What set Guns N' Roses apart?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Uly Gynns, Dec 9, 2015.

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  1. Uly Gynns

    Uly Gynns Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    For those who were alive in 1987-1993....

    Guns N' Roses, from 1987-1993, was huge. Their major-label debut was (even by 1990 and remains) the best-selling debut album of all time, going Diamond in the US alone with over 17 million copies sold by 1999; it remains the 11th best selling album of all time in the U.S.; they were all over the airwaves in this period; Even a mini-album of theirs went 5x Platinum; the UYI albums sold a combined 30 million copies worldwide. They sold out huge stadiums in minutes long before the internet age and their two year live tour only saw their popularity increase.

    For that roughly 7 year period they were arguably the biggest band in the world. The release of the Use Your Illusion records has been documented as being an almost historical event, with midnight release lines stretching for blocks; In this period of time they were almost at MJ levels of popularity.

    They were so huge that they were able to host their own PPV show in the summer of 1992 with people like Jeff Beck, Aerosmith and Lenny Kravitz appearing as guests. They were the main event at the VMAs the same year, and had an almost ten minute love song reach within the top five of the Billboard Hot #100 that summer. A bit earlier, the songs Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child dominated the airwaves.

    Even during the grunge era in 1995, a rather average cover of Sympathy for the Devil charted high on the Mainstream Rock Charts and even halfway up the Billboard Hot 100 without any promotion. Despite the departures of the entire band, anticipation and hype for Axl Rose's Guns N' Roses was very high and Chinese Democracy became a legend.

    Even as late as 2004, their Greatest Hits album dominated the Billboard Top 200 and spent 337 weeks on the chart. Not only were they huge in the 80s/mid 90s, but they've had a staying power beyond that of say, Def Leppard, Warrant or Crue in terms of chart success and relevance.

    My question is, what (at the time) set them apart, both for you and your friends? Why did they become so huge where many of their contemporaries did not? What was about them that drew you to them rather than to the other bands out there?
     
  2. drasil

    drasil Former Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    the superlative charisma and kindness of Axl Rose.
     
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  3. SizzleVonSizzleton

    SizzleVonSizzleton The Last Yeti

    I loved them, saw them early on the Appetite tour opening for Iron Maiden. I think the Ritz 88 concert is a thing of beauty and can be used as an example of 'THAT is rock n roll'!

    With all that said, a lot of it was luck. It's always a lot of luck with timing and management etc. I loved them right along side Motley Crue and Bon Jovi and Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. It's not like everything else stopped for me because of Guns n' Roses.

    Edit to add, I was way late on Metallica and Megadeth and Slayer at this time. They weren't on my radar, but if they had been they all released albums in that same time frame that are as good as GNR.
     
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  4. audioguy3107

    audioguy3107 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta, Georgia
    It's been written about many many times :)......it was the return to raw and nasty rock n roll rather than the silly glam rock that was so popular over the previous 8 years or so. They had such a nasty edge to them, to all the parents out there they were taboo. That's pretty much all it took (not to mention AFD is a hard rock classic of course), but their image really threw them over the top. All you need is a parent/teacher crusade against a particular band and it's their ticket to stardom!

    - Buck
     
  5. Uly Gynns

    Uly Gynns Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    No, obviously those other bands were successful as well in the same period, but GN'R seemed to have a "Roses Mania" thing going on especially from '88-'91 or so. The whole lines around the block wait for the UYI's release - the only other band to have that kind of reception so in this period was Metallica with the Black Album which was also a huge success.
     
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  6. SizzleVonSizzleton

    SizzleVonSizzleton The Last Yeti

    See 'timing and luck'. You can be great, otherworldly great, and you still ain't getting their without both!
     
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  7. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    My younger sis loved them, JH, Highschool during those years...
    I found them just like all the other rock bands... Just another cassette to drink beer and party along with, good times
    I was more into Ratt, Ministry and Mode during those years
     
  8. BryanA-HTX

    BryanA-HTX Crazy Doctor

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Fixed it for you. They did a cover of "Sympathy for the Devil" with the mostly-original lineup in 1994, which for whatever reason a lot of people hate on
     
  9. Todd W.

    Todd W. It's a Puggle

    Location:
    Maryland
    I agree with this part. I don't want to go as far as to say all the "silly glam rock" of the time was all that silly. I will say, for me, it was as important as an album for its time like the first Van Halen was my senior year of high school. Both, utterly fantastic in my opinion and game changers.
     
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  10. Uly Gynns

    Uly Gynns Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    It was popular enough in it's time to hit #1 on the Mainstream Rock Charts and #55 on the Billboard Hot 100 in Jan. '95 without any real promo or a video. So yes I'd say they were still 'big' in 1995. I'd imagine if they had released a new, original single in late 1994, with a video to accompany it it would have been even bigger.
     
  11. reb

    reb Money Beats Soul

    Location:
    Long Island
    Slash guitar playing
     
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  12. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Great melodies and lyrics that are very memorable and catchy.
     
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  13. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
  14. Before 1991:

    Solid riffs that also served as hooks
    Authenticity lacking in most other hard rock bands of the era
    Swing
    A sense of vulnerability underneath the authenticness that seemed to amount to more than faux sensitivity to get into her pants
    Slash's lead guitar work
    Solid production that didn't kill the songs with reverb and gang choruses and all that '80s crap
    Duff taking the lead in arranging the songs, rather than Axl
    Cool name

    After 1991:

    Ability to cruise on the afterburners of Appetite and Lies
    Axl's insanity
     
  15. dino77

    dino77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    They appealed to girls. Seriously, the fan base would have been much slimmer without those ballads.
     
