The one song Slash thought represented Guns N’ Roses best: ‘What the band is all about’
Most artists must spend years before nailing their sound down to a science. Although people always mention ‘We Can Work It Out’ when talking about the archetype of Beatles music, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had probably written close to a hundred songs before they even thought about writing that track. Sometimes, it’s easier to capture the magic, and Slash thought that Guns N’ Roses had their sound right out of the gate with ‘Paradise City’.
This is strange, considering that the song doesn’t really have the structure of any rock classic. Although the verses and choruses are there, having a song stretched out to over six minutes as one of the lead singles was unheard of both now and upon release, especially when half of the track is made up of guitar solos.
For Slash, this was practically just another day at the office. When working on Appetite for Destruction, the guitarist remembered that most of the songwriting took very little time to assemble, with every track becoming much more fleshed out within just a few minutes. While anyone would spend their whole lives trying to write a song like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Paradise City’ was actually a bit more colourful when they first laid it down.
When travelling between gigs, the band started jamming on the chord changes of the chorus when Axl Rose started singing “Take Me Down to the Paradise City”. The rest of the band would chip in the answer part, but Slash’s choice about the…shall we say, sizeable women of the region would be replaced with “where the grass is green, and the girls are pretty”.
Although the song doesn’t rank among the best songs that they ever made in Slash’s eyes, he admitted that all of the elements that made Guns N’ Roses special are there, telling CNBC, “I would have to say for Guns N’ Roses my favourite song was always ‘Paradise City’ just because it was just a great fun song, you know. Not necessarily the best song we ever did, but just a really good representation of what the band’s about”.
Granted, it’s not like Slash is wrong about representing everyone. While Rose might soak up most of the attention during the verse and chorus, the song gives the listener two songs for the price of one in the outro. As opposed to the sleek groove of the verse, bumping the tempo up to double time for the final verse really shows what the band can do, from Duff McKagan’s bass grooves to Slash practically flying up and down the neck towards the end of the song.
Even in that dark period that most Guns N’ Roses don’t like to talk about when Slash left the band, the guitarist’s solo band was still the best way to hear the song live. Myles Kennedy may even admit that he wasn’t as strong a vocalist as Axl Rose, but once you heard Slash play those shimmering chords, you had to rub your eyes to make sure that you weren’t transported back to 1987 all over again.
Then again, ‘Paradise City’ probably holds up the best because of how close it is to reality. No matter how much it represents what Guns N’ Roses was all about, everyone has felt like they are stuck in their nowhere town and would give anything to move to the City of Angels in search of a better life.
