On September 17, 1991, the hard rock band Guns N’ Roses released their groundbreaking albums Use Your Illusions I and II. They debuted, appropriately, at #2 and #1, respectively, on the Billboard charts, and have sold millions of copies.
They were also a watershed moment for the band: GNR released only the cover record “The Spaghetti Incident?” late in 1993, and Chinese Democracy in 2008. It’s safe to say that the Use Your Illusion albums were the high point of GNR’s commercial and artistic success, which they have yet to replicate.
The two records followed the band’s acclaimed and hard-hitting Appetite for Destruction, and the controversial G N’ R Lies, with the notorious songs “Used to Love Her” and “One in a Million.” The Illusion albums feature lead singer Axl Rose; lead guitarist Slash; rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin; bassist Duff McKagan, and two new members: keyboardist Dizzy Reed; and Matt Sorum, replacing original drummer Steven Adler.
While Use Your Illusion I and II have plenty of kickass rock songs in the vein of those on Appetite, they also boast ballads, covers, acoustic guitars (a la Lies), orchestral passages, and some very long pieces (“Coma” clocks in at just over 10 minutes).
Slash expanded on the sonic sorcery he had made his hallmark on Appetite, and Axl Rose penned some of his most raw and emotional lyrics ever: listeners would be forgiven for thinking that they were eavesdropping on his therapy sessions.
Upon their release in 1991, the music and words resonated deeply with twenty-something me. Revisiting Use Your Illusion I and II after many years, I am still in awe of much of the work, while acknowledging that some of it is sub-par, self-indulgent, or both. However, the albums are still a testament to a great band at the height of its potential, and the music has inspired me as a fiction writer.
In this post, I’ll look at Illusion I; in a separate post, I’ll cover Illusion II. If you have copies, crank them up as I walk you through them.
Use Your Illusion I
The album opens with an ominous bass riff as it launches, guitars screeching, into the frenetic “Right Next Door to Hell.” Ostensibly a hate-note to Axl Rose’s ex-neighbor, it’s the first of many self-reflective pieces: everyone knew that Rose had issues, but on these two albums, he’s going to share them.
Not bad kids just stupid ones
Yeah, though we’d own the world
An’ gettin’ used was havin’ fun
I said we’re not sad kids just lucid ones, yeah
Flowin’ through life not collectin’ anyone
Next comes “Dust n’ Bones,” my vote for the best cut on Illusions I. The framework for “Bones” was provided by the underrated Izzy Stradlin, and fleshed out by guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan. It’s a bluesy, lyrically quirky piece, with Stradlin on lead vocals, backed by Rose. “Bones” tells a short story about a breakup after infidelity, but it also waxes philosophical about…well, anything, I suppose:
Sometimes these things they are so easy
Sometimes these things they are so cold
Sometimes these things just seem to rip you right in two
Oh no, man, don’t let ‘em get ta you
After tromping along at a measured pace, with its laconic lyrics, the song suddenly gets very feisty, culminating in a trademark Axl Rose scream:
Ya get out on your own and you
Take all that you own and you
Forget about your home
And then you’re
JUST FUCKIN’ GONE!
…Followed by a furious, but brief, guitar solo before settling back down, and shrugging its shoulders (“And in the end, we are just dust n’ bones”). I can’t really explain why I love this song, but I do, so much so that I named a chapter of my novel This Wasted Land after it.
I can’t say nearly the same about the unnecessary cover of Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Live and Let Die.” The Gunners’ version is a fan favorite, and was nominated for a Grammy, but to me, it doesn’t substantially improve on the original. It seems like a bit of self-indulgence, another example of which immediately follows.
It’s not that “Don’t Cry” is a bad song: it certainly isn’t. But there’s no need for two versions of it, with identical music but different lyrics, on the two albums. The version on Illusions I was released as a single on September 17, 1991, but if I had to choose, I’d take the Illusions II version, which I discuss more in the next blog post.
“Perfect Crime” is another fast, hard-hitting tune, coming in and kicking ass in under 2 minutes, 30 seconds. Once again, it’s another Stradlin’ collaboration, but while I like most of his work, I’m not much of a fan of the next, which he wrote by himself.
Like “Don’t Cry” (which Stadlin wrote with Rose), “You Ain’t the First” isn’t bad: it’s a slow, country-western take on a breakup song, done in the key of Very Bitter (“Lots of others came before you, woman, but you been the worst”). But it’s nothing special. As I mention later, I would have left it off the records.
Stradlin does much better with “Bad Obsession” (another collaboration), the first of a few songs on the albums that deal with addiction, in whatever form. For so heavy a subject, the music is bouncy, sprightly even, with slide guitar, piano, saxophone, and harmonica. It’s a foot-stomping good time, even as the singer admits that a problem “better off left behind.”
…And then we get to “Back Off Bitch,” another hard-rocking steamroller where Rose vents (again) about a woman (again) who’s done him wrong (again). If this was the only song on this subject on the album, it would be fine, but taken in conjunction with the others, it’s a bit much. Yes, yes, I get it, Axl: that chick’s a piece of shit. Can we move on, now, and talk about something else?
