Rock music was my first love, so it’s only right that one of my early Songs of the 80s posts features one of the finest examples of the decade. In saying rock music, I was never a huge fan of really heavy music or thrash metal. My kind of rock, particularly during the mid-late 80’s and 90’s, was popular rock; the more chart friendly fayre from the likes of Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Whitesnake, Extreme, and the mighty Guns N’ Roses.
The artist
Guns N’ Roses were formed in Los Angeles in 1985, though some band members had been playing together long before then. The living legend that is Slash first played with original G n’ R drummer Steve Adler in high school, forming their first band there. At a similar time, Jeffrey Isbell (better known to us as Izzy Stradlin) and William Bruce Rose Jr. (better known as Axl Rose) bonded at high school due to their love of classic rock bands such as Led Zeppelin. Cutting a long story short, the original band members all made their separate ways to L.A., performed in different bands, came together with guitarist Tracii Guns (hence the name Guns N’ Roses) and drummer Rob Gardner, until Michael “Duff” McKagan joined them. McKagan quickly lined up a tour of West Coast USA gigs, primarily to test everyone’s commitment to the cause, and this resulted in Guns and Gardner dropping out of the band. This led to the formation of the classic original line-up of Rose, Slash, Stradlin, McKagan and Adler. They hired a rehearsal studio during the summer of 1985, quickly gelled, played up and down the West Coast, became the biggest unsigned band on the infamous L.A. rock circuit, and ignited a bidding war amongst record labels. Their debut album was released in the US on the 21st July 1987 and the rest is pure rock history…
Why I’ve chosen to write about this song
I grew up loving rock music. Pretty much all my early musical influences came from my mum and dad, particularly my dad. His favourite band is Status Quo, though he also loved Queen, therefore I grew up listening to both from a very early age. Despite this, hard rock was never really his thing, though he recognised that I was starting to gravitate towards that during my early teens. One day, he came home from work and thrust a tape into my hands. ‘One of the lads at work thinks you should give this a listen – he’s certain you’ll like it’. That tape was a copy of Appetite For Destruction. I placed it straight into the stereo – like most other British families in the 80’s, we had one of those huge stack systems (in its own cabinet, no less!) – plugged in the headphones, and life was never the same again. That may sound like a grandiose statement, but it’s true. Welcome To The Jungle is the opening track and I vividly remember hearing that intro for the very first time. The sound was raw yet huge. Those opening delay-drenched single notes seemed to leap from the stereo. Then Axl appeared from nowhere, with a slow growing wail which resembled a banshee’s scream. It was a build up of epic proportions, before that main riff kicked in at the 31-second mark. It was hard yet funky; it was in your face; it was like nothing I’d previously heard.
The whole album, and this song in particular, had me gripped. I played it over and over and over again – I couldn’t get enough of it. Most of the other rock songs and albums I liked at the time had some pop sensibilities about them – the likes of Def Leppard, Whitesnake, and Bon Jovi. Appetite for Destruction was different. The songs had a hard edge which the other bands mentioned here lacked, certainly at that moment in time. There was anger and attitude dripping from these tunes, none more so than Welcome to the Jungle. This was a visceral form of popular rock music – it blasted from the speakers, gripped me, and didn’t let go for a single second of the 4:33 track time (or, indeed, the 53:46 run time of the full album).
I was 13 at the time and both the track and album lit a fire inside me. It certainly led to me seeking out more classic rock, particularly as I read that the band were heavily influenced by classic Aerosmith and Led Zeppeling albums. I became obsessed. I read every interview I could with the various band members, eager to understand their influences, particularly Slash’s. I tried playing along with the songs (initially failing miserably). I even tried drawing the classic album cover – not the hugely controversial original album cover (seek it out if you don’t know what I’m referring to), but the amazing image of each band member as a skull, positioned on different parts of a cross, though I quickly discovered I was no artist. Basically, I became a Guns N’ Roses obsessive.
The video
A video which is every bit as edgy as the song. There is something about the way Axl sprawls his way through this which just drips with menace. Primarily a live performance video, this early introduction to the band hinted at the excitement and energy of their concerts. The performance is interspersed with brief images of civil unrest, violence, and glimpses at the shallowness of the entertainment industry, before the breakdown of the song has a straitjacketed Axl tied to a chair, thrashing around whilst a wall of TV screens all display the exact same images seen earlier in the video. It’s slightly uncomfortable viewing and aligns perfectly to the lyrics. Overall, a video which made a significant visceral impact.
The stats
The song first charted in the UK on the 3rd October 1987, spending two weeks in the top 100 and reaching the less-than-lofty peak position of 67. The Appetite for Destruction album had a surge of popularity in the UK during the summer of 1988 though. As a result of this, the song was rereleased as a single (officially a double-A side with Nightrain, though Jungle was always considered to be the main track), spending 7 weeks on the chart and reaching a peak position of 24. For the stats fans, the number one single in the UK during that week was Enya’s Orinoco Flow – quite the contrast! The number one album was the Dire Straits greatest hits collection Money For Nothing.
The cover version
Every now and again, I stumble across a solo guitar cover online which is so brilliant, it makes me either want to rush and pick up my guitars or smash them all into firewood and never play again – this is one of those covers. Josephine Alexandra is clearly a hugely talented lady – her YouTube following of 2.3 million suggests as much – and this is a jaw-dropping version of the song. I always find it astonishing, and hugely impressive, when a solo performer merges the lead vocal melody with a complex guitar part, and this is a wonderful example of that.
The wrap-up
Rock music will feature frequently here. I love it now and I loved it even more when I was a teenager. I found it incredibly difficult to choose the first rock tune to write about, though, in the end, I opted for the one which had the biggest impact on me. Welcome To The Jungle lit a fire in my belly all those years ago and it still fills me with excitement today. Time hasn’t diminished the power of the song – it still fizzes with an energy which few bands have been able to match since 1987. To my ears, it sounds as fresh, energetic and raw now as it did 37 years ago – surely the hallmark of a truly classic song?
Best wishes.
Mick
