Geffen 24148
Producer: Mike Clink
Track listing: Welcome to the Jungle It’s So Easy / Nightrain / Out to Get Me / Mr. Brownstone / Paradise City / My Michelle / Think About You / Sweet Child o’ Mine / You’re Crazy / Anything Goes / Rocket Queen
August 6, 1988
5 weeks (nonconsecutive)
The Guns N’ Roses saga isn’t exactly an overnight success story. The roots of the band date back to 1982, when friends Bill Bailey and Jeff Isbell arrived in Los Angeles from Lafayette, Indiana. After gigging with a number of other hard-rock bands, the duo formed Guns N’ Roses in March 1985, recruiting bassist Duff McKagan, a refugee of the Seattle punk scene. Guitarist Saul Hudson and drummer Steven Adler rounded out the group. By then, Bailey was known as W. Axl Rose, Isbell was Izzy Stradlin, and Hudson was simply known as Slash.
By early 1986, the band had created enough of a buzz on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood to attract the attention of nearly every major label. In March, Geffen won the bidding war, but the battle was just beginning.
In August 1986, the band began recording their debut album at Rumba Records in Canoga Park, California. “It only took 12 days for the basic tracks, but altogether it took several months,” McKagan says. The sessions were reportedly interrupted while Slash and Stradlin attempted to kick their heroin habits.
Meanwhile, the band was attempting to survive on a shoestring budget. “We didn’t have any money or nothing,” says McKagan. “We had one van between all of us that Geffen made the mistake of renting us, and we tore it to shreds. And we didn’t have anyplace to live.”
To keep the buzz surrounding the group alive on the streets, the band issued the Live?! @ Like a Suicide EP on its own Uzi Suicide label. The EP, released in the fall of 1986, was distributed by Geffen, but the major label’s name was kept off the release to secure the band’s then-underground reputation.
Appetite for Destruction was finally released on July 27, 1987. Robert Williams’s cover art, depicting a woman who had apparently been raped by robot, raised the ire of women’s group’s and retailers and led to the creation an alternate cover design. Rose’s lyrics about urban decay and his own personal struggles, in songs such as the aggressive album-opener “Welcome to the Jungle,” were bound to offend some. The track “Mr. Brownstone” addresses heroin addiction, a recurring problem since the band’s early days. Yet nobody paid much attention to Appetite at first.
“We didn’t think the thing would sell 10 copies,” says McKagan. “We weren’t expecting anything.” Yet slowly, mostly due to the band’s virtual non-stop touring, including dates opening for Iron Maiden, the Cult, and Aerosmith, the word on Appetite spread. “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” the most accessible track on the album, was rising on the Hot 100. The song was inspired by Rose’s girlfriend at the time, Erin Everly, the daughter of Don Everly of the Everly Brothers.
“We were on tour and still staying in shitty hotels,” says McKagan. “One day I was walking down the street in whatever city I was in, and I saw some preppy guy with a Walkman on singing ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ and I said, ‘What the fuck is this about?'”
The members of Guns N’ Roses would soon find out, as Appetite for Destruction, in its 50th week on the Top Pop Albums chart, finally completed its slow climb to the top, knocking Def Leppard’s Hysteria from the Number One spot. A month later, “Sweet Child o’ Mine” topped the Hot 100, but the public’s appetite for Guns N’ Roses was only beginning to grow.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of August 6, 1988
1. Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses
2. Hysteria, Def Leppard
3. Roll With It, Steve Winwood
4. Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman
5. Dirty Dancing, Soundtrack