Maybe this is a smaller fish to fry than the Beatles, but this album is essentially a bloated dinosaur. It is on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (at #61), and the tunes that everybody remembers never seem to go away, particularly from countdowns with stilted names like ‘The Best Songs of All Time.’ It’s earnt it’s place in a Debunking Classics series for a decade at least.

Most classics aren’t bad. I’ve learnt that. They ride the waves of ups and downs nicely, and while they aren’t particularly relevant anymore, they’re a pleasant listen.

But some are so criminally overrated, blown out of the water and notoriously painful that they deserve a smacking.

When an album is bad by reputation, I’ve always found that you can find a lot of negative reviews on the product, but nothing really explaining why the album is so awful. Well, how about we turn that around here and now. How about I take Guns n Roses classic, Appetite for Destruction, and tell _you_ why it’s so bad.

Appetite for Destruction is bad because there’s no singing in it. The stuff that passes for vocals is – probably – what would happen if you taught an exotic bird to talk and then had it squawk about sex for an hour in an electric chair.

You could even counter me here by saying that lead ‘singer’ Axl Rose’s screech is an ‘acquired taste’, but I still wouldn’t believe that Appetite for Destruction, their sweaty rockstar-hooliganism debut, is a record worthy of a passing grade.

Aside from an absolutely mind-numbing performance by Axl, the lyrics are a one-track lane of sex, drugs and partying. There’s nothing smart about them, unlike the witty sexuality of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik, for example, and they’re some of the worst I’ve ever heard. If you’re not quite sure what level of banality this encompasses, there’s plenty of quotes to come! Drummer Steven Adler is often sloppy on his kit, and when he’s not trying to keep a simple rhythm from falling apart, he resorts to making noise with a cowbell for slapstick value, which is applied to about two-thirds of this disc in absolute fucking overkill. If it wasn’t for guitarist Slash this album would be in trouble. There’s actually very little good to say about him, because sadly, like others before and after him, he falls victim to the ‘being shoved lower in the mix under the egocentric rocker/s’ syndrome, but his ocassional riff is the album’s only merit. Also no stars for however it was made; forget any clever adjective that could describe a record being put together, simply because none apply to this. Appetite for Destruction sounds like it was literally thrown together, with no regard to what might come out.

All three singles need debunking, but let’s start with possibly the most flogged, ‘Welcome to the Jungle.’ Composed of a fist of power chords and one opening note on reverb, it’s also Axl Rose at his most intolerable. He shrieks over the top in his scratchy, whiney voice:

‘In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring ya to ya
Sha-la-la-la-la-la KNEES! KNEES!’

The operatic ‘woah woahs’ behind him have more personality than he does. He doesn’t sound like he believes a syllable of the line ‘You’re a very sexy girl,’ so the romp also quickly becomes a snooze fest, party music that fails as party music, and that’s partly why it’s so piss-weak.

I don’t see what the appeal is to the song ‘Paradise City,’ when it’s practically four chords and a few special effects, including a sly keyboard that we only hear because the vocals are so offkey. Or, perhaps you’re more likely to pick up that the drums are out-of-sync with everything else. Axl, now locked in a semi-rap, shares his idea of paradise with us, apparently a place where the ‘grass is green and the girls are pretty’ – you’re not forgiven for that terrible writing, it’s a lame copout – and then he repeats it. By the end, it’s so stale that I’m beginning to plan a way for him to lose that forsaken drawl of his forever. And number 3 in all-time solos? Looks like whoever put that list together has some serious catching-up to do on their listening.

The honor of best single on Appetite for Destruction goes hands down to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ a squeaky clean polished power ballad of way overrated proportions. A soupy mess most of the way through, and hampered by the absence of a chorus, the only remotely interesting thing is that soaring lick, which is actually a technical exercise, further proving that Slash didn’t have to be the poor man’s Jimi Hendrix to come up with it. It’s good enough to start with, but after a while it becomes as grating as the voice, which gargles out a primitive love poem. But at least he was young, just imagining how bad it would be if they attempted to play it now makes me sick.

Ahh, now the rest. Here’s where it really hurts.

How ironic that ‘It’s So Easy,’ written against sexism and misogyny, is visibly guilty itself? It’s based around another one-note riff (although they do make it sound kinda cool), and this and ‘Mr. Brownstone,’ full of crude double entendres that point to heroin, demonstrate Rose’s inability to carry a tune even when he’s not chirping like he’s had his manhood removed. The moment in the former when the crew are boasting about their sex life is hilarious... They find themselves groping for a nifty word on the end of the line ‘But why don’t you just...,’ and so they (wait for it) settle for a brazen ‘Fuck off!,’ which is spat like they have punk attitude. Whoa, hey, that’s original! Who would have thought there could ever be an end to a phrase so pensive as ‘fuck off’?

