My Appetite for Destruction by Steven Adler

The quintet’s first UK Top 10 single, its simplistic singalong melody is arguably a little too keen to please, though the song may have had less global appeal had the band not changed its original lyric: ‘Take me down to the paradise city, where the girls are fat and they got big titties’.

If much of Appetite For Destruction declares that Los Angeles is a dirty, depraved, dangerous shithole, Paradise City is the album’s kicker, an admission that Guns N’ Roses wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Too scuzzy and grubby to gain true mass appeal, more than any other song on Appetite, it conveyed the idea of Guns as a street gang, fucked-up, bonded by booze and forever itching for the next rumble. Regularly dedicated at gigs to the LAPD, the furious, ‘fuck everyone’ anthem Out Ta Get Me was a largely biographical tale of the band being hassled by cops, landlords, drug dealers, girlfriends… ‘Some people got a chip on their shoulder,’ whines Axl, knowingly, ‘An’ some would say it was me.’ It scores its ranking here on attitude alone.Ī dedication to the cheap fortified wine Guns lived off while sharing digs at the infamous ‘Hellhouse’: “It’s a dollar a bottle, 19 per cent alcohol and a quart of it, you’ll black out,” noted Axl, approvingly. Never destined to be a single, it’s undeniably infectious, but a song to be kept at arm’s length. “It’s a more a statement about other people’s drug habits.” The ‘I used to do a little, but a little wouldn’t do, so the little got more and more’ lyric would prove prophetic for certain members of the band. “It’s not so much a statement about our drug habits,” insisted Stradlin. “I said that I wished somebody would write a beautiful song about me.” That’s not quite what she got, but for those of us peeking into her decadent lifestyle from the outside, this was a grimly compelling and rather scary insight into an unimaginably fucked-up world.Ī grimy Stones-inspired song about heroin, written by one-time drug dealer Izzy Stradlin.

“I was driving Axl to a gig and Your Song by Elton John came on the radio,” Young later explained. Written about Axl’s former girlfriend Michelle Young, My Michelle is a striking portrait of a young woman staring into the abyss. Appetite’s closing track, it’s an explosive end to a jaw-dropping album. Most famous/infamous for the fact that it features the sound of Axl Rose having sex with Steven Adler’s then-girlfriend Adriana Smith (“I did it for the band,” the former dancer later stated), Rocket Queen was Rose’s tribute to his friend Barbi Von Greif, who he acknowledged “kept alive for a while”.

My Appetite for Destruction by Steven Adler