Guns N’ Roses developed the reputation of being one of the most perilous acts on stage, and it contributed greatly to their legend and legacy.
In #TheMusicThatMadeUs__, senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri chronicles the impact that musicians and their art have on our lives, how they mould the industry by rewriting its rules and how they shape us into the people we become: their greatest legacies. * It was barely a few minutes past 7 PM on 10 December, 2012, when Axl Rose took to the stage at the MMRDA Grounds to face an audience in disbelief; one that has waited decades for this very moment. Were this to play out in Guns N’ Roses’ prime [say 20 years prior], no fan would have believed that the band could actually start a concert on time. This despite him being the only original member in the band at the time. G N’ R’s notoriety spanned impunctuality and boorish behaviour, assault and riot-inciting, all with a potent dose of genre-defying, generation-defining music. There was also the unmissable charm with which Axl seemed like he could get away with most of these headline-grabbing activities. He became the quintessential bad boy in a heavy metal band, surrounded by bandmates who each had alcohol and substance problems of varying degrees. Amid long-haired rockers with bandanas and top hats was a frontman in a Scottish kilt or cycling shorts singing about everything that mattered with a veneer of the outrageous.
Guns N’ Roses developed the reputation of being one of the most perilous acts on stage, and it contributed greatly to their legend and legacy.
If Motley Crue were the bad boys of the time, Guns N’ Roses were the dangerous ones with the kind of charm your mother would warn you about. Unsuccessfully. Bursting into the scene in 1987 when synth was at its peak and everything sounded tinny, the rich weighty sound of Gibson Les Pauls, and a singer who could sing effortlessly across three octaves, helmed an album that changed the way we understood rock music. Appetite for Destruction remains one of the best debut albums of all time, having sold more than 30 million copies out of the band’s 100-million-unit sales, coming with the unique distinction of having not a single weak, filler-like song. The album deserves to be in a hypothetical museum for how it changed the genre both for fellow musicians and for the fans.
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Like The Rolling Stones did in the 1960s, Guns N’ Roses in the 1980s showed fans what it is to be at the heart of music that is rebellious, debauched, and casually riotous. Rock has always been the anti-establishment voice, and the advent of G N’ R’s debut album signalled the end of grace in public discourse. The attitudinal shift included a predilection for the provocative and Appetite for Destruction contained within in the most feral, most untamed sounds [think ‘Rocket Queen’] that exploded in our consciousness, introducing us to a most uninhibited sonic experience. With ‘Welcome to the Jungle,’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ and ‘Paradise City,’ Appetite for Destruction set the bar so high for the band and its contemporaries that it seemed an impossible act to follow. But then a couple of years later, they casually drop Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, legitimising the power ballads, and making the risky investment of three highly overpriced music videos. Almost 30 years later, we remember exactly what we felt while watching Stephanie Seymour walk down the aisle as Axl Rose’s bride in ‘November Rain.’
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Capitalising on the MTV visual bandwagon and driven by Axl’s vision for the band, Guns N’ Roses established itself as the modern rock prototype, creating the noisier, rawer blueprint for grunge to anchor itself. Virtuoso lead guitarist Slash may have hated how universally loved ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ became but his overplayed-for-good-reason guitar interludes in the song was a way of directing rock fans away from the Strat-based shredding into the unconquered realm of guitaring heft. Running parallel to this has been their infamous image; a brazen celebration of rock and roll indulgences that covered the unholy trinity of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Similar Dionysian tendencies made it to their music even as Axl steered the band towards recreating music of his own heroes. Citing Queen’s Freddie Mercury as a major influence, Axl’s homage for the artist is very evident in his orchestral song writing on the Illusions albums even as early G N’ R is very reminiscent of AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, T-Rex, Sex Pistols, and Aerosmith. The delicate balance between the bluesy heart and the heavy metal head in the band’s music has meant that their sound ranged from Led Zeppelin to Van Halen and beyond, pushing the boundaries of the accepted and the acceptable.
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Their Use Your Illusion tour, spanning 28 months and 192 concerts in 27 countries is the longest in rock tour history, and it was fraught with ego clashes and drug struggles between bandmates. The band barely survived their own might by the end of it, in many ways signalling that the prime was past them even though they had just peaked in their careers. Their egos were not going to be able to make it. Reports of Axl assaulting various people, his diva-like demeanour, and fans being crushed to death by slam dancing crowds were severely hurting the band’s image although they initially contributed to their growing infamy. After splitting in the mid ‘90s, Axl continued to hold on to the band name even as everyone from Buckethead to Bumblefoot attempted to fill in for key original members, but in vain. In 2016, Slash and Izzy returned to the band almost two decades later, picking up from where they left the iconic band.
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Fourteen years since their last studio album, the band has released a compilation EP Hardskool, featuring two recent singles and two live tracks with guitarist Slash making no bones about the band’s preparation for a new album. The world has changed since Guns N’ Roses last put out an album. The band has changed since they split and reunited. But the fan has not. Hardskool takes us back to the vintage era where the band was new, and the songs were gritty. For me, watching them again at Bangkok’s SCG Stadium as part of their Not in this Lifetime Tour in 2017, was akin to being in a time machine, revisiting the band during its famed past. Axl may have gotten pudgier and lost more hair than Slash but here they were in their 50s helping us relive our teens and 20s, connecting us with a part of ourselves that we had forgotten about: what it takes to be a rock music fan at the threshold of a digitised world. Senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri has spent a good part of two decades chronicling the arts, culture and lifestyles. Read all the
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