jeff_wilder78's Full Review: Use Your Illusion II [PA] by Guns N' Roses
If there was one band that never quite reached the potential that they could (should) have, Guns N Roses was it. When they came along in the late 1980s, they provided an excellent alternative to much of the hair-metal and lame pop music that was plaguing us at the time. The Appetite For Destruction album was a classic of its time and still sounds terrific today. The Lies EP had its moments. Then in 1991, Axl and Co released the Use Your Illusion albums. As most of us know, this was their last gasp of greatness, as Guns N Roses went on to release the covers album The Spaghetti Incident not long after that and then Axl turned into a control freak and fired the rest of the band and threw away all their potential.
So how do the Use Your Illusion albums sound? Some good songs overall, yet they have quite a bit of filler as well. Overall, they would have done well by taking some of the better songs from Use Your Illusion I, putting them together with the better songs from II and shelving the rest. As a whole, II was the better album, having more good songs and only a few instances of filler.
II generally has more epic songs on it than I did. While a few of them go on for way too long, most of them are worth the running time.
The first track on here is an epic. It's the politically conscious "Civil War", which runs for 7:42. The song starts with a sample from the classic Paul Newman prison movie Cool Hand Luke ("What we've got here is failure to communicate"). As the last lines of it fade out, a slow acoustic guitar riff kicks in. The song follows a soft-loud format through it, which perfectly complements the lyrics. Axl rages against the government for making war as if it were a business and killing lots of innocent people in the process. This one is definitely a GNR classic as well as one of the best protest songs ever written.
"I4 Years" is a shorter song that has an almost reggae like feel. The lyrics for some reason remind me of Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street". Another winner.
"Yesterdays" is another shorter song, which has a slow rock sound to it. I just noticed the Beatles allusions in the song (the title and the line "Let them be"). The song is an expression of angst at how we may waste a day chasing novelties and how we spend too much time looking back when we should be looking forward.
Speaking of the aforementioned Bob Dylan, he is covered (quite well) next with that famous rendition of "Knocking' On Heaven's Door". Is it better than the original? I won't try to answer that. What I will say is that on the scale of Dylan covers, it rates on the high end with Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along The Watchtower" (With Michael Bolton's "Like A Rolling Stone" on the low end).
We now come to our first fender bender with the extremely lame "Get In The Ring". Musically the song is great. It's in the lyrics where the song falls flat big time. In the lyric we find Rose and co taking on big time rock publications that gave Guns N Roses bad reviews. The song sounds like something Fred Durst wrote for Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish album, which should give sufficient notice that this is a track to avoid.
"Shotgun Blues" is passable, yet nothing exceptional. The lyrics are more or less Rose ranting again, although not as annoyingly as he did on the previous track.
We're back in epic form on "Breakdown". The song features brilliant use of piano (in much the same way "November Rain" did), Slash’s guitar playing is great and the lyrics are some of the best that Rose ever wrote. In fact, apart from the aforementioned "November Rain", I don't know if Rose ever wrote a better song.
The Izzy Stradlin penned "Pretty Tied Up" is best described as "Lyrical S&M". The music rocks hard, which makes up for the lyrical shortcomings and the track itself is quite fun. So I give it a recommended.
"Locomotive" begins with some powerful guitar riffing by Slash. The song is another epic love song lyrically and it's a good one. It's 8:42, yet it never seems too long.
"So Fine" is a slow acoustic song that was inspired by the late New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders. The lyrics (which were written by Duff Mckagan) are sort of run of the mill. But since they were written as a tribute we’ll forgive them. Anyway, they’re not as cloyingly bad as a tribute song by Celine Dion would sound.
Next up are two definite GNR classics. First off, there’s the final epic track on this album and that one is known as “Estranged”. Yes, it’s another epic love song. It’s probably the least of the ones on here in my opinion. But is it bad? Not by a long shot. The music works well with the lyrics and Rose’s singing conveys the pain perfectly.
“You Could Be Mine”, on the other hand, is a straightforward rocker that is intended for playing loud. The lyrics are probably the most “Appetite For Destruction” like ones on here with lines like “I’m a cold heartbreaker/Fit to burn and I’ll rip your heart in two” and “You’re way out of line/With your b!tch-slap rapping and your cocaine tongue you get nothing done”. Great guitar work from Slash too.
Unfortunately, the album ends on a low note with an alternate version of “Don’t Cry” that does not sound as good as the one on Use Your Illusion I and the weak 1-minute song fragment “My World”.
So what we’ve got here is a classic album that sounds great, yet it could have been even better. If I had assembled Use Your Illusion, I would have put all of Use Your Illusion II aside from the last two songs, “Shotgun Blues” and “Get In The Ring” on one disc, then added from Use Your Illusion I: “Coma”, “November Rain”, “Don’t Cry”, The remake of Paul McCartney’s “Live And Let Die”, “Garden Of Eden” and “Bad Apples”. Of course all of this might not fit on one disc. Either way, Use Your Illusion II is a great album and it would definitely have been a better note for the original GNR lineup to go out on than the embarrassing Spaghetti Incident.
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