Guns N’ Roses 4: Use Your Illusion II

Releasing two albums at once meant that the chances of both hitting #1 in Billboard were slim, even for Guns N’ Roses. Somehow Use Your Illusion II (the blue and purple one) beat out its brother for the top slot. Arguably it was the better album anyway, with more variety and depth.

“Civil War” had been out for a year already, having been recorded when Steven Adler was still in the band, and included on an album compiled to benefit a charity founded by Olivia Harrison. It begins with Strother Martin’s iconic speech from Cool Hand Luke, and sets a somber tone for the rest of the album. “14 Years” was Izzy Stradlin’s best song of the batch he brought to the project; he sings the verses and Axl Rose handles the choruses, and they might as well be two separate songs stuck together. “Yesterdays” is less bitter but still disgruntled, and one of Axl’s better tunes. Their cover of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” had also been released previously on a Tom Cruise movie soundtrack, but in a slightly different mix.

Just when you think they’ve grown up, “Get In The Ring” sends us back to grade school. Yelled by Axl and Duff McKagan, between audience chants recorded live on tour only months before, it’s a basic eff-you to anyone and everyone, and particularly various writers and magazines who had been less than complimentary about the band. Duff helps out also with “Shotgun Blues”, which is just as angry and profane but doesn’t name names. The side is redeemed by “Breakdown”, another long but well-constructed track with introspective lyrics, with another film reference; this time Axl impersonates Cleavon Little from Vanishing Point over the last couple minutes.

Izzy returns with “Pretty Tied Up”, which seesaws between mythology in the verses and an incongruous chorus, but it’s got an undeniable strut. And while thus far they’ve chosen to open or close sides with the epics, “Locomotive” runs nearly nine minutes in the middle of side three. It’s a showcase for Slash, and we’re amazed that with all the tweaking these albums underwent, they never bothered to fix Axl’s time issues on the choruses. It’s even got a cool piano-driven coda. But then Duff steps up to the mic to mewl the bulk of “So Fine”, a mostly inoffensive power ballad with a truly stupid bridge.

We’re not done with the epics yet, as “Estranged” runs for nine minutes, has a lot of Axl on piano and Slash soloing constantly, and can be heard as something of a companion to “November Rain”. But it’s mainly remembered today for its truly bonkers video, released two years after the album came out, wherein Axl is chased by SWAT teams, sent to the nut house, and pursued by helicopters, finally leaping from an oil tanker to swim with dolphins. Then it’s back to the beginning of the cycle with “You Could Be Mine”, first released on the Terminator II soundtrack and something of a rockin’ sorbet in the spirit of the debut. “Don’t Cry (Alt. Lyrics)” has different verses but the same choruses as the “Original” on the other album, and nobody was ready for “My World”, basically an Axl-driven industrial rap experiment that sounds like a joke but probably wasn’t.

While there are some truly cringey moments on Use Your Illusion II, it remains an excellent demonstration of the band’s collective and individual talents. They weren’t just another hair metal band. (A week later, the major-label debut from a Seattle band called Nirvana was released, also on Geffen. The first album by another Seattle band, called Pearl Jam, had come out at the end of August. Meanwhile, new albums by such previously multiplatinum acts as Skid Row, White Lion, and Tesla did not break any sales records. The music business was changing again.)

Once again the Deluxe Edition added a disc of various live tracks from the shows, not all of which were included in the Super Deluxe Use Your Illusion box. And once again most of the GN’R songs were on the main album, with some interesting extras, like “Mama Kin” and “Train Kept A-Rollin’” with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith at a show in Paris. A segment from the same show encompasses a seven-minute drum solo, a four-minute Slash guitar solo that finds its way to the Godfather theme, and Queen’s “Sail Away Sweet Sister”. For some reason “Civil War” is bookended by the “Voodoo Child” riff, and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” is prefaced by the riff but no sung lines from Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed”. By this time the band had two keyboard players, backing vocalists, and a horn section, so Axl didn’t have to handle both playing and singing things like “Estranged”. And boy, did he holler a lot.

Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion II (1991)—3
2022 Deluxe Edition: same as 1991, plus 13 extra tracks