Don't Buy 33 1/3 Trash on UYI

[Teapot]

Just a warning: Do not waste $10 on the Use Your Illusion I and II entry in the 33 1/3 series.
I bought this piece of crap with high hopes. A friend sent me the entry for the Beastie Boys ?Paul?s Boutique,? a seminal album not only by the Beasties but for rap in general as it was the last to sample before artists demanded fees for the works to be sampled.
Anyway, the book was incredibly well researched and based on extensive interviews with those involved with the creation of the album. It also detailed the lives of the Beasties at this crossroad in their career, a time when they were looking to bury the frat-boy image of License to Ill with something completely different.
It was a true insider?s take and offered endless anecdotes as well as a fascinating look into the songwriting process. I couldn?t put the damn thing down.
So then I ordered the Use Your Illusion entry.
I knew I was in trouble when I read the back of the book.
?Use Your Illusion exemplifies what it means to get so caught up in the quest for pop totality that there is no way back. Use Your Illusion was lame crap by definition in the subculture that I grew up with as a college radio DJ and post-punk fan.?
It goes on to say as time went on the work became more ?unsettled? and ?harder to grasp? and ?emblematic of the baroque fancies that musical inspiration can inspire.?
Ugghhh.
I ordered it from Amazon so no looking back.
The author is Eric Weisbard who edited the Spin Alternative Record Guide and was a former music editor at Village Voice.
These are fine accomplishments but when someone like this is chosen to write something about GNR you know you?re in trouble.
The first 20 or so mind-numbing pages explore the impact of corporate rock and Soundscan and I don?t know what all else. He makes literary and film allusions which he attempts to tie back to GNR.
And then he hits the reader with this sentence: ?This is probably a good time to announce that, while I rehash fading memories of a period when I had UYI on my stereo borderline obsessively, I don?t intend to listen to it again until the very last chapter of this book. Maybe I won?t even like it anymore.?
The author of the Paul?s Boutique book performed like a journalist. He said, ?I like this album but for this book I want to find out more about it and maybe give the reader something he never knew about it, the behind the scenes process.? And then he went out and did the leg work.
But Weisbard, god bless him, or damn him, sat at his computer and started typing, occasionally hitting the Internet for old reviews and to make sure he got the song titles right.
It is one long and horrifyingly boring rock-critic circle-jerk, much like Danny Sugerman?s unreadable book about Guns where he tried to paint Axl as some Dionysian hero like Morrison.
This book is just a long essay, a thesis that paints Guns as a bloated, corporate rock machine on its last legs (which arguably they were but I don?t need to read more than 100 pages of art critic snobbery to know that).
And I?m not slamming Weisbard. I?m not going to be some crazed fanboy who brings out the daggers any time someone disparages GNR. The band gave its critics plenty of ammunition to crucify them with (Roberta, bicycle shorts, 24 changes of clothes in one show, etc.).
I?m blaming the publishers. I feel misled.
Or maybe I was simply ignorant to what this series is all about, believing that all the books followed the impressive formula of the Paul?s Boutique book.
Why give the green light to someone with a great deal of disdain for this particular record? Throughout the book he goes to great lengths to say how his friends and fellow critics all hated GNR and thought of them as talentless assholes. Again, it?s fine to hear that sort of thing to provide balance, but that?s all the book is (though I?m sure Weisbard would say it is more than that).
Anyway, there are sections of the book where four pages pass without one mention of GNR. During these sections the author expounds on whatever tangent he found himself following. The book reads like he wrote it in one night in a blur of hazy memories.
I bought this to get an insider?s look at the making of these albums, not to hear some fucker ramble on and theorize and postulate about a record he admitted he hadn?t listened to for more than 15 years.
Jesus, I found myself skipping pages until I saw GNR mentioned more than once in passing on the same page.
At the end he did a song by song breakdown like the author of the Paul?s Boutique book did. But while the latter gave an in-depth look into what went into the creation of each song, Weisbard gave cheeky and pointless observations.
For instance: Bad Apples??More rote glam boogie woogie and Exile copping.?
14 Years??This never came off at all and they made it the second track on this volume. The outtakes disc, the way Elvis Costello albums have expanded in reissue form to always include an entire second CD, has become a reissues commonplace, but here it was just all mixed in with the original.?
Again, I?m not going to go in a frothing rage because the guy doesn?t dig the album. But the book should have been billed as an extended socio-political, nut-jacking, hand-job waste of time if you?re expecting something of substance.
There are a few anecdotes which I?ll relate to save you the time.
One is Sean Penn?s defense of ?One in a Million? after a NY Times reviewer named Pareles compares Axl to Andrew Dice Clay.
Penn wrote, ?Pareles is a liberal clich?. Guns N? Roses song One in a Million is like a Capa photo of war. It is a no-holds-barred reminder that hatred, fear and bigotry are as alive today as they were when the American media called this war of domestic unrest a finished cause. One in a Million is a brave song. The fear and anger of it are what Pareles condemns.?
The other anecdote involves a show Guns played in Argentina. The local news showed Axl and Slash pissing off a balcony onto their fans below (don?t know if this is true but they were fucked on drugs so probably so). A father saw his daughter in that crowd shrieking with joy. When she got home he told her that she could not go and see the GNR show that weekend. She said, ?I?ll kill myself if you don?t let me go.? Moments later she shot herself in the head with her father?s .38 rifle. The dad found her and then killed himself.
This was from an article in the London Times so the story is true.
One more. During the outrage over the Manson song Axl attempted to calm the critics by saying he would devote some of the profits of the album to a ?save the dolphins? charity. (Don?t know if this is true but probably. Weird fucker.)
Anyway, that?s it for me. I stopped contributing to this board long ago (and I hardly contributed at all to be honest) because the majority of posts have devolved to,

