Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely You Can't Be
Serious Podcast. I am here with my good friend de Graves.
We're about to dive into a matchup for the ages.
This is a Titan versus a Titan, Guns n' Roses
Appetite for Destruction versus acdc's Back in Black.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely You Can't Be
Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten
of eighties and nineties pop culture with your co hosts
James D. Graves and Jason Kliban.
Speaker 3: So today we're going to be talking about Appetite for
Destruction first. Obviously Back in Black came out before Appetite
for Destruction, but we just decided to shake things up
a little bit and proceed with guns and Roses first. Today.
Our next episode will be on acdc's Back in Black,
and then we will talk final judgment at the end
of that episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these guys sort of took the world by storm
out of nowhere. These guys brought an intensity and a
grittiness and a power that I hadn't really experienced yet.
You mentioned that this album came out in nineteen eighty seven,
and for those of you who are listening and you
start to think in your brain, you're like, wait a minute.
And if you're like me, you attached songs to certain
time periods, you're like, well, Sweet Child of Mine was
popular with Summer of eighty eight. Paradise City really was
popular at the beginning in sort of eighty nine. It
took a long time. This was a slow builder. It
would eventually become the largest selling debut album of all time.
Speaker 3: So these are two powerhouses that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's dive in and see what happens.
Speaker 3: Okay, So starting out history of the band, Interestingly, nobody
goes by their given name. We're here to tell you
a story about Jeffrey and William and Michael and Saul
and other Michael. Nobody knows who those guys are. So yeah,
you have Jeffrey Dean Isabelle who became Izzy. You have
William Bruce Rose Junior, who was then William Bruce Bailey
who was then w Period Axel Rose. And then you
had Michael Andrew mccagan who was tough, and then you
had Michael Coletti who became Steven Adler. And then finally
you had Saul Hudson, who everybody knows as Slash.
Speaker 1: Cool names cool.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, Slash I think has has a super interesting history.
He was born over in the UK. He was born
in England. His mom was a clothes designer and designed
clothes for people like David Bowie and Janis Joplin and
quite a few other famous folks. And his dad was
an artist who designed album covers for Neil Young and
Joni Mitchell. I mean, that's a pretty cool, pretty cool
couple of parents. And so his mom moves out to
LA to pursue her fashion career and he starts going
to school in LA and they're friends with you know,
a lot of different actors and entertainers and musicians, and
an actor named Seymour Castle is the one who gave
Slash his nickname. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one other little tidbit that I think was interesting
about Slash's mom, in particular, she had a relationship with
David Bowie. Slash actually walked in on them together doing
The Wild Thing, which is interesting because later Axel Rose
gets in a fistfight with David Bowie at one of
his concerts.
Speaker 3: So, oh really, I didn't know that. Oh yeah, So
Slash starts going to school out in California and he
becomes a kick butt BMX writer. Yeah, and there's a
local school that has a really great place to either
go skate if you're a skater, or go ride BMX
bikes if you're a bmxer. And one day Slash is
out there and he sees this kid go shooting up
into the air and then come down face first into
the concrete and he's like, oh gosh, and he runs over.
He's like, are you okay, and kids like yeah yeah.
He's like, man, let me help you. I'll take you
home home, and he goes home with them. They become
fast friends, and this kid shows him how to play
the guitar. He's he's like, hey, I got this guitar.
He's like, oh cool, can you show me how? And
so this kid, Michael Coletti, who had been renamed Stevendler
Appler Yes, showed Slash's first chords on the guitar.
Speaker 1: That's It's incredible. What a moment in rock and roll
history that Face Slam put together the bits that would
become guns n' Roses.
Speaker 3: Several hundred miles away in the middle of the country
is he who was at that time Jeff, although I
Axel says he was always easy to him. But I've
heard different stories. But is he and Bill who becomes Axel?
Is he and Axel both are going to school together
in Lafayette, Indiana.
Speaker 1: I think that's so interesting. Nobody from this band was
from La No Yeah.
Speaker 3: They all they in La Yeah, moved in at various
times in their lives. Before Izzy moved out to LA
he and Axel would play together in a garage band.
And when I say in a garage band, I mean
they only played in the garage. There were no they
did no gigging because they're in Lafayette, Indiana.
Speaker 1: There was not a hop in musical scene in Lafayette. No.
Speaker 3: Axel had a rough childhood, you know, he did. He
had some weird connection that I don't want to go
into with his biological father. He thought that his stepfather
was his biological father until he was seventeen. There was
a lot of physical abuse, according to him, at the
house and an extremely religious household. And I mean the
benefit that came from that is that he got to
he learned to play the piano, and he learned to
sing in front of people. At his church. They call
it the Bailey Trio. He and his brother and sister
would sing together in the church.
Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing when we go through this, how
many artists get their start scene in church.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I also developed a talent for getting in fights
and stealing things and ended up getting arrested in the
neighborhood of twenty different times as a juvenile delinquent. And
so they were about to make him an habitual offender,
and he said, I think it's time to move out
to California. Just the year before, Izzy, who had graduated
from high school was the only one who had graduated
from high school with a impressive D average, had moved out.
And he thought, I'm gonna go find my buddy Izzy,
And so he hopped on a bus and made his
way out to La So, while Axel had been getting
in trouble with the law, Izzy had been trying to
get together with a band in La And so shortly
after he got there, he joined this band called Naughty Women,
which was a punk band, and he played the drums
for them. And then in the first show, the audience
members suddenly rushed the stage and began attacking all of
the musicians, and Izzy says, I just grabbed my symbol
stand and stood with it like a bat, trying to
find them off, yell and get the f away from
That was his introduction to the rock scene in La.
Speaker 1: You know, is he later on doesn't enjoy the chaotic
rock and roll lifestyle no, which I was just gonna say.
I respect him so much for this. You know, we'll
talk about their history here a little bit. But he
quits the band in ninety one at the peak of
their popularity, and he's like, you know, let's screw this.
Speaker 3: I'm out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't care. In my mind, I'm like, Okay,
who is the most valuable member of this band? And
I started going through it, I'm like, well, Axel provides
all the attitude and the distinctive voice, and I mean,
he is the star. Right then you take well Slash
is this guitar god, And then you start to think, man,
this guy contributed so much to just the sound of
the band, right, Yeah, Well, Duff was songwriter, cohesive guy.
He contributed songs. Is he is sort of the guy
that flies under the raider, but he's the guy who
wrote most of the album.
Speaker 3: Oh he wrote Yeah, he wrote a ton of songs
on the album, and he's the guy that put him
together for the first time. Really, if you have to
pick one as the founding member, it's going to be him.
And you know, it's interesting because we just we just
went through all of these people. And he mentioned after
he left the band that Steven Adler left not too
long before or not too much before him, because he
had become too addicted to heroin and couldn't play well anymore.
