Speaker 1: This is Pat from the thirty something Movie podcast, and
you're listening to my most excellent friends Jason and d
from the Shurley You Can't Be Serious Podcast.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Shurly 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.
Speaker 1: Back in Black.
Speaker 3: 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 Colliban.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: Today.
Speaker 4: 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 2: 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.
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.
Speaker 5: Of eighty nine.
Speaker 2: It took a long time. This was a slow builder.
It would eventually become the largest selling debut album of
all time.
Speaker 5: So these are two powerhouses that we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Well, let's dive in and see what happens.
Speaker 4: 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 Michael. Nobody knows who those guys are. So yeah,
you have 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 cole Letti, who became Steven Adler,
and then finally you had Saul Hudson, who everybody knows
as Slash. Cool names cool, 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.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's a pretty cool, pretty cool couple of grants.
Speaker 4: And so his mom moves out to 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.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: 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, So.
Speaker 5: Oh really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: 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, 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 stevenler
Apler Yes, showed Slash's first chords.
Speaker 5: On the guitar.
Speaker 2: 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'.
Speaker 4: Roses 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?
Isy and Axel both are going to school together in Lafayette, Indiana.
Speaker 2: I think that's so interesting. Nobody from this band was
from La No.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they all they all 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 2: There was not a hop in musical scene in Lafayette.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: 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 2: You know, it's amazing when we go through this, how
many artists get their start scene.
Speaker 4: In 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 going to 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 said, I just grabbed my symbol
stand and stood with it like a bat, trying to
fin them off. Yell and get the f away from me.
And that was his introduction to the rock scene in La.
Speaker 2: 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.
I'm out, 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 4: 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.
Speaker 2: Anymore, and 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 4: So after Izzy's horrendous experience in his first punk show,
he within just a couple of weeks says.
Speaker 5: And I'm not going to play with these guys.
Speaker 4: I'll more join this other band, also a punk band
called the Atoms, and within days he gets his drum
kit stolen from his call and so he's like, heck
with punk, these guys are jerks.
Speaker 5: Is there a heavy metal band I can join?
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: Nice, okay.
Speaker 4: So then in nineteen eighty three, Izzy forms Hollywood Rows
with Axel Rose.
Speaker 2: 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, 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 for the beginning.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: And while in the.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: Duff was a guy who had come from Seattle and
decided to come down to LA and he didn't know
what he didn't know what he's gonna play. He'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 he can
sing too, yeah. And so Slash, Duff and Steven together
are in road Crew. Guns and 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 Beck and you know he's
the one that leaves and 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 2: Its it's really interesting how these guys all kind of
came together. Yeah.
Speaker 4: 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, Traveler Cohast, 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
these clubs and they're in two rickety old vans 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, we'll we'll.
Speaker 5: Make it work.
Speaker 4: 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 b with.
Speaker 5: The songs written on them.
Speaker 4: 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 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 Rods.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, Slash, can you tell me where were your
copy of The Goonies is?
Speaker 4: 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 look good on the hat,
and so he takes the belt also for free and
puts it on the hat, and that is where you
get the Slash trademark.
Speaker 5: Look.
Speaker 4: 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 him Zoots. 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 gonna get signed. This is going to be great,
enjoying the fruits of their labor momentarily, and then the
next more 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 context. 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.
Speaker 5: And they look around and Axel's.
Speaker 4: Gone, yeah, He's just gone, yeah, we found the contacts,
but we lost Axel.
Speaker 2: A little foreshadowing of events to come.
Speaker 4: Right, And 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 were two hours for them
to arrive to sign the contract. I can't even I mean,
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.
Speaker 2: Fun. 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.
Speaker 5: Yeah, not pretty.
Speaker 2: It all comes together beautifully makes a symphony, though I
don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, 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.
Speaker 2: Live 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 Hubert live and then the Kubert sign and then
like a Suicide. Yes, so we always thought it was
live like n 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 4: 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 my Clink.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the producers that you didn't mention.
One of the possible producers was Paul Stanley of Kiss.
Speaker 4: 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 2: 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 5: Okay, yep.
