Prior to yesterday, the last time that I heard anything off the bloated & overproduced Guns N’ Roses album Use Your Illusion II must have been back in Boston, reclining on the filthy bed of Mr. Arafat Kazi, scourge of the Dhaka theatre community.
Those were high times, with the lumbering giant cycling through the entire history of 1980s and 90s metal, trying to convince me of the magic inherent in Powerslave and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I have long attributed Arafat’s fondness for metal as a product of some bizarre cultural translation whereby his Bangla brain hears music in a way fully different from my own. (This theory is scalable to Europeans– how else do you explain Robbie Williams and All Saints?)
But last night the random brought up a few old favorites from the semi-original G’n'f’n'R lineup– specifically “Civil War,” “Shotgun Blues,” “Pretty Tied Up,” and “You Could Be Mine.” I’ve never had any patience for the ballads on the Use Your Illusion albums– unlike Mr. Kazi who, to this day, adheres to the beauty and power of “November Rain”– but I admit a weakness for the sound of the rock numbers that, had they been on an earlier album, would stand with the band’s earlier efforts. And let us make no mistake: Appetite for Destruction is the defining album of scum rock, one of the great works, and a thing so fully digested individually and culturally that there’s no reason to listen ever again.
This got me thinking along a line of weird truth: there is a very basic argument to be made that the reason I live in Los Angeles is because of the awful impact of Guns N’ Roses on my childhood brain. I have very specific memories of being a wee lad of 10 or 11 and seeing the videos for “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Patience” and thinking to myself that I should ever so much like to go and live in the disgusting hell of Hollywood. An echo of which occurred at 13 when I bought both Appetite and the Illusions.
It certainly wasn’t a conscious decision but I think I may have moved here to follow out that forgotten childhood wish. God knows “My Michelle” and “Pretty Tied Up” are readable as blueprints for my life, circa early-to-midlate 2007.
The point of all of which is: for all the outcries that it’s just art, that it doesn’t really impact the kids, I’m living proof otherwise. Watch what you give your kids. Shit has consequences. And another thing: there are no more old scores. Yesterday was the day that I settled all the family business.
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:22 am
What, you killed Heath Ledger?
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Yes. Yes, I fucking did.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Damn you have a liberal interpretation of song lyrics. You’re like the Unitarian Universalist of interpreting lyrics. Although you’re very good at hearing them, I’ll give you that.