Appetite for Destruction - 20 Years Later - I Don’t Care What You Say, It Still Rules!

by Rob Lambert

Guns N’ Roses’ debut Appetite for Destruction was released on July 21, 1987 (with modest immediate success and MASSIVE success a year later). It was the summer between my 7th and 8th grade years. It was the height of the hair metal days. Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Motley Crue and a handful of lesser bands ruled the airwaves and MTV. I won’t try to be cool and pretend that I didn’t love all of that stuff. But then Appetite came out and whoa!

Look at this list of tunes:

Whoa. Classic. The only two that I left off that list are “Think About You” and “Anything Goes”. And those aren’t horrible.

What a creative period 85/86/87 must have been for those guys. I just read that Axl also brought “November Rain” and “Don’t Cry” to the Appetite sessions. “You Could Be Mine” and “Patience” were also already written and up for consideration. A majority of the well known songs that Guns N’ Roses would ever be know for were written during this period.

Man I loved this record. I remember the first time someone popped in the Appetite cassette and I heard “Welcome to the Jungle”. Wow. I remember side one finishing and just knowing that Paradise City was going to be a hit.

This record was the first punch in the face for the Poison-type bands toward their falling out of favor. Of course, the death knell would be delivered four years later with Nevermind.

I just can’t believe that Appetite for Destruction is twenty years old. That means that I’ve lived twenty years since that day that someone played that cassette for me … whoa.