4. Guns N’ RosesAppetite For Destruction
One of the ways to understand an album’s influence is to gauge how it’s evolved with you over time. This record came out when I was about nine or something. At that age most of what was going on within GN’R’s music and around the band went right over my head. I remember even being turned off by the artwork. What did turn me on though was of course the massive hit ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’. So much so that I started sporting the bandana headband and growing my hair out like Axl Rose. It’s a great song, no doubt. Slash’s guitar solo particularly just blew my mind. Still, like I said, the rest of the album and whatever Guns N’Roses stood for was quite beyond me and I was happy to go back to listening to ‘Rockit’ by Herbie Hancock.
Then my teenage years came around and once again Appetite… was in full rotation. This time though I was primed to go deeper. I remember I had a girlfriend called Michelle and so of course ‘My Michelle’ became my dirge. The references to drugs and porn not only made sense to me but now I could connect with them. It felt like my life was just catching up to the imagery of the record. All these things I’d been hearing about from this band that went over my head as a youngster, I now felt like I had a real association with. And so I dove in. I don’t want to say Appetite… made me want to chug Jack Daniels and smoke cigarettes, but in fact it did.
Later, in my 20s when I first found myself in Los Angeles this record once again loomed large. I was living outside of LA at art school and Aaron and I would drive down on the weekends to the most seedy places we could find on the Sunset Strip to dance and see bands and do bad things. Of course this was the playground that birthed Appetite… so it only felt natural for us to crank ‘Rocket Queen’ as we slugged back beers on the freeway. This was also the time period when I first began to make music so the album kind of morphed from just a purely visceral and graphic listen to an understanding of its pure and unadulterated musical prowess. The songs, playing and flow of the record just blossomed my appreciation for what a group of people making sounds together could achieve. To this day I’m in awe that this record was created. It’s one of those rare gems that the band had no hope of improving with their follow-up releases. It just wasn’t possible.