Speaker 4: Did Ace Freely has he come in to play at all?
Speaker 2: Not yet, not yet, but we're still early on this.
Speaker 4: 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 2: All right, Peter Chris pressures off.
Speaker 4: So looking at Guns n' Roses, not heavy metal. This
is a hard rock band. It's hard hard rock.
Speaker 2: And when they When they advertise for a guitar player,
they mentioned they looking for somebody with blues influence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and slashes 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 his 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 that 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 5: Just hearing it.
Speaker 4: That one of the greatest hard rock albums of all
time was recorded in Captain's recording studio just blows my mind.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Jungle was recorded at the place where this
song is recorded.
Speaker 4: 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's 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 2: 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 4: Yeah, and they still had the best selling debut album
in US history, And leaving those songs off, they still
managed to do it.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: This song has so many this song has there's so
many great elements that makes a great hard rock sun.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: You have the amazing guitar right off the bat. Yes,
you have this incredible Axel howl. It was just over
the top. You have the in the video, you have
Axle doing his serpentine dance, which the whole world was emulating.
After that, you have Slash's top hat, and the guitars
are dirty and sleazy and irresistible, it's amazing.
Speaker 4: And the song promptly does nothing well.
Speaker 2: That's because MTV fought him the whole way.
Speaker 4: Okay, so this, 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.
Speaker 5: It did not do well.
Speaker 4: Then the next month they released Welcome to the Jungle
in both the US and the UK. Again, it's still
did 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 2: 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 4: I don't know if you know this history, but there's
a guy named John Malone. He's a very conservative guy,
but he owned this little tiny company called Telecom.
Speaker 5: Which.
Speaker 4: 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 going to 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 2: So MTV said, we'll play at one time, at five
am on Sunday mornings.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: At the point, 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. 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 gonna make the
guy who owns Geffen Records mad at us if we
don't play the.
Speaker 5: Song, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 4: 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 will know what happened. Geffen
will be satisfied that we gave it our go, and
so no big deal.
Speaker 5: So they played the song.
Speaker 4: 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 2: And people called in and said play that video more.
Speaker 4: 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 Haley episode about how Eddie
when he came in and played the guitar, set the
sound monitors on fire. The phone calls, set the witchboard
on fire. That's when so many people called in to
say play that video again.
Speaker 2: It is almost lost appetite for destruction before 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. Yeah,
they released it and then they and then after the
success of the Sweet Child of Mind, they released it again.
Speaker 4: 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 2: Yeah, well, it got rotation in early eighty eight, for sure.
Speaker 4: Sweet Child of Mine came out in June of nineteen
eighty eight, and by September tenth had hit number one.
Speaker 2: 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 4: Yeah, I believe that, he says Queens. 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 2: 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? All right.
One thing I did want to mention. Have you ever
seen the movie Deadpool?
Speaker 4: Yeah, thats Clint east to a Deadpool, not the Ryan
Reynolds Deadpool.
Speaker 2: That's right, Harry Clint Eastwood movie Deadpool. Yeah, at the
beginning of the movie, there's a video shoot.
Speaker 4: Yes, and the.
Speaker 2: Director of the video is Liam Neeson, yes, and the
song that they use is Welcome to the Jungle, and
the lead singer is Jim Carrey. Yes, that Jim Carrey.
Speaker 4: 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 2: Those guys actually have a cameo in the movie.
Speaker 4: So yeah, they're 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 n' Roses band members
are play the parts of his band members at his funeral.
Speaker 2: 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 I wrote it together.
Speaker 4: So the video was directed by a guy named Nigel Dick. Yes,
that was his real name, Nigel Dick.
Speaker 2: Could you say that one more time?
Speaker 5: Is Nigel.
Speaker 4: 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 3: Nice.
Speaker 4: 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 you know what the back looking song
was for Welcome to the Jungle. It was a song
called pull Out of Rosie by a little band called
a c DC. Guess what That will come into play
later on when we get into the.
Speaker 2: History of Yes Love.
Speaker 4: It also on the maxi single was It's So Easy
and Knocking on Heaven's Door.
