Guns'N'Roses
Appetite For Destruction

Around the late 80s, Los Angeles was what we could call a gigantic brothel. Hundreds of young metalheads with a passion for eyeliner and teased hair, who preferred (call them crazy) a life spent between concerts, more or less available girls, and lots of drugs rather than being stuck in an office working for the boss, picked up their instruments and formed bands in the vein of Nikki Sixx and company, hoping to be more extreme and immoral than all the others.

This simple and hedonistic idea of life was reflected in the music and lyrics: distorted guitars, gritty voices shouting obscenities at the "Bitch" of the moment, and rhythmic sections in perfect American hard rock style gave life to a sleazy sound: there was no room for melancholy, victimhood, complaints, and assorted grievances; there was only the desire to rise from the dust of Sunset Strip, with the awareness that lower than this, you couldn't go.

Many bands originated from this metropolitan humus, such as L.A. Guns, Vain, or Skid Row. Some of them wrote milestones of the genre, while others went down in history as mere imitations. However, only one among these succeeded where the others failed and had its brief moment of glory: Guns N Roses, who in the summer of 1987, with "Appetite For Destruction," finally achieved the long-desired glory.

Driven by the catchy and appealing chorus of Paradise City, the album reached the top of the charts worldwide, bringing the sleaze sound into the bedrooms of a generation of young rockers.
It's simple hard rock played with a punk attitude that Axl and his bandmates proposed, yet it's precisely the simple and unpremeditated idea at the core of the album that established its consecration.

All twelve tracks are classics, yet among them, the violence of "My Michelle" stands out, making it clear from the first verses what kind of environment the five roses lived in, the brazenness of "Nightrain," dedicated to low-cost wine, and the "Worst Pub Ever" atmosphere of "Rocket Queen," the album's last track and true masterpiece of the genre: sleazy riff reminiscent of Aerosmith’s "Toys In The Attic," melodic chorus (who hasn’t sung it, imagining themselves as a hypothetical rockstar?), a solo bolstered by an orgasm (which never hurts), and a tear-jerking finale. Wow.

Subsequently, Guns N Roses would stay true to their "Sex Drugs 'N' Rock 'N' Roll" credo and reveal themselves as shooting stars: the violence and street attitude of this album would leave nothing behind, except the logo with roses printed on thousands of t-shirts; the band would renounce its origins by imploding on itself, the fan would place the vinyl back in its sleeve because it's "music for fifteen-year-olds, good for getting into rock, but then you move on to something else." Believe it.