Prior to the release of Guns N’ Roses epic double album Use Your Illusion 1 & 2, bassist Duff McKagan spoke 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… I remember turning around to Izzy and saying, ‘Man, we’ll never be like that.’ Of course, six months later that was us.” His timeline was a little off but he pretty much summed up what the future held for Guns N’ Roses.
Guns N’ Roses: The Biggest Band in the World
Fast forward almost two years later on September 17, 1991, Guns N’ Roses achieved something few bands have done. They were the biggest band in the world. Donald Trump was in a limousine heading for Tower Records in Manhattan to buy his own copies of Use Your Illusion 1 & 2.
The new albums were in a music industry’s first, being released simultaneously. Stores in every major city were opening at midnight in order to sell them.
In its first week of release, Use Your Illusion 2 had sold 770,000 copies and was number one on the US Billboard charts. 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 months before the album came out Doug Goldstein would replace Niven as the band’s manager. Goldstein would manage the band until his firing in 2002.
Never the Nice Guys of Rock N’ Roll
Guns N’ Roses were never the nice guys of rock n’ roll. It was part of their appeal and image. Tom Zutaut, 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.
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 videos for “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child of Mine”, which broke big while the band opened for Aerosmith in the summer of 1988.
Even before Appetite for Destruction broke big, the band had already been thinking about their next major studio record. The band had grand visions for their follow-up album but in the meantime they released G N’ R Lies in 1988 to help buy the band some time, as they were dealing with newfound fame and various addictions.
“One of the things I’m proud of is that at least none of the band members died on my watch” – Alan Niven
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. The bottom line is you have to help them fight the battle but only they can win the war. Slash would go cold turkey in my home one time. 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.”
Everybody in the band seemed to have some sort of addiction or personal problem 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. 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. There’s been a few times where we check each other but Steven wasn’t able to pull it back time and time again. It was really heartbreaking and we warned him too many times.”
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 record was “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 drummer Matt Sorum.
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 albums 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.”
The Biggest Misconception About “Use Your Illusion”
One big misconception about the records is that the band wrote a lot of new material for the Illusions records with Sorum on board. A lot of the songs on both albums were held over from Appetite for Destruction 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.
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.
The guitarist remembered, “We finally got together after a major roller coaster ride of ups and downs. It was in my house in the Laurel Canyon Hills. We compiled 30 songs or more in one evening and that was just the one time. All I remember that the band felt like itself, just the guys like it used to be. That was the only group writing session we had where we were all together in one room and that was a very poignant moment.”
Apart from the old songs, there were also a number of holdovers from years prior. The band members each brought their own songs with Slash bringing the epic tune, “Coma”, Duff had “So Fine” and Izzy had his songs including “Pretty Tied Up”, “Double-Talk and Jive”, “You Ain’t the First”, “14 Years” and “Dust N Bones”.
Success is Built Upon Having Something That Everybody Else Wants
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. Success in the music business, like success in any other businesses is built upon having something that everybody else wants.
Geffen Records: Hungry for a Guns N’ Roses Follow Up Album
The band’s label, Geffen Records was hungry for a new record. The stop starts of the past two years were making some at the label worried that they’d never see a new album. The band had several false release dates before a new album would be released.
The band would hit the road even before the Use Your Illusion records were done. Alan Niven decided that he wanted to renegotiate the band’s contract with Geffen. He’d been 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. David Geffen, head of Geffen Records, was notoriously hard-nosed but so was Niven. 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.” 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.
We did about 36 songs in 36 days so we weren’t effing around.” – Slash
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, “We did about 36 songs in 36 days so we weren’t effing around.
Axl 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.
By May of ’91, Niven was fired by Axl and Doug Goldstein was hired as the band’s new manager. That would be the catalyst that further divided Axl and the rest of the band.
Slash would say, “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. 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.
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.”
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. The subsequent tour was stretched on for years and grossed a whopping 60 million dollars, however, the band made almost no money because of their constant late starts, lawsuits, riots, overtime dues and fines.
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