His last concert was far made in nineteen ninety, but
they replaced him as a drummer, and Izzy said the
band didn't sound the same anymore, and.
Speaker 1: So Steven's contribution was huge, obviously not I mean, I
don't know this. He said that, so these five guys
came together and made a tight fist that they're all
five irreplaceable.
Speaker 3: So after Izzy's horrendous experience in his first punk show,
he within just a couple of weeks says, and I'm
not going to play with these guys. I'll join this
other band, also a punk band called the Atoms, And
within days he gets his drum kit stolen from his car,
and so he's like, heck with punk. These guys are jerks.
Is there a heavy metal band I can join? And
so he finds his band called Shire and then he
took up the guitar at that point because he didn't
have any drums anymore. Nice, okay. So then in nineteen
eighty three, Izzy forms Hollywood Rows with Axel Rose.
Speaker 1: Anything goes as a song that makes it to Appetite
for Destruction, that was originally a Hollywood Rose song. Yeah,
when you listen to it's it's not the same. It's
missing Slash's guitar, the lyrics are different. They had some
grown up to do, so Hollywood Roses were the beginning.
Speaker 3: So eighty three Hollywood Rose forms with Izzy and Axel
and the remaining members of this other band called La Guns.
La Guns was a band that included Tracy Guns, and
so they took Hollywood Rose, they took La Guns. They
put them together and it was Guns n' Roses, and
so Tracy Guns is with them just long enough for
the name Guns n' Roses to form before he leaves
and reforms La Guns again. By this time, by eighty three, Steven,
who had initially started, you know, with the guitar, had
learned to play the drums and He and Slash had
previously formed this band called road Crew, which was named
after a Motorhead song called We Are the road Crew.
And while in the road Crew they needed a bass player.
They put out this ad in a magazine called Music Connection,
and Duff McKagan is the one that answers that call. Now,
Duff was a guy who had come from Seattle and
decided to come down to LA and he didn't know
what he's didn't know what he's gonna play. It's like
I could play the drums, I could play the guitar,
I could play the bass. They need a bass player,
all right, I'll answer these guys, and so.
Speaker 1: You can sing too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so Slash, Duff and Steven together are in
road Crew. Guns n' Roses forms and then quickly Tracy
Guns leaves and then their drummer leaves, and quickly Slash
and Steven and Duff are all joined together and we
have our classic lineup Guns n' Roses. First show is
March twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five, and that is with
the Bassis all back. And you know he's the one
that leaves. Why Duff joins up, and then Tracy and
Axe will get into a fight, and so Tracy leaves,
so they call Slash to replace Tracy. And then when
the drummer, Rod Gardner quits, then they say, okay, we
got Steven, let's bring him aboard. And then they rehearsed
for two days and they did their debut show as
the Classic lineup on June sixth, nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: It's it's really interesting how these guys all kind of
came together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, then, you know, Duff had left this Seattle
band that he was with and they had previously booked
some shows, but since his band didn't exist anymore, he said, hey, guys,
I got these shows up in Seattle. Why don't we
go play those shows. Hey, that sounds like a good idea.
We can go, you know, travelo coast, it'll be great,
except it's not the coast and get together have a
few lifts. So they they start to venture up to
the these clubs, and they're in two rickety old bands,
which both break down along the way. They end up
hitch hiking the rest of the way up to Seattle,
only to arrive to find out that if you don't
promote yourself, the venue's not going to promote you and
nobody's going to come see your show. Well, like guys
going to war. This created a bond among the members
of the band and they became very tight knit group.
And so they got back to la and they started
playing clubs like the Whiskey a Go Go, the Roxy
and the Troubadour, and this girl who's their pseudo manager
at the time, says, you know, why don't you guys
come live in my apartment. It's across the street from
the Whiskey a Go Go, and you know will we'll
make it work. And so they all five of the
band members are living with her and another girl in
this house and this is the you know these this
is where you see the pizza boxes with the songs
written on them. But they start playing these shows. And
the way it works with bands in LA is if
you're good enough on Wednesday, they put you on the
Thursday rotation. You're good enough on Thursday, you go to Friday,
and then if you're the best bands around, you get
into play on Saturday nights and ultimately that's that's where
they got Okay, So just just an aside, just to
quicken aside. You know, these guys are poorer than dirt.
They're living with somebody so that they can afford to
have a place to stay. And so they'll get these
jobs in various places. And one of the places that
both Axel and Slash worked together was the video store.
Can you imagine there's a point in your life you
could have gone and rented a VHS copy of One
Crazy Summer from Axel.
Speaker 1: Roads Excuse me, Slash, can you tell me where you're
a copy of The Goonies is.
Speaker 3: So before one show, Slash sees a nice hat that
he likes in a store, and so he gives himself
a five finger discount for this felt top hat. And
then it happens to pass by another store where he
sees this kind of cool looking Native American style belt
and he's like, hey, that'd look good on the hat,
and so he takes the bell also for free and
puts it on the hat, and that is where you
get the Slash trademark look. So they are getting a
following at this point. They put on an incredible show.
If you can say anything about Axel Rosa that he
is fully invested in the live performances that they do.
And they start gathering and getting a lot of attention.
They had several record labels come and look at them.
But the A and R guy for Geffen is this
guy named Tom and they call hims Zoots comes to
the clubs. He actually got hired by Geffen because he
was the guy who had initially signed Motley Crue and
Geffen was looking for the next Motley Crue. So they party,
of course, hey, we're going to get signed. This is
going to be great. They're enjoying the fruits of their
labor momentarily, and then the next morning, of course, they're
running late, and then Axel loses his contacts and refuses
to go in his glasses, and so he's scrambling. They're
already late, they're already like an hour late, and he's scrambling,
and so this girl is trying to help him find
the contacts. Slash is trying to help him find the contest.
They're looking all over and finally, like Slash pulls them
out of this pair of jeans that actually been warring
three days before. He's like, all right, we found him,
and they look around and Axel's gone. He's just gone, Yeah,
we found the contacts, but we lost Axel.
Speaker 1: A little foreshadowing of events to come right, and.
Speaker 3: So they're they're an hour and a half late. At
this point, they finally look out the window at the
whiskey of Go Go and Axel is sitting in this
meditative state on the roof of the whiskey of Go Go.
I just can't even imagine, just you know, like, hey,
this is it, you know, this who home? So they
kept David Geffen waiting for two hours for them to
arrive to sign the contract. I can't even I mean this,
these guys, you know, it's like we've heard all the warnings.
Nobody else will sign them because of the volatility of
the behavior of these guys. And they show up two
hours late. But in a move that kind of staggers
the imagination, David Geffen went ahead and signed them anyway, uh,
and it turned out it worked out well far.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's just let's just review. We've got habitual criminal, criminals, criminals.
We've got total debauchery, we've got drug use, yes, we've
got late for performance. Yeah, we've got wild, dangerous looking band, yeah,
not pretty. It all comes together beautifully. It makes a symphony,
though I don't know.
