Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusion 1+2 - Classic or Dud?

It's a really good song! That whistling melody in the beginning. The way the intro slams into the verse riff. The piano in the outro. Musically it's one of my favorite G'n'R songs.

I can understand and identify with One in a Million to the extent that it's about wanting to maintain your privacy and personal space when you're out in public. That's a pretty compelling subject. It could easily be about cat-calling. Doesn't make it jake that Axl uses the n-word or about 8 other things he said!

Los Angeles by X lyrically covers similar ground to One In A Million.

xxposts
yeah, his defence was clearly lame but I guess he was not educated enough to express his thoughts on that in a better way. and he was young also. not easy to tackle such complex and touchy issues when you're a 20something rockstar under pressure (one might argue he could have avoided going there, then !).
anyway, I don't know him but it doesn't seem like he's racist or homophobic.

going back to the UYI albums with this thread, I agree that "Locomotive" is a weird beast : the first part is okay but kinda messy and the ending has a great feeling. I like their funky tracks, though.
were there many other LA metal bands with that funky touch ? I have next to no idea about that scene...

One thing that surprised me in Duff's book is that when they were a local LA band before they got signed some of GN'R lived in the same shitty apartment complex as Sly Stone. Guess Sly was down on his luck financially as early as the mid eighties.

aw. that's sad. considering how shitty their apartment seemed to be... maybe he could have joined them !

"And on the keys Mr. Sly F'N Stone!"

"gimme some funk!"
https://media.giphy.com/media/6kYIDxnVIRmik/giphy.gif

they would have been named Guns n'Stone Roses !

going back to my question, it really doesn't seem very common for all these 80s sunset strip metal bands to incorporate some groove and funk in their sound.

Yeah, the Crue did it a lot. I think it's that the shitty ones who couldn't play fast found it easier to slow things down and go for the groove. Like, they were rarely funky, just sort of lazily groovy. With this exception:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqP76XWHQI0

oh, ok, thanks !
this aspect never seems to be put forward in these bands (or again, maybe it's because I just don't know enough about that scene).

xhuxk used to talk about funky hair metal a lot

yeah one in a million is really problematic, but earlnash is right to point out that X's "Los Angeles" never really gets the scrutiny it probably deserved, esp in light of exene's later views and billy zoom's politics

also back to these albums it seems so logical that a one-disc edit would be perfect but everytime i try to do it i realize that it's just a big giant sometimes brilliant overreaching mess and should remain so

Yeah, I think that's a great observation! I had always viewed Los Angeles as mocking the woman it talks about. Like, they're making fun of her because she left over trifling bigoted shit. But now I don't know if that's the correct interpretation, esp given Billy Zoom and Exene.

also back to these albums it seems so logical that a one-disc edit would be perfect but everytime i try to do it i realize that it's just a big giant sometimes brilliant overreaching mess and should remain so

i forgot that i had made a uyi edit earlier this year and after the work i put into it it doesn't even fit on a single disc. so i basically 100 percent agree with this

here it is anyway https://open.spotify.com/user/unbornwhiskey/playlist/6A9Eke80frKBChaUT0qXvL

earlnash is right to point out that X's "Los Angeles" never really gets the scrutiny it probably deserved

?? this song's been talked about a lot - see "We Got the Neutron Bomb" etc, how's life interp is def correct

well sure i'm sure that's what X says but there was a real xenophobic, right wing element to LA punk and hardcore and obv it's way more complicated than "X was racist/X was not racist"

there was a real xenophobic, right wing element to LA punk and hardcore

Which I've seen John Doe comment on quite sharply in interviews in the past - he at least definitely saw X as descended from North Beach poets etc. and thought bands like Black Flag and the Circle Jerks were thugs fucking up their arty little scene. (Not quite sure where Fear falls in this whole thing - they were both obviously satirical and quite reactionary at times IMO.)

well sure i'm sure that's what X says

the song is about a specific person (Exene's former roommate or something iirc), they go into the song's source/meaning at length

I think it's safe to say that John Doe and Exene were collectively smarter/more self-aware than Axl Rose

I think for anyone writing a song about such racial angst is a tough subject. Such a brutal song about serial killers or misogyny would probably not hold up to as much scrutiny. I think this is probably more the case as stated before "yeah, his defence was clearly lame but I guess he was not educated enough to express his thoughts on that in a better way. and he was young also. not easy to tackle such complex and touchy issues when you're a 20something rockstar under pressure (one might argue he could have avoided going there, then !)."

Mr. Bob Goldthwait

"One a Million" is absolutely indefensible and also kinda brilliant. I can't think of another rock star as simultaneously compelling and repellent as Axl Rose. He was always at his best/worst venting his spleen, and he was never more of a motormouthed megalomaniac than on the UYI records. That's one reason why, for me, they've proven more durable than Appetite - which hardened into a classic rock totem at least 15 years ago - even though the band's initial spark is dying and both albums are super inconsistent.

I can't think of another rock star as simultaneously compelling and repellent as Axl Rose

I think it's in Duff's book where he talks about how Axl couldn't stand people being "okay" with him. They either had to love him completely or hate him completely. He speculates that this is why Axl would make fans wait for 4 hours for the band to take the stage at their shows.

Mission accomplished by Axl in that respect although this semi-reunion tour has people talking about him in a positive light for the first time in at least two decades.

Yeah, but what if he's ... using an illusion?

What if he's... using your illusion?

Now now, there's room for everyone to use your illusion, too.

Axl can use my illusion when he prises it out of my cold dead hands.

GNR was incredible live. Axl is in surprisingly good voice, his pitch is solid, he has a lot of power behind his high notes. on occasion when he sings more quietly, you can tell his falsetto isn't what it was 30 years ago, no, but I didn't expect him to be able to pull off some of the things he did. he didn't cheat and let his female backing vocalist take the high notes.

I didn't care for Chinese Democracy but I will say "This I Love" and "Better" were great live (the title track to CD is still meh, sorry). "You Could Be Mine", "Coma", "It's So Easy", "Nightrain", "Live and Let Die", "Civil War" were also favs.

they also thankfully skipped "Patience" which I've never liked.

if you're only an Appetite fan, tho...it may not be for you. they play 8 Appetite songs but that comprises like a third of the show (it was almost 3 hours long, with very little pause).

UYI dominates my list.

As discussed upthread, I've tried the one-album idea and, yeah, it doesn't really work. Not because it doesn't leave enough room to include some great tracks (for instance I have never liked the Macca and Dylan covers and could gladly edit them out) but, on the contrary, because the selected tracks aren't THAT good so it ends up being not really better than the messy 2 album and has less charm, somehow.

how about an EP, then?

How about just a pile of 15 or 20 singles?

Anyway, Locomotive is awesome. I love Axl's insane syntax.