Unhealthy appetite (article from the Boston Phoenix)

[jarmo]

Unhealthy appetite
Guns N? Roses are deeper than their catalogue
BY SEAN RICHARDSON


Last month, Guns N? Roses? new Greatest Hits (Geffen) made an impressive debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart, landing at No. 3 with sales of over 150,000 copies. That achievement put a cap on weeks of controversy surrounding the hard-rock icons, who have been limping along for most of the last decade with frontman Axl Rose as their only remaining original member. First, Axl joined old mates Slash and Duff McKagan in an unsuccessful legal effort to stop the label from putting the disc out. Then, he announced that the band were canceling their May 30 appearance at the first-ever Lisbon edition of the Rock in Rio festival, because Slash?s latest replacement, Buckethead, had quit on short notice. Regarding the status of GN?R?s long-delayed new studio album, Axl made a statement that must have rock fans everywhere rolling their eyes: "We hope to announce a release date within the next few months."

Given Axl?s prolonged creative silence, the odds are against him and whatever glorified solo album he may or may not have up his sleeve in 2004. But despite his eccentricity, GN?R?s legacy is secure. In the nine years since the last new track (a cover of the Rolling Stones? "Sympathy for the Devil") released by anything even resembling their original lineup, the band have sold around 10 million copies of their back catalogue. Their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction, has shifted 15 million units overall and is one of hard-rock?s all-time landmark recordings. So it?s safe to say that the appearance of Greatest Hits is overdue ? and it?s hard to blame Geffen for putting it together without the fractured input of GN?R themselves, which was the reason for the band?s lawsuit.

New music or not, the release of Greatest Hits marks GN?R?s third commercial resurgence in the last five years. The first one happened in 1999, when the archival Live Era ?87??93 came out and quickly went gold. Around the same time, the band?s new "Oh My God" was included on the End of Days soundtrack. Featuring Jane?s Addiction?s Dave Navarro in the Slash chair, the tune was a reasonable enough modernization of classic GN?R, but it never caught fire on rock radio. Three years later, the band surprised everybody by mounting a full-blown North American arena tour, which came to an abrupt end less than halfway through when Axl pissed off the trek?s promoters, Clear Channel, by failing to show up for a gig in Philadelphia. I paid to see them on the Toronto stop of that tour, and it was worth the price of admission, if not the hour-and-a-half wait for the group to take the stage: Axl was in fine form, and guitar god Buckethead actually made it hard to miss Slash.

Now comes Greatest Hits, which fulfills its basic obligation by presenting the group?s highest-charting singles in rough chronological order. That?s the way labels like to do things, not bands ? especially not album-rock acts like GN?R, who despite their five Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart are only partially defined by their radio profile. Playing by Geffen?s rules, I have just one problem with the song selection, and it could have been avoided with a simple substitution: ditch "Knockin? on Heaven?s Door" and replace it with "Nightrain." The Bob Dylan classic is a GN?R concert staple that fell flat in the studio and never even reached the charts in the Use Your Illusion II version that appears here. (A previous recording of the tune, from 1990?s Days of Thunder soundtrack, was a minor rock hit.) The Appetite party anthem "Nightrain," on the other hand, is the band?s only Hot 100 entry that didn?t make the cut.

That should have been a no-brainer, but otherwise Greatest Hits is an instant jukebox classic. It kicks off with the immortal screech of "Welcome to the Jungle," followed by GN?R?s breakthrough single and only No. 1 hit, "Sweet Child o? Mine." With its lyrical guitar breaks, riveting coda, and six-minute running time, the latter is the template for much of what follows, including the three remaining songs by the original lineup. "Paradise City" eschews romance in favor of silliness and aggression, but Axl?s sensitive side reappears in time for the unplugged ballad "Patience," on which he goes from a poignant whistle to a chilling howl. On "Civil War," a rock smash that first appeared on the 1990 benefit album Nobody?s Child (Warner Bros.) and later on Use Your Illusion II, he gets political for the first time and says goodbye to original drummer Steven Adler, a talented Tommy Lee type whose grooves were as nasty as his drug habit.

For some rock aficionados, the GN?R story ends there, less than halfway through Greatest Hits. Adler was replaced by the slicker Matt Sorum, and keyboardist Dizzy Reed joined the band around the same time. Those two changes diminished the group?s heretofore impeccable street cred, and they coincided with a move toward songs that were both more serious and more accessible. The crowning achievement of 1991?s Use Your Illusion I and II, which have combined to sell almost as many copies as the more-celebrated Appetite, is the nine-minute piano-man blowout "November Rain." Like "Patience" and the more concise "Don?t Cry," "November Rain" thrives on the tension between Axl?s emotional purging and Slash?s heroic melodies. Still, the problem with the Illusion singles is that apart from the steroidal "You Could Be Mine," there?s too much Elton John and not enough Aerosmith.

