Guns N' Roses
Appetite For Destruction

Writing a review of "Appetite For Destruction". Why do it? Many have already done it on the site, and it’s an album from 1987! My God... yet I can't resist. Maybe it’s because even today, 20 years later, if I don't listen to it at least once a month, something is missing? Writing a review of this album here is like throwing a bone into a pack of salivating dogs. But I enjoy it. I want to talk to you about the FEELINGS I experienced at the time. The album was released in California in 1987 but entered the Italian charts successfully only the following year, with the singles "Paradise City" and "Sweet Child o' Mine". In 1987, I was a bocia not yet a metalhead. It was damn hot that late spring afternoon in my room. Craxi was in power, "Sebago" shoes sold like sandwiches, and "Full Metal Jacket" was in theaters. The Duran Duran tape was playing on the stereo, Pink Floyd posters were hanging on the wall, while Madonna was being interviewed on DJ television. I had a pack of mint green Marlboro, a little can of "Snuff" nasal tobacco, and "Jinn Fizz", hidden in my backpack. Exactly a year later, I was still there. I was 15 years old (damn!). On my bed on a hot June afternoon. I was wondering how I would ever pass in September, the exams for the three subjects I'd just been slammed with that very morning. Craxi was no longer in power, "Vans" were selling like hotcakes, and I hadn't been to the movies in a year. The Dire Straits cassette was playing on the stereo and I had a "puvrone" on VHS to watch on TV. But I was seriously "down"! And so it was, while "the Lello" popped open a "Sapporo" (over my Latin translations) "the Luni" approached my stereo and said: "listen Beso, this music is the future. You listen to stuff for fairies". He pulled out two tapes from his pocket. One had a curious cross with 4 skulls around it and one in the center on the cover; the other, a comic-style drawing of a hand holding puppet strings over a cemetery's crosses (my other great love, the "Tallica"). Reading the titles, I asked: "and who the hell are these long-haired punks"? GUNS N' ROSES?
I didn’t even finish the sentence when my pop-dance ex-preppie room was profaned by an outburst of "AB (something?)-normal" volume music like I'd never heard before. It was distorted, screamed, nasty, fast. I said disgustedly: "I'll never listen to this crap!" Well... my first Beso-Mix (1989, on cassette) starts with "Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns'N'Roses. A year later, "the Lollo," manual NIKON around his neck, was photographing the embryo of our first metal band. The legendary "Mitres and Tulips". And what photos...! Today, two decades later, I can safely say that that afternoon in 1988 emblematically marked a change of era. The definitive sunset of problem-free childhood and the entrance into fake-problematic adolescence. Which at the same time marked, from a musical point of view, my transition from pop to metal. Just as the end of adolescence and the entrance into the "adult" world... problematic, ended my metal era and started the electronic one with the discovery of Depeche Mode and NIN. Slash's "Gibson Les Pauls" saturated on a cranked-up Marshall tube amp. A guitar that until then I had only heard used by bluesmen. The photo of Izzy with half-closed eyes and that style of playing a bit like "Rolling Stone". Damn, the only rhythms that even with the sheet music in front were impossible to replicate like him. It sounded too "dirty"! But his guitar underneath, sometimes too hidden by Slash's solos, was fundamental! In fact, he was the main composer of the group, and when he left, there was nothing left but fluff! The slightly Punk bass of Duff Rose. Yet he followed everyone without being a phenomenon. Steven Adler's drumset (a dud live!). Square and essential. And those lyrics... everything oozed alcohol, drugs, and sex. The voice of that country boy (Axl) who had come to the big city of angels. He looks around and doesn’t understand. He grew up between barns and patriotic flags, in that "WASP" America that wanted him to learn classical piano to give him an air. He felt uncomfortable among hookers, pushers, Mexicans, blacks, and Jews with luxury shops downtown. "Welcome to the jungle" baby and forward! A perfect piece in its imperfection, a bit like all hard rock. Because "It's so easy" to find an easy hookup for a handsome guy like him in that city with that low-toned intro that then explodes in the sparkling chorus. And then he climbs on the "Nightrain" of alcohol and excesses. And you understand by the third successful track in a row that you are listening to a great album. Even a filler track like "Outta get me" eventually gets your head bobbing. "Mr. Brownstone" (one of my favorites) touches experimentation in a fast tribal-chanted manner, supported by guitar phrases full of wah-wah effects coming out of the Mesa Boogie. And then the chorus. The novelty of Guns 'n Roses in hard rock (ignored by all) lies in the lyrics of the melodies that accompany almost all the instruments. Mr. "Brownstone" takes you to the arpeggio of "Paradise City". Damn the whistle!?! Brilliant. The touch of class. It signals the rhythm change at the end of the intro and down there in the mosh pit you start throwing folders.
A moment of pause is needed, and then the intro of "My Michelle" seems to start a slow one. Instead, it is an absolute track. Perhaps the best the Guns n' Roses have managed to produce. "Your daddy works in porno, Now that mommy's not around". What can you say? Axl at his hooligan violence at the highest level. Almost like Alex from "A Clockwork Orange". "Think About You" another fast and cute filler then "Sweet Child O'Mine". The "fake ballad". So many flings...! So many with that background that it was the only track I could no longer listen to over the years. Stunning! "You're Crazy" I like better in the semi-acoustic version in "Lies". "Anything Goes" is instead an underrated track. Because it is the only pure hard-rock piece of the entire album which closes with "Rocket Queen". A Chinese box piece that actually contains 3, dedicated to an ex of Axl who was the singer of the "Rocket Queen" in question. My fingers are cramping. Goodbye. They say the best things are written impulsively without rereading...