Speaker 3: The record label wants to take advantage of the fact
that these guys are hot right now, at least taught
in LA and so they put out an album called Live.
Speaker 1: Like an F and Suicide. It's kind of like the
Prince symbol. There's some symbolic like Hubert like symbols in
the title of the album. So it's live and then
live and then the Cubert sign and then like a Suicide. Yes,
so we always thought it was Live like an F
and Suicide, but the songs on this EP are reckless live.
Nice Boys moved to the city in Mammachin. This is
the first side of the Lies album. If you're familiar
with GENR Lies.
Speaker 3: So then the next problem to solve is who do
we get to produce this album? And they worked with
Spencer Prawfer, who had done Quiet Riot's Metal Health, which
was the first metal album to ever reach the top
ten on the pop charts, and he worked through several
sessions with them. They considered Mutt Lang, who we've talked about,
you know, with def Leppard and who was the producer
of Back in Black, and ultimately they end up with
this guy named Mike Klink.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the producers that you didn't mention.
One of the possible producers was Paul Stanley of Kiss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and oddly they decided not to go with him
because he wanted to change up the drum set on
Steven Adler's drums too much, and Steven was like, no,
screw you, Paul Stanley, not changing my drums for you.
Speaker 1: So basically, so far, if you're keeping score at home,
Van Halen said few to Gene Simmons, and Guns and
Roses said few to Paul Stanley.
Speaker 3: Okay, yep. Did Ace Freely has he come in to
play at all? Not yet?
Speaker 1: Not yet, but we're still early on this.
Speaker 3: I feel like he's going to I think Ace Freely actually,
you know what. Ace Freely was the inspiration for the
guitar solo by Mike McCready from She Is, where he
gets the guitar solo for Alive.
Speaker 1: All Right, Peter Chris pressures off.
Speaker 3: So looking at Guns n' Roses not heavy metal. This
is a hard rock band. It's hard hard rock band.
Speaker 1: And when they when they advertise for a guitar player,
they mentioned they looking for somebody with blues influence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and sashes slash as a unique style and it
is very much a hard rock or the term that
was coming out just about this time, a classic rock
kind of style. And he actually, you know the guy
who started managing the band at that point. When he
showed up, he was just like, I don't think Slash
had ever changed the strings on his guitar. So he
goes out and buys him a fifty nine less Paul replica.
This is not a Gibson less Paul. This is a
replica that is built by Chris Derek. Now, replica doesn't
mean to knockoff. It means that this guy, he was
a handmade guitar maker. They called him luthierst but he
I mean, he got the wood for this guitar from
an old barn and he put it together himself, and
this became the guitar. This is Slash's go to guitar
he still owns today, and it had a sound that
was different than anybody that was on the radio. Right
then they did their recording at a studio called Darryld
Dragan's Rumbo Records. You know who Darryl Dragan is, No,
he's Captain from Captain And to Neil.
Speaker 4: Just hearing it that one of the greatest hard Rock
Albums of All Time was recorded in Captain's recording studio.
Speaker 3: Just blows my mind.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Jungle was recorded at the place where
this song is recorded.
Speaker 3: Yes so, but as it turns out, it gives him
a very authentic sound, and Clink does things the old
fashioned way. I mean he spliced stuff together with a
razor blade. So you know, we're getting into that point
in history where digital recording is starting to take over,
but this still has the true sound of real instruments
that you hear on the album, which I think I
think has to be a huge part of why it's
so successful and continues to be so successful.
Speaker 1: Before we talk about the songs that are on the album, yeah,
I want to make a brief mention of the songs
that did not make the album. So here you go.
Here's the list. Back off Bitch, You Could Be Mine, Yeah,
November Rain, Wow, and Don't Cry Wow. Those songs. Those
four songs were left off kind of. I don't know
if you remember back when we talked about Frontiers, the
great songs were left off the Frontiers album. Yeah, I
mean you had these songs show up again in the
usual illusion albums. But I Mean Don't Cry was a hit,
November Rain was humongous, and You Could Be Mine was
a big song off the Terminator two soundtrack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they still had the best best selling debut
album in US history. Even leaving those songs off, they
still managed to do it.
Speaker 1: And unlike Frontiers, I'm not sure what you would pull
to squeeze in those fantastic songs. Appatite for Destruction was
released July twenty first, nineteen eighty seven. First song on
the album maybe the best hard rock song of the eighties. Yes, okay, cool,
This song has so many This song has so many
great elements that makes a great hard rock set. Right.
You have the amazing guitar right off the bat. Yes,
you have this incredible Axel. Howel was just over the top.
You have in the video, you have Axel doing his
serpentine dance, which yeah, the whole world was emulating. After that,
you have Slash his top hat, and the guitars are
dirty and sleazy and irresistible. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: And the song promptly does nothing.
Speaker 1: Well, that's because MTV fought him the whole way.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this song was the first single released in
the US and the second single released in the UK.
In the UK, before the album even came out, they
released It's So Easy. It did not do well. Then
the next month they released Welcome to the Jungle in
both the US and the UK. Again, it still didn't
do very well. I mean, they've got sales, but it's
not you don't. You don't have the overnight success of
the album that you expect to. I mean, when you're
listening to this, holy Cow, people should have been blown
away immediately. So the question then is why weren't they?
And as you just said, MTV's not playing the video
and the radio stations are not playing the song.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's let's dive into that because to me,
that's a very interesting part here. So Geffen Records, actually,
I mean David Geffen himself had to make a deal
with MTV to play the song.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know this history, but there's
a guy named John Malone is a very conservative guy,
but he owned this little tiny company called Telecom, which
was a pretty big friggin deal, and he flat out
he said, he said, the MTV guys, do not play
this band, or we're gonna take you off of all
of our stations. I mean, Telecom is one of the
biggest cable providers in the country, maybe the biggest at
the time. And he said, if you play these guys,
he just saw them as I suppose the spawns of
Satan or something, and he said, don't play him, or
we're going to take you off. We will take you
off our cable network. That's a pretty big freaking deal.
Speaker 1: So MTV said, we'll play at one time, at five
AM on Sunday mornings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at the point that it had been a year,
it had been a year since the single had been released,
and the record had sold about two hundred thousand copies,
maybe depending on your resource, maybe five hundred thousand copies,
and it wasn't enough to be impressive to the record label.
And the record label was pulling back. They're ready to say,
we're ready to be done with these guys. And it
was Coots, it was their A and R guy who
believed in them, who fought for them, who said, if
you played this video on MTV, this album will explode.
But MTV refused to play it. He had to go
to David Geffen. Now, David Geffen is no small fry
at either, right, I mean, he's pretty big. I can
imagine the guys from MTV and the struggle of we're
going to get kicked off the all of these cable
networks if we play this song, or we're going to
make the guy who owns Geffen Records mad at us
if we don't play the song, what are we gonna do?
