If you approach this band from the supposedly safe distance of a quarter of a century - so long ago lie the great successes of Guns N' Roses - you feel as if you were discovering the gigantic carcass of a whale on the beach: although you know that the mighty mammal is dead as a mouse, you exercise the utmost caution out of sheer fear that the monster might still move and kill you with one of its mighty tail fins. Guns N' Roses were, to stay in the picture, the blue whale among the rock bands. And they were unpredictable. If not completely crazy. And megalomaniac - first and foremost her frontman Axl Rose. And bands whose guitarists, like Izzy Stradlin and Saul "Slash" Hudson, absolutely want to be Keith Richards are not the worst anyway. All this made Guns N' Roses, along with some great records, a legend.
The GNR saga begins in 1985 in Los Angeles, then the world capital of rock'n'roll. The situation there, however, is bleak. Boy George and his cohorts dominate the charts, punk is dead, and disco booms through the dance palaces. While in the United Kingdom the New Wave of British Heavy Metal is a breath of fresh air, good old rock in the USA is more or less ridiculous. Bands like Bon Jovi, Great White, Dokken or Poison suffocate his subversive energy in silly tight spandex pants, grotesquely backed-up monster manes and hollow poserism. Musically, they rarely have more to offer than a glam-metal version dimmed to comic level with showy guitar riffs, bombastic drums and hysterical falsetto arias. Mötley Crüe, the forerunners of the genre, at least behave completely crazy, which gives them a veritable trash factor. And Van Halen are much too deeply grounded in the blues to fall below a certain level - they are the exception. Until Guns N' Roses show up.
At this point, let us refrain from praying down the chronology once more and limit ourselves to the cornerstones of the meteoric rise: in 1987 the debut album "Appetite For Destruction" was released. It stays in stores for a year, then finally explodes in the slipstream of the successful singles "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Paradise City". In the end, 28 million copies have been sold, and the MTV generation has its new superstars. Finally rock sounds again hard and bad, sleazy and sexy, in other words: great. As the decade draws to a close, GNR is the measure of all things.
Biggest rock spectacle in the universe
Less than two years later, however, the company, the biggest show spectacle in the universe, is as good as dead. By the second week of September 1991 at the latest, the fate of Rose, Slash & Co. is sealed, the band will disappear into the orcus of pop history without a sang or a sound. Paradoxically, the moment Guns N' Roses are about to celebrate their greatest triumph. On September 17th will be released with "Use Your Illusion I & II", released as two separate albums, the third studio work. Already in the months before GNR have cemented their reputation as the hottest live act of the scene, for example when they perform in Rio de Janeiro in front of 140,000 people. The "Use Your Illusion" world tour begins in May in the USA, by the summer of 1993 the group will have completed 192 concerts. "Use Your Illusion I & II" turns into a gold mine, occupies first and second place in the US charts at the same time. Two singles are in the US top ten, four in the English best list. Both albums together sell an incredible 36 million copies.