Speaker 2: 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 It's So Easy.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: Read it out there.
Speaker 4: Just what I've read so far is wonderfully written. It's engaging,
it's it's a good book.
Speaker 5: You should pick it up.
Speaker 4: But Duff talks about early on whenever they were doing
live sets and Axel would introduce him and he'd say, and.
Speaker 2: This is Duff the King of Bears, which is you.
Speaker 4: 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 circumstances were. 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 2: Be that's awesome. Okay. So this song is kind of
known because actual sings really low. Okay. He starts off
the song singing super low.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: Is not what he would normally do.
Speaker 4: It was when he was he was playing early on
before guns n' Roses form, but in those early Hollywood
Roses sets that 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. And so this
is actually a sample of what he had sounded like
before he found his signatures out.
Speaker 2: When they asked him about it, he said, I sung
it low because it fit the attitude of the song better.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: The song is about not about money, because they hadn't
become successful yet, so easy was getting the ladies there will.
Speaker 2: Be hard to keep this family friendly with the subject
matter we're going to cover throughout this album.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, especially some sampling that occurred on one of these.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk about that. But okay, I'm
really interested to talk about the video.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: 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 5: The single was released before the release of the album.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Okay.
Speaker 2: 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. That's it, Axel Rose David Bowie fistfight.
Speaker 5: That's hilarious.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: 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. 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 2: Apparently everybody axe wanted to see Aaron Everley with a
ballgag in her mouth.
Speaker 5: So horrible.
Speaker 2: That's terrible, I know, I know, all right, Moving on
to Nightrain.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: I'm kidding.
Speaker 4: This is a very cheap wine. Night Train is a
very cheap wine. And everything else that I said is true.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is a 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. Right. 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 4: 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, the Wino's 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 2: 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 4: It's a great, 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.
Speaker 5: Next on the album is.
Speaker 2: A song called out to Get Me. These lyrics are
about young Axel, a a billy Bailey being in and
out of trouble his entire life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and about the police that we're out to get
him right.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: 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 2: This song's great, this is so as well. So I've
got just just to recap. I've got one, two, three,
four songs in a row that I'm going to turn
the radio.
Speaker 5: Up every single time. No Skipper yet, No Skipper.
Speaker 2: Yet moving on to mister Brownside, incredible song.
Speaker 5: Yes freaking love it.
Speaker 4: 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 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.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: These life events built the song, and this one is
definitely not only about the life that they had in
the past, but the life that they were currently leading.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, mister Brownstone, this is a direct reference
to Heroin.
Speaker 4: 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 this song.
Speaker 2: So they all lived in the apartment together and they
moved out. And as they're moving out access as he
found a piece of yellow paper wadded up in the
corner this is where Izzy and 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 4: 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.
Speaker 5: Brownstone.
Speaker 4: That was to get the attention of Slash and Izzy
Stradlin and Steve Adler.
Speaker 2: This was the beginning of the end for Guns n' Roses. Yes, 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 4: 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 2: Fired in nineteen ninety. That's right, I love mister brown Zone.
It's a fantastic song. It's about Heroin. I don't care.
I still love it.
Speaker 5: It's about Heroin, but you can dance to it.
Speaker 2: This brings us to what every suburban kid in my
neighborhood freaking loved in January of eighty nineteen. This is
the sixth song on the album This is Paradise City.
If I say to U, d take me down to
Paradise City, the grass is green or rosar pit and
you don't have a line after that, you're probably not
enjoying this podcast at this point.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's interesting if you take if you
take in some of these songs, some of these songs.
Speaker 5: Not all of these songs, some of these songs.
Speaker 4: 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 2: Man Captain America's falling apart. He's a 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 4: 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. But
I'm pretty sure I heard from some of my work friends.
Speaker 2: That is definitely locker room stuff right there. They wisely
changed the words, though, to make it a number five hit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it might not have gotten as much radio play
with that line.
Speaker 2: The guys outvoted Slash on those lyrics. That's great. Slash
has stated that this is his favorite Guns and Roses song.
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,
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 4: Yeah, this was This was actually the first song that
they wrote together as a band.