I get an idea, We'll play it at four am
where nobody will hear it, and then we've satisfied nobody's
getting you know, John Malone won't know what happened. Geffen
will be satisfied that we gave it our go, and
so no big deal. So they played the song. It
was it was like depending on what place in the
country you were, it was either going to be four am,
three am, two am, or one am.
Speaker 1: And people called in and said play that video more.
Speaker 3: They not only did they call in, there were so
many calls in that they melted the switchboard. I mean
we talked in our van A Haley episode about how
Eddie when he came in and played the guitar, set
the sound monitors on fire. The phone calls set the
switchboard on fire. That's when so many people called in
to say play that video again, it is.
Speaker 1: Almost lost appetite for construction before where it got off
the ground? Which is which is? Which would have been tragic?
I remember this. I remember when this song was popular
the first time. Okay, so you had to kind of
be an MTV watcher. So for me, this song reminds
me of like Spring of eighty eight, right, so early
eighty eight. Yeah, they actually released this song twice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they released they did.
Speaker 1: And then they and then after the success of the
Sweet Child of Mine, they released it again.
Speaker 3: That could not find the exact and I look hard,
could not find the exact date that Welcome to the
Jungle got played on MTV for the first time. But
it seems to me from my memory, I saw Welcome
to the Jungle before I knew what Sweet Child of
Mine was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it got rotation in early eighty eight.
Speaker 3: For sure. Sweet Child of Mine came out in June
of nineteen eighty eight, and by September tenth had hit
number one. I know.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. When I was looking at it, So
there's a story that goes along with this. And I've
seen it said that it was New York. I've seen
it say that it was Seattle. I've seen it said
that it was la but Axel says that the inspirations
for the lyrics came from an encounter that he and
his friend had with a homeless man while they were
getting off a bus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe that, he says Queen's. I think that
the whole song has influences from those other towns. But
Axel's story is this is when we ran away from
home and we stepped off the bus in Queen's.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, So getting off the bus, there's a
homeless guy there and trying to scare young runaways. The
man yellows at him, do you know where you are?
You're in the jungle, baby, and you're gonna die?
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: One thing I did want to mention. Have you ever
seen the movie Deadpool?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Clint east to a Deadpool, not the Ryan
Reynolds Deadpool.
Speaker 1: That's right, the dirty Harry Clint Easwood movie Deadpool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the movie, there's a video shoot. Yes,
and the director of the video is Liam Neeson. Yes,
And the song that they use is Welcome to the Jungle.
Speaker 3: And the lead singer is Jim Carrey.
Speaker 1: Yes, that Jim Carrey.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, before Liam was huge, before Jim was huge,
and about the time that Guns N' Roses became huge,
all of that came together.
Speaker 1: Those guys actually have a cameo in the movie.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, they're at the funeral after Jim Carrey. Well,
spoiler alert, spoiler alert, I'm sorry about to spoil the
part in a thirty two year old movie when Jim
Carrey dies. You know, they have the funeral and the
band members are there. The Guns and Roses band members
are play the parts of his band members at his funeral.
Speaker 1: Slash said, that's the first song that Axel wrote the
lyrics to that Slash came up with the riff part
and they kind of wrote it together.
Speaker 3: So the video was directed by a guy named Nigel Dick. Yes,
that was his real name, Nigel Dick.
Speaker 1: Could you say that one time?
Speaker 3: Is Nigel Dick directed this video and his previous work
included Shout By Tears for Fears. He did that video,
then he did Welcome to the Jungle in eighty seven,
he did Wonderwall in ninety five, and then he did
Oops I did it again in two thousands. So this
is only a handful. This guy is a very prolific
video director. There are tons of videos that he's done.
But the idea that we have Tears for Fears, Guns
n' Roses, Oasis and Britney Spears in that catalog is
pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: When they released this song as a single, they did
a couple of times, and one of them was a
Maxi single, which means it's not just an A side
B side, it's you have a couple of songs on
each side. And do you know what the backing song
was for Welcome to the Jungle? It was this song
called poll Lot a Rosie by a little band called
ac DC. Guess what That will come into play later
on and we get into.
Speaker 1: The history of yes Love.
Speaker 3: It also on the maxi single was It's So Easy
and Knocking on Heaven's Door.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's awesome. Nice. Okay, so we're done with Welcome
to the Jungle. The next song on the album, track
number two, is a song called.
Speaker 5: It's So Easy.
Speaker 3: The song is so good man, yeah yeah, and you
could play it at any you know, church or social
gathering whatever. You know. This stuff is so in your face.
And this was this was I mean, here's here's a
here's a song that screams why you don't get played
on the radio. This song was actually written by Duff McKagan.
It was written with his friend west Arkeene, who was
also a co writer on Patients and the Garden and
Yesterday's Duff. I got to read a bit of his
biography and I got to recommend it to anybody who
hasn't read it out there. Just what I've read so
far is wonderfully written. It's engaging, it's it's a good book.
You should pick it up. But Duff talks about early
on whenever they were doing live sets and Axel would
introduce him and he'd.
Speaker 4: Say, and this is Duff the King of Bears, which is.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean honestly, all of the guys had
substance abuse issues and Duff was a heavy, heavy drinker
and that's what that's what the circumstance his work. And
so not too long after they just are starting to
become famous, Duff gets this call from these guys who say, hey,
we're doing this kind of like animated thing and we
just were wondering, we were thinking about calling the beer
Duff beer, Is that okay with you? And he was
like sure, whatever you know, who cares? As it turns
out that little animated thing happened to.
Speaker 1: Be that's awesome. Okay, So this song is kind of
known because actual scene is really low. Okay. He starts
off the song singing super low.
Speaker 3: He was always a baritone growing up, Like even when
he was a younger kid, he would sing baritone. And
that his more recognizable singing now is not what he
would normally do. It was when he was he was
playing early on before Guns N' Roses formed, But in
those early Hollywood Roses sets, he at some point went
into that higher register and all the guys in the
band went, dude, that's the way you need to sing. Yeah,
And so this is actually a sample of what he
had sounded like before he found his signatures out.
Speaker 1: When they asked him about it, he said, I sung
it low because it fit the attitude of the song better.
Speaker 3: Well, the song is about not about money because they
hadn't become successful yet, so easy was getting the ladies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there can be hard to keep this family friendly
with the subject matter we're going to cover throughout this album.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, especially some sampling that occurred on one of.
Speaker 1: These I can't wait to talk about that, but okay,
I'm really interested to talk about the video. Okay, okay,
And when when people go, wait a minute, there's a video,
there's a video to the song. There is a video
to this song. Okay, it's it's incredible, all right. So
the video was filmed October tenth, nineteen eighty nine. Okay.
This was released July twenty first, nineteen eighty seven. This
is two years after the release of the album Okay, right, and.
