Duff: The chords to that song I wrote when I first moved to L.A., when I didn't know me anybody and was kinda feeling a little down. So that kinda came out, like reaching for something, you know?
Slash: We were in the van, coming back from San Francisco to L.A., and we just started playing the basic chords - it was on acoustic at the time. Then we got into this 'Take me down to the paradise city, where the girls are fat and they got big titties' thing. I think initially it started out with 'the grass is green', and I thought, 'That's lame!' But we ended up keeping the 'grass is green' thing. The 'big titty' thing was just my own problem [laughs].
Slash: "Paradise City" we wrote before we were thinking about going in the studio.
Axl: The verses are more about being in the jungle; the chorus is like being back in the Midwest or somewhere. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and just looked up at the blue sky and went "Wow, what is all that, it's so big out there." Everything was more innocent. There are parts of the song that have more of a down home feel.
Slash: The best indicative of Guns N' Roses songs from where I'm coming from is probably "Paradise City." That's like right up my alley. And that was one of those songs when, as far as the guitars are concerned, that I wrote without even having to think about it.
Axl: When I started putting the overlayers on the vocals (I put five tracks on there), it seemed that it came out like some Irish or Scottish heritage. One of the weird things is I had a feeling it would go over good in Europe. The kids there sang Brownstone, they sang It's So Easy, Mama Kin, and these other songs that they'd heard on the EP. They also sang Paradise City and they'd never heard it!
Izzy: [The crowd] sang as loud as our stage monitors. We could hear them over the monitors.
Slash: The actual riff is heavy as far as heavy goes, but at the same time I have a major blues thing happening.
Slash: Sometimes [the song that used to intimidate me] used to be the intro to "Paradise City," before I go into the actual song. Or definitely having to do the fucking guitar-solo, because I never have that mapped out, you know.
Izzy: Listen to the end of Paradise City, I'm just doing the power chords, G and D. And Slash just goes manic in the last four bars. It's incredible.
Slash: There's a long lead on the end of "Paradise City," which was basically improvised.
Slash: I heard it on the radio yesterday... I have no ill feelings - no regrets about any of the stuff I've ever done. The only reason you did it was because you were into it at the time. You never look back and go, "Fuck, I wish I hadn't done that." It's all an adventure. Life is a big adventure. You go along with how it goes. It was written in a fucking van between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I think when I was originally singing it, it was "Take me down to Paradise City where the girls are fat and they've got big titties." Paradise City could be anywhere.
Steven: I love Paradise City ?cause I always wanted to get one bass drum to sound like two and I got that at the end of that song.
http://www.gnrsource.com/songinfo/afd/paradise.htm
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