Wake Up, Time to Rock Special 02.08.06: Leaping Majestically To The Defense Of Guns N' Roses
Posted by Tollah on 02.08.2006
Dated? Formulaic? Gay? The T-Bomber doesn't think so, and nor should you!
I've noticed that recently that in pretty much every news report here over the last few weeks there's been various reports about what Slash said or what Axl said regarding the release of the next Guns N' Roses album, "Chinese Democracy". Hell, even indie boy Ian Wright has reported on the Gunners twice.
Almost inevitably, these reports end with "I am so sick of hearing about this album and I refuse to buy it when it comes out and I hope it does shit and I hope everyone Axl and everyone else who has ever been in Guns N' Roses and all of their fans die in a horrific car crash".
Relax, you maniacs.
I find it hard to believe that these people, who were once such huge GnR fans, aren't going to listen to this album when it comes out. How can anyone NOT be intrigued by it? They were once the biggest band in the world and all of their original studio recorded albums have been nothing short of great. Axl has a proven track record as a songwriter. They've taken 12 years so far to come up with this CD. What have they been doing in all that time? How do the new band members sound? Omg, I bet you are all super pumped to hear it.
Anyone who thinks this album won't sell well is kidding themselves. GnR still have a huge fanbase from back in the day plus a lot of the younger folk today are getting into them. This CD will have no problem shifting copies.
Anyway, if you're sooooooo sick of Guns N' Roses, stop reporting news about them. No-one's forcing you to do it.
This brings me to my main gripe - Stephen Morgan's outrageous and sadly inaccurate column about the Gunners. You can read part 1 here and part 2 there.
First off, I've enjoyed Stephen's previous "Untouchables" columns, despite sometimes disagreeing with the outcome (Sex Pistols are untouchable? Taco, por favor). Also, the quality of writing and level of humour sure aren't lacking - I cracked up at the line about Axl's bongo player.
It's where Stephen starts talking about their work that things reach a grinding halt. Let's start with the review of GnR's debut album and the Greatest Album Ever, "Appetite for Destruction".
"It's So Easy" follows and…well, it hasn't aged as well as the first track. I mean, it's OK, but it sounds so 80's. A cookie-cutter riff, with an added spooky "Master Of Puppets"-esque break in the middle, doesn't make a great song.
Where is this spooky "Master of Puppets" break you speak of? I don't hear anything remotely like anything in "Master of Puppets" here. Anyway, what does make a good song is awesome lines like 'Why don't you just fuck off?' and 'Turn around bitch I got a use for you/Besides, you ain't got nothing better to do/And I'm bored'. This song is a winner every time.
"Out Ta Get Me" is again OK, but…*sigh* I dunno what to say, this sounds very dated. I can't really see the difference between this and a Bon Jovi song to be honest.
I don't get this one. Name a Bon Jovi song that sounds like "Out Ta Get Me". I can't think of any. Hell, I'm a Bon Jovi fan and don't think it would be a bad thing, but I just don't see any similarity whatsoever.
"You're Crazy" showcases the bands punk side and it's a side the band should have concentrated on more. Whereas the bluesy rock ‘n' roll songs on this disc sound horribly dated when listening to them now, this one still sounds great.
Okay, this one just bamboozles the T-Bomber. "It's So Easy" is the CD's most punk song. The band refer to it as their punk song and it was written by Duff and his old punk band. Yet it sounds dated, whereas "You're Crazy", which is also supposedly a punk song, still sounds great? Make your mind up. Personally I think "You're Crazy" is actually more of the bluesy rocker type of song which is supposedly soooo bad.
We finish off this mixed bag with "Rocket Queen", a song which straddles both sides of the punk/blues dynamic we have on the record. It starts off strongly with a great riff, but after about three minutes breaks down in a desperate attempt for stadium clap-a-longs. We then progress to a "Sweet Child"-style lighters-in-the-air section to bring the song home. Hmmm…thumbs up for the first part, thumbs down for the second. A nice idea though.
This is simply claptrap. "Rocket Queen" was voted GnR's best song on the forums last year for a reason - because it's downright awesome. It starts with some classic LA sleaze metal accompanied by an almost latin-American beat and riff, before progressing into an all out awesome fest with a huge stadium rock riff and Axl screaming out the lyrics like a mofo.
