“If I was stranded”: The one album Axl Rose would bring to a desert island
Having a musician pick their favourite record is like choosing between their musical children. As much as they might love the idea of having those gold standard moments in their record collection, every artist is a music fan first, so they at least realise the importance behind those classic albums that made them want to make music. When it comes to anything Axl Rose does, though, you could probably count on something extravagant blasting out of his stereo whenever he had a break from Guns N’ Roses.
When the band first formed, though, most were glad to hear a frontman who managed to hit some decent notes between the schlock of the 1980s. Most metal frontmen from around that time were into applying lipstick first and working on technique second, which is probably why the likes of Warrant and Winger were ridiculed the minute that grunge started to wipe everything out.
Even in the era when Kurt Cobain reigned supreme, though, Guns found a way to hold their ground because of how heavy they could be. No other hair metal band was going to touch what they did on Appetite for Destruction, and while Use Your Illusion was self-indulgent to the point of self-parody, you could tell that Rose still had a genuine love for music itching to get out, even if it meant going more than a few questionable directions on tunes like ‘Estranged’ and ‘My World’.
But the whole point behind those records was about not having any rules, and that’s what all great rock and roll thrives on. Rose may have been lumped in with the other screamers from around his time, like Bruce Dickinson and Geoff Tate, but he was never that kind of frontman. He needed to be extravagant when he wanted to and nasty when the time called for it, and all of that could be found in Sex Pistols’ work.
Despite the finesse that Slash had behind the fretboard, there’s a healthy amount of fury in the band’s work that came directly from Never Mind the Bollocks. Steve Jones didn’t necessarily play the most engaging lead lines by any stretch, but when listening to the way his Les Paul sounded blaring out of his amplifier, it was like a siren letting everyone know that the days of prog rock were officially dead.
“I think I’d be in a bind to figure out which one I’d want if I was stranded on a desert island. I might go with the Pistols, because maybe a boat would hear me if I played it.”
Axl Rose
Rose had officially entered his grandiose phase by the 2000s, but he still had an undying love for what Sex Pistols did, saying, “The two records I always buy if there’s a cassette deck around and I don’t have the tapes in my bag are Never Mind the Bullocks and Queen II. I think I’d be in a bind to figure out which one I’d want if I was stranded on a desert island. I might go with the Pistols, because maybe a boat would hear me if I played it.”
But, really, both those albums paint a better picture of what made Rose tick musically. He could get as ferocious as Johnny Rotten when he wanted to, but the musical juggernauts in Queen’s early period are also present whenever he broke out the piano and started making tracks like ‘Breakdown’ or ‘November Rain’.
Those rescue boats might be drawn to the fury of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’, but Rose knew that the ideal version of his music was a combination of filth and melody. Those lines may have been blurred more than a few times listening to an album like Chinese Democracy, but it was worth it knowing that Rose’s favourite music eventually gave us tunes like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.