?How many songs do you think will be on the album??
?What do you think the first single will be??
?Tell me your dreams about Axl.?
?What sitcoms do you think Axl likes??
?Top 10 reasons why people who don?t slavishly love the new Guns n? Roses support terrorism.?
?Topic banned by Jarmo.?

Anyway, figured you?d enjoy something useful. Or maybe not. Now you can go back to listing what animals Axl would have if he actually did live on a farm.
I?ll start.
A dolphin.

[estebanf]

I never wanted you to be so full of anger 

Anyway, figured you?d enjoy something useful. Or maybe not. Now you can go back to listing what animals Axl would have if he actually did live on a farm.
I?ll start.
A dolphin.

 

[icpillusions]

Anyway, figured you?d enjoy something useful. Or maybe not. Now you can go back to listing what animals Axl would have if he actually did live on a farm.
I?ll start.
A dolphin

Dolphins live on farms?

Anyway, it's not like we didn't know this stuff already. 

[Skunk]

Thanks for the review. I think GNR is one of those bands that rock critics like to talk about and put down because it makes them feel smart, but really it's just unimaginative and currently safe.
It's these people that will get on UYI for being bloated or overblown, and then of course reserve their cheers for much less talented acts who play exceedingly simple music (and there's nothing wrong with that, but when you lose any sense of objectivity, then the music journalists really are just flapping their arms trying to stay afloat, to stay cool and relevant in what they percieve as a scene or a current trend).


Also, the Top 10 reasons why people who don?t slavishly love the new Guns n? Roses support terrorism...
I don't know the reasons, they just do. I guess because when you're an idiot that's a 24/7 kind of thing.?

[W. Adam S]

Now you can go back to listing what animals Axl would have if he actually did live on a farm.
I?ll start.
A dolphin.

  That one sentance just summed up how lame this forum has become. I mean for fucks sake 'what GNR tatoo should I get?' or 'what GNR song is best to mourn to?', cant you people make up your own fucking minds over anything? Most of the threads now start something like 'so I was walking down the street and got to thinking...' or 'so what would be your number 1 blah blah blah'.

[michaelvincent]

?How many songs do you think will be on the album??
?What do you think the first single will be??
?Tell me your dreams about Axl.?
?What sitcoms do you think Axl likes??
?Top 10 reasons why people who don?t slavishly love the new Guns n? Roses support terrorism.?
?Topic banned by Jarmo.?

Or my favorite:

"Will Catcher be on CD?"

