Use Your Illusion I (Guns N' Roses)

The original line-up of Guns N' Roses

I think most of us know who Guns N' Roses are, and if you don't, get your head out of that rock, and let's go through a brief history lesson of GNR. What Guns N' Roses are probably most known for to people are three particular singles. Welcome To The Jungle, Sweet Child O' Mine, and Paradise City. Those song names ring any bells? Well they should, and these songs came from what's probably their most known album, and possibly the greatest deput album in rock n' roll history, Appetite for Destruction. The formation that was responsible for the creation of this album was made up of Steven Adler(drummer), Duff McKagan(bassist and backing vocalist), Izzy Stradlin (rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist, occasional co-lead guitarist and percussionist), Saul 'Slash' Hudson (lead guitar, occasional co-rhythm guitarist, and talkbox), and W. Axl Rose (lead vocalist, percussionist, synthesizer, and whistle). I am proud to say that I do own the actual album on CD. After Appetite for Destruction, it took at least four years for the band to make a proper follow-up to the album, with only Lies being released in that four year time frame(Lies was an EP released with four more new songs from the group). The official follow-up album to Appetite For Destruction became not one, but two albums. Use Your Illusion I, which I will be reviewing today, and Use Your Illusion II, which I will probably review some time in the future. Before I decided to buy the album last night and listen to it today, I noticed the people on iTunes say that it is definitely noticeable that there are tensions between Slash, Izzy, and Axl. On one side, you have the guitarists, trying to keep the band closer to their hard rock roots, while you have Axl on the other trying to do something different with influences like Queen and Elton John. I was a little worried at first that these tensions might ruin the album, but then I decided to just buy it and give it a listen and give you my thoughts in a review today. So is it a truly great album like their deput, or is it an illusion of what could have been? Well, why don't we start this review now and find out.

As usual, I'm going to start off with the musical quality of this album, and believe it or not, I like these songs better than the songs on Appetite For Destruction(be warned, I may make a lot of comparisons between this album and the one before it). Don't get me wrong, Appetite definitely has quite a few great songs of its own, but this album definitely has better quality songs, and in a greater quantity as well, but I digress. This album has some of the best hard rock songs I have ever heard, like Right Next Door To Hell, Perfect Crime, and Garden Of Eden, not to mention they also have two outstanding epics, November Rain, and Coma. However, and I really wish I didn't have to take a point off for this, not all of the music on this album is original, because of the fact that they decided to record a cover of Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die for this album, which forces me to take some points off, however, because it was actually a pretty good cover, I'll only take half a point off for it. I really don't think there's anything else to comment on in terms of this album other then the fact they also try some new styles of music out, for example, in Dust N' Bones, it's style and sound gives off a feel that makes me feel like I should go to some bar in a cowboy movie, and in You Ain't The First, they try to do another acoustic song, like the song Patience on their release Lies, and it really works out well, and these songs turn out to be pretty great songs. So all in all, this aspect of the album get's a 3.5/4.

Now we're going to look at the lyrical quality of this album, and there are surpsingly some pretty damn great lyrics on this album, both on the hard rock songs, the Queen styled songs and the experimental songs. Why surprisingly? Well when I noticed one of the songs was called Back Off Bitch, I was expecting the lyrics to be more "immature" than the lyrics on Appetite For Destruction, but I was most definitely wrong. On the song I just mentioned, there's actually some pretty good lyrics. For example, take a look at this lyric from the song.

You better back off, back off bitch, face of an angel with the love of a witch,

Read that lyric and don't tell me it's not just awesome, but relatable. I mean, if you're a guy, who doesn't know what it's like to talk to girl because she seemed and looked nice at first, but then when you got to know her she turned out to be a total bitch. I think the majority of you guys reading this review know what that's like. As for the girls, well, both guys and girls can relate to the lyrics of November Rain that describe going through rough times of a relationship. So I really don't know what else to say other than that these lyrics are pretty damn awesome, but again, Guns N' Roses didn't write the lyrics to Live and Let Die, but again, the cover was done pretty well, so I'll only take a half point off, therefore getting this album a 2.5/3 on lyrics.

Lastly we come to how well these songs and believe it or not, despite some criticisms that I heard were given on this aspect, they actually fit pretty well together, however I will admit that there are some times where they don't. For example, it just really catches me off guard whenever I hear Live and Let Die right after Dust N' Bones. You could call that a good thing about this album, because you can tell even more that a new song has begun, but if you want to fit two songs that are almost completely different from each other together, either create a segue, or just put more seconds of silence between the songs. For this case, I would just put more seconds of silence between them. Another prominent example I can think of where this occurs is the space between Double Talkin' Jive and November Rain. On one hand you have a very loud and edgy hard rock song, and on the other, you have a nine minute soft rock epic (at least until the outro). You would think that because of how enormously different from each other they are, it would be worse, but believe it or not, it's actually better. Why you may ask? Well I think this is all because of the acoustic/classical guitar outro that can be found at the end of Double Talkin' Jive that you hear before the song begins to fade out, but I digress. My point is that these songs actually do fit pretty well together, with some exceptions, so this aspect of the album get's a 2/3.

So we now come to the end of the review where I add up the points and say any more comments I have relating to the album. In terms of musical quality, this album get's a 3.5/4 with that half point being taken off because although Guns N' Roses covered Live and Let Die wonderfully, it is still a cover, which means I had to take some kind of points off the album for not being entirely original. Lyrically, this get's a 2.5/3, with a half point being taken off again only because of Live and Let Die being a cover, and in terms of how well the album functions as a whole, it get's a 2/3 because the songs do fit pretty well besides what some critics may say, with some exceptions. Which get's this album an 8 out of 10. Again, this album is a wonderful album besides the very few flaws I found with it, so go get it if you're a hard rock fan, or a Queen or Elton John fan, or, if you like an album with a variety of styles, go get it. Well that's all I have to say on this album, I'll see you guys whenever I do another one of these reviews. Bye!