Nesbit

A 50 piece orchestra makes sense because If there’s one thing November Rain is missing it’s an overinflated sense of grandeur.

morriscroy

Wonder if there's any leftover Use Your Illusion session tracks/outtakes/demos with Steve Adler on drums (besides Civil War).

cultshock

My favorite version of the song is the one that's mostly just Axl and a piano, from the 1986 Sound City sessions. I first heard that on the bootleg CD "No Refrain" back in 1989 and loved it. I'm glad that a much better quality version was included on the AFD box set, but no early versions of "Don't Cry" on that or this set, what the hell?

Nesbit

Will have to hunt that version down. Thanks for the recommendation.

I don’t dislike the song it’s just never something i’d pick over estranged, chapter three of the without you trilogy inspired by the writings of del james. Folks, if IM turning down this release with that level of bullshit still in my head 31 years later they’ve really missed the mark.

cultshock

I have that "bullshit" stuck in my head as well. The song is good, it just became so bloated as Axl can never stop tinkering with it (even to this day, considering the new version). Tracii Guns claims that Axl started working on the song in 1983, eight years before it finally ended up on UYI, so there's probably been a billion different evolving versions over the years. But IMO the best version is that 1986 piano demo, I think it's hauntingly beautiful and the sparseness of the recording suits the song way better than the needlessly overblown version we finally got.

joeblow69

I remember buying these 2 CDs the day they came out, and that experience is STILL the biggest musical disappointment I've ever had in my entire life. You guys who love this stuff, are you hearing with rose-colored hearing aids? Or do you seriously enjoy this? I don't think I could even put together a single album worth of good songs from UYI 1&2. (sorry if this comes off as a thread crap, I'm honestly blown away by some of the comments here)

Troy Stiffler

I'm not obsessed with it. But it's there with other 90's albums that I still like a lot. I was never crazy about the earlier Guns N Roses albums. Probably wasn't the right time. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Metallica, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots. I listened to GNR non-stop beside these bands. I was 10-15 at the time.

morriscroy

I didn't buy the two albums at first. I only purchased them many years later, when they were already discounted/bargain bin fodder.

Back in the day when I first heard a half dozen or so tracks on the radio from these two albums, I suspected it was never going to live up to "Appetite For Destruction".

stvn1974

I bought them on cassette and wore them out. I got a CD player finally and got them along with Metallica's Black Album, Nevermind, Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Ten on CD.
I am passing on both the Illusion and Kiss Creatures Of The Night sets. I looked up my orders for both the Destroyer and Appetite boxes on amazon and after seeing what I paid for them on release compared to the insulting prices for these new sets I will just have to say no.

Nesbit

Blown away? Oh come on now this isn’t like a Trout Mask Replica where it takes a special breed to even finish the thing 😆 I get that it’s not as good or real as Appetite but that’s also part of the appeal at least to me. They’re not a half punk, half metal, half blues rock downtown bar band anymore. They’re this huge, decadent THING. They’re the 75 foot tall versions of the album covers they had as set decoration on the tour. They ARE the November Rain video.

Admittedly it helps if it was the version of the band you were introduced to but even if it isn’t the records are good. If you don’t remember individual tracks and have the time i’d highly recommend Coma and Locomotive. Those are each albums best tracks IMO

morriscroy

If "Appetite For Destruction" had never existed, I would have thought "Use Your Illusion" sounded like another faceless generic hairspray metal band from that late 1980s time period.

morriscroy

(More generally).

Back in the day, I figured out that most bands' first and/or second albums was their best stuff from many years of songwriting prior. By the time it was the second or third album, the cupboard of older material is largely the mediocre stuff or almost empty. So they had to come up with newer songs to record during their grueling touring schedules, or on the spot during preproduction for their second or third albums.


Subjective examples of this transition of decent songs to mediocre (or outright garbage) might be bands like:

Motley Crue: Shout At The Devil -> Theater of Pain
Quiet Riot: Metal Health -> Condition Critical
Armored Saint: March of the Saint -> Delirious Nomad
WASP: (self-titled) -> The Last Command
Pearl Jam: Vs -> Vitalogy

I'm guessing this might be reflective of bands who do not have consistently proficient songwriters on their rosters, and/or their primary songwriters were "burned out".