Speaker 3: The single was released before the release of the album.
Speaker 1: It's all out of whack, this whole album because they
rode the wave for so long. Yeah, they had to
keep pumping out videos. I mean, it's just amazing. So
the video was shot October tenth, nineteen eighty nine, over
two years after the release of the original single. The
promo video was made at the Catouse in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: It's heavily edited because it shows Aaron Everley in bondage.
Aaron Eveley, daughter of Don Everly of the Everly Brothers.
That's who the song Sweet Child of Mine is written about. Yeah,
and we'll talk about that more here in just a minute.
But she is tied up, tied down up against the
wall for the entire video. Okay, but here's the interesting thing. Okay,
this is life with this band. Right before they shot
this video, they have this big show at the cat House.
Who shows up for the show, Well, Slash's mom shows
up and a friend of hers, David Bowie. Yeah, okay,
so David Bowie starts to hit on Aaron Everley. So
he and Axel get in a fistfight before they shoot
this video.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: Axel Rose David Bowie fistfight.
Speaker 3: That's hilarious.
Speaker 1: The release date of this video. Okay, this is not
a typo. When you say I don't really remember this, well,
that's because this video was released May twenty seventh, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's hilarious because it They start off the
video and they said, Axel says, we're making this for ourselves.
If we made a nice video for MTV, we could
put it out and sell my records and but instead,
we're going to spend one hundred and fifty grand just
to make something we want to see. And so that's
what they got is nobody else saw it for another
thirty years.
Speaker 1: Apparently everybody wanted to see Aaron Everley with a ballgag
in her mouth.
Speaker 3: So it's horrible. That's terrible.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, all right, Moving on to Nightrain.
Speaker 3: Night Train is this very high quality wine that guns
n' roses would enjoy after a long day of recording
appetite for destruction. It is also enjoyed by other wine
connoisseurs that we call whinos. I'm kidding. This is a
very cheap wine. Night Train is a very cheap wine.
And everything else that I said is true.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is a this is this song is amazing, right,
This is another great song. It's totally about getting drunk.
This song was ranked eighth on Guitar World's list of
top ten drinking songs. Right right, right, So they Slash
talks about how they came up with this anthem right
on the spot.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So Slash and Izzy wrote the main riff while they
were sitting on the floor of the band practice room,
but they didn't have any lyrics. So one night there
they're wandering around Palm Avenue sharing a bottle of Night Train,
and someone yelled, I'm on the night Train. Then the
whole band jumped in and actually improvised the line bottoms up,
fill my cup. Yeah, and there you have it. The
rest is rock and roll history.
Speaker 3: At some of the shows that they did in nineteen
eighty seven, Axel would give drinking tips from the stage.
He would introduce the song and then say, in these
liquor stores that the Winos hit up right beside us
the Thunderbird. Here, you're gonna find some night Train that'll
f you up twice as bad as Thunderbird, and it's
a lot cheaper.
Speaker 1: So this song was released July twenty ninth of nineteen
eighty nine, again, two years after the release of Appetite
for Destruction and after the release of Patients. This is
they're still writing Appetite for Destruction after they've released another album.
Speaker 3: It's a grow awesome, Yeah, it's great when you have
an album that is filled with so many great songs.
Of course, you're just gonna keep churning out the hits. Yeah, absolutely,
So we're done with night Train. Next on the album is.
Speaker 1: A song called out to Get Me. These lyrics are
about young Axel aka Billy Bailey being in and out
of trouble this.
Speaker 3: Entire life, Yeah, and about the police that we're out
to get him. Right.
Speaker 1: Slash talks about how this is the band being against
the world. I don't buy it. I think this is
legal trouble from Axel. Yes, yes, some of the lyrics
in this I think are very accurate emotions for Axel.
If you know anything about Axel, this doesn't really surprise you.
You can tell this is deep seated anger in Axel.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean he talks about how after shows, the
rest of the guys in the band will, you know,
go have a drink and ready to party and hang
out with people. But he needs like an hour or
two just to come down from the intensity that he
builds up while he's singing these songs, because he lives
in each song as he sings it. He remembers the
motivation for the words behind the song, and he relives
it as he's blowing our mind with it.
Speaker 1: This song is great. This is a turn it up
song as well. So I've got just to recap. I've
got one, two, three, four songs in a row that
I'm going to turn.
Speaker 3: The radio up every single time. No Skipper yet, No
Skipper yet.
Speaker 1: Moving on to mister Brownstide. Incredible song.
Speaker 3: Yes, freaking I love it. Yeah, it kicks all kinds
of butt it and this is you know again, this
is this is the band saying we're not going to
sing about pretty things. We're not going to sing about
uh love stories, although that does come up here later
on in the album. But we're going to sing about
the life that we've lived. You know, We've got Welcome
to the Jungle, We've got it's so easy. You know.
These life events built the song, and this one is
definitely not only about the life that they had had
in the past, but the life that they were currently leading.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean, mister Brownstone, this is a direct reference
to Heroin.
Speaker 3: So the lyric that we heard there at the beginning,
the show usually starts around seven, we go on stage
around nine. That was a direct reference and dig onto
the guys who, because they were all shooting up Heroin,
would show up two hours late for the show and
so Axel would sit there and he's got this expectation
to start at seven. He's got this energy built up
so that he's ready to go. He knows that the
crowd is expecting them at seven, and these guys keep
him waiting there for two hours and it drives him
absolutely nuts. And so that's I mean, this is that
emotion coming out full force on the song.
Speaker 1: So they all lived in their apartment together and they
moved down and as they're moving out, Axle says he
found a piece of yellow paper wadded up in the corner.
This is where Izzian Stevens room was. He opens it
up and had the lyrics to mister Brownstone on it.
He read it and thought, man, this is this is great.
Speaker 3: Whenever they were opening up for the Rolling Stones in
La it was October of eighty nine, so they had
they had been playing together for two solid years. And
Axel comes out and says, unless certain people in this
band get there together, these will be the last Guns
n' Roses show you'll ever fing see, because I'm tired
of too many people in this organization dancing with mister G. D. Brownstone.
That was to get the attention of Slash and Izzy
Stradlan and Steve Adler.
Speaker 1: This was the beginning of the end for Guns n' Roses.
Slash even though he was strung out, so that statement
and that embarrassment, and he knew it was directed at him,
and he said it made him hate Axel. Duff thought
it was embarrassing for this to surface on stage and
made him want to quit the band, so that public
call out in October of eighty nine started the breakup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they actually kicked Steven Adler off for a while
and only let him back in if he signed a
contract promising never to do Heroin again, which he signed
and then promptly broke, which is why he got fired
from the band.
Speaker 1: Fired in nineteen ninety. That's right, I love mister brownsone.
It's a fantastic song. It's about Heroin. I don't care,
I still love it.
