Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion I & II


...There's no shortage of stories and history about Guns n' Roses, so i don't really need to rehash it all, but i will point out things relevant to other albums i've talked about.

Use Your Illusion I & II (it's all one big work) are monumental. It had been 4 years since Appetite for Destruction, and rather than simply AN album, they made a 2+ hour musicological documentary about being Guns n' Roses. That's what these albums are, the illusion is what you the listeners see, the reality is much more terrible and real.

The reality is that they sat around for 2 years because Steven Adler couldn't do Guns n' Roses levels of herion and still walk anymore. Fights with neighbors, getting arrested, they all ODed, died, and got resuscitated at various points, then decided to hire a new drummer, work up more of their early songs, a couple covers, write epic ballads, scathing tirades, divide the whole thing into exterior and interior points of view (color coded for your convenience), and just be the biggest, nastiest rock and roll band ever, presumably expecting to die in the process. It took a year and a half to record this glorious monstrosity. Obviously their egos and addictions eventually got the better of all of them, but that's their future and we're living in the moment right now.

1 is the fiery macho axl saying "yes, yes, i am a dirtbag, but don't pretend i'm somehow the exception in this messed up world" as they speed their muscle cars out into the desert. 2 is axl saying "here's how we actually feel about this stuff, we are human." Most people instantly gravitated to the second album (and it's still much more popular), but you can't have one without the other. To my mind, Use Your Illusion II is the adrenaline crash, the hangover, the depression to Use Your Illusion I's mania. The first album literally ends with slash and axl's real overdose, and the second album picks up with "none of this is good; the world, us, our relationships, none of it."

You can go scour the band's history for relevant details, but all of these songs are about themselves and the world they physically (if not quite mentally) inhabit.

As you may have noticed, my only criticisms of any of the people behind all of this music have come when they didn't do a good job of what i think they were trying to accomplish. These two monolithic statements are proof positive of how good the music can be. They certainly don't glorify that alien world in my mind, and it's hard for me to get on board with anything after (especially right now), but the Use Your Illusions are just spectacular.

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