Speaker 2: 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?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: 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 named the
dog Indiana.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're done with Paradise City.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: It's so awesome.
Speaker 4: I mean, ah, dad gum, what a great way to
finish off the song.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 6: Nice, So flip your tape over to the R side,
and here we go with my show.
Speaker 4: Thank com It's such a good song, gritty.
Speaker 5: I mean, I just gotta say this.
Speaker 4: 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 2: Yeah. So Axel is writing in the in the car
with a friend from high school, girl named Michelle Young,
and they're listening to Elton John on the radio and
the song of your song comes one.
Speaker 4: Hearing Me right and you can tell about it?
Speaker 1: This is this song.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Right.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Yeah, it had.
Speaker 2: Hard to come up with a sweet little love sonnet.
Speaker 4: For for that person, right, So they just wrote it, honestly.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 5: This, play this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, everybody everybody would be like, no, you can't
do this.
Speaker 5: This is horrible.
Speaker 4: 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 she 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 2: 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 anemity and just marveling that this song
is about her and nobody knows who she is.
Speaker 5: She said later on when they asked her about it.
Speaker 4: That she didn't care because she was so efed 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 5: It's true.
Speaker 2: This song is so good. I love it once again,
a full on, top down, turn.
Speaker 4: It up, banging your head yep, so you're banging your
freaking head of this song.
Speaker 2: All right after my Michelle. That brings us to a
song called think about You.
Speaker 4: It was written by Izzy and it actually was written
before he joined up with Guns n' Roses and Tracy
Guns of course, who was a part of the band
momentarily right, knew, I mean, I is he comes in,
you know, starts this band Hollywood Rose. They get together
with Tracy Guns, 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 2: Really, this is something I haven't heard yet.
Speaker 5: This is a good stay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I heard his story. Hey, that's okay, that's
a good story. Okay, I heard is They say it's
a quick love song about drugs, sex, Hollywood and money,
which is basically what Appetite for Destruction is about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, whole album.
Speaker 2: To me, this is a good song. But 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 4: 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.
Speaker 5: The cover of this album. Right.
Speaker 4: Well, this that wasn't the original album cover they had
as the original album cover. This artwork by again by
a guy named Robert Williams.
Speaker 5: But it's this.
Speaker 4: Very kind of weird alien attack in our robot that's
a 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 2: The Yeah, the robot painting is strange.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean it.
Speaker 5: The guy's famous.
Speaker 4: You know, there's there are There was a whole like
segment of artists. Harry Krum 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.
Speaker 5: Was really popular like this.
Speaker 4: I remember seeing Axel talking about this painting selling for
like ten thousand dollars whenever it was first produced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after thinking about you, we have sweet shot of mine.
Speaker 4: 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 2: That fact alone blows me away.
Speaker 4: 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 5: He hates it.
Speaker 2: 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 every daughter the Everly
brothers Don Everly right.
Speaker 4: It is such a love poem.
Speaker 2: Actually actually married Aaron. Lasted about five minutes. This song
reached number one September tenth, nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4: 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 spotflight 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 skies, 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 to quiet.
Speaker 2: Light less by.
Speaker 5: It's like freaking Walt Whitman. I mean, it's just beautiful.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 2: It's poetry and it's tender and it's genuine and it's
loving and it's 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? Guy says,
I think you have to sing that I've got something
that's going to blow you away? You ready for this?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Have you heard the song unpublished critics from the Australian
band Australian Crawl.
Speaker 5: No, I have not.
Speaker 2: I'm going to play this for you. You ready for this?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Okay, turn it up.
Speaker 2: Right, nineteen eighty one song.
Speaker 4: Oh damn once you fought it from the critics.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's no Goodbye Blue Sky. But there are similarities, right.
Speaker 4: 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. 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.
Speaker 5: That's that's cool. I I yeah, my mind is reasonably blown.
Speaker 2: Yes, pretty cool?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 2: Pretty cool?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: 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 air waves the summer of nineteen
eighty eight incredible song.
Speaker 4: Okay, so are we done with Sweet Child of Mine's
so good?