Speaker 3: Right, It's about Heroin, but you can dance to it.
Speaker 1: This brings us to what every suburban kid in my
neighborhood freaking loved in January eighty This is the sixth
song on the album, This is Paradise City. If I
say to you, d take me down to Paradise City,
the grass is green or kind of throws are pig
and you don't have a line after that, probably you
know you're probably not enjoying this podcast at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting if you take if
you take in some of these songs, some of these songs,
not all of these songs, some of the if you
take the lyrics away from the music and the attitude
and the dirty tattooedness of it all and just put
them down on a piece of paper. This is freaking poetry.
Speaker 1: Man Captain America's fallen apart, He's court jester with a
broken heart. This is one of the great sing along
rock songs of the late eighties. This reached number five
on the Hot one hundred.
Speaker 3: So let me ask you this. When you and your
junior high to high school friends were singing the song,
would you change the lines? Because Slash wanted the chorus
to be take me down to the Paradise City where
the girls are fat and they got big titties, which
I'm pretty sure I heard from some of my sophomoric friends.
Speaker 1: That is definitely locker room stuff right there. They wisely
changed the words, though, to make it a number five hit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might not have gotten as much radio play
with that line.
Speaker 1: The guys out voted Slash on those lyrics. That's great.
Slash has stated that this is his favorite Guns and
Roses song.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: One of the things that he always comments is he says,
our best work is the collaborative work. Guns and Roses
was traveling. They were playing a gig in San franciscoing
on the way back there, traveling in the van, kind
of like what you were talking about earlier. He said
that the band was in the back of the band,
the back of the van, drinking and playing acoustic guitars
when he came up with the intro yep, Duff and Is.
He started playing along and Slash started to humming a melody,
and that's when Axel sang take me down to the
Paradise City. And then they just sort of were all together,
threw in their bits and it became this wonderful rock anthem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was This was actually the first song that
they wrote together as a band.
Speaker 1: I might this might be the best encore song of
all time. Okay, when you leave, when you play Welcome
to the Jungle and it's so easy and rocket Queen and
you leave, you say thank you, Boston, We'll see you
next time. Wait a minute, We're not done until we
play Paradise City. All right? I did hear Axel talk
about how the verses in Paradise City are about the jungle, right,
the Captain America falling apart. He's a court juster with
a broken heart. But the chorus is like the Midwest,
the hopeful, feel good safe Indiana. Yeah, we're named the
Dog Indiana. Yeah. Okay, we're done with Paradise City.
Speaker 3: Man, I hate to be done with Paradise City because
you have this. Okay, we're just gonna skip to the end.
Here's the end. It's so awesome. I mean, ah, bag gum,
what a great way to finish off the song.
Speaker 1: It's timeless. It really anytime this comes on the radio,
I've heard it ten thousand times. I'm turning it up,
I'm singing along. I'm singing take me Home, all right,
So stop your tape, hit Ejack, kick it out, flip
it over to the other side. And as I mentioned that,
I forgot to mention, there is no first side and
second side on this tape. There is no A side
and no B side, right G side and an R side. Nice,
so flip your tape over to the R side, and
here we go with Mike show bag gum.
Speaker 3: It's such a good song, gritty. I mean, I just
gotta say this. When you flip the tape over, I
always had this trepidation, like We've just finished this fantastic
side and I'm flipping over the other side and I'm
just worried that they put all their crap on the
second side, and then this song pops on and you're like,
holy crap, this whole album is gonna be good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Axel is writing in the in the car
with a friend from high school, the girl named Michelle Young,
and they're listening to Elton John on the radio and
the song of your song comes on.
Speaker 5: You planned here, right, and you can tell about it.
This is this.
Speaker 1: Song, beautiful song. And according to Axel Rose, he and
Michelle were in the car together and she said she
just happened to mention that she had always wanted someone
to write a song about her, right, And so he
kind of took that as a challenge.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The only problem was, this is a girl who had
was addicted to drugs, her mom had died from a
heroin overdose, and her dad was working in the pornography industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it hard to come.
Speaker 1: Up with a sweet little love sonet for that person.
Speaker 3: Right, So they just for wrote it, honestly.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, his first attempt was this sweet, romantic one
that had absolutely almost nothing to do with the reality
of her life, right, right, Yeah, And he was unhappy.
He just felt dishonest about it. So he changed it
to the honest version, right, and he brought it to
members of the band and he's like, Slash, what do
you think of this? Slash like, dude, you cannot play this.
Speaker 3: I can't play this. Yeah, no, everybody everybody would be like, no,
you can't do this. This is horrible. And so it's
good that they do have some moral compass on this.
But they end up actually ends up calling her and
he's just honest. He's just like, hey, you know, I
did what you wanted. I wrote you a song, but
I don't know that you're gonna like the lyrics. And
she ended up being okay with it. She was happy
that they didn't sugarcoat it, and she was happy that
it was honest and truthful to her horrible life.
Speaker 1: I heard her talk about this. She went to a
concert they played my Michelle. The whole place is going
bonkers to a song written about her, and she's standing
there in total anonymity and just marveling that this song
is about her and nobody knows.
Speaker 3: Who she is. She said later on that when they
asked her about it, that she didn't care because she
was so left up. But she said, either way, I
can't deny that it's true. My dad does distribute porno
films and my mom did die, So what do you
you know? It's it's not slander.
Speaker 1: It's true. This song is so good. I love it
so once again, a full on, top down, turn it up.
Speaker 3: Bang in your head. Yep, so you were banging your
freaking head of this song.
Speaker 1: All right after my Michelle. That brings us to a
song called think about You.
Speaker 3: It was written by Izzy and it actually was written
before he joined up with Guns n' Roses and Tracy
Gunns of course, who was a part of the band
momentarily right, knew. I mean, Izzy comes in, you know,
starts this band Hollywood Rose. They get together with Tracy Gunns,
guns and Roses forms. But Tracy said, this song is
about this woman named Monique Lewis, who we all quote
unquote dated and actual actually has a tattoo of this
lady on his arm.
Speaker 1: Really, this is something I haven't heard yet. This is
good story, okay story, and that's okay, that's a good story. Okay.
I heard he say. It's a quick love song about drugs, sex,
Hollywood and money, which is basically what Appetite.
Speaker 3: For Destruction is about yeah, whole album.
Speaker 1: To me, this is a good song that this is
the weakest song on the album. This is the only
song that I think might want to skip this one,
But most of the time I listen to it anyway,
it's still good.
Speaker 3: So Actual has a tattoo of this girl on his arm.
