Net Music Review

Hair metal, cock rock, call it what you want, but it sucks. No two ways about it. However, this first full length album from Guns N’ Roses is the exception that proves the rule. Love or hate the circus that went (still goes?) with them this albums did one thing that set them apart from their contemporaries of the time….it rocked. It has the ingredients of a classic rock album, Axl’s screaming vocals, riffs to die for and a sense that at any minute it could all fall apart. It spawned monster singles that hogged air play on radio and scared the hell out of parents all over the world, which is probably why they were so popular. Certainly when I first heard this record as a kid at school (admittedly some years after it was released) I had to hide my taped copy from my parents as they did not approve, which was half the attraction! It was, the band were dangerous and volatile.There are few better ways to open an album and announce yourself an unsuspecting world than first track “Welcome To The Jungle”. The echoing opening guitar line and Axl’s scream that then give way a monster riff that the whole song is built around. It paves the way for what is to come next, which is the spirit of the Sex pistols mixed with LA rock and leaves you with no time to catch your breath. While the lyrical content of the album is hardly going to win prizes for poetry (Check out the school boy-esque lyrics to Sweet Child O’ Mine) it is delivered without a hint of irony, it is the attitude that wins you over. The themes explored range from nights wasted on cheap booze (Nightrain) to tales of drug addiction (My Michelle, Mr Brownstone).While this is a hard rock album, it is still accessible to those who don’t necessarily like that genre thanks to the massive hit singles “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. To this day “Sweet Child O’ Mine” still enjoys widespread airplay and now enjoys classic status. Legend has it that Slash came up with the famous guitar line as a joke thinking it was the kind of thing that the band would never play! And all of this from a group of drug addled LA drop outs and a man from Stoke-On-Trent, possibly the least rock and roll town ever.Credit has to go to producer Mike Clint who was the only person brave enough to take the band on, indeed so many music industry executives were afraid of the band and singer Axl Rose’s posturing/mood swings. But he managed to focus the band long enough and the results as you can hear are stunning, its just such a shame that infighting and ego’s got the better of them.In later years the band would eventually become a cliché of everything that they professed to hate about American rock in the 80’s and fall apart, but this debut has left us with a lasting legacy and is the benchmark for all American hard rock albums. Not a bad, not bad at all…..Guns N’ Roses - Appetite For Destruction