Real and honest rock music. Guns N' Roses in New York in 1988 (Photo by Getty Images, Larry Marano/Getty Images)
"Rock music got lost in the '80s. Guitars didn't sound like guitars, drums didn't sound like drums. It all sounds artificial. Lost. Then the Guns N' Roses guys came along and gave rock 'n' roll back the honesty it lacked." These words were said by Gene Simmons, leader of the legendary band KISS, in a 2015 interview. Simmons, one of the world's greatest rock heroes, who happened to be born in Israel as Haim Weitz, listed "Appetite For Destuction" as one of his 10 favorite albums of all time. "You can't argue with the songs on this record. The guitar riff of "Welcome To The Jungle" is no less than that of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction." And as soon as you heard Axel's high pitched voice singing the wonderful lyrics, you knew it was something special that we hadn't heard since Led Zeppelin. It still works, to this day."
Since 1987, with the exception of a few breakups and crises typical of such bands, the Guns N' Roses brand continues to be the standard for "quality rock". A lot of bands have formed since then, many have broken up - but no band has managed to maintain the aura of the Los Angeles members as rock 'n' roll A-lists.
In a moment, they're here. Guns N' Roses performing in 2017 (Photo courtesy of the band)
Since the original line-up reunited, the band has returned to being the biggest touring band in the world. On June 5, the band will take the stage in Israel with its strongest ever line-up, with vocalist Axl Rose, super-guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McGann. Alongside them will be keyboardist Dizzy Red (who was an inseparable part of the ensemble in the 90s as well), drummer Frank Ferrer and a battery of musicians who make the evening rich and exciting, just as expected of the band - whose sold-out performance in Israel in 2017 is considered one of the highest ever performed in Yarkon Park.
On the occasion of the gig, we tried to list the band's five greatest songs and found that it was an almost impossible task. It is very likely that as usual such lists will annoy quite a few fans, but with so many hits - it is really impossible to find a consensus, especially since this list can change every day anyway. Did you agree? Annoyed? Come write to us in the comments, and feel free to suggest your list.
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5. Paradise City
Beyond great songs, the band members were also known in the 80s for wild behavior and uncontrolled consumption of mind-alterers. That's perhaps why almost every member of the band has a different story about how this hit was written. Duff claims to have written the song himself about the loneliness he experienced after moving to Los Angeles. Slash claims that he improvised the opening riff after a successful show in San Francisco, and Duff and Izzy were just there and joined him for the jam from which the song was born. Axel, by the way, presented the song in its live debut: "We wrote this song together today." Does it even matter who wrote the song or when? Probably not, because it became one of the biggest hits from the band's debut album. It is quite possible that the decision to veto Slash's line, "Where the girls are fat and they've got big titties," turned out to be correct in retrospect.
4. Patience
A year and a half after their debut album, which was announced as Masterpiece upon its release and in retrospect was considered one of the greatest rock albums of the decade (if not the greatest), the band rushed to release their second album "GnR Lies" despite not having enough new original material. The result was several covers recorded live, along with four new acoustic songs. In retrospect, it's a pretty unnecessary album, but it did introduce a sensitive new side to the band that no one even knew existed. On the album's only single, which begins with Venus playing and a melodic whistle (whistling! in a hard rock band!), Axel and the friends display their power as musicians. Three acoustic guitars, a huge singer who proves to be much more than screaming and one commodity that is missing in all of our lives: patience.
3. Sweet Child O' Mine
So it's not the band's biggest song, so it's at least their most recognizable hit. The song that even your grandmother knows how to hum and despite the loud guitar solo, no one will raise an eyebrow if we find it on a "relaxing weekend" in Galgalatz. A song with such classical qualities that many mistakenly thought when it came out that it was a cover. This is not accidental. It is the last song the band wrote for their first album, with the stated goal of finding a hit sound. They had heard a lot of Lynard Skynyrd songs in those days, and after Slash played the opening riff to friends, which he improvised just for an exercise in playing, the hit almost wrote itself. It's the song that put the band on the map, and made them synonymous with rock at the highest possible standard. Not surprisingly, their catchiest song also became the song that received the most covers, including some surprising ones like the Black Eyed Peas. By the way, the line "Where do we go now" was originally written as an honest question, when Axel could not finish the lyrics to a song he originally wrote for his girlfriend. With no other choice, the line became an inseparable part of this iconic song, which not coincidentally has already garnered a billion and a half views on YouTube - an unusual number for a song from the period.
2. Welcome To The Jungle
A competitor deserves the title of "the greatest song to ever open a debut album". Imagine opening this record, of an unfamiliar new band, starting to play it, and Slash's deadly opening riff starts playing. It was a song that perfectly defined the band. The song helped the band build their reputation as "the most dangerous band in the world", thanks in large part to the sincere rage that can be heard in Axel's voice. Many mistakenly think that the band wrote the song about the jungle of the Los Angeles music industry, but the real story is much simpler. Axl Rose arrived in New York one day, where a homeless man jumped on him and yelled at him: "Do you know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby! You're going to die!" The rest is history.
1. November Rain
Anyone who grew up in Israel in 1991 and had a cable connection knows that this is the greatest song of that decade, with no real competition. On MTV Europe's broadcasts in Israel at the time, the song was played on an hourly basis. That's why, even though it's a very long song (very long!) and very complex musically, there's no one who lived in those years who doesn't know how to recognize every chord in the song. It's hard to separate the legendary video from the song, perhaps because we all watched it between 23,993 and 2,20 times in the nineties, and another 2021 billion times on YouTube (what a crazy number!). What exactly is going on there? Why did the bride die? Why do wedding guests freak out so much because of a little rain? Why step on the cake? And why does the friend with the curls go out to give a crazy guitar solo in the middle of the desert? It doesn't matter at all. This amazing epic, which Axl Rose wrote for almost a decade, combines so many styles that it's hard to even begin to list them. There's a lot of Elton John influence there (especially from the album's long opening track "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"), along with Alice Cooper influences and even a bit of country rock. If Axl Rose hadn't known Hotel California, we probably wouldn't have gotten November Rain. Originally, the song lasted almost <> minutes (!) but his bandmates helped him edit the song for "only" nine minutes. Until <>, it was also the longest single to reach the top of the US sales charts, but then Taylor Swift came along with "All Too Well" and overtook it by a full minute. But with all due respect to Taylor, Gans will continue to be played on the radio for another hundred years whenever rain starts drizzling in November. Our great-great-grandchildren will also get to fall in love with the Nines' biggest hit.
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