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 2: 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 4: 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 2: 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 4: 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 2: Axel's vocals on this song are amazing. He gives me
like chills the way he can ride that wave so high.
After hearing his baritone on It's So Easy.
Speaker 4: You shared something with me about his voice, and a
survey that was taken tell me about that.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Carey, wider than Freddy Mercury.
Speaker 2: According to the survey, because he goes so low and
can hit those 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.
Speaker 5: But I'm honored. That's a good way to put that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I wonder if he's mellowed a little bit
in his old age.
Speaker 2: 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,
a totally different song. They changed the lyrics, they changed
the music.
Speaker 4: Okay, so the interer to this song, you noticed 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 5: All Right?
Speaker 2: I would argue that Living on a Prayer is a
little more famous, but keep going.
Speaker 5: You'd be wrong, but that's okay.
Speaker 2: On next week's podcast, we'll be debating Living on a
Prayer versus Peter Frampton.
Speaker 4: Anyway, this is the only song on Appetite that Slash
uses the talk box on.
Speaker 5: It's that kind of weird.
Speaker 4: 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 Ritchie Samborer so much.
Speaker 2: That's cool, that's cool. It's on the weaker side on
the album, but it's still one I love.
Speaker 5: Still great song for sure.
Speaker 2: All Right. That brings us to the last song on
the album, song called Rocket, great intro, great guitars.
Speaker 4: 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 gonna 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 2: It's like two songs smashed 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
Child of Mine like love song. It's really interesting.
Speaker 4: 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 von 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 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 2: We have to talk about Adriana Smith.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Adriana Smith was Stephen Adler's girlfriend.
Speaker 5: Kind of Yeah, no, she was. She was his girlfriend
and she was mad at him.
Speaker 4: 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, Art.
Speaker 2: Hey, I've got a great idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this was just what we're about to do. Oh
my gosh.
Speaker 2: So so he said, he prepositioned 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 4: And that's what she got, along with some infamy. She
said later on that this weighed pretty heavily on her soul.
Speaker 5: She only got a bottle.
Speaker 4: 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 2: Something to tell her grandkids about. Come over here, kids
and need you to listen to this song. Hear that sound,
so that 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 Cole,
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.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: It's just so gross, and say, oh.
Speaker 2: He's not even pretending like they usually are.
Speaker 4: 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 2: I hope they set up a candle too.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: They dimmed the lights, they set the mic up, and
then they.
Speaker 5: Exited the room.
Speaker 4: 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 Victor quote, the fucking engineer Deglio because of
his contribution.
Speaker 2: That's a great man. Gosh, that's almost.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 2: It's hilarious. Oh, more embarrassing than what Adriana Smith has
a little with.
Speaker 4: 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. If 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 2: 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 Usual 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 you usual illusion one and two. All right,
so that apps Appetite for Destruction.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 5: Joining in and communicating with us on Facebook. We're blown away.
Speaker 2: Thanks guys.
Speaker 4: 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 Surely Podcast at
gmail dot com. All right, we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Okay, I mean I know what.
Speaker 4: It's just an flower note a low F on the scale.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, a low f.
Speaker 2: On the scale to a high of B sharp six.
Speaker 4: Okay, there's no such thing as be sharp.
Speaker 2: Let's start over. Let's start this one over.
Speaker 5: Does it say B sharp?
Speaker 2: It has be and it has a little little note
thing by it.
Speaker 4: Okay, so it looks like another like little b right,
a little baby be okay, okay, good good, all right,
so you just you misinterpreted the symbol. Let's be flat.
I was really really gonna judge.
Speaker 5: Be sharp. Okay, yeah, no, wonder they thought he was great?
Speaker 2: Yeah really, okay, I'm gonna start this little conversation.
Speaker 5: Over real quick. Okay, I think it's great.
Speaker 2: 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 5: Did you say concert Hotels.
Speaker 2: Dot concert hotels dot com.
Speaker 4: Oh, if concert hotels dot com is speaking, you should listen.
Speaker 2: I'm just telling you. On this list, Steve Perry is
below Eminem We're lily literally weeping.
Speaker 5: Right now below.
Speaker 4: 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.