Guns N' Roses

Guns N' Roses was form in LA in 1985 by the merger of two bands name Hollywood Rose and L.A. Guns.  Their style of music is a mixture of punk, rock and blues and one of the main influences is Hanoi Rocks
The current members were:

• Axl Rose - vocals
• Slash - lead guitar
• Duff Mckagan - bass
• Izzy Stradlin - rhythm guitar
• Steven Adler -drums

Some of the members were replaced and the band came to consist of:

• Axl Rose – lead vocals, piano 
• Dizzy Reed – keyboards, piano, synthesizer 
• Tommy Stinson – bass guitar, backing vocals 
• Chris Pitman – keyboards, programming, backing vocals 
• Richard Fortus – rhythm & lead guitars, backing vocals
• Frank Ferrer – drums
• Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal – lead & rhythm guitars 
• DJ Ashba – lead & rhythm guitars

The band started out on the club scene and release an EP called Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide which has become a collectors piece.

The bands first major album was Appetite for Destruction in 1987 with Welcome to the Jungle as the first single.  The song did not do well initially but Geffen Records founder persuaded MTV to play it after hours.  Rock fans soon started requesting it and the band initially became popular in Japan.  Welcome to the Jungle was played in the Clint Eastwood Film, The Dead Pool.

The second single Sweet child of mine was written as a poem for Axl Roses girlfriend was a smash hit in 1988.


Guns N' Roses performed at Monsters of Rock, Donnington along with Iron Maiden and Kiss and despite Axl Roses plea for calm two members of the crowd were trampled to death.  This and some of the band members drink problems lead the band to be labelled dangerous.


The band released G N' R lies in 1988 which had conversational songs on namely One in a Million:

Guess I needed

Sometime to get away 

I needed some peace of mind 

Some peace of mind that'll stay 

So I thumbed it 

Down to sixth and L.A.

Maybe your greyhound 

Could be my way 

Police and niggers

That's right 

Get out of my way

Don't need to buy none of your 

Goldchains today 

I don't need no bracelets 

Clamped in front of my back 

Just need my ticket till then 

Won't you cut me some slack 

Chorus: 

You're one in a million 

Yeah, that's what you are 

You're one in a million, babe 

You are a shooting star 

Maybe someday we'll see you 

Before you make us cry 

You know we tried to reach you 

But you were much to high 

Much to high 

Much to high 

Much to high 

Immigrants and faggots 

They make no sense to me 

They come to our country 

And think they'll do as they please

Like start some mini Iran 

Or spread some fucking disease

They talk so many goddamn ways 

It's all greek to me 

Well some say I'm lazy 

And others say that's just me

Some say I'm crazy 

I guess I'll always be 

But it's been such a long time

Since I knew right from wrong 

It's all the means to an end, I,

I keep on movin' along

Chorus

Radicals and racists

Don't point your finger at me

I'm a small town white boy

Just tryin' to make ends meet

Don't need your religion

Don't watch that much TV 

Just makin' my livin', baby,

Well that's enough for me 

Axl denied this saying the song was from a protagonist point of view and that Slash was half black.  He said he admired bands like Body Count and Queen.


The band nearly disbanded because of the drug problems of Slash Adler but they returned to the studio to record the Use your Illusions albums.  Adler was replace by Matt Sorum from the Cult and Dizzy Reed joined the band on keyboards.  When the albums released the debuted at 1 and 2 and stayed there for over 100 weeks.  The band made very expensive videos with November Rain and Estranged.  The music on these albums evolved to keyboard and horn sections in the songs.  They then started on the longest tour in rock history of 28 weeks which had incidents of riots, late arrivals and rants by Axl who was very outspoken against critics and rivals.









The punk and rock album "Spaghetti incident" was released in 1993 which featured some contraversal songs which were thought to be pro Charles Mason.


The band then was in turmoil but finally after nearly 15 years whilst they recorded Chinese Democracy.  Before its release most of the songs were leaked and available for download for intervals before they were removed from the sites.   Chinese Democracy was not as elaborate as the Use your Illusions albums but nevertheless it still has keyboards and horns in some of the songs.


The band has attracted much controversy during there time but they were also highly spoken of by other musicians and the music industry