In the case of "Use Your Illusion", I'm guessing GnR saw this as an opportunity to record and release a lot of the stuff in their backlog they had written which was never recorded for Appetite, along with then-newly written songs regardless of quality. Especially if Geffen Records was willing to go along with it, and saw it as a huge cash windfall riding on GnR's peak worldwide popularity at the time.

I don't know if Geffen's executives anticipated hairspray metal declining at the time.

GuessWho

There's an old saying along the lines of...

You have your whole life to write your first album, but a few weeks/months to write the follow-up.

stvn1974

Willie Nelson also said that it is hard to write a good album on a full stomach.

Josh-da-man

"Appetite for Destruction" was one of the all-time great albums. It would have a been a bloody miracle if the follow-up came to its predecessor's glory.

I found the "Use Your Illusions" albums to be wholly inferior to "Appetite," but still quite good. Quite a few singles, and even the non-single songs were pretty good. They certainly swapped the street-level aggression and grime of AfD and added in a healthy dose of pretension, but that's not always a sin in my book.

If you want to talk about disappointing albums, the mid-late 80s weren't kind to AC/DC, Judas Priest, and Kiss. "Use Your Illusion I/II" >>> "Flick of the Switch," "Fly on the Wall," "Ram it Down," "Asylum," "Crazy Nights," and "Hot in the Shade."

A long time ago I would have included "Turbo" on the list, but its grown on me over the years.

ViewAskewbian

I guess we're not counting LIES as the follow up to Appetite for Destruction?

cultshock

LIES is kind of a weird one, half acoustic EP, half reissued pre-Appetite "live" EP. I see it as more of a stopgap to hold fans over rather than an actual follow up. I still think it's cool though, I just wish "One in a Million" didn't have such unfortunate, ugly lyrics, because if not for that it would be a really good song.

Josh-da-man

"GNR Lies" wasn't an actual album. It was just a way for Geffen and the band to reissue the impossible-to-find "Live Like a Suicide" EP.

And they padded it out with a few new tracks so they could price it like a full album.

ViewAskewbian

I still think it's a good tune just like "I Used to Love Her". I mean, I always took those tunes as being about a character/certain type of person then, say, Axl's own views when he wrote them. Then again, I don't know the guy. He could be a girlfriend burying homophobic racist for all I know

morriscroy

Also an easy cash grab for Geffen.

"The Spaghetti Incident" likely was released for similar reasons. Allegedly many of the tracks on "The Spaghetti Incident" were recorded during the Use Your Illusion recording sessions.

cultshock

Oh yeah, it is a good tune for sure, and your explanation is the one that Axl went with during the criticism at the time. It's just a shame that I'll never be able to belt that song out during karaoke.
I wasn't surprised to see it missing from the AFD box set, but it's omission was a bit glaring. I think the only time I've seen footage of it played live was at an acoustic set in NYC back in 1987. The video was terrible quality, I'd love to see a nice quality video of that set.

cultshock

Yeah, many of the songs were recorded during the UYI sessions, but the versions on the EP removed Izzy's guitar and replaced them with Gilby Clarke's. I'd love to hear the original versions, but considering the utter lack of studio outtakes on the new box set I doubt we'll ever hear them, especially considering that Axl likely wouldn't want to have to pay Izzy any royalties on those.

Josh-da-man

And "GNR Lies" and "The Spaghetti Incident" are both better than "Chinese Democracy."

gerrythedon

CD box $202.99
https://www.target.com/p/guns-n-rose...05#lnk=sametab

Vinyl box $396.99
https://www.target.com/p/guns-n-rose...54#lnk=sametab

Nesbit

Ive always really enjoyed Spaghetti Incident. I’d probably put GNR Lies and Chinese Democracy at about the same level personally. I listen to CD more often now (which still isn’t a ton) but that’s just because i’ve easily listened to Lies ten times more during my life and neither is a favorite. Best thing on either album for me is like my third favorite version of Mama Kin