Part of my 50 greatest albums of all time.
I’d been listening to Def Lepard and Bon Jovi as a 13-14 year old and fancied that I was a bit of a rocker. Now, this is late 80’s so both bands were considered metal for some reason but I’ll never forget seeing Welcome to the Jungle on some TV show and asking myself “What the fuck was that?” And I was in. This was the first album I bought with my own money. This was 4 Real people!
But no one else was talking about them. I had the piss taken out of me for having Guns N’ Roses written on my school bag. (This used to be a Thing)
“Who the fuck are Guns N’ Roses?” They laughed.
Yea, a few months later and no one was laughing. G n’ R were everywhere. *
It’s hard to explain just how much the world went nuts for this scuzzy rock n roll, just how heavy this was compared to anything else getting played on the radio. There’s an argument that Nirvana killed Glam Metal, but I’d argue that Glam Metal died at the release of Appetite. All the Glam bands sounded so weedy compared to this. This was sex drugs and rock n’ roll, but this isn’t good time, party music. This is a different kind of party, this dangerous, the drugs and drinking feel out of control. These are songs that glamourise the debauched lifestyle, but in a really seedy way. Remember if you come to the Jungle, you’re going a’ die. There’s an edge to this album that the Glam Metal crowd never came close to.
While GnR are considered hard rock these days, this was heavy metal as far as the world was concerned back in the late 80’s and pearls were clutched. There was moral outrage.
So imagine a young me growing up in the middle of nowhere, hearing this stuff and having his mind blown.
This was also well before the band became a joke. No Use your Illusions bloated crap, before all the infighting. This is just lighting bottled. (Let’s just ignore that original album art)
This is an album that goes hard, I mean, from the siren playing over the intro to Welcome to the Jungle, you know this is coming in all guns blazing. No pun intended.
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to go through the album track by track, I’m sure it’s ingrained into the world’s collective consciousness, but just look at the track listing, banger after banger. It’s So Easy (The Manics used to do a great cover of this.) Mr. Brownstone, My Michelle, Nighttrain. It’s embarrassing for everyone else just how good these songs are.
Paradise City is still world class, I’ll always be disappointed I never got to see them live, just to be in the pit when the whistle blows and all hell would break loose.
Every time Sweet Child O’ Mine comes on I roll my eyes and go to turn it off, but I never do. This song is a stone cold classic for a reason and that solo is perfect. I’m normally against cheesy music but fuck it, sometimes you just got to let get and have some fun.
It’s insane that this is a debut album, the band are locked in and play perfectly off each other. It’s a pity that they fell apart and would never come remotely close to this again but fuck it. We have this and that’s enough.
TL,DR?
You had to be there. It was amazing.
* This may make me sound insufferable. I can assure I wasn’t. That came about 3 years later in my mid teens.
The ways of exile 