Use Your Illusion I & II released 14 years ago

[Mikkamakka]

How many of you realize that it's been 14 years since the USe Your Illusion albums were released?

Maybe you'd like to share the story of how you got the album(s)?


Personally I went and bought the LPs right after school. Then back home and listened to them from Right Next Door To Hell all the way to My World.




/jarmo

My story exactly.

My first favourites were Back Off Bitch, Double Talkin' Jive, Dead Horse, Coma, Civil War, Get in the Ring and YCBM. (Most of them are still my No. 1s, but not BOB, GITR and DH.) I had had high expectations for November Rain, Don't Cry and Knockin' On Heaven's Door, but these songs left me disappointed. To tell the truth I'd been listening the UYIs for two weeks, night and day, and then went back to listening AFD. But some weeks (maybe 2 months) later I fell in love with the albums.

[mick]

i bought them after borrowing them in about 95.. i wish i got them earlier but i just got into the band then.


"Its been 14 years of silence.. its been 14 years of pain..........

You beat me to it 

[grabaraxl]

my father was (still is) a radio dj, and he was on vacations with my mom. so he gave me the phone # of a friend of his that was head of promotion at bmg, the distributor of geffen in europe at the time. so i called him everyday and actually got both vinyls one week before they were released (if i wanted the cd's i had to hold on another week for them). so i remember calling the guy one morning and he told me to go to their offices to get the records. that was probably the longest bus trip ever! i remember holding the records n my hands and trying to decide what should i hear first.
i knew some of the songs at the time - the singles (ycbm and don't cry), the soundtrack/compilation tracks (civil war, kohd) and the songs that had been played at RIR91 (pretty tied up, dtjive, bad apples, estranged), cause another friend of my father that went there gave me a tape with the press conference and the show.
so i decided to go for "november rain" first, since it was the most awaited song for me.
cool times!

[PhillyRiot]

Know what was funny?  It seemed like I waited for ever for UYI to come out!  I do remember the excitement, and GNR delivered.

[Cornell]

Know what was funny?? It seemed like I waited for ever for UYI to come out!? I do remember the excitement, and GNR delivered.

   I know!  It felt like forever since AFD was released and I was dying for more GNR.  Little did I know that was quick! 

[pilferk]

Bought both of them on Cassette, on release day, at Strawberries Music in Avon, CT.

Went home, put on my stereo, and listened to both tapes, straight through.  Favorite songs (and still to this day) were Estranged and Coma.

Didn't get the CD's until about a year or so later...when I bought them because I had all but worn the damn tapes out.

[Scree]

I remember the release date well. I was still at school at the time but was in hospital under going surgery. I was in about a week before release and I kept asking my parents to get me the UYI albums (using my ill status as leverage  )

I went through the surgery on the day of release and later that night when I was coherant enough from the anesthetic wearing off my mum gave me UYI I... not that I gave a shit.. I was still pretty zonked from the operation. The next day however, a male nurse I had befriended (who also loved GnR, as I found out before the surgery) had had a whip round and collected enough from the other nurses to get me the other album. Man was I stoked

My mum wouldn't bring in my portable stereo so I could blast it, so I had to use my walkman. So to this day I have to thank GnR for making me feel  a little better while I recovered.

[Ignatius]

Bought (can't remember which one) the day it was released. I think it was on LP, the other one (tape) was given to me as a present a few days later for my b-day. Thing is, I've had so many UY albums, I totally forgot which came in LP and which on tape. I've owned 3 UYI-1 cds, 2 UYI-2 cds, 1 UYI LP and 1 UY cassete. The tape and LP are gone... So I'm happy to say that out of the 20 million copies those two albums combined sold worlwide, I'm responsible for 7!

Weeks later I bought Nirvana's Nevermind and U2 Achtung Baby...but that's another story.

[vicarious existence]

I had gone to this store call the Record Stop, on LI,(down the street from The HS I went to) who had the albums a week before they were released. so by the time it was released I had already had the illusions for a full week, I drove from nassua Lake Ronkonkoma, the day they said they would have it, I had to pay in advance the week before that, I had gotten two coppies of each, one set in cassettes, and one set in cds, .As soon as I got them  I got back in my care and drove all over LI, along the beaches, and listened to the cassettes, cause thats all I had in my car then, I think I listened to both front to back about 3 times, before I got back to Elmont where I was ,living at the time. Imdediate stand outs were , def Estranged, NR, Dont damn me, Coma, Dont Cry,, ....I had seen them the june before at nassau collisium.. and I was so pumped for these albums.Like AFD I listened every day, for yrs,after. I could go no where in my car without those 3 albums.

Hey man, I went to Sachem too ... and Record Stop always seems to have albums a week or so in advance. I think I got Contraband there a good 4 or 5 days before the official release date...

But anyway, I unfortunately wasn't a GNR fan back when these albums were released (I was like 7) but when I did get them I could not stop playing them for months. I still to this day play them on a regular basis in the car.

