Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Looking back on landmark double release 25 years later: Axl Rose and Co. were falling apart but their creativity was at a peak

In April 1990, the classic lineup of Guns N’ Roses played its final show. The occasion was the nationally televised Farm Aid concert,
a disastrous set that included, among several bizarre highlights, Steven Adler drunkenly belly-flopping in the general direction of
his drum set only to miss by four feet, and Axl Rose ending the live broadcast with a climactic “Good fuckin’ night.” It was the
mark of a band breaking apart.

Amazingly, though, the imploding GN’R were in the midst of an artistic surge. One of the songs played at Farm Aid (in a version
hampered by Adler’s inability to learn it) was “Civil War,” a sweeping epic that would eventually open the second disc of the
massive 30-song, two-and-a-half-hour opus they were hard at work on throughout 1990 and ’91. Slash would later liken Use
Your Illusion I and II to the Beatles’ White Album (though “maybe not as good”), a titanic mix of gritty ragers, passionate
rock-opera ballads and decadent screeds – from the failed-relationship triptych of “Don’t Cry,” “November Rain” and “Estranged”
to the rock-critic indictment “Get in the Ring” to the misogynistic double-header of “Bad Obsession” and “Back Off Bitch.”
“Thirty-five of the most self-indulgent Guns N’ Roses songs,” Slash said. “For most bands, it would take four to six years to come
up with this much stuff.” Like the White Album, it was brilliance created amid collapse.


full article here :

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-guns-n-roses-history-making-use-your-illusion-albums-106057/

Never bought the argument you could trim that down to one album.

You aren't cutting 'November Rain', 'Estranged', or 'Coma'.  That's a half hour right there.  And CDs were, I believe 74-76 minutes at the time.

Still are aren't they?

The comments are hilarious. Some guy saying it was a "spotty album". All these years later and some people still don't get the brilliance of UYI... ::)

That's because those albums were full of "fillers"... I mean if u look at those albums after 20 years, you know you just needed 1 album with this core songs:

You Could Be Mine
Civil War
Live and Let Die
Don't Cry
Estranged
Double Talkin' Jive
November Rain

plus 2-3 other songs of your choice

i mean I like all the fillers when i listen to them, but i won't listen to those songs again and again... (shotgun blues, bad apples etc...almost once in a lifetime)

AFD had only a couple of fillers (anything goes and you're crazy fast version...imagine that album with ycbm and maybe don't cry, songs that were already written) that's why is  considered epic..

I don’t know why Adler is shit on so much for Farm Aid. He tripped on the drum riser but immediately recovered and was ready to go. He played both songs just fine.

You're missing the point.

Axl talked about their next album being a double album in 1987. There was obviously an idea already back then that this is how it was gonna be.

There's a lot of things about the UYI albums that people don't really think about when they go on and on about the so called filler songs. It was supposed to be a double album. It was supposed to be different from Appetite For Destruction.  It was supposed to be diverse.


We got two albums on one day, and it's made into a being "bad" thing.  :hihi:




/jarmo

that's bullshit. plus, we all have a different tracking list in mind when it comes to think about it as a simple LP.
that really proves it doesn't make any sense.

that, Sir, is really true. you can clearly see on the videos of the show that he's done a good job considering the circumstances.

I don't know either. the band had probably enough of him at this point.

I honestly hear no filler at all on either album. To me they're both perfect.

An interesting thing to think about is how people may feel about them if they had been released as one double cd/cassette album (and a 4lp set of course) package, in the same manner of thr smashing pumpkins 'Melon Collie..' album.

My view ia that opinion would be kinder towards them.

Love those albums.  Master pieces in my opinion.  :D

That´s a piont. B/c they knew now that was his last gig with the band.


..... and some more "stuffs"  ;D

My only issue with the albums is the use of voice effects on some of the songs. Some examples, “let me hear it now” on Breakdown, the deep backing vocals during the choruses for Pretty Tied Up chorus and Locomotive, and “whole damn bunch” on Bad Apples.

That is such nonsense I don't even know what to say.


I really do not understand why anybody gives an ounce of a shit how the albums were packaged. I don't care if every song was on its own CD. The quality of the music is all that matters.


I don't believe that was effects. Just Axl's really deep low register. And I love it. Really adds a sinister undertone.

Axl himself said the uyi making "it was a fight for years" and that the double thing it was "the only way to survive as a band": izzy & slash wanted all their own songs to be put on the album, and that's the result.  You can't compare you ain't the first with november rain, be serious... It was basically a compromise between the guys who weren't anymore a "band" as they were during AFD. They mainly put their "solo" stuff into the album.
And i said slash and izzy on purpose, cause duff had his sweetener when the spaghetti incident was out. The result is still good, i love those albums, but you know they will never have that aura of perfection AFD has

Say something!  Explain why "Shotgun Blues" is a brilliant song that people REALLY just don't understand the brilliance of after all these years!  :D



He was talking about public perception, so quality of music isn't necessarily all that matters.... Also, if every song is on it's own CD, does sequencing matter?  Artwork?  Does anyone buy the Shotgun Blues CD?

