When the Guns and Roses broke out with their national debut album “Appetite for Destruction” in 1987 and WAPL started playing cuts from it, I didn’t really care for it. It wasn’t until years later that I gained an appreciation for their songs and the musicians in the band and I now wholeheartedly agree with Rockin’ Apple listeners who voted it as one of the top 20 WAPL albums of all time, coming in at number 13.
Axl Rose struck me as punk who, if he hadn’t been in a rock and roll band, would have been in prison. I thought Slash and his big dumb hat was trying way too hard to look cool with his ciggy hanging from his mouth like he was the next coming of Keith Richards or something. Musically it all sounded like caterwauling and screechy noises. But as years went by and I listened more and more to the album, it began to grow on me. First it was Paradise City, a song I had hated but had somehow become a guilty pleasure. Sweet Child of Mine used to drive me up a wall. Now I find myself trying (and failing) to mimic Axl’s hip sway dance moves to it.
I’m not sure what flipped the switch for me on G’n’R. Maybe I was too snobbish to appreciate that Axl has the greatest vocal range of any rock band lead singer. Seriously, it’s been scientifically measured. Maybe I was too married to the classic rock guitarists of the 60s and 70s to allow myself to really hear how Slash fits right in with the best of them.
That said, I still hate their version of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Musically it’s all cool but I could never get past the way Axl pronounced the word “door.” He sings it as dough-uh-oh and it drives me nuts. It used to fun and a bit disheartening for Rick and I to take constant requests for it. Listeners would say, “I want to request Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and we’d then ask which version they wanted to hear. Many times the response was, “What do you mean?” We’d then ask if they want the G’N’R version or the original by Bob Dylan and lots of them would refuse to accept the fact that it could be the same song. Weird. It brings to mind a quote from the great Science Fiction author, Robert Heinlein. “A generation which ignores history has no past and no future,” he wrote.
But the screw of my hate/love affair with Guns and Roses finally turned all the way around in 2018 when we booked original G’n’R drummer Steven Adler to headline the WAPL Christmas Bash. The songs sounded fully realized and fresh in the hands of his excellent band and Steven’s boundless energy and incessant good mood as he met with the radio staff and listeners was infectious. I don’t know that the rest of the guys in the band are as approachable and gregarious as he is, but I’d like to tell them in person that, at long last, they got me. Hater gone lover, man.
