Prior to the release of Guns N' Roses epic double album Use Your Illusion 1 & 2 bassist
Duff McKagan had the famous last words about opening for the Rolling Stones in 1989 saying
we got these gigs supporting the Rolling Stones we're massive stones fans so that's great for us
we get down there and the Stones each have their own limo
They have their own trailer each of them
they have their own lawyer You know Mick has one
Keith has one Charlie has one And I remember turning around to Izzy
and saying man we'll never be like that Of course six months later that was us
While his timeline was a little off he pretty much summed up what the future held for Guns N' Roses
Fast forward almost two years later on September 17th 1991 and Guns N' Roses
achieved something few bands have done They were the biggest band in the world
And at that moment Donald Trump was in a limousine with five models heading for
Tower Records in Manhattan on his way to buy his own copies of Use Your Illusion 1 & 2
The new albums that were in a music industry's first being released simultaneously
Stores in every major city were opening at midnight in order to sell them and Guns N' Roses
guitarist Slash was burned out by the creation of those records and was about to take a
holiday to Africa interrupted his journey to the airport to stop off at a Tower Records on Sunset
Boulevard and watch the records go on sale from behind a two-way mirror in the back of the shop
Ironically the very same mirror from which store detectives had arrested Slash for stealing
cassettes 10 years earlier In its first week of release
Use Your Illusion 2 had sold 770,000 copies and was number one on the US Billboard charts
While Use Your Illusion 1 had sold another 685,000 copies taking the number two spot
Alan Niven who was the band's manager from 1987 to 1991 looked back at that time and said yeah we
had overnight success it took us three years The momentum you try and create then creates
its own momentum and your labor turns into loss control
The months before the album came out Niven would be gone as the band's manager replaced
with Doug Goldstein who had managed the band until his firing in 2002
And Guns N' Roses were never the nice boys of rock and roll
It was part of their appeal and image and Tom Zutaut who was the young A&R man
who'd signed the band to Geffen Records was fighting not to have them dropped
before they'd even released their first album Tom Zutaut had to almost beg Alan Niven to take
them on as they drifted toward self sabotage and Niven had agreed in part because the situation
was so messed up I couldn't make it any worse and Niven's managerial strategy
was based on one that Peter Mensch and Cliff Bernstein had used with Metallica
Another uncompromising hard sell of a band underground at first and then maybe gold
with an album number two if they got really really lucky and maybe platinum after that
Nevin would recall nobody knew it would explode as it did
Anybody who says they did is certifiable Now it would be a year before their debut
album Appetite for Destruction would break big and it was due in large part to the grueling tours and
the success of the music video for Welcome to the Jungle which MTV initially refused
to play and the smash single Sweet Child of Mine which broke big while the band opened
for Aerosmith in the summer of 1988 and even before Appetite broke big
the band had already been thinking about their next major studio record
once Appetite broke big the thing that happens to big bands happened to the Gunners with Duff
saying we all bought our houses we all had our friends and our friends would be saying you're
the glue that holds the band together and we're all getting that and you don't know
what to think it's never happened to you before the record finally broke in the States a year
after everywhere else and all of a sudden when we come back to LA everyone in the clubs
they're all dressed like us Imagine coming back and
you're a cultural phenomenon People are dressing like you
Your music is being played on the radio all the time
You walk into a grocery store and you're on the cover of Rolling Stone
People see that magazine cover and they see you and they're freaking out
This is in the grocery store I've always gone to Now the band had grand visions for their
follow-up album to Appetite but in the meantime they released G in Our Lives in 1988 to help
buy the band some time as they were dealing with newfound fame and various addictions
And their manager at the time Alan Niven would say one of the things I'm proud of is that at least
none of the band members died on my watch That took a lot of effort
The bottom line is you have to help them fight the battle but only they can win the war
And Slash would go cold turkey in my home one time I cleaned the vomit from his mouth made sure
he got clean then as soon as he's clean he calls a car and goes straight to his dealer
That was the sort of thing you were dealing with You'd call Slash say hey come into the office
you've got an interview with Guitar Player Magazine
There was no interview He'd in and you'd stick
him in a car fly him off to Hawaii and put him in a golf course where he couldn't score
We'd do that sort of thing I put Steven Adler on a plane
