Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, released on July 21, 1987 on Geffen Records. It was well received by critics and topped the American Billboard 200 chart. As of September 2008, the album has been certified 18 times Platinum by the RIAA. The album is featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die,. Axl Rose stated that many of the songs featured on the album had been written while the band had been performing on the Los Angeles club circuit, and a number of songs that would be featured on later Guns N' Roses albums were considered for Appetite for Destruction, such as "Back Off Bitch", "You Could Be Mine", "November Rain" and "Don't Cry". It is said that the reason for not putting "November Rain" on it was because they had already agreed to put "Sweet Child 'O Mine" on it and thus already had a ballad on the album (however, both Use Your Illusion albums would contain more than one ballad). The band started searching for someone to produce their debut, mostly recommendations made by Geffen executives Alan Niven and Tom Zutaut. Demos were recorded under both Manny Charlton and Spencer Proffer, with some work made with the latter being issued in the EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. One of the interviewed prospects was Kiss's Paul Stanley, rejected after insisting on changes to Steven Adler's drum setup and the songs. The band considered Robert John "Mutt" Lange, but he proved too expensive to hire. Eventually Mike Clink, who had produced several Triumph records, was chosen, for being the first to record the band exactly the way they wanted. After some weeks of rehearsal, the band entered Daryl Dragon's Rumbo Recorders in January 1987. Two weeks were spent laying down basic tracks, with Clink splicing together the best takes with his razor blade. Clink worked eighteen-hour days for the next month, with Slash overdubbing in the afternoon and evening, and Rose cutting vocals until the sun came up. Slash struggled to find a guitar sound before coming up with a Gibson Les Paul copy plugged into a Marshall amplifier. He spent hours with Clink paring down and structuring his solos. The total budget for the album was about $370,000. According to drummer Steven Adler, the percussion was done in just six days, but Rose's vocals took much longer as he insisted on doing them one line at a time, in a perfectionism that drove the rest of the band away from the studio as he worked. Many of the songs on Appetite For Destruction began as solo tracks that individual band members wrote separate from the band, only to be completed later. These songs include "It's So Easy" (Duff McKagan) and "Think About You" (Izzy Stradlin). "Rocket Queen" was an unfinished Slash/McKagan/Adler song that was written from their earlier band Road Crew, whereas "Anything Goes", written by Hollywood Rose and included in their compilation album The Roots of Guns N' Roses, was later re-written for Appetite. Most of the songs on the album reflect the band's personal experiences and daily life, such as "Welcome to the Jungle", some of the lyrics of which Rose wrote after he encountered a man near the highways of Manhattan in 1980 shortly after arriving there from Indiana, and "Mr. Brownstone", which is about the band's problems with heroin. Lyrics to some of the songs focus on the band members' younger years, like "Out ta Get Me", which focuses on lead singer Axl Rose's constant trouble with the law as a youth in Indiana. The band also based song lyrics on some of their female friends, reflected in the songs "Sweet Child o' Mine", "My Michelle", "You're Crazy", and "Rocket Queen".
<b>100 Best Albums</b> Early on in the history of Guns N’ Roses, Axl Rose was driving around with his friend Michelle when Elton John’s “Your Song” came on the radio. Gee, Michelle said, I wish someone would write a song that beautiful about <i>me</i>. So, Axl went home and tried. The first draft didn’t sit right—it was too reductive, too romantic, too much like a <i>song</i>—so he started over: “Your daddy works in porno now that mommy’s not around/She used to love her heroin, but now she’s underground” (“My Michelle”). Yeah, it was bracing, Michelle said. But it was the truth.<br /> It isn’t just that <i>Appetite</i> is mean—though it is. It’s that it never flinches at how it feels, no matter how ugly. The drug songs aren’t about getting high, they’re about blacking out (“Mr. Brownstone”, “Nightrain”). The sex songs don’t relish the physical act so much as the power that comes with it (“Anything Goes”). When they give you an anthem, it’s against a backdrop of filth and misery (“Paradise City”). And when they give you a ballad, it’s with the paranoid sense that nothing so pure could actually be real (the dark outro of “Sweet Child o’ Mine”). Conquering their conquests isn’t enough: They want to degrade them and trade high-fives about it later (“It’s So Easy”).<br /> At the time, the band was considered an antidote to the slickness of pop-metal—something like The Rolling Stones to the early ’60s. But a better comparison is the Sex Pistols: rude, fearless, unencumbered by metaphor. Some bands make sloppiness sound liberating; Guns N’ Roses make it sound menacing, the howl of something unstable and sleepless. The album famously ends on a happy note: “Don’t ever leave me, say you’ll always be there/All I ever wanted was for you to know that I care” (“Rocket Queen”). But only a few bars earlier, it just as famously captured the sounds of Axl and a stripper having sex in the studio. <i>Appetite</i> bears its crumbs of hope, but it puts you through hell to get them.
