62. Guns N’ Roses, "Appetite for Destruction"

 

You could be anywhere in the world when the opening riff of "Sweet Child O' Mine" comes over the speakers and somebody will go "WHOOOOOO."  I don't care if it's a VFW post in Des Moines or a sushi restaurant in Soho or an abandoned ship on an island in the South Pacific.  Put on that song and someone will WHOOOOO.  That riff - which came in second behind "Whole Lotta Love" in a BBC poll of the greatest guitar riffs in history - is one of the greatest things in rock 'n roll and everyone knows it.

This album, the best-selling debut album in US history (in the world, it's Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell, which I fear we will see), initially landed with a thud upon release in 1987, believe it or not.  It wasn't until the following year that Geffen general manager Al Coury convinced MTV to play the video for "Welcome to the Jungle" for three consecutive days.  It became the most-requested video in MTV's history and you know what happened next.

It's a little ironic, don't cha think, that "Child," one of the best-known songs on the album, is also one of the most uncharacteristic, a sappy ballad about Axl Rose's girlfriend Erin Everly (daughter of Everly Brother Don), quite unlike the rest of the album in tone and content.  The rest of the album is dark, way darker than I remembered.  The first verse of "My Michelle," which is astonishingly about a real person who Axl wrote it for:

Your daddy works in porno, now that mommy's not around
She used to love her heroin, but now she's underground
So, you stay out late at night and you do your coke for free
Drivin' your friends crazy with your life's insanity

You know the absolutely iconic "Welcome to the Jungle" already, in which Axl warns that "You learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play" and "If you got a hunger for what you see, you'll take it eventually."  "Mr. Brownstone" is, of course, about heroin addiction, and "Anything Goes" is a misogynistic sexual boast ("Panties round your knees with your ass in debris/Doing that grind with a push and a squeeze," gross).  "Rocket Queen" famously (or infamously) includes the actual recorded sounds of sexual congress between Rose and drummer Steven Adler's girlfriend.

I haven't even mentioned "Paradise City," every teenager's dream, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.  But in keeping with the rest of the album, once you get away from that fist-pumping chorus, things get dark in a hurry:

Strapped in the chair of the city's gas chamber

Why I'm here, I can't quite remember

The Surgeon General says it's hazardous to breathe

I'd have another cigarette

But I can't see, tell me who you're gonna believe

Not great lyrics, but you get the point.  None of the lyrics are especially great, and who gives a shit?  We're here to fucking party and pretend that we bang chicks.

But it's not just adolescent sexuality that sold the record; musically, it was a revolution, combining the Sunset Strip glam-metal that exemplified the scene the band emerged from with punk and blues into a totally unique sound.  A lot of this was Slash; he basically invented a style of metal guitar that has been endlessly copied to this day, drawing on everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Jeff Beck to Jimmy Page and other guitarists, I'm sure, whose names do not start with J.  Axl had this wild-ass yowl that sounded unlike anything else on Earth, which is good because it distracts from his lyrics.  Put it together with the solid rhythm section (Adler and bassist Duff McKagan studied Prince records to learn how to lock in a groove, which is a pretty fantastic idea for any rhythm section) and you've got a breakthrough sound.

As long as there are teenagers and cheap beer and weed and the hopes of moving to the big city and fucking partying their faces off, there will be a place for this album.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.