He also has on his arm a tattoo of across
with faces on it, which you will recognize as the
cover of this album. Right, Well, that wasn't the original
album cover they had as the original album cover. This
artwork again by a guy named Robert Williams. But it's
this very kind of weird alien attack in our robot
that's either raped or about to rape this girl and
her panties are around her ankles, and it's I mean,
you're just adding fuel to the fire of all those
record companies and MTV executives who said, we are not
interested in this band. They're too dangerous, we don't want them,
And so ultimately they ended up saying we got to
change the album cover. And Axel already had this tattoo
on his arm, and so it You know, every time
I saw it, I thought, oh, we got the tattoo
because of the cover. Now the cover came from his tattoo.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, the robot painting is strange.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean it the guy's famous. You know,
there's there are there is a whole like segment of artists.
Harry Kurum I think was the name of one of them.
I mean, they would do these kind of graphic or
pornographic almost comic artwork, but it was really popular like this.
I remember seeing Axel talking about this painting selling for
like ten thousand dollars whenever it was first produced.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after think about you, we have sweet shot of mine.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I know that you are thinking the same
thing that I am thinking, which is this is awesome.
That intro guitar is awesome. As it turns out, Slash
played it as a joke.
Speaker 1: That fact alone blows me away.
Speaker 3: He was talking with Steven and he's like, I'm trying
to Yeah, I'm trying to do a sound that sounds
like a circus. And when you say that, you're like, okay, yeah,
actually I can kind of hear that and what I'm
playing there. But he's trying to make this goofy sound.
But then the other guys end up liking it, and
then Axel puts this these love song lyrics to this
song that Slash started out with as a joke, and
he hates this song.
Speaker 1: He hates it, he said, he hated it for a
long time, but he came to embrace it because the
fans love it, and I think that's cool. I hate
it when artists hate their own work. But Axel had
this love poem that he had written for Aaron Everly
daughter the Everly brothers Don Everly right.
Speaker 3: It is such a love poem.
Speaker 1: Actually actually married Aaron. Lasted about five minutes. This song
reached number one September tenth, nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: You know, as I mentioned before, there's a little bit
of discrepancy about whether it was the video for Welcome
to the Jungle that brought them into the spotlight or
whether it was this song. And I think I'm probably
going to land on it was a combination of the two.
I would not have been as interested in this song
had I not seen the video. But then this song
is flat out freaking amazing, and I can see how
it was the lead in for other people to embrace them,
because you got this band that is rough, rough, rough
singing about the worst parts of life, and then they
come out with this beautiful She's got eyes of the
bluest s guies, and if they thought of rain, I'd
hate to look into those hides and see an ounce
of pain. Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe
place where as a child eyed hide and pray for
the thunder and the rain, quiet lights. It's like freaking
Walt Whitman. I mean, it's just beautiful.
Speaker 1: It is it is. It's poetry, and it's tender and
it's genuine, and it's loving and it still rocks. The
guitar solo in this song is incredible, you know, it's interesting.
The end part of this song, Axel's sitting there and
he's talking to one of the guys who is helping
them produce the album. They got to the end and
they didn't know how to sort of close the song out,
and he said, I think we need to have a
breakdown at the end of the song. And Axel says, well,
where do we go? I mean, where do we go now?
The guy says, I think you god to sing that.
I've got something that's going to blow you away. You're
ready for this?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Have you heard the song unpublished critics from the Australian
band Australian Crawl.
Speaker 3: No, I have not.
Speaker 1: I'm going to play this for you.
Speaker 5: You ready for this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, turn it up, all right?
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty one song. Soitics my.
Speaker 3: Oh damn once you bought it the crics.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's no Goodbye Blue Sky.
Speaker 6: But there are similarities, right, Okay, so the chord progression,
because as I was listening to it, and I'm thinking, okay,
but that's I mean, that's every country song, right, I mean,
that's also sweet Home Alabama.
Speaker 3: But when you got to the melody of the lyrics
in that one, I was like, ooh, there's a substantial
similarity to the melody and the lyrics there. That's that's cool,
I I yeah, my mind is reasonably blown.
Speaker 1: Yes, pretty cool?
Speaker 3: Huh?
Speaker 1: Pretty cool? Yeah? All right. I don't know what more
we can really say about this song other than the
summer of eighty eight, along with portion Sugar on Me
flashback to our Hysteria episode, this song ruled the airwaves
the summer of nineteen eighty eight. Incredible song.
Speaker 3: Okay, so are we done with Sweet Child of Mine?
Speaker 1: So good? It's so good.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: All right. So the beauty of Sweet Child of Mine
flows right into a heavy, fast paced, rock your socks
off song called You're Crazy.
Speaker 3: So the intro to this song is very, very similar
to the end of Paradise City, Like I don't I
don't know in the live show if they went from
one to the other, but I could sure see them
doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, very fast paced, super in your face
mosh pit. Yeah, this is one of my favorite songs
on the album. The interesting thing to me about this
song is there's several different versions. Okay, so the one
that appears on Appetit for Destruction is super fast paced
and sort of a speed song, right. The version on
gen r Lies is it's acoustic, of course, but it's
slowed way down, and that's the way the song was
originally intended to be. Stephen Adler has said that he
perversed the slow version much better.
Speaker 3: Right, It's got a groove and a blues that the
other one that doesn't have the original release You're meant
to bang your head, the other one You're meant to
tap your foot.
Speaker 1: Axel's vocals on this song are amazing. He gives me
you like chills the way he can ride that wave
so high. After hearing his baritone on It's So Easy.
Speaker 3: You shared something with me about his voice, and a
survey that was taken tell me about that.
Speaker 1: Okay. So, according to Concerthotels dot Com, a survey that
you know, it's not Time magazine or anything, but they
came up with they determined that Axel Rose has the
widest range of any singer in pop music history. That's
wider than Mariah.
Speaker 3: Carey, wider than Freddie Mercury.
Speaker 1: According to the survey, because he goes so low and
can hit super high notes. It also determined that he
was the greatest singer in history. They asked him about this, right,
and I thought his comment was great. He's like, hey, thanks,
I'm honored. He's like, but I know, you know, there's
a little bit of a back backlash on this. He's like,
there are a lot of singers that I prefer to
hear sing other than me, But I'm honored.
Speaker 3: That's a good way to put that. Yeah, but I
wonder if he's mellowed a little bit in his old age.
Speaker 1: This song, in the chorus, it goes you're crazy, then
you're effing crazy. Right, But the song originally was written
as a possible single, so they wanted to leave the
curse words out of it, right, So they didn't add
the curse words until they were playing it live and
there was a girl that was throwing stuff at him
and trying to get on the stage, And as he
was singing this song, he was looking at it. He's like,
you're effing crazy. Moving on to a song called Anything Goes.
This song was originally performed, written and performed by Hollywood Rose.
Totally different song. They changed the lyrics, they changed the music.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the interer to this song, you notice the
guitar sounds way different than the other songs in the album, right, right,
So he is using something called a talk box. Slash
is using something called a talk box with his guitar.
If you are a bon Jovi fan, which I know
that you are, that's something that Richie Sambor uses all
of the time. Probably the most famous talk box example
that I can think of is from Frampton Comes Alive,
the song do you Feel like I Do?