Also, you missed out "My Michelle" and "Anything Goes" from this album.
Now onto "Lies", where things go out of control!
"Reckless Life" and "Nice Boys" are standard GNR with extra punk thrown in for good measure. "Move To The City" pulls off the blues-inspired rock track far better than anything on "Appetite", even including what appear to be horns. "Mama Kin" is filler...
"Nice Boys" and "Mama Kin" are covers of classic songs by Rose Tattoo and Aerosmith. So much for research.
"Patience" is a slow, acoustic ballad with the same ambition as "Sweet Child" but a completely different sound.
I like how the most famous song the album by far and the only single from it is skimmed over like that.
"One In A Million" finishes, and it's an anthemic ballad that can stand up there with the likes of "Paradise City" and "November Rain" in terms of quality.
Huh? Don't get me wrong, I love "One In A Million", but anthemic ballad? How can you talk about this song and not waffle on about the infamous "nigger" and "faggot" lines that caused so much controversy? Weird.
For the sake of quickness I'm just gonna state which tracks are filler straight away so I can get to the interesting ones: "Dust ‘n' Bones", "Perfect Crime", "Back Off Bitch", "Double Talkin' Jive", "The Garden", "Garden Of Eden", "Dead Horse". They're all just your standard GNR rockers; no surprises here. They probably sounded exciting in 1991, but again, today they sound dated. Bands like System of a Down and Rage Against The Machine have made these tracks pretty redundant, so let's talk about the rest of this instead.
Uhh..? How have a pair of shitty nu-metal bands made these songs redundant? That made no sense whatsoever.
"Live And Let Die" is a sort of half-ballad half-big rock song. It's one of the more famous ones on the album, but the way it pinballs between the two styles is half-assed and the "big riff" just sounds terrible; it should have been left in the 80's where is belonged, guys. Sorry, this one doesn't do it for me.
It's a cover of a Paul McCartney song. Seriously, I thought everyone knew that.
"Don't Cry" is another ballad, and by now people must surely have been sick of these things. This one is formulaic, even for GNR, and "November Rain" later on makes this song completely pointless.
"Don't Cry" is one of the all-time greatest love songs. In fact, I prefer it to "November Rain". Great track that was also GnR's most popular song in the club days before they got signed and went huge. The lyrics are simple yet effective, the song slowly builds up beautifully to climax at the solo and final chorus.
We finish of with the 10-minute "Coma", which starts with the drums mimicking a heartbeat and builds up to the usual stuff; "I love you", "don't leave me", "I'm in a coma" etc. etc. I think it's about Axl staging his own death or something; either way it's extremely grandiose in a not-very-good way. It's also entirely formulaic; we even get the traditional breakdown in the middle (though it does have some unconvincing vocal samples of doctors handling a coma interspersed in the middle as well). There's no big arm-waving ending, as Axl apparently just rants until he runs out of steam and the song finishes. A messy ending to a decent album overall.
Another great song demolished by a poor review. Everything you point out as being bad here is actually good. The lyrics are superb and Axl's vocals are off the charts in this song. Grandiose is a good thing and it's not formulaic at all. Not at all. There's not even a chorus and the chord patterns are all different. Axl's 3-minute rant at the end is completely and utterly glorious.
We kick off with "Civil War", a big, pump-your-fist epic that goes over 7 and-a-half minutes. It's not bad, but it's very tame. There's nothing challenging in either the lyrics or the music. It sounds like a Springsteen off-cut, to be honest. And for an opening song, 7:42 is just too long. I mean, come on…you're supposed to be drawing people in here. Most of ‘em will be asleep by track two.
7 minutes is too long? What are you, a woman?
"Breakdown" again goes over 7 minutes and is some kind of attempt at a Hillbilly-stomp track. A GNR hoedown if you will. How they stretched this to 7 minutes I'll never know. This goes nowhere, and is just horrible, especially the stupid voiceover for the last couple of minutes.