As a songwriting entity, GN?R pretty much ceased to exist with the post-Illusion departure of guitarist Izzy Stradlin?, Axl?s childhood friend and the group?s answer to Keith Richards. In 1993, they released the much-maligned covers album The Spaghetti Incident?, and five of the 14 tracks on Greatest Hits are covers. "Live and Let Die" and "Since I Don?t Have You" aren?t much more fun than "Knockin? on Heaven?s Door," but the other two are keepers in my book. On the Dead Boys? "Ain?t It Fun," Axl and glam-rock cult hero Michael Monroe start a spitting match on the microphone while Slash sends sparks flying in the face of punk purism. "Sympathy for the Devil," from 1994?s Interview with the Vampire soundtrack, appears here for the first time on a GN?R disc. It?s a worthwhile excavation, the sound of a wounded band having one last blast with a song that epitomizes the black heart of rock-and- roll.

 

[jarmo]

Unhealthy appetite (continued)



DO ROCK FANS WANT "Patience" and "November Rain" on the same album as "Sweet Child o? Mine" and "Paradise City"? Of course they do. But the Guns N? Roses holy grail will always be Appetite for Destruction: just ask Axl, who performed a whopping 10 of that disc?s 12 songs when I saw him in concert two years ago. That same ratio applies to Bring You to Your Knees (Law of Inertia), a well-executed new GN?R tribute album featuring 14 heavy hitters from the American hardcore underground. As Law of Inertia label head Ross Siegel recently told AP, this is an idea whose time has come. "Heavy music doesn?t take itself as seriously as it did six years ago, when all hardcore bands were tough-guy, straight-edge killjoys. Now jeans, sunglasses, and whiskey are back; so is singing about girls and rocking out. I thought it would be interesting to take bands from the current environment and have them interpret the most hedonistic band of the last 20 years."

A week after Bring You to Your Knees came out, I went to a sold-out club show by Buffalo?s Every Time I Die, who are playing OzzFest this summer and contribute a straight-faced cover of the folk-rocker "Used To Love Her" to the disc. The band took most of their cues from contemporaries like Converge and Queens of the Stone Age, but frontman Keith Buckley wore a skintight Bon Jovi T-shirt and wasn?t shy about preening for the moshpit. The kids are already calling it glamcore ? and if GN?R could cover first-gen East Coast punks the Dead Boys, then a bunch of umpteenth-gen East Coast punks with metal chops covering GN?R is only natural.

I say East Coast for a reason, because most of the West Coast bands look better than they sound on Bring You to Your Knees. Or maybe they just get outclassed by two prominent New Jersey groups, the Dillinger Escape Plan and God Forbid, who will never be mistaken for Skid Row wannabes. Dillinger add to their formidable legend by running "My Michelle" through their trusty electro/jazz/grind wringer, without ignoring the rock essentials of swinging, shredding, and enunciating: this is one of the hottest deconstructionist covers you?ll hear all year. On "Out ta Get Me," God Forbid frontman Byron Coley crosses Axl with the Bad Brains while the band channel Judas Priest.

Eighteen Visions are the only group who show up with a star producer, Mudrock (Godsmack), which might be part of the reason why their "Paradise City" is so tame. Fellow Californians Bleeding Through lean into "Rocket Queen" with exuberance but sabotage the emo histrionics at the end with irony ? which, as any Dillinger fan knows, is a dead scene. Tuneful Inland Empire geeks the Beautiful Mistake close the album with the haunting "November Rain" clone "Estranged," a prime candidate for the second volume of GN?R?s Greatest Hits. Axl can keep a good band down all he wants, but we?ll always have their back catalog.

---

Source(s): http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/top/multi-page/documents/03734422.asp
   
Thanks to: NixonNRoses



/jarmo

 

[matt88]

Pretty good article, it shows that the best songs werent on the greatest hits

[alternativemonkey]

Who says Axl doesn't get positive press! Axl should be all over this.

Axl - Call up (or write) the Phoenix and thank them for the review, not only the album review, but the positive review of the concert in Toronto.

Axl should give up his disappointment in the Greatest Hits collection and issue a thank you to all those who bought the Greatest Hits and promise to better it with Chinese Democracy.

Come on, Axl . . .  Show some appreciation for your supporters!!!!

[MadmanDan]

Good article!  The guy was clearly well informed and a GNR fan himself

[Ted Nugent]

They've sold 10 million copies of their back catalogue in the past ten years?

Axl doesn't need the money, that's why Chinese Democracy hasn't been finished yet.

[jazjme]

TWAS a nice read! Thanks!

[bolton]

Pretty good article, it shows that the best songs werent on the greatest hits

i think you aren't right,because the best song are on gh(paradise city,wttj,sweet child,ycbm,november rain,don't cry),

[matt88]

Pretty good article, it shows that the best songs werent on the greatest hits

i think you aren't right,because the best song are on gh(paradise city,wttj,sweet child,ycbm,november rain,don't cry),

True but there also missing alot of their best songs 2, plus there are 5 or so covers on it, thats fucken pathetic

[elevendayempire]

That was a great article. Positive about both the old and the new GN'R, grateful for the mainstream attention the GH disc has got the band, but mindful of its many flaws. Pretty much sums up how I feel at the moment - though I notice he didn't mention that Velvet Revolver are likely to capitalise on the attention the GH is getting. After all, ask any random person on the street what they think of when you say "Guns N' Roses," and as many of 'em will say "Slash" as will say "Axl."

SG