At 11 a.m., an employee raised the metal gate in front of a record store – it may have been called Turtle’s – inside a Tuscaloosa, Ala. shopping mall to open for the day. I’d been waiting outside the store for approximately nine minutes.
It was Sept. 17, 1991 and Guns N’ Roses, the reigning kings of hard rock, were finally releasing not one but two new albums, “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II." This event was totally worthy of ditching a Biology 101 class, which was taught by a University of Alabama instructor so profoundly boring his last name should have been Ambien.
With tax, a purchase of both “Illusion” CDs totaled over $30. This amounted to more than half the money I had to get by on for the week. These were acceptable terms. Like many fans, I’d been waiting for this day for over four years, which is how long it had been since Guns dropped their lone full-length, the scorching 1987 debut “Appetite For Destruction.”
Speeding back in a white Honda Accord, which boasted only a cassette player, to my green-carpeted apartment, I couldn’t wait to jam the “Illusion” CDs into the stereo system. The anticipation was at level of which I’d experienced years ago at a friends' party while stumbling to a bedroom with a girl to get laid for the first time. (Incidentally, that rite of passage occurred to the strains of the Sammy Hagar-period Van Halen album “5150.")
Having heard some of the “Illusion” songs via bootleg and also at a Guns concert in Birmingham a few months earlier, it wasn’t a shock that their new music was more complex and sprawling than “Appetite” (which while containing undeniably hot playing and arrangements was much more direct).
In 2011, the word “epic” is totally played out, but there’s no better word to describe many “Illusion” songs, such as “Coma,” “Estranged” and, of course, “November Rain.”
As any super-fan would, I spun the “Illusion” LPs constantly for a week. Poured over the cover art and liner notes. Memorized lyrics and riffs. The Rod Stewart-goes-metal ballad “Yesterdays” quickly became a favorite, as did “Civil War,” a whisper-to-a-scream number that remains one of the best Guns songs ever.
But unlike the cheetah-lean “Appetite,” there was definitely fat on the “Illusion” discs.
Did we really need two version of the lullaby “Don’t Cry,” which had the same backing track but different lyrics? There were some cliché-riddled rockers too, such as “Bad Apples” and “Dead Horse.” And the least said of “My World,” which sounded like psychotherapy fed through one of Trent Reznor’s synthesizers, the better.
The prominent addition of synths, sound effects and bloated studio tinkering (the most inexplicable: occasionally dousing Axl Rose's leonine vocals in electronic goo) on “Illusion” was the antithesis of the bullet-hard “Appetite.” (Yes, I know there’s some synth on “Paradise City,” but it’s just a taste and not a major sonic component of the track.) In Slash’s 2007 self-titled autobiography, the Guns guitarist wrote that at one time he possessed a rough mix of “Illusion” before those superfluous elements were added. Unfortunately, Slash also wrote he has long since lost said mix.
The Guns N’ Roses arc has been told many, many times. They were going to be my generation’s equivalent of Led Zeppelin (and Axl and Slash our Plant and Page), then, quite suddenly, it didn't pan out. I’m still a massive fan. Even though I wonder what might have been…What if Guns were together enough to follow "Appetite" with a full-length album of sharp acoustic songs, instead of the five that appeared on their 1988 EP “Lies.” (Clearly, this would be an unprecedented and dichotomous pair of records.) And then, the coup de grace - an ambitious yet airtight third LP. Yes, a single-disc version of “Use Your Illusion” would have completed a rock ‘n’ roll triptych for the ages. Below are the 15 songs and running order that should have been on there, paired down from the 30 tracks released on the “Illusions” discs. Oh well, there's always iTunes, right?
“You Could Be Mine”
“Bad Obsession”
“Dust N' Bones”
“Garden of Eden”
“Civil War”
“Pretty Tied Up”
“Back off Bitch”
“Don't Cry”
“Perfect Crime”
“Locomotive”
“Yesterdays”
“Knockin’ on Heaven's Door”
“Coma”
“You Ain't the First”
“November Rain”
