Bigger Boat Hall Of Fame #2

BIGGER BOAT HALL OF FAME #2




Guns 'N' Roses "Appetite For Destruction"

This is the absolute everlastin' electrifyin' death defying motherlovin' fuckin' shit. The only album I own that come rain, shine or shitstorm makes me feel glad that I'm squeezing out on existence on this god awful excuse for a planet. Give me an empty flat, this album and a steady supply of Jack and Coke and all the other crap just... goes away. Sure it's only for 60 minutes but in a bankrupt world populated by idiots, morons and religious nutbags any true escape you have left should be clasped to your bosom like an old grenade with the pin out and a rusty trigger.

Now here's the question... How does an album created by five loveless scumbags in a hole in West Hollywood in the 80's mean so much to me - a guy who has about as much in common with the perpetrators as he does with Dame Barbara Cartland? Sure, part of it is wish fulfillment. I don't do drugs, I rarely drink these days and the up-all-night any-hole-will-do sexual shenanigans of the Gunners is, frankly, completely alien to me. So is it all about escapism? Getting my jollies from hearing 5 guys details exploits that, odds are, I'll never experience. I don't think so. If that were the case that just about any metal album from the late 80's would get the job done. Poison, Warrant, Skid Row,Motley Crue, The Bulletboys, Faster Pussycat et al all sang from a similar hymn sheet. Besides, Guns 'N' Roses had one thing that the rest of that lacked. Authenticity. Stadiums, orchestras, lighter waiving ballads and (god help us) bicycle shorts would be in their future but at the time of Appetite these were guys who legitimately walked/drank/snorted it like they talked it.

When they sang about gettin' on the Nightrain the subject was not some semi-metaphorical rock rollercoaster but the cheap wine that was the only booze they could afford. Not only did they dance with Mr Brownstone, they bought him dinner, walked him home, then humped him senseless in an alley behind the rehearsal studio. And the orgasmic moans you here at the start of Rocket Queen are authentic. Someone set up a mike and Axl went for it with some willing tramp right there on the control desk. Every note, every lyric, every drop of blood, sweat or whatever that comes out the speakers when you put this baby on was right there in studio. Even the supposedly soppy ballad was laced with attitude. Compare Sweet Child O' Mine with similarly efforts like Poison's Every Rose Has a Thorn or Warrant's Heaven they're not just from different places - they're from different galaxies. Part of the credit for this goes to Axl whose lyrics (even when seemingly sweet on the surface) always have a dark edge that betrays the singer misanthropy and hair-trigger temper. But the main credit goes to guitar genius Slash who hated the song so much that, three quarters of the way through, he purposely tries to self-destruct it with some of the most vicious playing he ever put down. The irony of course being that his efforts elevate the song from cursory ballad to genuine classic. Though I have no real authority on the subject for my money the song contains the single-greatest solo ever committed to record - and the only one that I can sing along to note-for-note.

Every so often I'll get into one of those concoct your own supergroup kind of discussions and will be ultimately forced to admit that, although Keith Richards, Bonham and Dave Lee Roth come close, my uber group is the original line-up of Guns 'N' Roses. The chemistry these five guys created, inadvertently or not, on this album has never been equaled. Axl wasn't the greatest vocalist (though he is top five) but he was without a doubt the most compelling. No-one has ever sounded more like the meant what they were singing. Not even the singer himself on later albums. I have been told by many a drummer, and many an other musician, that Steven Adler was barely even proficient at his instrument. This is conclusive proof that the further the mastery of your instrument goes, the less you understand it. As members of the band have subsequently admitted, Adler's drumming had a unique feeling - a sense of swing that ensures songs from Appetite continue to fill dancefloors in rock clubs and beyond throughout the world. For proof you need only listen to the cast-iron booty-shaking grooves of Mr Brownstone and Rocket Queen. He was ably abetted by Duff McKagan, whose punk origins give his playing a drive and a leanness that curtailed the excesses which would later destroy the band.

By far Appetite's greatest pull though, is the guitar playing of Izzy Stradlin and Slash. Throughout the album, their lines circle each other like two guys in a knife fight, each taking turns to be the aggressor but never leaving the listener in any doubt as to who is playing what. There is an interplay between the two that even Richards and Wood never matched. Of all the guys who ever tried to be Keith Richards, Stradlin came the closest while Slash simultaneously manages to be the most technical and the most punk guitarist you ever heard. Listen to the way the two guitars snarl and snap at each other on Welcome To The Jungle, or the way they team up and hit you head-on for the pulverising riff of Paradise City. They would never be this good again (with the exception of the opening single to the Use Your Illusion albums You Could Be Mine which is the only song they recorded subsequently that was good enough to find a place on Appetite).

If the greatest crime a musician can ever commit is pandering, and it is is - especially when they try and hide it - then Guns 'N' Roses are the most innocent band of all time. The sound of Appetite is the sound of five guys in a room who do not give a flying fuck what anybody else wants to hear or what anyone else thinks and whose only desire is to take take all their influences and spit them back in the face of every lame, wan, fey limp-wristed, sucker of satan's cock who ever played from anything other than their heart. The true artist serves only themselves and in respect Axl, Slash, Duff, Izzy and Steven are true artists. The best album ever made? You better fucking believe it. And what was I listening to as I wrote this? Do you even need to ask?