#gnr lies

[rocketqueen1989x]

those curls 🫶🏽

[izzystradlindoesitforme]

Izzy Stradlin Vest Appreciation

Part II

'Cause every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

[rocknrollflames]

Reminds me a little of E.T. in the closet with all the stuffed animals.

[1spy]

1988 | Guns N' Roses - "Patience"

I was riding my bike with a friend back in middle school, and he started singing this song that sounded really cool. The kids now would call it a meme song, where there's just one catchy bit that gets memorized and transmitted instantly to seemingly every kid you know. All I know is we were riding our bikes around and singing this song at the top of our lungs like kids did back then:

Take me down to the paradise city / Where the grass is green and girls are pretty / Oh won't you please take me home

It was so dumb and fun. And I had not, at the time, even seen the video for "Paradise City." In fact, the first video I remember seeing from Guns N' Roses was their mega-popular acoustic ballad "Patience."

It's not the most representative song in their catalog. GNR's debut album, Appetite for Destruction, had come out in 1987 and was full of heavy, uncompromisingly sleazy hard rock bangers that made other LA hair metal bands sound tame and fake in comparison. The album painted a portrait of a Hollywood underworld where sex and drugs are traded for access and opportunity, but where the American dream is most likely to end in an overdose. All of which seemed pretty far away from my life in suburban Spring, Texas.

But Patience was a perfect entry point for me, a kid whose favorite band was—at the time—the Eagles. The gentle acoustic ballad opens with Axl whistling, which may have been a savvy bid for pop relevance only one year after Bobby McFerrin's huge #1 hit "Don't Worry Be Happy" also included prominent whistling. Patience got all the way to number four.

I wasn't the only one connecting GNR to the Eagles. Hotel California and Appetite for Destruction have similar themes involving sex, excess, and corruption in a drug-soaked Hollywood. Axl had performed backing vocals on Don Henley's album, End of the Innocence. And Henley played drums and sang backup when Guns N' Roses played "Patience" on the 1989 American Music Awards.

It took two years for it to happen, but the singles for "Welcome to the Jungle," "Paradise City," "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Patience" eventually made the band ubiquitous. And Axl was constantly in the news for being a terrible human: starting shows late, nearly starting riots at his own shows, saying racist, misogynistic, and homophobic shit, and otherwise being a huge asshole.

At the time none of that mattered to me. What mattered was the way I felt when I pressed play on the CD. It was exhilarating every every single time. It still is. Appetite for Destruction is the best selling debut album of all time because it has no skips. It's an incredible hard rock album front to back, full of songs that are musical, surprising, funny, sophisticated, angry, and—more than anything else—convincing. It was hard to listen to Appetite and then put on Warrant, Poison or Motley Crue. Nirvana killed all those bands, but GNR put them on notice.

"Patience" wasn't on Appetite. It was on a follow-up collection of two EPs called GN'R Lies. The GNR half was old live performances from 1986 ("Move to the City" was my fave). The "Lies" half was a set of four acoustic originals whose popularity may have inspired MTV Unplugged:

"Patience"- the second song I ever learned to play on guitar all the way through.

"Used to Love Her" - A jokey song about killing your girlfriend and burying her in the back yard.

"You're Crazy" - Better, bluesier, and somehow darker than the version on Appetite.

"One in a Million" - The song whose lyrics included racist, anti-immigrant, and homophobic slurs, but also functioned as an Axl Rose origin story.

Even when I was a kid listening, the lyrics to "One in a Million" bugged me because Axl's lyrics on the song weren't just hateful, they were the worst lyrics he had recorded. It was a missed opportunity, because it's probably the best song on this record. It was his best vocal performance, it had the best solo, and Axl whistles over the opening again with an even better melody. It sucks because he ruined the song with half-assed, bigoted lyrics.

None of this is to provide an apologia for GNR (or for me). They were my favorite band until my senior year of high school. They were the reason my first guitar was a Gibson Les Paul like Slash played. And I dove DEEP into both Use Your Illusion records when they came out (I could write three or four more posts about UYI I & II).

But once Izzy Stradlin' left the band, I knew they were never going to make another record as good as Appetite. The best songs off Use Your Illusion are the Izzy songs. The coolest guy in that band was Izzy. And the best post-Appetite record by anyone in the band is Izzy's solo record with the Ju Ju Hounds.

I went to see Guns N' Roses in 1992 with Soundgarden opening. And I'm glad I did. But Izzy wasn't there, and I felt his absence. Basically, it feels like I left GNR when Izzy did.

But if he ever rejoins the band, I might see them again.

Fave lyrics (for someone who loved walking the tough suburban streets of Cypresswood at night):

I've been walking the streets at night Just trying to get it right It's hard to see with so many around You know I don't like being stuck in the crowd And the streets don't change but maybe the names...

[rodpower78]

Guns n Roses - Appetite For Destruction + G n' R Lies (Australian TV ad ...

[oldsoulgunsnrosesgirl]

Ok This Is Fr So Me I Love All These Albums So Much😭😍I love these men so much

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[adoringyouhxney]

GN’R Lies

[itryandfeelthesunshine]

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022;

34 years ago, on November 29, 1988, Guns N' Roses released the album "GN'R Lies". It peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 chart. ❤️‍🔥 Can you spot the differences between these two covers? 🎸

#GNRNEWS

M. 🌹

[animalb0y]

My way, your way Anything Goes tonight!! 🎶

[rocknrollflames]

Yep. I remember that passage. He's got a good heart, Steven.

Happy Birthday, dear sweet, fun, loving, unselfish, gorgeous, talented man.

“Obviously we still had to work other jobs. Steven was the only one of us who was not working. He had been kicked out of his house when he was twelve and learned early how to make his way on the streets. But he was completely unselfish. If he scrounged up the money for a hamburger or a bag of Cheetos, he would share it with me or any of the other guys - no matter how hungry he was.”

- Duff McKagan about Steven Adler

[rocketqueen1989x]

I CANT. THEY LOOK SO FED UP 💀🤣🤣

[rocknrollflames]

GNR Fox Late Night 1988

Still one of the best.

[stvnszlr]

okay um . so i found this video of duff at a qna for his book a few years back where some guy starts being an asshole and like trying to harass him about knowing kurt cobain which is … what it is

BUT THE WAY DUFF RESPONDS ????? oml it has me WEAAAKKKK WATCH HIM SHOUT AT THIS FUCKING DUDE

I WOULD BE SCARED FOR MY LIFEEE IF SUCH A HUGE ASS DUDE LEANED OVER AND YELLED AT ME LIKE THAT oh my god duff is actually so intimidating

[hi1234hehe]

Axl rose gets made fun of online to

Trolls poke fun at his looks and his voice. Like he’s trying and you don’t look the same as you once did in your 20s

exactly and it makes me so sad that he is getting made fun of everyone ages and it’s nothing to make fun of like the people making fun of him are going to age worse. Also I love Axl like a lot I love GNR and I love there music and a sad fact is that Axl banned Google from having any bad-looking pictures of him because people were making fun of him a lot and it hurt his feelings (sorry for the rant) 😭😭😭 also the people making fun of him don’t realize that he is way more successful than any of them are so I don’t understand why people like making fun of him for something as small and as natural as aging

[my-bass-lies]

[rocknrollflames]

The best Guns N'Roses song ever written.