Guns, Roses, N' The Universe
Hello, friends! Rob here.
I'm not really sure where this story begins. In a way, it starts with a gift from my brother, either for my birthday or Christmas, sometime around 1998. In a way, it starts with a scene from a movie, or a late-night drive. In a way, it starts in Los Angeles in 1985, when the city's hedonistic depravity was approaching a tipping point.
This story is about Guns N' Roses. In a way.
This isn't an ode or an homage (though it will read like both at times). It's not "Confessions of a GNR Junkie.” While Guns N' Roses is certainly a band that I like, perhaps even love, they aren't my favorite band. That would be Tower of Power. They certainly aren't my greatest musical influence. That's probably Michael Brecker, or arguably my late junior high and high school band director, Bill Brown. So why not write about them? Why GNR?
Guns N' Roses have been at the center of a number of key moments in my personal development and my relationship with rock music. In the majority of these moments, it could have been any other band, but, for whatever reason (or perhaps no reason at all), it was Guns N' Roses, over and over again, to an extent that has become difficult to ignore. They're like my personal Forrest Gump, but with more guitar solos.
When I was about thirteen, my brother Andy bought me a copy of Appetite for Destruction. I'd love to tell you that I unwrapped it, puzzled at the grim cover art, popped it in, and had one of those eye-opening "what is this music?!” moments, but come on. I didn't grow up in some kind of Footloose town where loud music had been outlawed in the interest of public good. I had heard of these guys. I already liked "Paradise City” due to its use in a scene from the criminally underrated nineties teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait in which social pariah and stereotypical nerd William Lichter becomes the life of the party after getting hammered and singing a spirited rendition of the song in front of his classmates. As a teenage boy who had hundreds, maybe thousands, of Magic: The Gathering trading cards and zero girlfriends, I was taking notes. Music makes you cool.
When he was in high school, my brother Andy was in a band. I usually got to tag along for his shows during the summer, which, at thirteen or fourteen years of age, was just amazing. I would ride in the back of the white minivan that Andy had inherited from our mother after years of abuse as the family vehicle, stretching out amidst the drums and amplifiers, listening to the radio and the sophisticated humor of high school students, sitting in on post-show debriefings at the Denny's where the guys always seemed to have a friend or two working the graveyard shift, flying under the radar at music venues and DIY garage shows by helping haul the band's gear.
The band consisted of Andy, two other students at his school, and a twenty three-year old singer who didn't have a driver's license and lived in Coweta, OK, a far-flung little town that even those of us in Tulsa couldn't help but write off as podunk. Coweta had a Wal-Mart. Its people apparently called it "the mall.” As I recall, Andy and his bandmates took turns ferrying their lead singer to and from his home. When it was my brother's turn, I would often accompany him. I treasured the rides back from Coweta; sitting in the front seat, just me and my cool older brother, talking about life, the universe, and whatever was on the radio. For reasons that I cannot fully explain, I have a distinct memory of "Paradise City” popping up during one such drive.
The singer eventually got his driver's license. The band threw him a sweet sixteen party.
Appetite for Destruction was one of the first albums I was able to listen to from start to finish. I found something cathartic in its arc: it starts at the bottom of a deep valley, trudging through despair and hollow excess, but gradually drifts towards themes of acceptance and reconciliation. It may not have a happy ending in the traditional sense, but it has an ending that acknowledges that pain, grief, and regret are all part of life. At the time, I hadn't yet realized that a great album needed to be more than just a collection of great songs. But I was learning.
I would stay up way past bedtime, playing video games, listening to Appetite for Destruction on repeat and quietly singing along. The summer after I got the CD, I had just gotten my braces out. I had a retainer in. Those late nights taught me how to enunciate with a sheet of molded plastic clipped to the roof of my mouth. They also taught me how to sing falsetto.
Years later, after I had altogether abandoned my retainer, my mother and I took a trip to Los Angeles to visit a few colleges. I was at the age where one starts to consider all of those looming questions- words like "goals” and "career” and "future” kept cropping up at inopportune moments. At one point during the trip we stopped in a towering shopping mall to kill some time. I purchased a GNR live compilation calledLive Era '87-'93. That night, I gave it a listen. I understand why some may blanch at the thought of Axl Rose singing a Bob Dylan song, but there's a moment during a recording of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door” where he leads the crowd in an earthquake call-and-response which is so beautifully captured- Axl on one end, and a crowd in the tens of thousands bolstered by two soaring backup singers on the other, until eventually he calls out, "let's make this one reach the heavens!” and they all sing together and it feels like the all of humanity is there, in that moment, belting like it's the last thing they'll ever do. Guns N' Roses' story will always be marred by division, by clashing egos and interpersonal struggles, but in that moment you can feel the electricity, the perfection, of beauteous unity. You can feel the power of Music, capital M, force of nature. The power it has to bring us a little closer to heaven.
At least, I could feel it. I was there. It wasn't "like I was there.” I was there. "Goals.” "Career.” "Future.” I want to make music. I want to feel that electricity. I want to be a part of something big enough to take on a life of its own. Something that brings people together.
On Sunday, Guns N' Roses played at the Superdome here in New Orleans. For weeks I had believed that I would miss it for being on tour. On Sunday, we woke up early in Arkansas, drove ten hours with minimal stops, and made it back to New Orleans at about seven PM. Three hours later, I was there. Part of a crowd of tens of thousands, singing "Knocking on Heaven's Door” in the direction of Axl's outstretched vocal mic.
This story is about Guns N' Roses, but it isn't. It's about music, but it isn't. It's about my brother, but it isn't. It's about me, but it isn't. It's about slotting the keystone into the top of an arch that I never thought I'd live to see completed. It's about a skeptic finding compelling evidence of an ordered universe in the most unlikely of places. It's about one of the great, immutable facts of existence: everything is all up in everything else's business. GNR is not the center of my universe. They're not the glue that holds it all together. They're not the missing link, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Higgs Boson. They're a band. They are just a band. They are just what they are. In that respect, they are like everything. And everything is always so much more than just what it is.
