Guns N' Roses: The True Story Behind the Use Your Illusion Albums

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 c

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