50 Shadow Of Your Love
Single B-side, 1987
Written by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin during their Hollywood Rose days, along with Rose’s friend and Stradlin’s future sometime replacement in GN’R Paul Tobias, this is the fastest song in the GN’R canon. Originally slated for the Live ?!*@ Suicide EP (hence the faux crowd noise mixed onto the track) and introduced by Rose’s ‘1-2-3-4’ count-off, it proceeds over a breakneck 3:05. Rose claimed Thin Lizzy as its influence, but really Shadow Of Your Love owes a much greater debt to Motörhead. In fact Slash’s bottleneck-guitar contortions recall ex-Lizzy man Brian Robertson’s standout contributions to his solitary album with Lemmy’s troops, 1983’s Another Perfect Day.
PR
49 You Ain’t The First
Use Your Illusion I, 1991
Guns’ hit the back porch with this whiskysoaked shit kicker.
Corey Taylor (Slipknot/ Stone Sour): “I know a lot of people – including myself – have huge issues with the Use Your Illusion albums. To me, had they trimmed the fat and consolidated it into twelve or fourteen songs, it would have been bulletproof. But there’s just something about this song that makes it so good to listen to – like you can practically hear the booze in the air. When you put it on, you don’t have to get warmed up to hit any of the good notes and you don’t have to know all the words – it’s a huge ‘fuck you’ to the chick that stormed out and ruined your life. To me it was a great middle ground between GN’R Lies and Use Your Illusion. You can just hear they’re just hanging out – you can practically smell the smoke in the room. As a kid, that was so fun to hear that it took me out of the rest of the album. There are some great songs across those two albums, but that song in particular, I can just put it on and drive.”
RH
48 Oh My God
End Of Days OST, 1999
The GN’R that recorded this rattling slab of distorto-metal from the soundtrack to reviled Arnold Schwarzenegger movie End Of Days was unrecognisable, musically and physically, from the band that had dominated the first half of the 1990s. Slash, Duff and Izzy were gone, leaving Axl lord of all he surveyed. It was probably for the best – there’s an unfathomable chasm between Appetite For Destruction and Oh My God. The first original Guns song in eight years, it was a shock to the system at the time but it’s aged well, even if the presence of four (!) guitarists – NIN’s Robin Finck, Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro, ex-Circus Of Power man Gary Sunshine and Paul Tobias – pointed towards the overkill that would define the reconfigured Guns N’ Roses.
DE
47 Catcher In The Rye
Chinese Democracy, 2008
This intelligent, insistently melodic song opens with mellow electric guitars and piano, and Axl Rose vocalising in the reverb-soaked distance. Ahead lay darkly humorous lyrics about madness and violence, Rose drawing on his revulsion for JD Salinger’s titular book, and the pernicious effect Rose thought it could have on weaker-minded souls. Most notorious among these of course was John Lennon’s murderer, Mark Chapman; the song fittingly offers some pleasing, Beatlesy tribute sequences, thick with chiming piano chords and some Hey Jude ‘nah-nah-nah-nah’s. An early version with a nixed guitar solo from Brian May isn’t difficult to unearth online.
GM
46 Chinese Democracy
Chinese Democracy, 2008
Written by Axl after he found himself moved by the final scenes in Martin Scorsese’s Dalai Lama epic Kundun, Chinese Democracy was first played live a whole seven years before its namesake album finally emerged. It’s no Welcome To The Jungle (what the hell is?), but as far as album openers go it’s still a riotous, full-throttle rager, bouncing along for a breathless 4:43 minutes as bursts of noodly solos fly out all over the place. With contributions from two backing vocalists, three keyboard players (including Axl) and no fewer than five guitarists, it also might just be the record’s most collaborative track.
MA
45 Move To The City
Live ?! @ Like A Suicide EP, 1986 *
A track that may as well have been marinated in sleaze, Move To The City repurposed Aerosmith’s Mama Kin to recount the teenaged Axl Rose’s journey from Lafayette, Indiana to Sunset Strip – wailing sirens, rumbling gutter-boogie riff, barely audible horn section and all. Another carry over from their Hollywood Rose days, it surfaced as the third track on the self-released Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide EP. The crowd noise, overdubbed on to the EP’s tracks to excuse the band’s own amateurish production, was lifted from recordings of the 1978 Texxas Jam festival, headlined by none other than a zonked-out Aerosmith and with Ted Nugent and Van Halen also on the bill.
PR
44 Shackler’s Revenge
Chinese Democracy, 2008
The first official release, owing to its inclusion in the videogame received a lukewarm reception upon arrival. For many, its
