The Ultimate Rock 'n' Roll Rewrite: How Critics Trimmed the Fat from Guns N' Roses’ Epic Use Your Illusion!

Appetite for Destruction stands tall as perhaps the greatest rock 'n' roll record ever unleashed. I say "perhaps" only because neither you nor I have actually heard every rock album ever recorded. It is entirely possible some got missed. But I say "perhaps" not because I think, say, the White Album is more worthy. No, it isn't. Of course The Beatles are better than GN’R, I haven't lost my mind yet, but they never recorded anything as singularly great as Appetite. And neither did anyone else.

It's an unconditional loud claim to all the derogatory and complimentary clichés ever concocted for rock 'n' roll—something like "turn off the lights, we did it"; it's got the nagasonic teenage warhead, and the swagger literally permeating the low-rent metal guitar work, and all the songs are so cool and poisonous you can catch them before the disc even finishes playing. Appetite was about the loss of innocence—theirs and ours—and it dragged a whole generation of matted-hair kids into the harsh realities of street life. It made rock 'n' roll dangerous again. It created people who made it dangerous to the public and to themselves. To get dangerous, all you had to do was bathe in its ruinous neon glow.

But back to what was. The guys in the band were poor, hungry, and scrawny when they created the album, living in some hangar and feeding on the scraps brought by their numerous girlfriends. By the time they signed the contract for its follow-up, things weren't like that anymore. They were millionaires, high on drugs, completely losing the storyline. And so they created a massive double-album beast, so bulky and complex that nobody could make sense of it.

Use Your Illusion I & II is precisely what an excess of money and fame did to a band, and it not only shook the cornerstone of GN’R's foundation, it betrayed the very essence of what made GN’R great in the first place. A lion doesn't need to explain to others that he's a lion. And a lion would never have made Estranged. The killer charm of Appetite was that it was the work of sharp-eyed predators who made an album so perfect nobody could touch it 30 years later. Predators capable of and ready for hard work with an animal instinct. And Illusion sounds like an over-saturated set piece.

Yet all is not lost. Somewhere deep inside the stacks and stacks of mediocre Illusion tracks and eye-popping numbers, a great rock 'n' roll record exists. You see, it's not Appetite itself that's so great, but of course Van Halen II—that's what's truly great. Therefore, to whip the album into shape, we had to do a little rearranging. And here is the Illusion as it could have been.

Side «A»

1. You Could Be Mine

   This was the first single of the Illusion project, but for some reason, it was buried on part II. It is definitely the most obvious successor to Appetite across both albums, acting as the ideal intro to GN’R's new high-budget space age. It's just as intoxicating and vicious as anything on the debut, only bigger, louder, and clanking like a giant robot in an airplane hangar. It builds an appetite (cough-cough) for the destruction that is bound to happen. Put it first, and you've got yourself a proper party starter.

2. Dead Horse

   Both parts of Illusions are stuffed with Emperor’s New Clothes moments, most of them courtesy of W. Axl, who according to all known sources acted about as rationally as Tony [Montana] from Scarface during recording sessions. So we happily discard those dubious moments. I wonder if nobody was around to tell this freak that "I'm gonna kick you in your doggone little ass" is precisely what you say about this very doggone little tune? In any case, it was the most authentic rock 'n' roll song Rose penned for these albums. It's a grand heavy-metal-infused Stones knockoff that gives the whole record a smooth flow.

3. Don’t Cry

   The '80s were over, of course, but a power ballad remains a power ballad. Positioned actually as track 4 on part 1, I think it should be brought up to first for a short breather before the noise and commotion that follows. It's also the last time you'll hear anything genuinely sentimental from these outlaws. If you're more into November Rain, you can put it on side "B" or a bonus EP or somewhere else. This isn't a Queen record.

4. Pretty Tied Up

   Another stout glam cocktail shoved into the corner on part II, Pretty Tied Up is a fantastically low-rent piece taking us back to the group's green youth. It sounds like the work of maladjusted misfits and is wildly rock 'n' roll. When the '90s faded, songs like this became the domain of Scandinavian acts like The Hellacopters, for whom it's business as usual, but this strain of drugs Guns poured into barking rock acts like Queensryche / NIN, and this shit lived on in Chinese Democracy. They had plenty of it in them, I'm sure.

5. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

   Admittedly, the band had grown up and matured by this point (well, at least grown up), so the song is right there with it. There's no way the Appetite version would be lying in the dust listening to Dylan, but now? Why the hell not? It's brimming with rock clichés Guns never had in their output before. It sounds like polished punk rock. Plus, it's a great song no matter who plays it.

6. The Garden

   Why not finish side "A" with a wondrous miniature? Alice Cooper pops out of nowhere in this delightfully deranged ode to drugs, strippers, New York, and other forms of madness, showcasing the band wandering onto and thoroughly combing through psychedelic metal territory. Like Knockin’, it points to a certain maturity. And it's a fun tune, even if it's about being hooked on heroin.

Side «B»

1. Bad Apples

   The track kicking off side two ought to remind you why you love the band you're listening to, and Bad Apples is quintessential GN’R with cowbell ringing, great for listening to at night, something you can dance to if you've had enough to drink. And in a high-sound world where Illusion is a compact single album, we're all drunk and dancing the night away.

2. Bad Obsession

   One of Izzy Stradlin’s finest, this slow-moving, ragged medley feels like badly corrupted Stones numbers performed by GN’R.

3. Civil War

   While we hardly need this thing running for seven and a half minutes, such a powerful, slowly building drill is genuinely one of Guns' best songs, even if it's a method of reviving Heaven's Door. But it also serves as a reminder that the band had more on their minds than just drugs, women, and massive piles of cash. They were also capable of feeling anxious, falling into depression, and agonizing over the things drugs, women, and cash so often lead to.

4. Right Next Door To Hell

   Turn up the tempo on Civil War and you get this song. A fast, shocking thrash buzzer that makes the heart beat faster—this is the Guns we were promised back in '87.

5. Locomotive

   Tuning into track 11, Locomotive is one of the lost gems of Illusion, a song so piercing its sound can tip over into chaos at any second. Yet another reminder of why they were dubbed "The Most Dangerous Band in the World."

6. Coma

   Let's wrap up the tale with the most unimaginable 11-minute nightmare of a deranged junkie penned by a heroin-numbed Slash. There's no harmonious chorus here, and anyone can die at any given moment, including yourself. The ultimate ending for a band permanently living on the razor's edge.

   
   Release Date: September 17, 1991
   Artist: Guns N’ Roses
   Albums: Use Your Illusion I & II
   Total Track Count: 30 tracks
   Total Runtime: Approx. 2.5 hours (Part I — 75:56, Part II — 75:52)
   Chart Peak: Simultaneously occupied the #1 and #2 spots on the Billboard 200 chart