What the hell? Because there's a banjo for thirty seconds at the start it turns the song into a "Billbilly-stomp"? This is actually a piano ballad in the same vein as "Estranged" and is completely awesome. Some great lyrics from Axl and Slash really tears shit up on the solos. A beautiful song and one of GnR's most underrated gems. Speaking of "Estranged"...
"Estranged"; 9.23. What in the hell is this? I guess it's meant to be touching. It's not. It's dull. And way too long (surprise!).
Okay, this is what got my ire up to the MAX. "Estranged" is the greatest song ever. It's a masterpiece. It starts in a dark place with some awesome Slash guitar melodies. Then we get the piano breakdown in the middle that's just beautiful to listen to. The last bit is where the song really rules as Axl's lyrics are sublime (emos, punks and goths could take a lesson in writing about feelings and all that crap without sounding like massive gaylords here), his vocals are superb and Slash plays not one but two classic solos (one in even has dolphin noises. DOLPHIN NOISES! Dolphins are special). Plus it has a great ending, something that GnR far surpass any other band ever at.
At least "You Could Be Mine" is on here. The band manages to stay under the 6-minute mark and delivers a slice of good old thrash metal (well, a watered down version at least, just like everything else on the album).
Yeah, everything on that album is a watered down version of everything else. That makes about as much sense as a foreigner.
There are no exciting songs on this album. It's like they realised they'd perfected the art of the rock ballad on their first record and decided to just keep watering the formula down until they were more mass-consumable than KFC.
How is the formula watered down? All of GnR's rock ballads are completely different and are the most innovative in the genre. The fact that they can write an epic like "Novemeber Rain" and also release a stomper like "Welcome to the Jungle" just goes to show how talented Guns N' Roses are.
I'm not gonna break down "The Spaghetti Incident". It's a good album of covers that shows that a hard rock band can play punk better than punk bands themselves. It's obviously not better than the "Use Your Illusion" albums, but Lil Stevie Morgan obviously has a major boner for punk so of course he does say it's better.
They also opened the door for Rage Against The Machine to come along and make the kind of exciting music that GNR, at one point, could have made. Korn came out around this time too, and doubtless wouldn't be as big as they are if it wasn't for GNR.
What the fuck? Neither of those crappy nu-metal bands sound anything like the classic rock of GnR. For GnR's influence, look no further than the late-80s LA sleaze metal scene. When GnR went huge a whole load of those bands followed.
Based on this, we can also blame nu-metal monkeys like Fred Durst and that guy from Creed on Guns ‘n' Roses too.
Yes, but you're basing on something nonsensical that you didn't explain. Nice one. Both acts are more influenced by the grunge scene which GnR were the antithesis of. In fact that guy from Creed was a huge rip-off of Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. The only similarity he has with Axl is his huge ego.
Slash and Duff, along with Matt Sorum (who replaced original drummer Adler during the "Use Your Illusion" sessions, as I glossed over last week) are currently in Velvet Revolver, making music that sounds very similar to early GNR stuff. Expect an album full of 19-minute ballads in approximately three years, then.
Velv sound nothing like GnR. "Contraband" sounds more like a grunge album than a classic rock album.
Apparently I'm not the only one who's soul was offended to the core by Stevie Morgan's massive tyrade. There's thread on the 411 Fan Forums, and this email I got from upset T-Fan, Karl.
Tell Stephen Mogan he's a cunt. He has the world's stupidest opinion two weeks ago a good column on Rage now he comes out and disses GnR. He called Estranged "dull" what a knob
Linkage
Ian Wright witters on about wanting to be an artist "just like his Uncle". It's all a bit poncey in my opinion but it's Ian's final news report here on 411. Check it out.
Ben Cwazolski smacks us in the face then pisses all over our hair with the latest edition of All You Cannot Live Without.
Brandon Ratliff wants to fucking fire all of you fuckers for not contributing to features. You can check out his review of foreign metallers In Flames' latest album as well as his new column Bands That Need Fans.
'WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF', you are probably thinking. 'WHERE ARE ALL THE USUAL AWESOME T-BOMBER FEATURES?!'. Well, Wake Up, Time To Rock is moving to the Saturday News Report slot, so you'll be able to find them there every week. Also look for a review of Big Day Out from me in the next couple of days.
