Appetite for Destruction Review

Hollywood in 1987 was full of bands in hairspray singing about parties. Guns N' Roses sang about the hangover, the dealer and the hospital. Slash and Izzy Stradlin play off each other like two men arguing in the same room, one all bluesy melody, the other all rhythm and sneer, and Mike Clink's production keeps them dry, close and loud rather than glossy. Axl Rose sounds genuinely dangerous, shrieking one moment and crooning the next. Welcome to the Jungle and Nightrain are tours of Los Angeles at its most squalid, Mr. Brownstone is a heroin song that refuses to glamorise the habit, and Paradise City is the chorus every stadium since has tried to write.

Sweet Child o' Mine, built on a riff Slash reportedly played as a warm up exercise, became their only American number one. The album took a year to reach the top of the chart, which says more about radio than the record. The writing is vivid rather than wise: the view of women across the album is ugly in places, and It's So Easy and parts of Rocket Queen have aged badly. Nothing else in hard rock that decade sounds this alive.