I am not saying Guns N’ Roses are an ‘underrated’ band in the grand scheme of things. They’ve sold over 100 million records, joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, and everyone from the Manic Street Preachers to The Strokes have counted them as an influence, but they are certainly underrated by a particular demographic (which you probably fall into, if you’re reading the Isis). You know, the people who insist that they love the Smiths but just can’t stand Morrisey, and Guns N’ Roses might be a little bit too ‘dad rock’ for them to want to engage with because they must signal themselves as “in”. Young people in the UK who are into music just don’t listen to Guns N’ Roses. This article is to those people, the people who would ask: “Why would I ever listen to Guns N’ Roses?” So when I say something is not talked about enough, I mean in these circles, not in the whole world (certainly not in Brazil, anyway).

Guns N’ Roses’ undisputed leader is their frontman and namesake Axl Rose. Some, and not unfairly, find his voice unbearable. It is true that he sounds like he gargles razor blades before every time he appears onstage, and his voice resembles what I imagine a hyena would sound like if it became a singer—but this is also what makes him so great. His voice has this almost catlike quality where he plays around with a note, contorting syllables and its sound beyond all recognition. In a performance of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ at Rock am Ring in 2006, he holds the opening note for an astonishing 25 seconds to the point where he sounds more alien than human. For perhaps the most extreme example of this, listen to his performance of ‘Perfect Crime’ in Indiana in 1991, though this does push perhaps too far for most. His vocal range is, genuinely, unmatched. Hitting lows of F1 in ‘There Was A Time’ and highs of B♭6 in ‘Ain’t It Fun’, he possesses one of the largest vocal ranges of any popular music singer. This beats Freddie Mercury, Mariah Carey, and Ariana Grande by some margin. As a lyricist, he’s no Leonard Cohen, but no slouch either. Also, and this is an opinion that people really disagree with, but Axl Rose’s outfits on the 1991-93 Use Your Illusion Tour are some of the most fun and unique stage outfits of all time. Sometimes he donned a fishnet football jersey, kilt, and elaborate gold belt. Sometimes it was a bright red blazer, bright red underwear, and literally nothing else. Whatever he was wearing, it usually only lasted about one song before a change into an equally ridiculous but brilliant look. He was certainly never boring.

The other most important figure in the band is Slash. Pretty much everybody knows Slash. He’s about as iconic as a rock guitarist can get and is a cultural figure that often transcends his own band (look no further than him clad in leather jacket and trousers at the Oscars earlier this year alongside Ryan Gosling playing ‘I’m Just Ken’), yet he is often underrated in guitar circles. If you ask anyone who doesn’t play guitar to think of a ‘guitar hero’, Slash may come to mind—but if you tell any music students this, you may get a funny look. So I’ll say it: Slash took everything that Chuck Berry was to his generation, Jimmy Page was to his, Joe Perry and Kirk Hammett were to theirs, updated and built upon it to craft one of the most idiosyncratic and iconic guitar styles whilst never using elements that stray too far from standard rock language, a feat for which he does not achieve enough recognition. And it isn’t that I just like blues rock and 15b17 licks—other guitarists I count among my favourites include Derek Bailey, Leo Brouwer, Charlie Christian, Jeff Beck, and Julian Bream—but there is a place for it when done exceptionally well. Besides, Slash does not do this as exclusively as some of his detractors think. I’m not calling him the greatest guitarist in history. That’s a futile debate anyway due to its subjectivity and the fact that Toru Takemitsu’s guitar works are clearly the best things ever done with a guitar.

I could go into detail here about how Izzy Stradlin was the band’s secret weapon and truly the Keith Richards of the 1980s, or how Duff McKagan’s punk basslines and Steven Adler’s bouncy drums created a world-class rhythm section for Axl and Slash to let loose over, but then this article would balloon out of control. If you Google how many albums Guns N’ Roses have, most places say six—which is a respectable number. This is somewhat misleading, however, since they only truly have two. Their ‘second’ album is an EP that they have already released, an acoustic version of a song from their first, and only three new songs. It doesn’t count. Their ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ albums have the same name, same album cover, were recorded together, and released on the same day. They’re one album. Their ‘fifth’ album is just a covers album, and their ‘sixth’ is great, yet essentially an Axl Rose solo project rather than truly a Guns N’ Roses record. If, like me, you feel that they only really have two albums—the explosive debut Appetite for Destruction and the melodramatic yet wild Use Your Illusion double album—then this is a remarkable amount of influence for a total of under 3½ hours of music on full-length original records.

