Appetite for Destruction
Appetite for Destruction is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, released on July 21, 1987, by Geffen Records. The album was recorded from January 18 to June 23 in 1987, and was produced by Mike Clink. Most of the album's themes reflect the band's personal experiences and daily life, including their youth. The cover of the album depicts a Celtic cross and skulls representing each of the five band members: Izzy Stradlin as the top skull, Steven Adler as the left skull, Axl Rose as the center skull, Duff McKagan as the right skull, and Slash as the bottom skull.
Appetite for Destruction initially received little mainstream attention, and it was not until the following year that the album became a commercial success, after the band had toured and received significant airplay with the singles "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City", and "Sweet Child o' Mine". The album went on to reach number one on the US Billboard 200 and spend four non-consecutive weeks there. It became certified 18× platinum, making it among the top 10 best-selling albums in the United States, as well as the best-selling debut album in the country.
In total, five singles were released from Appetite for Destruction: "It's So Easy" with "Mr. Brownstone", "Welcome to the Jungle", "Sweet Child o' Mine", "Paradise City", and "Nightrain". "Sweet Child o' Mine" would reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100, while "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Paradise City" would also reach the top 10 on the Hot 100.
Although critics were originally ambivalent toward the album, Appetite for Destruction has received retrospective acclaim and appears on lists as one of the best hard rock albums of the 1980s. With over 30 million copies sold, it is one of the best-selling albums worldwide. In 2018, it was re-released as a remastered box set to similar universal acclaim, hitting the top 10 of the Billboard 200 once again, over 30 years after the original album was released.
Background
Guns N' Roses' first recordings were for a planned EP in March 1985, shortly after the band formed, with "Don't Cry", a cover of "Heartbreak Hotel", "Think About You" and "Anything Goes". However, plans for the release fell through, as original guitarist Tracii Guns left the band, being replaced by Slash. Shortly afterward, the classic lineup of Axl Rose, Duff McKagan, Slash, Steven Adler, and Izzy Stradlin was finalized.After heavy touring of the Los Angeles club scene, the group signed with Geffen Records in March 1986. In December of that year, the group released the four-song EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide, which was designed to keep interest in the band alive while the group withdrew from the club scene to work in the studio. The EP release was also designed to soothe the label, which believed the band did not have enough songs to record a full-length album.
Writing and recording
Rose stated many of the songs on the album were written while the band was performing on the Los Angeles club circuit, and a number of songs that were ultimately featured on later Guns N' Roses albums were considered for Appetite for Destruction, such as "Back Off Bitch", "You Could Be Mine", "November Rain", and "Don't Cry". It is said that the reason for not putting "November Rain" on Appetite for Destruction was that the band had already agreed to put "Sweet Child o' Mine" on the album, and thus already had a "ballad" on the track list.Producer Spencer Proffer was hired to record "Nightrain" and "Sweet Child o' Mine" to test his chemistry with the band. The band eventually recorded nine songs with Proffer during these sessions, including "Heartbreak Hotel", "Don't Cry", "Welcome to the Jungle", and "Shadow of Your Love". In mid- to late-1986, the band recorded demos with Nazareth guitarist Manny Charlton, which were released in 2018. The band initially considered Paul Stanley of Kiss to produce, but he was rejected after he wanted to change Adler's drum set more than Adler wanted. Robert John "Mutt" Lange was also considered, but the label didn't want to spend the extra money on a famous producer. Ultimately, Mike Clink was chosen, and the group recorded "Shadow of Your Love" first with Clink as a test.
After some weeks of rehearsal, the band entered Daryl Dragon's Rumbo Recorders in January 1987. Two weeks were spent recording basic tracks, with Clink splicing together the best takes with his razor blade. Clink worked eighteen-hour days for the next month, with Slash overdubbing in the afternoon and evening, and Rose performing vocals. Slash struggled to find a guitar sound, before coming up with a Gibson Les Paul copy equipped with Seymour Duncan Alnico II pickups and plugged into a Marshall amplifier. He spent hours with Clink paring down and structuring his solos. The total budget for the album was about $370,000. According to drummer Steven Adler, the percussion was done in just six days, but Rose's vocals took much longer, as he insisted on doing them one line at a time, and Rose's perfectionism drove the rest of the band away from the studio as he worked. Final overdubs and mixing were done at Mediasound Studios, and mastering at Sterling Sound in New York City.
