The one Guns N’ Roses song that blew Lars Ulrich’s head off: “It was so venomous”
When Guns N’ Roses broke out in 1987 with their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, they resonated with audiences for several reasons. The main factor was that musically, they hit a middle ground between the ubiquitous but widely derided hair metal of the day and the traditional rock acts of yesteryear. In addition to the band members being prominent personalities, this made them a commercial juggernaut.
While Guns N’ Roses had a bombastic style that played into the mainstream musical zeitgeist, their music was also underpinned by ample anger during those days, a feeling which saw them appeal to listeners of their generation a little further, given that there was a distinctly punk attitude at play.
While they certainly weren’t doing anything as exciting as what was emerging in America’s underground scene, their passion was palpable, and off the back of frontman Axl Rose’s wailing vocals and lead guitarist Slash’s visceral playing, they asserted their dominance quickly, and resoundingly. One only has to look at early tracks such as ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ to find evidence of this punk-oriented edge.
Of course, Guns N’ Roses were not everybody’s taste even back then, with late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain one of their most famous critics. At the height of his fame, Cobain kicked off one of the 1990s biggest musical feuds with Axl Rose. Aiming a dig at the Los Angeles band, he said: “We’re not your typical Guns N’ Roses type of band that has absolutely nothing to say.”
Even if the hero of Generation X was antithetical to Guns N’ Roses and made no bones about his thoughts towards them, many other mainstream rock acts were effusive about Rose and his group of hellraisers. One influential group who were early supporters and would later take them on a disappointing tour in the early 1990s was Metallica, the thrash metal pioneers who always advocate groups doing something fresh with rock.
When speaking to Classic Rock in 2005, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich recalled first hearing Appetite for Destruction. He said that one track in particular, ‘It’s So Easy’, blew his “fucking head off” with its fury.
Ulrich commented: “I was sitting on an airplane going through a bunch of cassettes that I had finagled over at our record company, and one of them was Appetite. When ‘It’s So Easy’, the second song, came on, it just blew my fuckin’ head off. I had never heard anything with that kind of attitude. It wasn’t just what was said – it was the way Axl said it. It was so venomous. It was so fucking real and so fucking angry.”
Listen to ‘It’s So Easy’ below.
