The Song Fight Bulletin Board

What is your favorite Guns N' Roses song?

Old GnR or "new" GnR? In my opinion, progress peaked at "Use Your Illusion". I keep both albums on rotation in my players.

I like "Estranged", "You Could Be Mine", and "Dead Horse". "November Rain" was good only so far as everyone bought the book the video was based on. Other than that, it was overplayed. But OMG that dress worn by Stephanie Seymour...

-jd0

Mr. Brownstone.

I only like Appetite for Destruction. I think Slash is awesome. I think Axl is terrible. The rest of the band is okay. Appetite was so huge when I was in High School, you can imagine in the greater Los Angeles how much everyone loved G n R. They have some great riffs. I'm not really a big fan, and I find them incredibly dated.

Yeah, Axl is a bratty prima donna and Slash is a cool dude. But I try not to let my opinions of a person influence my opinions of their art--otherwise my songfight reviews would be worthless, or more worthless.

"November Rain" is a timeless classic, of course. I'm pretty sick of "Paradise City" and "Sweet Child o' Mine". Back in high school my favorite was "My Michelle"; now it's "Civil War".

glennny wrote:Mr. Brownstone.

I only like Appetite for Destruction. I think Slash is awesome. I think Axl is terrible. The rest of the band is okay. Appetite was so huge when I was in High School, you can imagine in the greater Los Angeles how much everyone loved G n R. They have some great riffs. I'm not really a big fan, and I find them incredibly dated.

"Mr. Brownstone" is my pick as well.

That's three times in as many weeks that Glen and I have agreed on something in here. Now if only we could see eye-to-eye about Song Fight/Nur Ein music...

When I was living in a dorm in 1987, I had a guy living across the hall from me who was a huge metalhead. He introduced me to bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth. I became forever thankful, because I hated heavy metal at the time. Most of it that I’d heard was hair crap. Something else he turned me onto was a totally unknown band named Guns N’ Roses, and their totally unknown album Appetite For Destruction. Remember, this was the fall of 1987. Seriously, no one had heard of GnR. I have no idea how he heard of them, but there you go.

Months later I was in an apartment and we were still in touch. He told me that he had just seen GnR in some tiny downtown dive and they were still pretty much unknown at that point. Almost immediately after that, “Sweet Child o’ Mine” came out and they became the biggest band in the world. Songs I had known for over a year, like “Paradise City” and such, were huge hits.

I soured on the hits rather quickly, but the album was just so rock solid I grew fond of some of the filler tracks like “Mr. Brownstone” and “Rocket Queen.” And it became a go-to bass playalong disc.

These posts have listed a string of epic songs by timeless, classic rock artists.

And somehow GnR and John Valby also got 'topic' days too.

It's probably a function of my age, but I always lumped GnR in with the likes of Cinderella and Skid Row. I mean weren't they just another hair band? A more-successful-than-average hair band? Or does the eventual adoption of a bandana and/or cornrows suddenly mean that this never happened?

Yikes. So much genre bias. Better not let my hair metal roots show too much. (There's a karaoke night at SFL...it's bound to show up in big ways)

Honorable mention to "Oh My God", "Sweet Child O' Mine", and "Don't Cry".

My favorite is You Could Be Mine

After high school I spent a lot of time at an arcade that had a pool table and a lot of kids trying to hustle each other. This was on the jukebox, and it got played a lot, I seem to remember it was a 'B' side. This one guy would put this on the juke and strut around after a profitable victory. The whole arcade would often shout 'FUCK OFF' at the appropriate time.