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  16. Shem the Penman

    Shem the Penman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pittsburgh, PA
    It's a good question because the climate was important to their success. I'm not even a huge fan but GnR were NOTHING like Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, et al. They may have looked like it at first, but they had the songs, Izzy brought a Stones and Faces spirit to the songwriting. It's a real difference, the other bands being pop based disposable stuff whereas Guns were grounded with stronger musical roots.

    Although the real secret is that "Sweet Child o' Mine" is a roller skating song that was also accepted by metal kids.
     
  17. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976

    Providence and sheer raw talent.

    The combination of five completely different and distinct individuals from different parts of the country with differing ideas, backgrounds, and influences, thrown together into a single band in Los Angeles during the heady days of the mid-1980's, leading to an astonishingly creative streak in a short period of time fueled by a blizzard of booze, birds, and blow... all of which combined created a perfect-storm alchemy of personality and performance not seen in rock since Led Zeppelin, and which not only paved the way for their stratospheric rise and explosion but also their subsequent dysfunction and rapid implosion relatively soon after; the combination of those wasted but talented five personalities was dynamite but unstable dynamite at that, it gave them that edge but it also blew up in their faces not long after.

    Well, all that and the f**king GREAT music... plus the fact they are one of, if not the only, 'legacy' act that hasn't had their back catalogue remastered and re-released over and over; you can still buy the originally-mastered recordings (CD or vinyl, take your pick) today as when they were first released, and they STILL sound terrific, that tells you something about the utter vapidity of the 'remastering' racket in the current music biz (with some notable exceptions).
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2015
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  18. What set G'n'R apart from most of their contemporaries is the fact that they wrote incredibly catchy, kick-a## rock'n'roll songs that weren't considered cheesy or lightweight. This was quite refreshing in 1988, after a landslide of 80's bands that were nothing but cheesy & lightweight.
     
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  19. vamborules

    vamborules Forum Resident

    Location:
    CT
    They had two blonde guys, two dark-haired guys, and one ginger. It was the perfect hair color balance, and impossible for people to resist.

    Now you know.
     
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  20. ChrisScooter1

    ChrisScooter1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, GA
    There were lots of reasons for me. By the time 1987 came around, I had left my middle school metal head identity behind and gravitated towards college rock and other bands that , if I wanted to get a sense of aggression and danger, so called "metal bands" were the last thing I wanted to hear. Teased hair, hockey stick Floyd Rose guitars, "classically trained" lead singers, cliche riddled piss pour song writing, GIT "scale by numbers" soloing and drum sets that had no business being that big...it just was silly and pointless. If I wanted to ROCK...punk, old AC/DC or Aerosmith, Hanoi Rocks, aggro dance music (Ministry) hit the spot way better than anything that was coming out at the time from the majors labeled hard rock. Then, this live EP of a bunch of seeming street crawlers (Live like a Suicide) reminded me of what made dangerous hard rock cool in the first place. It harkened back to bands like early Aerosmith, early 70's Stones, New York Dolls, etc. They dispensed with the day glow hockey stick guitars, slung the Les Paul low into a cranked Marshall or Mesa 1/2 stack with the midrange CRANKED, not scooped, brought the drum set down to a regular size (heck, Adler even went WITHOUT a rack tom for a while), added attitude, dance grooves and a powerhouse rhythm section without the use of double kick or finger tapping pyrotechnics and proceeded to rock with that testosterone vibe, without taking it into jock mode. Yeah, Axl had teased hair early on, but the overall aesthetic was to dispense with the foo foo and look the way a rock star should look...lean, mean, cool and dangerous. Simply put, they made hard rock cool and relevant again. Once Appetite came out, clearly they showed they could back up the attitude and style with very good song writing. They actually wrote melodies along with riffs and grooves. We now know they stole a few of those ideas, but they knew a good melody, groove and riff when they heard it and built a career with it. For me, the ultimate cool factor was how each song sounded different and I loved how Axl used two different voices on Appetite. I could never quite get behind the UYI albums...for me they lost something when they got rid of Adler and Axl's ego was too big by then. Appetite, for me, was a lightening in the bottle moment. That album still holds up today AND reminds me of the era.
     
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  21. John Fell

    John Fell Forum Survivor

    Location:
    Undisclosed
    Izzy Stradlin
     
  22. Uly Gynns

    Uly Gynns Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    They were truly a hybrid:

    Axl - Queen, Rose Tattoo, Hanoi Rocks, Elton John, Foghat, 10cc
    Slash - Mick Taylor, Aerosmith, Jimmy Page, AC/DC
    Izzy - Rolling Stones, Faces, reggae, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, Lynyrd Skynyrd
    Duff - was a Seattle Punker, brought a huge Punk influence to the band, obsessed with Prince and Cameo
     
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  23. tim185

    tim185 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    What is a day glow hockey stick guitar? The only part of that, that made any sense to me was "floyd rose".
     
  24. sddoug

    sddoug Music Aficionado

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    The songs. The answer is always the songs. What made the Beatles great, the songs. What made Led Zeppelin great, the songs. Continue, et. al.
     
  25. nolazep

    nolazep Burrito Enthusiast

    Great songs, "dangerous" image, and absolutely perfect "f-word" usage (as an 11 year old, that meant quite a lot).
     
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