyrics(Charlie,not Marilyn),before Slash went off with Velvet Revolver(whose lead singer looks like the poster boy for anorexia) and the endless wait for Chinese Democracy to be released(which will be next Thursday of Never!).

So,in much appreciation of the music that was,here are some of my favorite songs from the album. You really shouldn't play this at work for two reasons: a)alot of these lyrics could be grounds for harrassment charges from your fellow co-workers and b)the urge to crank up the sound is hard to resist. Trust me on that.

SWEET CHILD O'MINE

"Sweet Child O'Mine" was the first video that I ever saw GNR in,and got me hooked right away. Even my dad liked the song(and he was pretty picky). Yes, it's a girl friendly tune but so what? It's as close to a ballad as the band comes to and much more sincere sounding than alot of the hair metal love songs that clogged up the airwaves at the time:



ROCKET QUEEN

And now for something on a much different note. To be honest,I wasn't paying alot of attention to the lyrics(which weren't always discernable the way Axl sang),I just liked the way it sounded:



IT'S SO EASY

I have a fondness for bad guys(fictional,that is) and this song is the Ultimate Villian theme,in my humble opinion. Particularly the low and breezy chorus,it fits so right when it fades into the night:



NIGHTRAIN

This song rolls hard and fast along the tracks and takes you screaming with joy for the ride. So difficult not to be moving when hearing this:



PARADISE CITY

Some of you may be wondering"Hey,where's Welcome to the Jungle on this list?". Well,I'm not including it-that song has become too much of an easy go-to cliche for "everything's going to hell in a handbasket" commentary. When WTTJ was used for the opening sequence of Lean On Me,I laughed at the soundtrack subtility there. Instead,I prefer to go where the grass is green and the girls are pretty to take me home: