Guns N’ Roses would shock the rock world with their seminal debut record Appetite
for Destruction in 1987. While the album took almost a year to break big it soon became one of
the biggest selling rock records in history. The band followed it up with a an EP 1988’s GN’R Lies
that also went sold a million copies. As the world waited for the band’s next full length follow up
theyentered an extremely dark time full of substance abuse, infighing, lineup change as
well as negative press coverage. However, despite all the obstacles Guns N’ Roses delivered in a
major way releasing their double album Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 in September of 1991
which was a juggernaut and helped make Guns N'Roses one of the biggest rock acts in the world.
One of the songs found on the band’s double album would be inspired by a
near fatal overdose that frontman Axl Rose would suffer and in my humble opinion it
would result in one of the band's best songs. Stay tuned for the full story.
In a one on one with Interview magazine in 1992, frontman A Rose discussed his
love-hate relationship with sonwriting with it on one hand being cathartic, while at the
same time difficult to experience past emotions. And throughout 1989 to 1991 in various interviews
the members of Guns N’ Roses gave they would drop a lot of clues in terms of what fans could expect
on their full length follow up. Following the band’s Appetite for Destruction Tour in 1988,
Guns N’ Roses would head back to Los Angeles. Unlike Appetite for Destruction
the band members now had money and without the distraction of touring or being in the studio,
all the members except Rose went down the rabbit hole of addiction.
It was during this time guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin rented a house in the hollywood hills.
And it was that house where Slash slash wrote several songs including today's topic Coma
and the trackLocomotive. Slash would reveal to guitar magazine that 'Coma' was written on
acoustic guitar and it was originally called girth taking its name from a friend and collaborator of
the group West Arkeen who Duff McKagan claimed to writer Mick Wall had a girthy genital
In a separate interview with music radar Slash would reveal, I wrote Coma in my heroin delirium.
That's a song that I'm still proud of. There's not a lot of 'technique' – it's
a pretty straight up kinda Slash approach. But the thing that's really interesting was the vamp-out,
which was this circular rotating chord progression that never ended:
the same chord progression every time, but it just kept changing key. That was my mathematical
musical discovery. I just stumbled on it and it's very much me doing my thing… but it worked
Fans would first hear about the song when Axl Rose spoke to MTVs Kurt Loder in 1990
on the program Famous Last Words. This interview happened almost a year before
the Use Your Illusion albums dropped and here's a clip of Rose talking about the song.
You had mentioned there's a song on this album coming up that might cause some problems you
think. There's a song called Coma that is like 11 minutes and 45 seconds long with no chorus.
Okay and i think there was one verse that some what repeats itself. Um, it's Slash's baby,
it's his monster. The song used to be called Girth. Um,
but I started writing about when I OD'd 4 years ago and the reason I OD'd was cause of stress i
couldn't take it. Yeah I grabbed this bottle of pills in an argument and just gulped them down
and i ended up in the hospital and but i liked that i wasn't in the fight anymore and i was
fully conscious that i was leaving. Yeah, i liked that. But then I go all of a sudden my first real
thoughts though were that ok you haven't toured enough, the records' not going to last, it's going
to be forgotten this and that you have work to do get out of this and i went no and I woke up
you know pulled myself out of it but in the describing of that some people could take it wrong
and think this means go put yourself into a coma. You know, it's really tricky and i'm still playing
with the words to show some hope in there. yeah At the time of the interview Rose would indicate
he hadn’t finished writing the lyrics , but in a separate interview Rose mentioned
I tried to write that song for a year, and couldn't. I went to write it at the studio and
passed out. I woke up two hours later and sat down and wrote the whole end of the song, like, just
off the top of my head. It was like, don't even know what's coming out, man, but it's coming. I
think one of the best things that I've ever written was maybe the end segment of the
song "Coma". It just poured out he'd remember. Coma would be found on Use Your Illusion 1 and
would be the longest song on the double album clocking in at just under 11 minutes in length.
The song wasn’t played live a whole lot on the Use Your Illusion Tour since it took was difficult or
Rose to sing live and it was difficult for the groups rhythm guitarists including gilby clarke
and izzy Stradlin to remember. Izzy Stradlin would tell the Vox in 1991 that he had to have a special
chord chart made for him during live gigs since he couldn’t remember all the changes in the song.
The exact writing of the song has been debated amongst Rose Rose and Slash. While both are
credited with writing the song Slash has stated in numerous interviewes he wrote all the music and
brought the finished track to the band. Rose would reveal in a 2008 interview on a fan message board.
Yes Slash was in Guns and on Jungle and the whole I came to him for his riff
is as much crap as him saying he brought Locomotive and Coma in as complete songs.
Drummer Matt Sorum who played on the song would reveal to a fan on twitter the track was recorded
in just one take with no computers and he would briefly touch upon the song in his new book
Double Talkin Jive. He would reveal how the band originally rehearsed 36 songs for the Illusion
records and the plan wasn't to release a double album, but rather they would choose the best 13
or 14 songs. He would reveal in his book We had managed to pull together
thirty-six songs, and after playing all of them for Mike,
we decided to record the lot and then pick out the best thirteen or fourteen.
I remember liking several of them, especially the killer tracks like
“You Could Be Mine,” “Dust N’ Bones,” and “Pretty Tied Up.” Then there
were the tracks like “Coma,” which I just didn’t get at all. I mean, a tenminute
rock song? But Axl just said, “Look, Queen did it, the Stones did it.
We can do whatever the fuck we want. Let’s push it, let’s go as epic as we
can. Let’s not make the same record again.” Axl wanted to take the band to a stadium level,
and he knew that with epic songs, epic videos, and larger than life imagery, we could do it.
In addition to releasing the song on the Use Your Illusion 1 record a live version could
also be found on their 1999 release Live Era as a bonus track. Since the reunion of Axl Rose,
Slash and Duff McKagan in 2016 as part of the Not in This Lifetime Tour 'Coma' has become
part of the band's setlist. That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure
to hit the like button and subscribe. We'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.