Heart of Darkness

Guns And Roses - Welcome To The Jungle

Video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5dqd_guns-n-roses-welcome-to-the-jungle_music

Personal History Alert: This was the song, along with Thunderstruck by AC/DC, that made me fall into pre-pubescent love with loud music at the approximate age of 10 or 11. Needless to say, my tastes have matured to a degree in the intervening years and, while I haven't listened to this song in probably 15 years, I can still remember it word for word and note for note and there's a degree of subjective fondness. I'm really hoping that the first listen will bring back the happy memories and that the song will remind me why I thought it kicked so much ass back in the day.

After the first listen it takes a while for the taste of bile subside, but that does allow me to take a slightly more objective view of the song.

It starts off with an almost arpeggiated guitar courtesy of the Amazonian-coiffed Slash (probably the hairiest man in rock), building into.. actually, I can't be objective. This song stands, along with Warrant, Poison, Def Leppard et al, for everything bad in loud guitar music. God, it's awful. Axl Rose's canine-unfriendly shrieks, faux-swagger and orgasmic, microphone humping groans just shit me. It's probably quite a good song viewed in fully objective hindsight, but in the context of all the awful early 90s hair metal, and what it wrought, it just sounds painfully adolescent and leather pants-y. I just can't take it seriously. It makes complete sense that a 10 year old with no musical context or understanding would think that it's fantastic, but for the love of god, if you have a brain in your head, don't ever admit to liking this.

It's so unpalatably bad that not even Rose's solid work on rock nutterdom redeems it. As per the scale (tm):
(1) Must have done enough drugs to kill a regiment of dutch soldiers
It's safe to assume that Rose was not scared of cocaine and Jack Daniels.
(2) Must have been to prison more times than the neck tattoo fairy
He beat up supermodels, probably because they were smarter than he was. By all accounts he was a habitual criminal throughout his youth. If ever there was a case study for the Three Strikes Law, Rose should have been it. They should have thrown away the key. Maybe the Hague has a special court for crimes against music.
(3) Must be reknowned for wild and destructive behavior
Beaten supermodels, continual feuds with bands such as Motley Crue, Nirvana, The Offspring etc etc, the revolving door policy of bandmates and Chinese Democracy's elephantine gestation period all bear testament to behaviour that should have seen Rose and cohorts
(4) Should have a proper pseudonym
I doubt his parents named him after a car component. It's unlikely that Slash's parents were so completely and utterly monosyllabic that they saddled him with a single noun for a name. And Duff Mackagan probably wasn't named for the fictional beer in The Simpsons.
(5) Should have a suitably weird history
Raised a Pentecostal, sexually abused by his father, taught sunday school.

But Rose has none of Iggy Pop's chuckling misanthropy. He doesn't have the charm of Willie Nelson. He's just a pissed-off, coked-up, drunken Michael Jackson.

He's impossible to like. Slash appears to be a half-wit. The rest of the band were just untalented people in leather pants who could affect the teased-up hair and rail-thin look of early 90s supermodels while acting dangerous. They were basically a machine that ingested drugs and Jack Daniels and excreted music for teenagers. It's no wonder that no-one but the most atavistic of throwbacks care anymore.

Verdict: Rather relive the early 90s by listening to Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer

Tomorrow: Del Shannon - Runaway