one night to go to Hawaii and he's sitting in first class yelling we're
all going to die and the planes going to crash Of course they invite Mr. Adler to exit the plane
at that point and so he's back in LA and he can go to his dealer and we're messed all over again
Now everybody in the band seem to have some sort of addiction or personal problems but they
all had it in check except for drummer Steven Adler
Duff looked back at that time saying referring to Adler he was suffering
the worst and couldn't pull back And Duff who still remains in
contact with the drummer would say we had this unwritten sort of code
Pull it back when it's sensible and when it's time to record or
time to play a show pull it back Check yourself There's been a few times where we check each other
you know hey dude and that's all we have to say It was a sort of honor amongst thieves
But Steven wasn't able to pull it back time and time again
And the irony wasn't lost even then Slash and I told him quite a
few times dude it's us talking to you if we're telling you that you're
too messed up you're getting too messed up Look who's talking to you
We're the guys that everyone else is worried about and we're worried about you
It was really heartbreaking and we warned him too many times
And Slash would look back at that time saying it was totally regrettable but the band finally
got to the place where we wanted to make a record which was a hard enough place to be
We're talking about the span of about a year which to us was like a lifetime and Steven we
could not just get him back to front We were resigned to the fact that he
wasn't going to be able to do it in the timeframe that we needed him to get going
because we might miss the bus We might fall apart again and
take another year to get it together By the summer of 1990 the band was ready
to record their next record but Adler couldn't play He was either too drunk or high and the only
song to feature his drumming on the records was the song civil war which was initially released
on a benefit album and the drum track had to be stitched together from 60 individual takes
The band had a lawyer drop a legal document informing him that he would
be fired and they thought it would scare him but it had little effect
Adler would be eventually fired by the band in July of 1990 and replaced with the Cult's
drummer Matt Sorum and with Steven out of the picture another member was slowly drifting
out of the group guitarist Izzy Stradlin was also distancing himself from the band
The newly sober guitarist was surrounded by the booze-filled bandmates Duff, Slash and Matt
He was not a fan of the scale of complexity of the album's saying I did the basic tracks then Slash
did his tracks like a month or two by himself Then came Axl's vocal parts and I
just went back to Indiana Now one big misconception about the records
is that the band wrote a lot of new material for the Illusions records with Sorum on board when
in fact a lot of the songs on both albums were held over from Appetite or even written before
their debut album including songs like November Rain Bad Obsession Don't Cry The Garden You Could
Be Mine and Perfect Crime to name a few Now the problem with recording the actual
albums was that it was difficult to get everyone in the same room
They had all these ideas and songs written but they hadn't solidified arranged or structured
them yet and the band wouldn't break the back of this problem until one night at
Slash's house with the guitarist remembering it was so splintered and such a struggle but
I remember we finally got together after a major roller coaster ride of ups and downs
It was in my house on Walnut Drive in the Laurel Canyon Hills
We compiled 30 songs or more than 30 songs in one evening and that was just the one time
and all of that that I remember that the band felt like itself just the guys like he used to be
Izzy Duff and Axl and we managed to put a focus on 36 songs
That was the only group writing session we had where we were all together in one
room and that was a very poignant moment Now apart from the old songs there was
also a number of holdovers from years prior the band members each brought their own songs
with Slash bringing the epic tune Coma that he had written while he was completely stoned as he put
it and Duff had So Fine and Izzy had his songs too including Pretty Tied Up Double-Talk and Jive You
Ain't the First 14 Years as well as Dust N Bones And the band's existence at that time was
different from a lot of other bands as well Appetite for Destruction still continued
to be a huge seller for the band four years after it was released
and the non-appearance of its follow-up gave their managers some leverage to do things that
had never been done before in the music industry And success in the music business like success in
any other businesses is built upon having something that everybody else wants
so the band's label Geffen Records was hungry for a new record and the stop starts of the
past two years were making some at the label worried that they'd never see a new album
And the band had several false release dates before it would be released
and the band would hit the road even before the Use Your illusion records were done
Now regardless of that Alan Niven decided that he wanted to renegotiate