We don't know. Let it die.

[MotherGooseLuvR]

Thanks for the review. I think GNR is one of those bands that rock critics like to talk about and put down because it makes them feel smart, but really it's just unimaginative and currently safe.

I disagree.

I think critics put GNR down because the band was so great at one point and had so much potential.? Critics used to love them.? They were the Rolling Stones of their generation.

But UYI was, by many people's standards, a bloated, indulgent, aimless, self-important album.? The fact that the band crumbled shortly thereafter seems to support those critics' claims.?

Critics don't bitch about Warrant or Poison.? Why?? Because those bands never really had a chance to give the world something special.? GNR did.? The fact that they couldn't deliver on their promise is both disappointing and fascinating.

[Skunk]

"Couldn't deliver on their promise"?
I think GNR did give the world something special. They fell apart afterwards, true, but i think it's pretty weak to knock what they did because of what they didn't do. It's my opinion that the UYI albums were completely indulgent and aimless, (and maybe bloated)... but i don't think any of those things change the quality of the music.

[14 Yrs Of Silence]

It's these people that will get on UYI for being bloated or overblown, and then of course reserve their cheers for much less talented acts who play exceedingly simple music (and there's nothing wrong with that, but when you lose any sense of objectivity, then the music journalists really are just flapping their arms trying to stay afloat, to stay cool and relevant in what they percieve as a scene or a current trend).

I agree with this 100%.  Its very popular to call UYI bloated, but I don't agree with that at all.  I love the UYI albums and while having released one album with all the best tracks may have quieted the critics some, I would never complain because 1.  Its the last time we got any new music and 2.  I think all the songs were worthy of being released. 

[Skunk]

It's these people that will get on UYI for being bloated or overblown, and then of course reserve their cheers for much less talented acts who play exceedingly simple music (and there's nothing wrong with that, but when you lose any sense of objectivity, then the music journalists really are just flapping their arms trying to stay afloat, to stay cool and relevant in what they percieve as a scene or a current trend).

I agree with this 100%.? Its very popular to call UYI bloated, but I don't agree with that at all.? I love the UYI albums and while having released one album with all the best tracks may have quieted the critics some, I would never complain because 1.? Its the last time we got any new music and 2.? I think all the songs were worthy of being released.?

Right... i think they were all worthy of release too, and the only reason people even hint otherwise is because they were all released at once.
It is kind of funny though, the idea that UYI was too much... oh, so GNR should release less? Watch what you wish for.

[Robman?]

Thanks for the warning, no way I'm buying that now 

[MotherGooseLuvR]

Had the Sex Pistols lasted long enough to hire Bob Ezrin to do a concept album rock opera, I think they'd have been greeted with the same reviews that UYI gets.

Is it so hard for people to imagine that good bands can make bad albums?  It doesn't mean they're not talented artists.  GNR's problem was they made their bad albums, but never rebounded.  UYI might be looked back on differently if it didn't signal the end of the band.  It was a downward trajectory from which the band could never recover.

And while a lot of that album sucks, there's still a lot of really good things about it.  You can hear the different creative forces fighting for control of the band.  It's a pretty fascinating record, even if it's not that successful.

[W. Adam S]

I love UYI though, I cant understand why people slate them. I think they are very balanced, some tracks are overblown (in a good way) some straight forward rock and roll 

[marknroses]

Some of the greatest rock songs ever, let alone GNR, come from UYI.
We may all agree that there are 2-3 songs that it could be without but aside from that, it has something for every occasion.

If you go on YouTube and watch Axl's rant after Bad Obsession in Phildelphia in December 1991, you can get his opinion on critics who had their biased opinions on GNR. It's pretty funny actually.

MNW

[cody6977]

I actually laughed a couple times in this thread....thanks for the banter!

[benchiefjr]

Now you can go back to listing what animals Axl would have if he actually did live on a farm.
I?ll start.
A dolphin.

