Even back then, Rose had a pretty clear idea of what “November Rain” would be. permanently, joining Stradlin and Slash (the group’s guitarists), bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler, they worked on tracks for their debut, Appetite for Destruction. “It amazes me that radio in America doesn’t give Elton John the space that they give Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and the Stones.” “If you want to learn how to sing all different styles, try singing like Elton John - anything from the blues on,” Rose once said. Whether or not it was an intentional homage, the song forming in Rose’s head was a salute to a musician who profoundly shaped him as a performer. As others have noted, “November Rain” is strongly reminiscent of “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” the opening salvo off John’s acclaimed 1973 masterwork Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. on a bus to visit his pal Jeff Isbell (who would change his name to Izzy Stradlin for GNR), Rose started thinking of some piano chords that sounded John-like. The same artist who paraded virulent homophobia in “One in a Million” absolutely adored Elton John, and while traveling back and forth in the early 1980s from his Indiana hometown to L.A. And I basically put thoughts together about how sex is power and sex leaves you powerless, and picked up a lot of distorted views that I’ve had to live my life with.”Īmidst that anger and toxic worldview, however, Rose also had a penchant for sweetness. “I was two years old, very impressionable, and saw this. “I got a lot of violent, abusive thoughts toward women out of watching my mom with this man,” he said in 1992 about his biological dad. (He also asserts that his stepfather was physically abusive.) (Unfortunately, that’s apparently not poetic license on his part: He’s been accused of assault.) That anger and pain has been with him since childhood, when (Rose claims) he was sexually abused by his biological father. A songwriter capable of great sensitivity and tenderness, he could just as easily demonize women, treating them like sex objects and targets of his violence. It was also, according to guitarist Slash, “the sound of our band breaking up.”Įver since Rose emerged as the slender, boyish frontman of GNR in the late 1980s, he’s always had this fascinating dichotomy to his personality. It’s one of their most indelible love songs. “November Rain” was a monster and also ridiculous - and that goes double for the video that emerged in its wake. By the time GNR finally recorded “November Rain,” they were probably the biggest band in the world and Rose most definitely was trying to come up with a pull-out-your-lighter power ballad that would demolish anything their competition could conceive. 1 - but Rose thought he could top it with “November Rain.” It had been a song he’d been chasing for nearly a decade, first conceiving the epic piano anthem when he was still a kid living in Indiana, dreaming of moving to L.A. The ballad “Sweet Child o’ Mine” had been Appetite’s biggest hit - to date, it remains the group’s only No. Read next by Tim Grierson: Paul Newman’s Most Essential Roles.it has to be the right note and it has to be held in the right way and it has to have the right effect, you know?” I was working on, like, writing these ballads that I feel have really rich tapestries and stuff, and making sure each note in effect is right. A few songs in particular, he said, “if they come off like I want them to, are going to be the biggest things this band has ever done. Rose felt confident, telling a journalist about some of the tracks he was working on for what would be the Use Your Illusion albums. After the success of their visceral debut Appetite for Destruction and the controversy that greeted the follow-up EP G N’ R Lies, which included the racist and homophobic “One in a Million,” there was plenty of anticipation (as well as a little dread) about what would come next. The 1990s were just getting underway, and Axl Rose was plotting the future of Guns N’ Roses.
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