684. Guns N' Roses / Use Your Illusion I. 1991. 4/5

Following the enormity of Appetite for Destruction it was always going to be interesting scenario to see what Guns N' Roses would do in order to equal or top its popularity. It would be safe to say that it would have been difficult to predict that the response would be to write, record and release TWO albums, both on the same day. An impossible task, you would say, to do so and to be able to sell both in appropriate numbers. But they did, and for the most part they succeeded in doing so with both albums.
This is a real eclectic mix, showing that their music cannot be categorised in a single genre. But, they are able to mix it into a format here that, for the most part, makes the album a winner.
The good songs are terrific, top-shelf stuff. They are songs you can easily walk around singing in your head for days afterwards when you have thrown the album on for a whirl. The lesser songs on the album are, well, average at worst, and OK on most scales. The album survives on a whole because these songs - good, average, fast, slow, heavy, soft - all mix themselves in to the playlist such that whatever your tastes or likes of each song, you can be sure that it will be offset by the next song in order. It means that, even though some of these songs could be considered "skip" songs, you have no desire to do so, because it all seems to fit together rather nicely.

It kicks off with brilliant "Right Next Door to Hell", a breezy mix of lyrics and guitar shovelled in until it bursts through the speakers, a song that could easily have come from their debut opus. This is followed by "Dust N Bones" which slows the tempo down immediately and also introduces the piano into the mix as well.
The cover version of Wings' "Live and Let Die" is a real treat. It pays homage to the original but not straying too far from its formula, but it gives it a real hard rock edge, and the energy that comes out is just awesome. "Don't Cry" (this version being dubbed the "Original Version" rather than the "Alternate Lyrics" version on Use Your Illusion II) is tolerable without being anything above average. I feel as though this is this album's "Paradise City", a song that most others seem to love, but that I find quite average.
"Perfect Crime" is what I would consider the best type of Guns N' Roses song. It is short, sharp, taxing vocals, great riff and solo break and terrific drumming, all at a cracking pace. Great stuff all round. This is followed by "You Ain't the First", an acoustic song in the same style as what was done on G N' R Lies. Now, while that stuff was OK for an EP release, I don't really see the need to revisit it here on a new album a couple of years later. If you wanted to write this song, then do it at THAT time! Sure, that's just my opinion, but it did seem a little odd at this time of the album. "Bad Obsession" reinvigorates the piano here, as well as bringing in the harmonica, so that it has a real rockabilly feel to the song. Another song for me that isn't bad, but it doesn't appeal either. "Back Off Bitch" is a much more straight forward hard rock song, with typical Axl attitude. "Double Talkin' Jive" is a really subtle under toned kind of song, featuring Izzy Stradlin on vocals and an extended guitar solo from Slash that leads out the song.
"November Rain" was the overblown lengthy single, and the video it spawned is by all accounts one of the most expensive ever produced. To be honest, when I first listened to the song on the album I was less than excited about it, but, having had it played on the radio for six months straight, and having seen the video for the song a thousand times, it did begin to grow on me. Though I would never call it once of their greatest songs, I do now find myself enjoying it whenever it comes on. "The Garden" follows this, which features Alice Cooper on vocals on part of the song, and it is written in a very Alice Cooper-type way. You could easily mistake it for one of his songs, such is the mood and tempo it is played and sung at. "Garden of Eden" moves the album back into fourth gear, driving along at a frenetic pace that had been missing from the previous couple of songs.
"Don't Damn Me" starts off with a great rock riff and Axl at his best, spitting out lyrics in an incomprehensible tone and without taking a breath, which seems literally impossible if you try and sing along with him. It has a great solo from Slash and is one of my favourite songs on the album. I cannot understand why they have never played it live, it just feels like a great live song. "Bad Apples", dominated by the piano of Dizzy Reed, sounds as though it could be being played in an old western bar, the band in the corner playing while everyone around them sips whisky and plays poker. "Dead Horse" is of a similar vein, although there is not the dominating presence of the piano here that there was on "Bad Apples" it is much more driven by the guitars.
The album wraps up with the 10 minute sleeper, "Coma". In so many ways, certainly when I first got the album and listened to it, this song really did almost send me into a coma. It really dragged out the conclusion of the album, and on two occasions during the song it feels like it is finished, only to kick start again (no doubt much like a coma victim). In recent times I have come to enjoy it much more than I did in those days twenty years ago, though i still think it is dragged on far longer than is necessary.

I have always felt, probably like a majority of people, that if the band had just taken the best parts of both Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, and fused them together, they could have made one album that may have reached legendary status. As it turns out, both of them stand up on their own. Use Your Illusion I has something for just about everyone's musical taste, and all with a distinctive Guns N' Roses flavour about them, which is quite an achievement. To me, there are a lot of songs here that I like rather than love, and a numberof others I can tolerate rather than like. With an album so long and with so many songs of varying styles, you might be able to find a lot that you enjoy, but there will also through sheer volume be a few that you are ambivalent about. In an overall rating of the album, this is what costs it getting full marks.