Many of the songs on Appetite For Destruction began as solo tracks that individual band members began separately from the band, only to be completed later. These songs include "It's So Easy" and "Think About You". "Rocket Queen" was an unfinished Slash/McKagan/Adler song from their earlier band Road Crew, and "Anything Goes", written by Hollywood Rose and included on their compilation album The Roots of Guns N' Roses, was re-written for Appetite. Most of the songs reflect the band's personal experiences and daily life, such as "Welcome to the Jungle", some of the lyrics of which Rose wrote after he encountered a man in New York shortly after arriving there from Indiana in 1980, and "Mr. Brownstone", which is about the band's problems with heroin. Lyrics to some of the songs focus on the band members' younger years, like "Out ta Get Me", which focuses on lead singer Axl Rose's constant trouble with the law as a youth in Indiana.
In 1999, Rose decided to re-record the album with the then current lineup of Guns N' Roses to "spruce up" the album with new recording techniques. This re-recorded version of the album was never released, although the second half of the re-recorded version of "Sweet Child o' Mine" can be heard during the end credits of the 1999 film Big Daddy.
Artwork
The album's original cover art was based on Robert Williams' painting Appetite for Destruction. It depicted a robotic rapist about to be punished by a metal avenger. After several music retailers refused to stock the album, some Geffen executives compromised and put the controversial cover art inside, replacing it with an image depicting a Celtic cross and skulls representing each of the five band members. In a 2016 interview, Billy White Jr., who designed the tattoo with the cross and skulls upon which the album artwork was based, explained: "The cross and skulls that looked like the band was Axl's idea, the rest was me. The knot work in the cross was a reference to Thin Lizzy, a band Axl and I both loved." The original cover was supposed to be on the 2008 vinyl reissue of the album, though executives replaced it with the "skulls" art at the last minute. The photographs used for the back of the album and liner notes were taken by Robert John, Marc Canter, Jack Lue, Leonard McCardie, and Greg Freeman.The band stated the original artwork was "a symbolic social statement, with the robot representing the industrial system that's raping and polluting our environment." In albums which were issued on double sided media, the two sides were labeled "G" and "R", rather than the conventional "A" and "B". Tracks 1–6, which compose side "G", all deal with drugs and hard life in the big city. The remaining tracks, which compose side "R", all deal with love, sex, and relationships. In an interview with That Metal Show in 2011, Rose stated his initial idea was for the cover art to be the photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding that was on the cover of Time magazine in 1986, but Geffen rejected the idea, saying it was "in bad taste".
Marketing and sales
When Appetite for Destruction was released by Geffen Records on July 21, 1987, it received little notice from American press and radio, apart from some airplay in California. Music journalist Stephen Davis later attributed this to competing rock music in the mainstream at the time, including Aerosmith's comeback hit album Permanent Vacation, Def Leppard's presence on radio with their Hysteria album, and the dominance of U2's spiritual rock over MTV's prime-time viewership. The album debuted at number 182 on the Billboard 200 the week of August 29, but it only sold 200,000 copies in the first several months of its release, and Geffen planned on "walking away" from the record.Radio stations originally did not want to play "Welcome to the Jungle", and MTV did not want to air the song's music video. However, after several months of lobbying the network, Geffen general manager Al Coury convinced MTV to play the video just once a night for three nights. "Welcome to the Jungle" became the most requested video on the network, and Coury pitched this success to radio stations, whom he sent promo copies of "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City", and "Sweet Child o' Mine".
With the radio and video airplay, as well as the band's touring, Appetite for Destruction managed to top the Billboard 200 on August 6, 1988, over a year after it was released. It spent four non-consecutive weeks at number one and a total of 147 weeks on the chart. Slash recalled: "We thought we'd made a record that might do as well as, say, Motörhead. It was totally uncommercial. It took a year for it to even get on the charts. No one wanted to know about it."
From 1994 up to 2018, Appetite for Destruction sold 1,216,017 copies in the United Kingdom. By September 2008, the album had been certified 18× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, having shipped over 18 million copies in the United States, making it the country's 11th best-selling album ever. According to Billboard in 2008, it is also the best-selling debut album of all time in the US. That year, Sky News reported the album's worldwide sales to be approximately 28 million copies, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time; by 2013, worldwide sales were estimated at nearly 31 million units to that point.