Product Description
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It may surprise some to realize that s N' Roses released only
four full-length original albums, and two of those debuted
simultaneously. But they were enough to forever change rock 'n'
roll. Even more shocking is that one of the great bands in rock
history, with it's last studio album issued 10 years ago, has
never had a "best of" compilation. Now it has. Welcome to the
jungle with Greatest Hits (Geffen), released March 23, 2004. With
14 selections housed in a digipak, Greatest Hits features all
eight of the band's Top 40 Billboard Hot 100 tracks (five of them
RIAA-certified "gold, " i.e., sales of more than 500, 000 units).
Along with spanning the group's five album releases, Greatest
Hits also marks the debut on a s N' Roses album of the band's
cover of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" for the
1995 film Interview with the Vampire.
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If time is the true test, then s N' Roses' Greatest Hits
confirms that they really were one of the greatest rock & roll
bands in the world. While, in retrospect, fellow graduates of the
class of 1987 are about as cool as poodle perms and spandex, the
L.A. bad boys still rock like gods. Listening to the sun-drenched
chords of "Paradise City" and the ensuing stadium-sized swagger
is enough to make wearing leather trousers and bandanas seem like
a good idea. Of course, it helped that for them sex, drugs, and
rock & roll was a way of life, not a fashion statement. As Axl
Rose wails "I wanna watch you bleed" on "Welcome to the Jungle"
like a chain-smoking lunatic possessed, it's hard not to believe
he meant it. Yet equally, it was his surprisingly poetic nature
that made genuinely touching love songs of "Patience" and "Sweet
Child of Mine."
Though none of their subsequent albums matched the drug-crazed
genius of Appetite for Destruction (
/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000OQF/${0} ), they did, as the Greatest
Hits reminds, have their moments. From the bloated Use Your
Illusion I ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000OSE/${0} ) & II (
/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000OSG/${0} ) came ultimate rock ballads
"Don't Cry" and "November Rain," along with the primal rage that
was "You Could Be Mine." And while the covers of the The
Spaghetti Incident? ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000P17/${0} ) were
largely forgettable, the fact that their final single was a seedy
sneer through the Rolling Stones (
/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/48687/${0} )' "Sympathy for the
Devil" seems spectacularly fitting. --Dan Gennoe
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About the Artist
----------------
In the late-'80s s N' Roses changed the face of hard
rock--and the y thing is, they weren't even trying. For
better or worse, nearly every rock band at the time tried to cop
the quintet's raw, street-wise intensity, which took the bad-boy
image to its most extreme.
Formed in the mid-'80s from the ashes of various Hollywood bands,
including L.A. s, the original line-up included frontman Axl
Rose (born Bill Bailey), guitarists Slash (Saul Hudson) and Izzy
Stradlin (Jeff Isabelle), bassist Michael "Duff" McKagan and
drummer Steven Adler. They already had a reputation for both
their powerful live shows and fiery temperaments by the time
Geffen signed them in 1986. The group's first full-length album,
Appetite For Destruction, was released in 1987. It took a year
for the record to reach Billboard's No. 1 slot, but after that,
there was no stopping it. There was no stopping the band, either.
Whether Slash was uttering four-letter words on national
television or Rose was threatening to break up the band over
various members' rampant heroin abuse--in front of a packed house
at the L.A. Coliseum when GN'R was opening for the Rolling
Stones, no less!--trouble seemed to dog them. Rose especially had
a habit of railing against the media, then creating mayhem that
the media found impossible to ignore. The decadent stories the
band related in their debut album, and the subsequent Use Your
Illusion I and II, were frighteningly real. So were the
occasional bursts of pain and sensitivity illustrated in many of
their songs.
It was inevitable that this volatile bunch would c. The first
to get fired was Adler when he couldn't control his drug abuse.
Matt Sorum replaced him. Stradlin left next to form a solo
project, Izzy Stradlin & The Ju Ju Hounds. Gilby Clarke came on
board for a while. By the time the group went on its 1993 stadium
tour, co-headlining with Metallica, it had become an overblown
entity--they added two keyboardists and a horn section, and it
was all too much. The group hasn't put out an album of new songs
since 1991, and turmoil continues to follow them. Clarke is no
longer in the band and no one seems to know for sure if Sorum is
still around or not. Slash left late in '96; it is rumored that
Nine Inch Nails' Robin Finck will replace him. Nevertheless GN'R
(or what's left of it) has promised to make a new album in '97.
The big question is: Does anyone still care?
This Biography was written by Janiss Garza
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