Speaker 1: All?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: I would argue that living on a Prayer is a
little more famous, but keep going.
Speaker 3: You'd be wrong, But that's okay.
Speaker 1: On next week's podcast, we'll be debating Living on a
Prayer versus Peter Frampton.
Speaker 3: Anyway, this is the only song on Appetite that Slash
uses the talk box on. It's that kind of weird.
You can hear him wabo wobbin to guitar as it's playing.
But it's a very unique sound. But yeah, I thought
you would enjoy the fact that he's doing that since
you like Richie Simboro so much.
Speaker 1: That's cool, that's cool. It's on the weaker side on
the album, but it's still one I love.
Speaker 3: Still great song for sure, all right.
Speaker 1: That brings us to the last song on the album,
song called rocket Me great intro, great guitars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know I talked about you listen
to the first song on the B side or the
R side in this case and think, Okay, these guys
are going to do well on the second side, and
then they finish it off with something like this and
it is awesome, like they bring it home just wonderfully. Yeah,
this song is amazing, amazing, good song.
Speaker 1: It's like two songs mashed together. Yeah, so you have
the first part and you have the here I am
I'm your Rocket Queen. Yeah, and then then it fished
out with this sort of a it's like a sweet
chilt of Mine like love song. It's really interesting.
Speaker 3: There are a couple of ladies involved with this particular song,
and the first one they mentioned in the liner notes.
Her name is Barbie van Grief, and she was somebody
who she was somebody who they crashed with, basically like
a lot of people. And she had another girl that
they had started a band together, and she wanted to
call the band rocket Queen. You know, she's just an
eighteen year old kid hanging out with these these guys,
but Slash referred to her as a queen of the
underground scene. But she was the one that they gave
they gave credit in the liner notes for, although I
don't know that she's the one that probably deserved the
most credit on the song.
Speaker 1: We have to talk about Adriana Smith.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Adriana Smith was Stephen Adler's girlfriend kind of yeah, no,
she was. She was his girlfriend and she was mad
at him. She was his girlfriend and she was mad
at him. So she came and kind of offered herself
up to the band, I guess. And so Axel said, Hey,
you know, why don't we we record it for you know.
Speaker 1: Art, Hey, I've got a great idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: So so he said. He propositioned her, let's go have
sex in the vocal booth and we'll record the sounds
and we'll put it over the bridge of the song.
And she said, I'll do it for the band and
a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Speaker 3: That's what she got, along with some infamy. She said
later on that this weighed pretty heavily on her soul.
She only got a bottle of Jack out of it,
and then the band became famous, and that was all
she ended up with, and drug addiction and shame.
Speaker 1: Something to tell her grandkids about. Hey, come over here, kids,
and need you to listen to this song.
Speaker 3: Hear that sound. So that kind of brings up a
story that happened to me because I'm listening to this.
I'm listening to this album and I put it on
and call my twelve year olds in the car with me,
and it gets to the part where Axel's going and
Cole's like, it really bothers me when he does that.
Why He's like, Dad, I know what he's doing. And
he's like, oh man, the guys at school they make
that noise. It's just so gross.
Speaker 1: And he's not even pretending like they usually are.
Speaker 3: So, you know, they had to set up a mic
for this, right, they had to set up You can't
just you know, there's.
Speaker 1: I hope they set up a candle too.
Speaker 3: You know, they dimmed the lights, they set the mic up,
and then they exited the room. So the guy who
mixed the album, his name's Michael Barbiro, and he didn't
want to have anything to do with this, and so
he set up the microphones and then he left. He
had this assistant engineer named Victor Deglio record it, and
so on the album. In the notes, Deglio is listed
as as Victor quote, the fucking engineer Diglio because of
his contribut.
Speaker 1: That's a great man. Gosh, that's almost.
Speaker 3: Love that.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious. Oh, more embarrassing than what Adriana Smith has
to little with.
Speaker 3: So Rock and Queen was the song that they were
performing in Saint Louis in nineteen ninety one, when there
was a guy. You know, it's pretty commonplace these days
that people have cameras. It shows I mean, you can't
avoid it with. Everybody has a phone that has a
camera on it, but back in nineteen ninety one it
was rare and it was really frowned upon. And Axel
sees this guy taking pictures of him and tries to
get the security to do something about it. They don't
do anything, so he decides to take matters into his
own hands. He jumps out in the crowd, hits the
fan with the camera, kind of has to fight up
the security guys, gets thrown back up on the stage
and says, thanks to the lame ass security, I'm going home,
and he throws the mic down and walks off stage
and the rest of the band goes with him and
a full scale riot breaks out.
Speaker 1: There are some amazing, amazing stories that follow this band
post Appetite for Destruction, but those are a podcast for
a later day when we cover usual Illusion one and two.
I would love to hear anyone's suggestions for what goes
with USUER Illusion one and two. What's a good matchup
for it? We want to hear from you, guys. Hit
us up on Twitter, hit us up on Facebook, email
us let us know your suggestion for what is the
best matchup for USUER llusion one and two. All right,
so that wraps up Appetite for Destruction.
Speaker 3: Join us for part two of the Appetite for Destruction
versus Back in Black Podcast. We really appreciate all the
support you've been given us out there. We're overwhelmed by
how many people are listening and joining in and communicating
with us on Facebook. We're blown away.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys.
Speaker 3: Please please check us out on Facebook at Shirley Podcast
on Facebook or on Twitter at Shirley Podcast, or if
you want to, you can email us Shirlypodcast at gmail
dot com. All right, we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 1: Okay, So according to this list, Axel's voice, I'm not
a musician, but it goes from super low F one.
I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean I know what. It's just a flower note,
a low F on the scale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, a low F on the scale to a
high of B sharp six.
Speaker 3: Okay, there's no such thing as B.
Speaker 1: Sure, let's start over. Let's start this one over.
Speaker 3: Does it say be sharp?
Speaker 1: It has be and it has a little little note
thing by it.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it looks like another like.
Speaker 1: Little B right, a little baby bee.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, good, good, all right, so you just you
misinterpreted the symbol. Let's be flat. I was really really
gonna judge contest be sharp. Okay, yeah, no, wonder they
thought he was great? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Really okay, I'm going to start this little conversation over
real quick.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think it's great.
Speaker 1: Okay. I don't know if you saw this, d but
there's a source out there called concert hootels dot com.
They came out with the list of greatest vocalists.
Speaker 3: Did you say concert hotels.
Speaker 1: Dot concert hotels dot com.
Speaker 3: Oh, if concert hotels dot com is speaking, you should listen.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you. On this list, Steve Perry is
below Eminem.
Speaker 3: We're lily literally weeping right now. All music images and
movie clips are used for the purposes of commentary and
education in conjunction with the Fair Use Agreement under the
US copyright law.