ONE
My best friend from fifth form on was Corran McHugh. He taught me how to play my first song on the guitar: Highway to Hell. He was a very good guitarist. He listened to a lot of heavy metal: Iron Maiden, AC/DC, WASP, Man O' War... it's sort of an endless list of hair and guitar shredding. He was into the heavy metal where they didn't do sit down acoustic ballads and their hair was long but it was lank. Before Def Leppard were absurd they released quite a decent album called Pyromania. Before Guns 'n' Roses became an overnight sensation their album Appetite for Destruction spent years(?) building up a cult following. Corran introduced me to both. Hearing Welcome to Jungle for the first time introduced me to a new feeling with music: excitement and fear.
TWO
I was not bad at school. I did not smoke, I did not wag, I did my school work, was civil to my teachers and got good marks without making too much effort. There ain't much darkness in the first five tracks on this mix tape. It's a sound track of light and melody and bopping about. We're about to enter a dark musical period that's about hardness and anger. The other thing rock music does. Young men (or should that be old children?) are attracted to it for some reason.
Welcome to the Jungle is Guns 'n' Roses best song. A lot of their other songs are good but unoriginal. Sweet Child O' Mine is a cracking good rock ballad (where do we go now?) but it's just a rock ballad, and songs like Paradise City are stadium wank songs that are just silly. Guns 'n' Roses were best when they were fast and nasty. Most of Appetite for Destruction is fast and nasty. They had no class, and they were incredibly juvenile. Here's the last line from their liner notes:
..and all those who taught us hard lessons by attempted financial sodomy, the teachers, preachers, cops and elders who never believed...
Believed in what? A bunch of hairy alcoholics playing music about having sex and taking drugs? And before we move on... could there be a better guitar-as-penis-fantasy photo than this one of Slash? I could say all kinds of things about this photo, but I think the photo really says it all.
THREE
The problem with me being interested in the devil's music is that I looked like this. It was never going to fly in the end. The end, as it turned out was four years away, about the end of my first year at university.
This period is an interesting one because I never listen to any of this music anymore. The only band I can still tolerate is Bon Scott's AC/DC. They were pretty catchy and had a sense of humour. The rest of them were just dreadful.
Guns 'n' Roses
My best friend from fifth form on was Corran McHugh. He taught me how to play my first song on the guitar: Highway to Hell. He was a very good guitarist. He listened to a lot of heavy metal: Iron Maiden, AC/DC, WASP, Man O' War... it's sort of an endless list of hair and guitar shredding. He was into the heavy metal where they didn't do sit down acoustic ballads and their hair was long but it was lank. Before Def Leppard were absurd they released quite a decent album called Pyromania. Before Guns 'n' Roses became an overnight sensation their album Appetite for Destruction spent years(?) building up a cult following. Corran introduced me to both. Hearing Welcome to Jungle for the first time introduced me to a new feeling with music: excitement and fear.
TWOI was not bad at school. I did not smoke, I did not wag, I did my school work, was civil to my teachers and got good marks without making too much effort. There ain't much darkness in the first five tracks on this mix tape. It's a sound track of light and melody and bopping about. We're about to enter a dark musical period that's about hardness and anger. The other thing rock music does. Young men (or should that be old children?) are attracted to it for some reason.
Welcome to the Jungle is Guns 'n' Roses best song. A lot of their other songs are good but unoriginal. Sweet Child O' Mine is a cracking good rock ballad (where do we go now?) but it's just a rock ballad, and songs like Paradise City are stadium wank songs that are just silly. Guns 'n' Roses were best when they were fast and nasty. Most of Appetite for Destruction is fast and nasty. They had no class, and they were incredibly juvenile. Here's the last line from their liner notes:
..and all those who taught us hard lessons by attempted financial sodomy, the teachers, preachers, cops and elders who never believed...
Believed in what? A bunch of hairy alcoholics playing music about having sex and taking drugs? And before we move on... could there be a better guitar-as-penis-fantasy photo than this one of Slash? I could say all kinds of things about this photo, but I think the photo really says it all.
THREE
The problem with me being interested in the devil's music is that I looked like this. It was never going to fly in the end. The end, as it turned out was four years away, about the end of my first year at university.
This period is an interesting one because I never listen to any of this music anymore. The only band I can still tolerate is Bon Scott's AC/DC. They were pretty catchy and had a sense of humour. The rest of them were just dreadful.
Guns 'n' Roses
- "I'd just like to say that I have a personal disgust for small dogs, like poodles." (Axl)
- "I hate to take showers! Guitarists don't like showers 'cause we like the grease to build up on our fingers." (Izzy)
- "I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it." (Axl - Take me down to Paradise City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty - Rose.)
- I don't have to go down to the Comedy Shop to qet a joke. I can find that here." (Slash)
Really, it was only a matter of time before Axl started wearing bicycle shorts and writing ten minute ballads about rain.
1 comment:
There must be things that needs counting in the Social Studies department. I know, you could count the number of times Ashley doesn't wash his hands.
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