  That one sentance just summed up how lame this forum has become. I mean for fucks sake 'what GNR tatoo should I get?' or 'what GNR song is best to mourn to?', cant you people make up your own fucking minds over anything? Most of the threads now start something like 'so I was walking down the street and got to thinking...' or 'so what would be your number 1 blah blah blah'.

thats what happens when there isn't a CD

[estrangedpaul]

Had the Sex Pistols lasted long enough to hire Bob Ezrin to do a concept album rock opera, I think they'd have been greeted with the same reviews that UYI gets.

Even if the music turned out to be good? Thats ridiculous. How come when Queen, The Who, Pink Floyd or the Beatles do double albums, concept albums, rock operas, etc., they get praised as geniuses, but when The Sex Pistols/Guns N' Roses do it, its slated? I realise the irony of the Sex Pistols releasing such an album, but if the music is good, surely that's all that matters.

Is it so hard for people to imagine that good bands can make bad albums?? It doesn't mean they're not talented artists.?

But their not bad albums. Are you saying the only reason GnR are considered one of the best rock bands ever is because of Appetite For Destruction and G n' R Lies?. I'm sorry, but you don't get their reputation on the basis of two albums. Obviously November Rain, for example, had something to do with it. A lot of people consider it one of the best songs ever, so for that song alone the UYI's were worthwhile.

On UYI1: Dust N' Bones, Don't Cry, Perfect Crime, Bad Obsession, Back Off Bitch, Double Talkin' Jive, November Rain, Don't Damn Me, Dead Horse, Coma
On UYI2: Civil War, 14 Years, Get In The Ring, Breakdown, Pretty Tied Up, Locomotive, Estranged, You Could Be Mine

Out of 30 songs, theyre's 18 that are undisputed classics, as good as and worthy to have been on Appetite For Destruction. How can two albums with so many great songs be considered a failure? Yeah they were directionless, and yeah they're were songs comin from all over the place, but the same could be said of Physical Graffiti and the White Album and many other great rock albums.

The only songs I would consider pointless were You Ain't The First, Don't Cry alt lyrics, the two cover versions and My World. All the other 25 are great in their own way.

GNR's problem was they made their bad albums, but never rebounded.? UYI might be looked back on differently if it didn't signal the end of the band.? It was a downward trajectory from which the band could never recover.

And while a lot of that album sucks, there's still a lot of really good things about it.? You can hear the different creative forces fighting for control of the band.? It's a pretty fascinating record, even if it's not that successful.

You're post sums up that every criticism that has ever been of the Illusion albums has nothing to do with music, which should be all that matters.

[RJ1221]

why do people write such long posts? no one's gonna read all that

[W. Adam S]

why do people write such long posts? no one's gonna read all that

FFS ^ this is what Im talking about, anyone with a half decent education (ie you can wipe your own backside) can read half a page of text, stop dumbing yourself down and stop being so lazy.

[MotherGooseLuvR]

On UYI1: Dust N' Bones, Don't Cry, Perfect Crime, Bad Obsession, Back Off Bitch, Double Talkin' Jive, November Rain, Don't Damn Me, Dead Horse, Coma
On UYI2: Civil War, 14 Years, Get In The Ring, Breakdown, Pretty Tied Up, Locomotive, Estranged, You Could Be Mine

Out of 30 songs, theyre's 18 that are undisputed classics,

Guess we just disagree about what makes an "undisputed classic."?

Here are some songs I consider "undisputed classics:"? Anarchy in the UK, Johnny B. Goode, In My Life, Rock Around the Clock, Satisfaction, My Generation, I Feel Good, What's Goin' On, Blue Suede Shoes, Thriller, American Girl, Paranoid, Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love, Sweet Home Alabama, Keep On Rockin' In The Free World, etc...

Aside from GNR Fanboys, I doubt there are too many people in the world who consider "Get In The Ring" an undisputed classic.? Same for... well... all of those songs.? I honestly don't think any of those songs would be voted as "undisputed classics."? I'll bet most people in the world aren't even aware that GNR did a song called "Bad Obsession," much less would think it's a classic on par with the greatest songs ever written.

A great band with a huge body of work would be lucky to write five undisputed classics in their career.? I don't think GNR had more undisputed classics on UYI than the Beatles had in their entire career.? But I can see how it would seem that way to a die hard GNR lover.?

SCOM, WTTJ and Paradise City are "undisputed classics."