[mikec]

I was a freshman in college playing football and I bought the tapes b/c I didn't have a cd player yet.? I got them @ midnight and ran back to my dorm room and put II in my walkman and then preceded to listen to both three times.? I fell asleep with the headphones on and was late to all my classes.? Our coaches found out and were questioning me why I missed they said it was cool b/c they knew I was a GNR freak.?

[WAR41]

haha thats a cool story mike...

I think this topic is done every year, but I am not sure about that.  Anyways on to my 'story'....

My brother was a huge GNR fan at the time.  I was not really all that into music at the time and didnt have that much exposure to it.  I was 10 when they were released.  My brother (who was 14) bought both albums and he listened to them all the time in his room which was right next to mine.  I remember hearing all of the songs, but he played Perfect Crime ALL the time.  I DEFINITELY remember hearing that song non-stop.  The second most played was Bad Apples which honestly is one of the songs I am not too wild about on the Illusions albums.  Then he would do his homework in our kitchen and he would play it on my parent's stereo system set up they had.  He always played UYI 1 more than 2. 

Then he realized that I liked them too, so he gave me his You Could Be Mine cassette single which I still have, and I made a copy of AFD.  Like so many have said, I can't believe it was 14 years ago.  Its incredible!

[Wooody]

first album I ever bought (on cassette) was uyi 2.... I WAS NINE YEARS OLD MOTHERFUCKERS YEAH   

[spacebrain5000]

i'm sad that i can't reminisce with you folk... ah well..
i'm 16 now, i got the albums uhm, last summer.... i don't really have any interesting stories but there were days where i had headphones glued to my head all day for days on end listening to these albums... i tell you, after i discovered gn'r, it basically reignited my love for music. i just fell in love with music again. i still think those albums are the some of the best things i've ever heard.

my favorite thing to do these days is listening to use your illusion II on the roof of my house late at night (like past midnight). i have this thing, i don't know if it's weird or something, but i can't listen to gn'r in front of other people... i mean all of my friends know of my gn'r fanaticism but you pretty much develop emotional attachments to the albums (especially UYI) and listening to it with other people feels too personal.
i got all the gn'r albums chronologically which i'm very glad i did now.

[younggunner]

I wish I could have experienced the build up to the Illusions but I was only 6 yrs old at the time. When I was just getting into GNr I was on Napster and I said to myself lets see what this band plays besides Jungle,Scom and PC. So I dloaded Dust N Bones and NR. I was hooked after that.

This was all about 5 yrs ago. I was a soph in hs. I went out and bout the albums and was blown away. I liek many here could not put the albums down. Everynight I would just sit in my room and listen to them over and over.

The great thing about those 2 albums is that over time they have gotten better for me. I never got into some of the songs. Partculary Estranged. And then liek 2 years ago, I finally "got it"

Amazing albums.

CD will be my oppurtunity to experience what many of you had experienced prior to the Illusions. It wont be a public spectacle like the Illusions were but in terms of just urself and that record it will be the same.

[nesquick]

I watched the YCBM videoclip on Canal + (Top 50), and I was like "wow? ". I loved everything. I loved the video, T2 was a huge success but I was too young to see it. I only had the Video to watch some images of the movie. I was fascinated by this band, especially by Axl and Slash (and Scharzenegger ). Then I got the UYI. I was blown away by Use 2. It's still my favourite album of all time. I think Use 2 is even better than AFD.
"my world" didn't count. For me the album ended at track 13 (DC- alternative version). I think I will listen to this record until I die. The piano is so fantastic.

[Aero]

my mom did buy UYI 1 cassete for her, I did listen to it and became a fan 

14 years...

14 years of silcence 

14 years that are gone forever 

come on axl stop loosing your time

[disease51883]

Let's see. 14 years ago, I was eight years old. I wasn't an active music fan at the time, and I basically listened to whatever my friends and family did. GNR was the biggest band in the world though. So it was hard to miss them. My mom always played "Sweet Child O' Mine", and my friends (who were a bit older) always watched MTV and played "November Rain". I got more into music during the post-grunge era. I saw GNR as a catchy band from a genre I had no interest in. I had a ton of run-ins with the fascist Indiana system during my senior year, and I eventually closed myself off from the world. I decided to give GNR another chance at that point. Of course, it blew me away this time. Heh. I guess my GNR fandom was a long time coming.

I'm not even really in a posting mood. I had to say something about this topic though. I read  fans, Merck, the band, and everyone else spreading Chinese Democracy propaganda all the time, and it's to the point that I don't even get that excited anymore. I stopped worrying about the album a couple years ago. It makes things a lot easier. If it ever comes out, it'll be a great, unexpected bonus. Then I read this thread, and I makes me want *my* GNR first day record-buying experience. It just doesn't seem fair. Fucking Good Charlotte get their asses wiped for them while we have to wait and wait and wait... No, no, it's just an album...

"It's just an album... It's just an album... It's just an album..."

[Eric]

I bouught both of the on cassette-I remember the exitment of them coming out-I think it was the first ever midnight sale for a release-

[gnrfan1797]

11 years old and allready a die hard gnr fan my dad took me to late stay open of the house of gutairs to buy them. I cranked them 2 cd's for day's