The problem Axl Rose has with Guns N’ Roses song ‘Paradise City’
‘Paradise City’ is a track which transcended Guns N’ Roses. The hit single is one of the most successful in rock music and a definitive track from the genre. However, Axl Rose has never been entirely happy with the finished version of the song, and if it was up to him, there’d be significant changes made to the recording.
While Guns N’ Roses remain a divisive act, their debut album, Appetite For Destruction, epitomises an entire era of rock music. During this period, they were the most dangerous band on the planet, and chaos followed them everywhere they went. Riots often broke out at their shows, and fans became accustomed to expecting the unexpected.
Appetite For Destruction contains wall-to-wall hits. In addition to ‘Paradise City’, the album includes ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. These anthems have now become part of popular culture, but at first, they were all largely ignored by radio. Eventually, it broke through into the mainstream, and Guns N’ Roses were sat on a handful of commercial hits.
‘Paradise City’ was picked as the album’s third single, and by this stage, Guns N’ Roses were the name on everybody’s lips. It became their third consecutive track to reach the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 and charted in several other territories internationally.
However, at the time of its release, Rose spoke to Steve Harris and explained why ‘Paradise City’ is his only regret on the album. “The only thing I would like to do is I wish we would have more time to mix, but we were working on a release date, and there was a couple songs I didn’t feel we had enough time to get just right. ‘Paradise City’ I think, could’ve been a little clearer, but we were mixing two songs a day to make a release date,” the singer explained.
He continued: “There was all kinds of reasons why we had to make that release date like getting the record out before it would catch nerves for the month of August and things like that. It was all kinds of reasons why we had a certain amount of time that we had to get it done. So we just did the best we could in that amount of time.”
Considering the time constraints they were fighting against while recording Appetite For Destruction, Rose was pleased with the final product and confident Guns N’ Roses didn’t sell themselves short. “We didn’t really compromise,” he added. “We still, I think hit pretty close to the mark we were wanting to hit. There wasn’t really anything I want to change. There’s two words I think in that whole record that I didn’t quite say the way I wanted to, and I forgot which ones they were”.
Watch the video for ‘Paradise City’ below.