Like, say, “Double Talkin’ Jive,” written by Stradlin. A nasty piece of work with a menacing bass line, its first verse could be the opening to a sleazy crime novel: “Found a head and an arm in da garbage can.” It keeps going gritty from there, but concludes, surprisingly, with a crisp, flamenco-style guitar solo by Slash. Like “Dust N’ Bones,” it’s an odd, short song where you can hear something new every time you listen to it.
Up next is “November Rain,” the first of the very long, very personal songs that are a hallmark of the albums. “Rain” comes it at just under 9 minutes, and features sweeping orchestration in the vein of its inspiration, Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.”
“November Rain’s” hushed, slow start belies its grandiose, emotional crescendo, with Slash’s soaring, wailing solo ending it all in spectacular fashion. Twenty-something me ate up and savored every moment of the song; fifty-something me finds it overwrought and excessive. That’s not so much the fault of the song, as it is my having heard it too many times (I feel the same about Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”). Nevertheless, it’s a superb, monumental piece.
How to follow the over-the-top “November Rain?” With a small, understated song like “The Garden,” the love-child of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Like that song, “The Garden” starts innocuously enough, flitting about and obliquely referencing drug use, before taking an alarming, sinister turn, musically and lyrically. Seventies shock-rocker Alice Cooper, appropriately, reveals “The Garden’s” true nature:
Only poor boys take a chance
On this garden’s song and dance
Feel her flowers as they wrap around
But only smart boys do without
Turned into my worst phobia
It’s a crazy man’s utopia
If you’re lost no one can show ya
But it sure was glad to know ya
Bye bye
Alas, there is one too many gardens on this record, and “Garden of Eden” is the substantially inferior one. There are few GNR songs that I think are just downright terrible, but this is one of them, naught but frantic, frenzied jamming and Axl Rose rapping at 800 words per minute. Hard pass.
Once the band arrived on the scene, Rose quickly attracted attention, often negative, for numerous controversial statements he made on stage or in the media. “Don’t Damn Me” is his reply to his critics:
So, I send this song to the offended
I said what I meant, and I’ve never pretended
As so many others do, intending just to please
If I’ve damned your point of view
Could you turn the other cheek
In the rollicking “Bad Apples,” Rose admits that it isn’t all fun and games being rich and famous—in some ways, he’s worse off than he was before. That weariness extends to relationships in “Dead Horse,” one of the best deep cuts on the album:
Sometimes I feel like I’m beatin’ a dead horse
An’ I don’t know why you’d be bringin’ me down
I’d like to think that our love’s worth a tad more
It may sound funny, but you’d think by now
I’d be smilin’
I guess some things never change
Never change
Narrated by a young man as doctors attempt to resuscitate him in an emergency room, “Coma” is a cri de coeur about a life gone out of control. The longest (over 10 minutes) and one of the most personal songs on either record, it’s a stream of consciousness monologue without a chorus, punctuated by angry women berating the singer (“You are such a fucking prick!”) until a different one seems to lean in close and whispers, “I love you.”
The guitars are blistering, the drums often reminiscent of a human heartbeat, and the whole thing is mesmerizing and absorbing. The middle of the song slows to a haunting interlude, an eye in the emotional hurricane, where Rose finds some solace:
No one’s gonna bother me anymore
No one’s gonna mess with my head no more
I can’t understand what all the fightin’s for
But it’s so nice here down off the shore
I wish you could see this
‘Cause there’s nothing to see
It’s peaceful here and it’s fine with me
Not like the world where I used to live
I never really wanted to live
As a writer, sometimes I find inspiration in a book or movie: my novel Dragontamer’s Daughters derived a lot from the Little House books that my girls read when they were young. Sometimes, I’m inspired by where I am, who I know, and what’s going on around me: such was the case for much of my book Lost Dogs.
But sometimes, inspiration comes in snatches from unlikely sources, in unexplainable ways. I don’t really know why these lines stirred something within me and informed the essence of my latest novel, This Wasted Land, but they did:
Please understand me
I’m climbin’ through the wreckage
Of all my twisted dreams
But this cheap investigation just can’t
Stifle all my screams
And I’m waitin’ at the crossroads
Waiting for you
Waiting for you
Where are you?
Next up, let’s look at Use Your Illusion II.
Kenton Kilgore writes killer SF/F for young adults and adults who are still young.
In his latest novel, This Wasted Land, high-school senior Alyx is lost and alone on a desolate world of monsters never before imagined. And if they don’t kill her, the witch who has her boyfriend will.
Kenton is the author of Lost Dogs, the story of the end of the world as seen, heard, and smelled by a dog. Stray Cats, the sequel, is coming soon: sign up here to get a free excerpt. He also wrote Dragontamer’s Daughters, like Little House on the Prairie…with dragons!
With Patrick Eibel, he created Our Wild Place, a children’s book about the joy to be found in exploring Nature. Kenton also published Hand-Selling Books to help authors better their sales.
Follow Kenton on Facebook for frequent posts on sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. You can also catch him on Instagram.