The one singer Axl Rose said he would be nothing without: “It would open my mind”
It wasn’t clear when Guns N’ Roses first formed whether or not Axl Rose was going to be a rock and roll legend, in jail before he reached his 30s, or dead by the end of the tour for Appetite for Destruction.
That album title wasn’t put there by accident, and almost every one of the band’s greatest moments came out of all of them channelling all the hedonism of their lives and taking rock and roll one step further in the process. And while Rose did have a lot of piss and vinegar in his delivery, he could still talk about his love for the greatest bands in his record collection.
You have to remember that there was no real reference point for where a band like Guns came out of, and while their influences from bands like Aerosmith and Rose Tattoo were evident from the minute they got onstage, they also weren’t afraid to play around with different influences whenever they went into the studio. There was punk in their delivery, a little bit of blues in the way that Slash played guitar, but for Rose, he wanted to dream bigger than his influences.
People like Aerosmith did have a great amount of attitude whenever they performed, but Rose pictured the band making more lavish music and creating a spectacle onstage. While a band like Kiss was able to do that through making the show more extravagant and having the music be a second thought half the time, Rose was centred more on what Queen was able to do every time they performed.
Because of all the great acts that the 1970s spat out, Queen is still one of the quintessential live bands of their era. They have made countless hits and could turn any venue inside out within the span of a few songs, but let’s not kid ourselves here. The reason why the band stuck out was because of Freddie Mercury, and Rose never took any of the songs that his idol sang for granted.
Anyone with Mercury’s level of showmanship usually lets the music take a backseat half the time, but he was as much of a genius in the studio as he was onstage. Much has been made of tunes like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ now, but if you look at any of the songs that Queen made during their prime, almost all of Mercury’s songs had that signature musical quirk about them, whether that was the showtunes or the emotional wrecking balls like ‘Love of My Life’.
That influence might not come out every time Rose sings, but he felt that the whole reason he was in music was because of what Mercury did, saying, “If I hadn’t had Freddie Mercury’s lyrics to hold on to as a kid I don’t know where I would be. It taught me about all forms of music… it would open my mind. I never really had a bigger teacher in my whole life.”
And it’s not like Rose couldn’t bring that fury the same way Mercury did live. While his performance at the Concert for Freddie with Elton John was incredibly tasteful, hearing him reaching to the top of his range during Guns N’ Roses’ prime was a sight to behold, especially when he started storming around the stage like he was a rabid dog that had just been let off its leash.
Then again, does Rose really need to outwardly say that Mercury was one of the finest vocalists to ever do it? I mean, if you were to look at any other rock and roll frontman that has come to light in the past four decades, a lot of them are going to use Queen’s Live Aid as an example of how every single rock frontman should be expected to act when they have a crowd in front of them.
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