Something glossed over there is the fact that Appetite for Destruction is their debut album. Debut! Slash was just 21 when the album hit the shelves and yet had already written some of rock’s best-known and loved guitar solos. It is truly not talked about often enough how ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Paradise City’, and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ were all released on a debut record. Not to mention the rest of the album: songs like ‘Rocket Queen’ and ‘Nightrain’ are, though less popular, arguably even better. Beyond the raucous rock of their first record, there’s a tremendous amount of incredible music on the twin Illusion records. On the first one, Double Talkin’ Jive includes one of Slash’s finest solos and a flamenco-inspired outro section influenced by Slash’s time in Spain and The Garden is a spinning psychedelic number featuring Alice Cooper. Even the worst songs are great. I’m a sucker for experimental music, so I actually really like ‘My World’, though I wouldn’t blame people if it wasn’t for them (I think ‘Revolution 9’ is better than most of Please, Please Me, if you want an indication of where I’m at). There’s a few real setpieces on these albums: ‘November Rain’, ‘Coma’, ‘Locomotive (Complicity)’, and ‘Estranged’ average nearly 10 minutes in length and are all universes within themselves—sprawling epics that rival any of rock’s major blockbusters like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

Perhaps nothing has done more damage to Guns N’ Roses’ image than the cult of Kurt Cobain. I am going to preface this by saying that I absolutely love Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, so none of this is actually criticism, just fact. Guns N’ Roses vs Nirvana was one of the biggest music feuds of the early 90s, and it was fundamentally a standoff between the two frontmen. As far as Kurt was concerned, Axl was indicative of the hedonistic, often misogynistic, kind of glam rock that had dominated the West Coast of the 1980s and stood opposed to the DIY ethos of grunge, not to mention Axl’s ferocious attitude and constant rockstar antics. As far as Axl was concerned, Kurt was in no place to criticise Guns N’ Roses, who were more similar to Nirvana than Kurt would care to admit. They were signed to the same major label (how very DIY) and Axl didn’t feel like taking moral advice from Kurt and Courtney, who was using heroin whilst pregnant.

That’s all well-trodden ground of rock history, but in all the mess, one simple fact gets lost in the story of Guns N’ Roses vs Nirvana: Guns N’ Roses are not a glam metal band. Guns’ N Roses were born out of the Sunset Strip, a 1.7 mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. Several legendary clubs and restaurants sit along the road: the Roxy, the Rainbow Bar & Grill, and the world-renowned Whisky a Go Go. In the 1980s, the Sunset Strip scene was dominated by glam metal bands like Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Ratt. These bands were known for their big hair, makeup, and spandex—certainly not for the quality of their music. Guns N’ Roses, in their early days, looked like glam rockers, walked like glam rockers, and lived like glam rockers, but their music was not hair metal. They played a raw and ruthless hard rock the quality of which hadn’t been heard in decades. Their musical antecedents were not Mötley Crüe and Poison, they were the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. They were not the last stand of hair metal, they were killing it from the inside. If anything, they were far closer to the alternative rock of Nirvana than Kurt Cobain would have you believe. As Axl himself put it onstage once:

“What is this word… alternative? Someone who leads an ‘alternative’ lifestyle. All I know is that when Guns N’ Roses started, ain’t no fuckin’ radio stations want to play our shit either. Ain’t no radio stations wanted to play Metallica. So I think we have the world’s biggest ‘alternative’ crowd here tonight.”

And he’s right. Radio stations were terrified to play them. John Malone, a conservative Republican who owned the largest cable TV provider in America, told MTV that they were not to play a single note by this new angry, dangerous, rock ‘n’ roll band. Songs like ‘Mr. Brownstone’ about taking heroin? ‘My Michelle’ about a girl’s mum dying and her dad turning to porn work? ‘Rocket Queen’ featuring live sex noises? They were certainly as ‘alternative’ as grunge. They’re clearly not ‘underrated’. They have nearly 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify. But this is a plea to the Isis-reading demographic who are casting Guns N’ Roses into that lowest of echelons (“oh, I think my uncle likes them”); Guns N’ Roses are one of the true greats and deserving of the attention of anybody interested in music. All the members of the classic lineup are in the pantheon of their respective instruments and they leave an indelible mark in their short but fiery existence.∎

Words by Albert Genower. Image Courtesy of Ed Vill.