the band's contract with Geffen now he'd been previously told
that the managements of both Whitesnake and Aerosmith had tried their luck after selling
five million records each and had been turned down flat and David Geffen who is the head of Geffen
Records was notoriously hard nosed but then so was Niven and the undelivered Use Your Illusion
set was his secret ace in the hole At a dinner with Geffen's label president
Eddie Rosenblatt he tried his luck after I'd made sure Eddie had
at least half a dozen glasses of wine I'd leaned over to him and said I hate to spoil
the evening and don't freak out on me now but you need to take a message to David and that is until
you renegotiate there will be no record And Niven would end up getting his deal
Use Your Illusion would come as two single standalone records released on the same day
It was a classic music business master stroke that allowed the band to claim it as a kind of
gesture to their fans while providing not one but two revenue streams for the label and fans
wouldn't be forced to buy an expensive double album set and they could buy either album
or just both of the records at the same time Now although the final album credits acknowledge
a long timeline of two years and seven recording studios one of the most remarkable
things about the records is the speed at which the basic tracks were recorded
Slash would remember I was really happy with a lot of material and I think we wanted to
do basic tracks with a new drummer We did about 36 songs in 36 days
so we weren't effing around After the basic tracks were
done I'd spent three weeks doing guitars which for 30 songs was actually pretty fast
I was sometimes doing two songs a day but everything hit a brick wall when it
came to doing the synthesizer stuff and I never agreed with doing the synthesizer stuff anyways
Although I think some of it is brilliant it was part of the new
way which was the beginning of the end That was the beginning of the whole
process taking over and it was like a lot of days we were not working
Some days it was working and most of the record was finished didn't really need the rest of
it That was the biggest disagreement for me
And Duff McKagan would look back and say well Axl is a perfectionist
That's what makes him great and the end product's great but it's maddening to work with that person
and there's no hashing out with him and November Rain in particular the
song that was torturing him he was happy he was finally finished with it and it
really wasn't characteristic of the band Rose would tell Hit Parader around the
time of the album's release we knew we had to bury Appetite in some way
There was no way to outdo that album and if we didn't outdo Appetite in one way or another it
was going to take away from our success and the amount of power we had gained to do what we wanted
I'd never really looked at it as two separate albums
I've always looked at it as an entire package for me it fits together perfectly for the 30
songs in a row and everything that we decided to record for the album made it
eventually things came together and a month before the albums came out guitarist Izzy Stradlin
played his final show with the band at Wembley Stadium before his departure was announced in
November of 91 and by May of 91 Niven was fired by Axl and
Doug Goldstein was hired as the band's new manager and that would be the catalyst that further
divided Axl and the rest of the band with Slash saying Alan was somebody that I
trusted whereas I knew Doug was somebody that played both sides against the middle
in other words he's telling me one thing telling Axl another and appeasing Axl all the time
and I was aware of it but at the same time as long as stuff was getting done I was okay as
long as we kept booking tours and I was sort of kept in the mix as far as mechanics that's how he
managed to get from 1990 to 1990-whatever we had the world record for touring
even when we lost Izzy because we had all these shows booked I was just like
let's just keep it going but when the tour was finally over it was time to
get back to work it was impossible because Izzy wasn't there Steven wasn't there and it really
dawned on me the harsh reality that Axl and I had grown is so far apart and we really weren't
all that close to begin with we'd grown so far apart and to this
day there's no putting that back together now Rose would talk about the breakup of
the group in the mid 90s telling Rolling Stone magazine it was the king of the mountain thing
it's an old saying don't buy a car with your friends and the old man all wanted to hold the
wheel ended up nearly driving the car over a cliff now the sales of Use Your Illusion 1 & 2
stand today more than 15 million copies a piece almost double the
estimate that Alan Nevin made to Eddie Rosenblatt And the subsequent tour was stretched on for years
grossed a whopping 60 million dollars but the band made almost no money because of their constant
late starts lawsuits riots overtime dues and fines so that concludes today's video guys
thanks for watching let me know which album is your favorite
Use Your Illusion 1 or 2 in the comments section below and as always let me know which stories
you'd like to see me cover in future episodes on my channel