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

A new question: How's The Spaghetti Incident? I've always wondered if maybe it secretly kicks total, inauthentic ass.

Flesh and Blood by Poison was best rock album of the 90's. followed by Slave to the Grind by Skid Row.

Novemeber Rain is one of the best songs ever written.

1. Pretty Tied Up
2. Yesterday
3. Get in the Ring
4. November Rain
5. You Could Be Mine
6. Civil War
7. Garden of Eden (that's the one with Alice Cooper?)
8. Dust'n'Bones
9. Estranged
10. Back off Bitch
11. Knockin' on Heavens Door

trying for the first time to listen to these back to back. wondering if that will make UYI II make more sense to me.

man what happened to these guys after appetite

I really love UYI 1, like UYI 2. I mean "Right Next Door to Hell" coulda fit right on Appetite.

UYI missteps with the ballads and the pretension, but I can listen to either disc and have a good time. T'aint no Appetite tho you're right.

so torpid

@Steven_Hyden 20 Jun
The best way to enjoy the USE YOUR ILLUSION albums: Imagine they are GNR's TUSK, and Izzy is Lindsey, Axl is Stevie, and Duff is Christine.

I revisited the record due to this thread. Wish I had that 20 minutes of my life back.

So you only listened to one song?

haw

i keep UYI2 in the car, shit still bangs

say whatever you want about this album. Listen to two minutes of Chinese Democracy and you'll see a true rock bottom.

f'real

I am a well-documented crazy person, but I listen to Chinese Democracy more often than the Illusion albums.

I like most of each Use Your Illusion album. It reminds me a bit of Xgau's review of "Sandinista!:

Sandinista! [Epic, 1981]
At $9.99 discounted, figure sides five and six as a near-freebie sweetened by great cuts from Timon Dogg and a grade-school duo. Compare "Apple Jam" (you know, on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass triple, now there was a prophetic title) invidiously to the run of their dub ramble. Listen to Sandinista Now!, the promo-only one-disc digest Epic has thoughtfully provided busy radio personnel, and note that you miss (in my case) "Rebel Waltz" and "Let's Go Crazy" and "Something About England" (and who knows what in yours). Note that you also miss the filler and assorted weirdnesses which provide that heady pace and/or texture. Then note as well that the many good songs aren't as consistently compelling as on previous Clash albums, though God knows "The Sound of Sinners" is a long-overdue Christer spoof and words about reading are always apt and the romanticization of revolution is an inevitable theme. And conclude that if this is their worst--which it is, I think--they must be, er, the world's greatest rock and roll band. A-

Except for the world's greatest rock and roll band stuff, of course.

Wow this must be the shittiest version of these albums to exist

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

Certified platinum!? I've never heard of that. Does Axl know !?!?

Don't Damn Me still ranks as one of their best. Civil War, too.

i've seen the comp before and puzzled at the track selection, at least the wiki explains that it was all songs with no curses to be sold at places like walmart, makes a little more sense now.

ugh, "the garden," so terrible

death to all customized tracklistings that omit "locomotive"

have there been any high-profile critic "callouts" in the rock genre since "Get in the Ring"? really think that was the height of GNR's ridiculousness, but just curious of what other examples the genre may hold (not looking for rap, obv, cuz the genre is sort of based on calling out other people in song).

"I Killed Christgau With My Big Fucking Dick"

Just saw GN'R in Philly last week and I was surprised how heavily they leaned on the Illusions. They played Double Talkin' Jive, You Could Be Mine, Civil War, Don't Cry, Live and Let Die, Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Estranged, Coma, and November Rain. Civil War and Double Talkin' Jive would both make my single disc Illusion. You Could Be Mine probably would too if just for the insane way that song ends.

fierce vignettes of depravity that burn with fire and passion

yesssss

Also "get in the ring" is catchy and fun. Not many other tracks with these qualities on these albums !

Xxxpost they kinda have to....not a huge discography

I think they could play Appetite in it's entirety or maybe a little bit more off of Lies. Duff's also the only one reminding us that the Spaghetti Incident? happened.

maybe a little bit more off of Lies.

"One in a Million" - if taken as an unreliable narrator with jumbled thoughts - is never more timely.

I have recently watched the Jon Brewer Documentary
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2016/most-dangerous-band-in-the-world
some interesting stuff (considering I liked them at the time, as a teenager, but have never been a big fan and so never knew or cared much about them).

about the musical reasons of the split, although the Chinese Democracy project was the debacle we know, I can't help thinking Axl had a point since the "let's go back to the roots blues hard rock" approach of Slash seems pretty boring to me (as well as all the UYI bluesy hard rock tracks).
at least Axl's ideas and ambitions had something special, even on UYI.
also, putting aside his own tantrums, his position regarding the drugs excesses in the band were reasonable : maybe behind the crazy diva, there actually was someone intelligent and sensible !

xp

God, that is such a beautiful, dumb, catchy, racist piece of shit song. I loved to listen to that song when I was a kid, even though I was appalled by the words. Now that I'm older, it's absolutely unlistenable. Wish someone would cover it and change it up. Fuck Axl Rose.

xxpost I think Chinese Democracy is pretty rad and Axl was right to avoid the Bon Jovi and Poison route of making a "bluesy" album.

Wasn't "One in a Million" supposed to be seen through the eyes of someone from the Midwest (say Indiana) showing up in LA? If Axl was a brutal racist an meant every word in that song I doubt he'd wear NWA hats and play with a black drummer.

Yeah, I dunno. I mean, Slash's mom is black, too. I think Axl just epitomized ignorant white kid from the midwest more than any actual malice.

Racists can have black friends. Have you ever heard the phrase "You're one of the *good* ones" that they often employ?

Whether it was his own views or being a narrator, it was a poor choice to use the word and Axl should be eaten by wolves.

but not until after 7/29 cos that's when I see them.

lol

that's an old issue in literature that comes back regularly in pop (rock, rap, etc) but I don't understand why the authors of songs are supposed to mean everything that's expressed in their lyrics. it's a pretty unfair (not to say silly) criticism. why couldn't they portray a character or express other views ?
And I don't even like "One in Million" !

I don't think Randy Newman would be writing songs for kids movies if people believed he wasn't writing in character.

sure but there are also so many silly controversies accusing some artists or band of having misogynist/racist/antisemitic, etc lyrics without considering the authors might not express their own feelings/views in the songs.
anyway, it's an endless and hopeless issue. the media needs these controversies I guess !

this was his shitty defense of it at the time:

"I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word nigger. Why can black people go up to each other and say, "Nigger," but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down. I don't like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I can't say. I used the word nigger because it's a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word nigger doesn't necessarily mean black. Doesn't John Lennon have a song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World"? There's a rap group, N.W.A., Niggers with Attitude. I mean, they're proud of that word. More power to them. Guns N' Roses ain't bad. . . . N.W.A. is baad! Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason we put these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy and we'd sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why'd he put us in his skit? We don't just do something to get the controversy, the press."

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.