If the first half comes close to having a good moment, it’s ‘Nightrain,’ a straight-up, unpretentious celebration of booze, although I gotta say, after hearing it a few times I never ever want to hear the same one-two-one-two cowbell arrangement again. Although the production (of which there is little) does make you feel as if there’s a gap somewhere there shouldn’t be in the song, Slash does get a solo longer than a few seconds, which is a distraction but also a relief, and supplies some adrenalized distortions on some of his favorite power chords. ‘Out Ta Get Me’ is the paranoid rockstar ode that, pun intended, needs ‘ta get itself together.’ We’ve heard this sort of ‘WE! WILL! PREVAIL!’ motif coming through a thousand times before in rock music, and there’s no reason for you to pursue it today. In case that still doesn’t turn you off, Axl mumbles through a haphazard descending chorus,

‘They’re out ta get me! They won’t break me! I’m fuckin’ innocent!’

Case closed on that one.

‘My Michelle’ possesses a monster riff and speedy off-the-beat drumming to its name that could work if the man up front wasn’t so obviously detached from what he’s saying. After an album of raw sex, this number has him saying encouraging Michelle to ‘look for true love.’ Most ludicrous is the chorus:

‘Well, well, well
You just can’t tell
Well, well, well
My Michelle.’

That’s right, six wells, out of a total of... twelve words! A song like ‘My Michelle’ has no place on this sleazy album.

It seems after a couple of lovey-dovey ballads, however, that Guns n’ Roses are eager to step back up the pace on Appetite for Destruction, to demonstrate that they’re still worthy of the most headbangable mindless hard rock on the market... so they turn out atonal thrash all through ‘You’re Crazy’ and ‘Anything Goes.’ Co-ordinated drumming controls the tumultuous pace with a prominent bassline to boot, but it gets boring very quickly and Axl slurs more than ever. During ‘Anything Goes,’ he hits a note, then falls torturously off... maybe that’s a grand metaphor for Appetite in general. Whatever it’s _intended_ to be, it results in the most god-awful racket heard until a little band called Limp Bizkit. I really can’t tell if either of these cuts are about anything, and in addition, this phrase alone is perhaps one of the most unsavory on the album: ‘You’re crazy, aren’t you? Uh uh uh.’ Hoo, a great way to capture listeners indeed. Which leaves one song.

Rocket Queen

I must confess I don’t really want to comment on this one, but my spearheading of Appetite for Destruction wouldn’t be complete without it. It features the real sounds of people having sex in the studio. Is this what Guns n’ Roses need to do for their listeners to ‘get it’? Are they so incapable of communicating the pleasures of penetration through their bad lyrics that they actually need to get a live recording of it and plaster it over their song as a way of saying ‘This song’s about sex’? Outside of that onerous effect, we get the same three guitar notes on loop, and it’s a pretty midtempo song to put last, with a bridge stretched out so far you can almost hear it yawning. A rough scratch and smash on a snare is how Appetite for Destruction ends. We should have guessed.

I’m beginning to see the appeal of Metallica in that era – I’m still not fond of their heavyweight Master of Puppets, but anything that seemed like an alternative or more real than this pop-metal crap must have been eaten up by depressed listeners at the time. Appetite for Destruction is through and through the sound of an 80s band living poorly... Who wants to hear that anymore? If anyone can explain to me where the talent, glamor, or even hype comes from regarding Guns n’ Roses, please leave me a comment. Until that unlikely time, their ‘classic’ debut is a dumb, faceless, one-sided and pathetic listen, and if anyone says that it still hits hard, I might just have to rip into them.

1.5 stars, because I think that Slash’s riffs are good enough to save it from being a one-star record

(PS Axl; you should have kept that original, interesting cover of the robot rapist... then I might be convinced you actually had some guts and didn’t just want MTV airplay. Besides, it’s much more interesting to look at then a cartoon of your face)

1. Welcome to the Jungle
2. It’s So Easy
3. Nightrain
4. Out Ta Get Me
5. Mr. Brownstone
6. Paradise City
7. My Michelle
8. Think About You
9. Sweet Child O’ Mine
10. You’re Crazy
11. Anything Goes
12. Rocket Queen

I’m enjoying myself here, so more of these will probably come soon

Recommended: No