While *Frampton Comes Alive *and Rumours came out at the peak of my fun loving party years I was a little older than the demographic that made AFD by Guns N’ Roses so big.
I never really got it. They were good but hardly head and shoulders above thier competion (IMHO). I find Axl’s voice kind of grating and Slash was certainly competent within the style but not so much better or different than several other bands in that genre. They had some lyrics that were catchy and the songs were solid but again not vastly better than the competion.
Granted, other hard rock bands were doing well at the time but at least around here, Gn’R seemed to “explode onto the scene”.
What did they tap into* in 1987 that made them so popular.
What was different about the music on AFD.
*Besides a bazillion groupies.
While I was taking a shower I thought of a way to put it more concisely, “What was Gn’R bringing to the 1987 party that thier competition wasn’t?”
Also…when I was “standin’ in the shower thinkin’” it occurred to me that the other members of GNR were supposed to be a big part of the sound but unlike FM where you could tell a Lindsey song from a Stevie song from a Christine song, in GNR I never heard individuals standing out, other than Slash and Ax.
First off, though they may have seemed to “explode onto the scene” I remember it being a slow build.
Note: No research here, but this is an accurate account of my experience.
This album was part of the soundtrack of my eighth grade year so my memories here are vivid. Though the album was released in the summer of 1987, I never heard anything from it on popular radio until the summer of 1988- this was when I got to know who Guns and Roses were: a full year after the album was released. As the summer of 1988 came to a close, I started 8th grade. For this school year of fall 1988 to spring 1989, Appetite for Destruction was part of the soundtrack of my life both through my own cassette player and on the radio.
So, this album really didn’t “explode onto the scene” though I do agree that that is how it seemed.
Why was it popular? I have one idea but I think it’s an important point.
They were hard edge enough that we bought them as being authentic (contrast with the typical 80s “Hair Metal” bands like White Lion or Poison- we thought those guys were a bunch of pussies). But on the OTHER hand, they wrote much better Pop songs than the typical “legit” Heavy Metal bands. All the songs on Appetite for Destruction are singable, much more so than songs that Metallica and Iron Maiden were putting out at the time.
Not that legitimate Heavy Metal bands weren’t putting out quality material, but they weren’t putting out Pop songs.
And on the other extreme, the pop metal “Hair Bands” weren’t fooling us.
Guns and Roses had a hard edge that we respected, but they were also writing good Pop songs that we could sing along to.
It was a time when the top selling rock/heavy metal bands were all glammed up. Look at Axl’s hair in their first video. G&R was gritty and raw and more real than the hair metal out there. And the album was damn good.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Having been 14-15 at the time, I can attest to the fact that the hair bands (Poison, Motley Crue, Winger, etc…) were regarded as effete at best, and their music was kind of effete as well.
Bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer were cool, but way too hard for radio play.
Guns & Roses was just at that sweet spot of hard, yet radio friendly, and got a LOT of radio play as a result.
Listen to “Welcome to the Jungle” vs. “Hysteria” by Def Leppard, “Girls Girls Girls” by Motley Crue, or “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi and you’ll see what I’m talking about. (all of the above were released as singles in 1987).
Yeah, I guess they were under my radar until one day it seemed like every bar I went into, every Trans Am I pulled up next to in traffic, every time I turned on the AOR station…there they were.
I don’t know, but I’m the wrong person to ask. I was never really a fan and I think GnR is very overrated. Many people in my age group think Appetite for Destruction is the greatest musical achievement mankind has ever produced. OK, that may be a bit of exaggeration but it sure feels like it sometimes.
Now you’re talking. Jane’s Addiction was much more my style.
The cover art, of a robot standing over a young woman, panties around her ankles, was pretty shocking to me at the time. I had seen much more extreme covers from obscure European metal bands but at the time GNR’s cover seemed pretty edgy for mainstream.
I never owned the album, but I was in my early 20s at the time, so I was pretty well aware of the band and their songs. However, I don’t think I ever saw that album cover – this is the only cover I’ve ever seen associated with it.
I’ll add to the chorus of “it was heavy, but poppy”. Because, that’s why. Before that album broke, it was played on the independent metal shows in Dallas. That simply wasn’t going to happen to any of the Hair Metal bands. I personally thought it was good, but would rather they played another Accused song. Shortly after I heard it on there, I was present when a “d-rock” (goth before there was goth) girl cranked the radio when “Welcome to the Jungle” came on the radio. As lots of people would say: “I knew they had something there, but I had no idea how big it was”.
It still was just a metal record, but it was good, and poppy enough to get airplay. In retrospect, that original cover is probably more meaningful art than its contents, with the exception of “Mr. Brownstone”. But then again, Elvis wasn’t incredibly popular because he was incredibly deep, so that’s out of context.
TL;DR: It was a hell of a lot more agressive, more interesting, and reflected reality better than Whitesnake.
Nothing really to add; it came across as more authentic and raw vs. hair metal.
I’ve said a bunch of times on this board that the thing that makes music “Rock” is danger. It took them some time to break, but the songs and the danger were there.
I was not a GnR fan at the time. I liked the music enough to listen on the radio but I didn’t buy the album. In retrospect it has aged much better than moost of the rock of the day.
I remember singing, “Take me down to Panama City” with the rest of the guys in the barracks at Fort Rucker getting ready for the weekend.
Recognizable, clear & unique skilled guitar sound, over the top singer who also had a solid yet unique voice, lyrics were good and you could actually sing along. Just quality stuff …
FWIW, I have never been a GnR fan, but do realize why they were popular.
Another much more minor thing to consider is that being about the hardest metal that would succeed on radio means that all those kids whose parents kept a tight rein on what music they listened to loved it, because it was farther along the track of what they wanted to listen to, but was played on the radio, so it was a lot harder for parents to crack down on.
(remember, this was well pre-mp3, so you had to get Columbia House or go to the music store, and this was also the era of Tipper Gore, and municipalities jailing performers for profanity, and other comparable stupidity)
Guns n Roses was musically a bigger sound than other hair metal bands. They had a second guitar player that played rhythm and the dynamic between the two guitar players was just more interesting and powerful than what other bands had going. Most other metal bands just had one guitar player that alternated between fuzzy on the verses and then a clear tone on the guitar solo but GnR had both going at the same time.
The whole album was a good value in that most albums had the single you bought the record for, a couple of good songs and half filler songs. Every song on Appetite for Destruction was really well done and you could listen through the whole thing without wanting to fast forward your cassete.