I actually think the opposite.  Releasing two "separate" but related albums on the same day seems more unique than a single package like Mellon Collie - and stirs up a bunch of comparisons between the two more so than people would if just "Disc 1" and "Disc 2".

If there'd been a double album, it wouldn't have been as special. Nobody had released two different albums on the same day before. Double albums, yes.

And if you could only afford one album per week or whatever, you would still end up with something instead of nothing....





/jarmo

for me:

   "Right Next Door to Hell"
"Perfect Crime"
   "Back Off Bitch"
"Double Talkin' Jive"
November Rain"
   "Don't Damn Me"
"Dead Horse"
   "Coma"
Civil War"
"Get in the Ring"
"Breakdown"
"Pretty Tied Up
So Fine"
Estranged"
"You Could Be Mine"
   "Don't Cry" (Alt. Lyrics)

God how we wish they would do that now Slash and Duff have been quite evasive regarding new material in recent interviews giving similar answers to what the last lineup said when asked about a new album which doesn't give much hope to it ever happening.BTW "Get in the ring" is one of the best song's from the illusion albums it's such a throwaway fun song while putting a few music journos in their place. :beer:

Would love to hear GitR 21st century, where the venting goes to the polititians, social media , hipsters and the ill's that this centuries entitled class have changed the world not for the better, oh and of course downloading mother fuckers too.

I think you are greedy.

Its not that the albums have fillers. By definition, a filler is a bad song within an album that has a couple of hits.

UYI's didnt have hits. They had epic,, out-of-this-world monumental songs that will stand the test of time when the monkeys will rule over the earth.

The rest of the songs while not epic, are absolutely terrific.

I you think Back off Bitch. Shot Gun Blues, You aint the first, etc as fillers, you're not that big of a fan.

If you think  Anything Goes and You're Crazy are fillers you are crazy too.  :hihi:

I think the only filler song in the UYI's is My World. But that's not even a song, so its not really a filler.  :smoking:

Here's my thing on the "GNR should have made the UYIs just one album" argument.  Many people say that, but my next question to them is always which 15 songs would you put on that one album??  And everybody's 15 song list is always different - sometimes radically so.  Sure, perhaps a song like Don't Cry is always on the list, and My World is never on the list, but for most of the 15 people are all over the board.  A song like Coma is one of the favorites to some, and hated by others.  To me, this supports the idea that GNR got it right the way they did it.  It's an eclectic mix of songs in different styles (one of GNR's great strengths), and different people prefer different tracks. 

I'm in the minority I know, but I like My World

I always looked at the Illusions as a boxset. I'll bet most fans wish Axl would have done the same thing with the Chinese Democracy Sessions...just release it all and move on.  :hihi:

I do too.

That's how it worked for me - it was a while before I could afford to go back and buy UYI 1 after I bought 2.

Going back to the perception thing I brought up before, I think people were kinder to Mellon Collie than they perhaps should have been, based on it being one album. Two separate releases would have highlighted its weak moments more - of which there are quite a few.

While UYI was a unique release, and garnered attention that way, I think it's being two separate releases leads people to focus more on its weaker moments than they would otherwise, and hence criticize it more. It could also be argued though of course that more focus is brought to things on it that might have got 'lost in the mix' otherwise.

I find it really interesting how simple things like this really can alter how an album is received. Tracklistings are another one - it's fascinating to think how both the UYI albums might have been viewed by us all if they had been sequenced differently.

Here’s my memory of the release of UYI. I had both cassettes reserved at the record store. I had to go to Memphis by bus (like a 15 hour bus ride) for a court date that might have ended in jail time. It was a few days after the release, so I decided to save the first listening for my bus ride. The day I was to leave a girl I liked who I partied with a lot  begged me to leave one of the cassettes with her for the weekend. She was pretty hot and I thought it would help my chances, so I relented. After listening to the other cassette on my Walkman (I forget which one I kept) I regretted giving her the other one. The guy next to me on the bus asked me what I thought of the cassette. I told him about the other tape and how I wished I had it. Turns out, he had both tapes, and his Walkman had 2 inputs for headphones (I didn’t even know that was possible!). So, we plugged in and rocked out, and I got to listen to both of them after all.

And it didn’t help me with the girl, btw. But we did continue to party together. That chick could smoke a lot of pot (& she usually had some!)  : ok:

Wait, so people are complaining about the Illusions albums having too much filler (which I completely disagree with, but I love every GnR song so you can’t go by me on that) and then comparing them to The White Album? 

The White album is absolutely full of filler and completely over rated in my opinion. There are some great songs on it, but as an album it’s bloated. Nowhere near as good as Sergeant Pepper. Certainly not as good as either of the Illusions albums.

I take issue with the statement that in 1990 (!!) the band was already imploding. I don't think so. What then were the next 3 years of almost non-stop touring worldwide?

I mean, it was a dicey proposition that could have fallen apart at any moment from the day it was formed, simply due to the members' attitudes and drug use.

As far as UYI, I would say there was definitely filler, but nobody can agree on what it was. I can't see any value in You Ain't the First, Dust N Bones and 14 Years beyond maybe being bonus track novelties. But some people actually like them. Blows my mind, but I know a lot of my favorite songs were left as bonus tracks by several bands.