The band eventually signed on to Geffen Records for less money than they were offered by other record companies, but with Geffen they were offered the ability to do their own things, whereas other companies had wanted to change the band and image and music to their own terms. Having signed in March 1986, the band had released a four track EP, “Live Like a Suicide” in December of that year, in order to keep peace with their record company as well as keep their name in the minds of the fans out there, as Geffen had feared that the band didn’t have enough material to release a full album. The writing and recording of “Appetite for Destruction” took place over the first six months of 1987. Several producers came in and help produce songs, in order to gauge their suitability to work with the band. In the long run Mike Clink was the man who got the job, a producer with a wide experience and with different genres of bands. With songs from a wide variety of timelines of the band and its members, in hindsight it probably always boded well for the album to have a varied and interesting progression. The album was eventually released on July 21 1987, to the massive sound... of crickets...
For an album that has become one of the biggest sellers of all time, it is amazing how little anyone knew about it for so long. There’s little doubt that much of the album was uncommercial, songs whose subject matter and explicit language made them impossible to play on the radio. It was also one of those albums that had the ‘explicit language’ sticker prominently displayed on the cover, which may or may not have hindered its sales.
Eventually, it was two singles that broke the band firstly into the mainstream, and then into the stratosphere. The alternative flavoured “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, not a ballad but with lyrics that makes radio stations stand up and think ‘that’s a hit’, was the first to make a splash, with Slash’s uniquely harmonic guitar riff to open the song, and then his solo later on, making a song that atmospherically made the band marketable on the basis of it being a great track that ticked all those commercial boxes without being the atypical radio hit. This was the song that powered the album sales, such that it finally reached top ten around the world, a year after its release. Six months on from that, the band then released “Paradise City” as its next single, and this sent sales soaring again. “Paradise City” had a film clip of Guns N’ Roses playing live, and the song drew on that to continue the sales surge of the album, with its repeatable lyrics and rock sensibilities, giving kids of all ages a chorus that they could cling on to. These two songs were the driving force that propelled the sales of the album well into two years after its initial release.
And the thing is, once people bought the album, they discovered that the rest of the songs on the album weren’t really like those two songs at all. Some found disappointment in this, but many found the true joy of what Guns N’ Roses had compiled for their debut opus. The incredible energy of the tracks throughout is something to behold. The lyrical content and in your face style of each song is like a freight train, or perhaps even a Nightrain, bearing down on you. Both the album opener “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Nightrain” were released as singles, but both had more impact on people once they began buying the album. The opening trio of songs in “Welcome to the Jungle”, the hard rock jingle “It’s so Easy” and the rollicking “Nightrain” make for a terrific start. “Out Ta Get Me” and “Mr Brownstone” leave nothing to the imagination as to their lyrical content, and the excitable enjoyment that they are performed at both musically and by Axl’s vocals make them fantastic songs to sing along to. Both have such brilliant riffs, and the groove of “Mr Brownstone” is awesome. After the lengthy overhaul of “Paradise City”, the two songs sandwiched between it and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” are probably my favourites on the album. “My Michelle” and “Think About You” are arguably the most unlikely songs to appear on this album, and perhaps that’s why they attract me so much. At opposite ends of the scale when it comes to the lyrical aspects of singing about the ‘girl in your life’, for me they have always picked up that middle part of the album. And of course, once we’ve crossed over “Sweet Child O’ Mine” you have the three closing tracks, with the fast paced “You’re Crazy”, the hard jumping of “Anything Goes” and the lengthy extolling of “Rocket Queen”, a song I’ve always felt may have fit better on one of the Illusion albums. But what it does do is close out a most remarkable album given the circumstances of its release and growth over the years.
I know full well I didn’t have this album until well into 1988, because no one in my high school had this album, to my recollection, in our final year of high school. I know I had this on cassette recorded for me by someone in the first half of 1988, and I don’t think I bought this until sometime in that year, probably at the time they really began to get noticed. I remember seeing the album in record shops that I frequented in those days, with the big warning sticker on the front, but because I hadn’t heard anyone who listened to them, or heard any of the songs off the album, I ignored it and looked at the other wares in the racks. And I guess I followed the crowd a little when it came to finding and enjoying this album. I don’t feel any problem with that. Sometimes being a sheep is a good thing and leads you to something you may otherwise have missed, and I think this album in particular is a good example of that. I know the band toured Australia at the end of 1988 and I didn’t feel overwhelmed to attend, so I know my feelings on the album were still ambivalent at that stage, some 18 months after it had been released. One of my funniest memories of the time is when one of my best mates bought the UK 12” single of “Welcome to the Jungle” because he loved that song, but found that “Nightrain” was on the B side, and he claimed he was going to go home, and drag a razor blade right across the B side to make it unplayable, because he hated that song so much. Of course, within a few months he then claimed that he did actually enjoy the song after all. Funny times.
It is an eclectic and unique album that has crossed genres, and indeed is one that cannot be categorised into any one format as a result. It’s a metal album, and hard rock album, a rock album, an alternative album, a post punk rock album... and probably another half a dozen genres rolled into that as well. One thing that I’ve always attested to is that I love the album much more than those two songs that drove its eventual popularity, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Paradise City”. They are good songs, but not in the best half of songs that appear on this album. They did their job in getting the album airplay, and for me it was discovering everything else here that is the real bonus.
In the years since this album has held up surprisingly well, perhaps because there has been so little other material released beyond 1991, that it doesn’t have much to stand up against in the GNR discography. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe this is just a unique album that stands the test of time because it had to fight so hard to be recognised in its time. Whatever the reason, 35 years on – or in reality I guess 34 years on, from the time most of us actually discovered it – this album is still a pretty damned good listen.
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