How the Guns N’ Roses album ‘Use Your Illusion’ destroyed arena rock
There was a certain limit that rock and roll could be taken to during its prime. Although every artist spends their time roughing it in clubs in the hopes that they will catch the eye of a record company, the only end goal is to see them graduate to stadiums and spend the rest of their lives towering over everyone else like gods among men. There is a moment where rock jumped the shark, though, and the reason why arena rock died is all because of Axl Rose.
Granted, it’s not like Rose didn’t warrant some praise with Guns N’ Roses. Throughout their rise to stardom, hearing tunes like ‘Paradise City’ and ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ on the radio was the perfect antidote to soppy hair metal ballads, but there was only so long that Rose wanted to take that sound before he started becoming the Los Angeles version of The New York Dolls.
So, for Use Your Illusion, Rose knew that he needed to bury what he had created. That was a thing of the past, and what would come afterwards was bound to be something far more lavish than anything that had ever come before. And for the first few songs on the albums, it still feels like the Guns N’ Roses we all knew.
Listening to ‘Right Next Door to Hell’ or ‘Dust N Bones’, it doesn’t feel like this is going to signal the end of the group, but once they start hitting the lavish ballads like ‘November Rain’ and ‘Don’t Cry’, it’s clear that something was changing. Looking through both albums, there’s a constant push and pull between the styles, especially when Rose decides that short runtimes are for the weak on tracks like ‘Breakdown’.
Even though the band kicked off the album cycle by going on one of the biggest tours in rock history, it was clear that not every one of these tunes would have worked within that concert setting. ‘Rocket Queen’ and ‘It’s So Easy’ still felt like the best version of themselves, so going from that to an Elton John-style ballad did nothing to endear them to fans who wanted something heavy.
So, how did ‘Use Your Illusion’ kill arena rock?
But an album needs to do something more than be boring to kill arena rock, and that comes with its crushing runtime. As if the album wasn’t already bloated on one disc, hearing them spread out across two albums is where things start to hit a snag, especially by the time ‘Estranged’ starts and feels like some epic movie score that Rose probably helped write for an imaginary action film where he’s the protagonist.
And once they got a few legs into the tour, the lavish parties and Rose not bothering to show up for some of the shows left a lot of rock fans feeling stung, especially when listening to a new album called Nevermind. Suddenly, Kurt Cobain had a lot to say about the kind of divas that Rose represented, and no matter how much Rose resisted engaging with Cobain, it was clear that the Nirvana frontman was the cool stoner kid to Rose’s school bully.
By the time the tour finally wrapped up, it wasn’t just every member of Guns N’ Roses that wanted out. Even though the grunge acts were now packing stadiums, there seemed to be a much better connection between bands who wanted to relate to their audience rather than be the flashy new artist on plasma screens.
And looking at where some of the biggest names in arena rock are now, half are trying to outrun Axl Rose or look insane following in his footsteps. People like Green Day and Arctic Monkeys have managed to take their audiences on a journey when they play, but there’s always someone like Ivan Moody taking the road Rose paved and claiming that he’s above everyone else and is doing the audience a favour by bothering to turn up to any of their scheduled shows.
So, while the biggest names in rock can still keep the train rolling even when they reach stadium level, Use Your Illusion marked a moment where people began to see the rockstar diva for what it truly was. Others may have tried to capture that magic over again, but there’s now an uncanny irony whenever someone tries to pull something out of Rose’s playbook and play it completely straight.
