#491 Guns N' Roses, 'Welcome to the Jungle' (1987)

 

I graduated high school in the 1980s, so yeah, I know this one.  It was ubiquitous.  It's good, but I always thought of them as an above average band for the time. Not a great one. I didn't feel the motivation to spend my money on the album or anything.  But I've mostly heard it in cars or at a party or something.  Time to give it a serious listen....

How many teenaged hands reached to turn the radio up when that guitar intro came on?

Yeah,  I think it was the vocal that didn't do it for me.  The band is kicking ass.  The guitar sounds are muscular and the two parts mesh really great. Don't really need the singers little orgasm sounds over the solo.

So I enjoyed more than I thought I would.  The singer is probably why I didn't dig Guns N' Roses more.  For me, he's kind of like David Lee Roth without the charisma.  Good song, though. 

Comments

  1. RonDecember 3, 2021 at 8:49 PM

    Ubiquitous is correct. I did like it a lot and it would make my Top 500. Axl Rose (aka William Bailey) and Izzy Stradlin (aka Jeff Isbell) were both from Lafayette, Indiana (same home state of David Lee Roth). They Greyhounded to LA and crashed the scene. They met up with Slash, Duff McKagan & Steven Adler eventually. The rest is history.

    After they released all multiplatinum "Appetite for Destruction", "GnR Lies" EP, "Use Your illusion i" and "Use Your Illusion II" recordings, Izzy left the band. Ever since, GnR's song writing quality and quantity decreased immensely. After all, Izzy was the only original member to have a high school diploma (D average, but it's passing). It took 13 years for the disappointing "Chinese Democracy" to come out and then nothing except stadium tours they did periodically before the pandemic.

    You might think I'm dissing Izzy about his diploma, but he is a really good songwriter and I enjoyed his music after he left GnR. He's got a bit of a rough Ron Woodsy voice, so he never made it as big obviously. He had a band called the Juju Hounds and they sounded like cool Faces/Rolling Stones rock with a bit of Reggae thrown in. Nice!

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