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Most of you who are
reading this will know this band already.
GN'R is one of the greatest rock legends
of the 80's and early 90's. Three
of the members are back together in
Velvet Revolver: Slash, Duff and Matt.
Singer Axl Rose recruited new musicians
to continue under the GN'R name, but
little has been heard of them since
the key musicians left or were replaced.
Here's the GN'R biography
from AllMusic.com.
Written by Stephen Erlewine &
Greg Prato.
 At
a time when pop was dominated by dance
music and pop-metal, Guns N' Roses
brought raw, ugly rock & roll
crashing back into the charts. They
were not nice boys; nice boys don't
play rock & roll. They were ugly,
misogynist, and violent; they were
also funny, vulnerable, and occasionally
sensitive, as their breakthrough hit,
"Sweet Child O' Mine," showed.
While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously
spit out dueling guitar riffs worthy
of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose screeched out his tales of sex, drugs,
and apathy in the big city. Meanwhile,
bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven
Adler were a limber rhythm section
who kept the music loose and powerful.
Guns N' Roses' music was basic and
gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy
base; they were dark, sleazy, dirty,
and honest — everything that
good hard rock and heavy metal should
be. There was something refreshing
about a band who could provoke everything
from devotion to hatred, especially
since both sides were equally right.
There hadn't been a hard rock band
this raw or talented in years, and
they were given added weight by Axl
Rose's primal rage, the sound of confused,
frustrated white trash vying for his
piece of the pie. As the '80s became
the '90s, there simply wasn't a more
interesting band around, but owing
to intra-band friction and the emergence
of alternative rock, Rose's supporting
cast gradually disintegrated, as he
spent several years in seclusion.
Guns N' Roses released
their first EP in 1986, which led
to a contract with Geffen; the following
year, the band released their debut
album, Appetite for Destruction. They
started to build a following with
their numerous live shows, but the
album didn't start selling until almost
a year later, when MTV started playing
"Sweet Child o' Mine." Soon,
both the album and single shot to
number one, and Guns N' Roses became
one of the biggest bands in the world.
Their debut single, "Welcome
to the Jungle," was re-released
and shot into the Top Ten, and "Paradise
City" followed in its footsteps.
By the end of 1988, they released
G N' R Lies, which paired four new,
acoustic-based songs (including the
Top Five hit "Patience")
with their first EP. G N' R Lies'
inflammatory closer, "One in
a Million," sparked intense controversy,
as Axl Rose slipped into misogyny,
bigotry, and pure violence; essentially,
he somehow managed to distill every
form of prejudice and hatred into
one five-minute tune.
 Guns
N' Roses began work on the long-awaited
follow-up to Appetite for Destruction
at the end of 1990. In October of
that year, the band fired Adler, claiming
that his drug dependency caused him
to play poorly; he was replaced by
Matt Sorum from the Cult. During recording,
the band added Dizzy Reed on keyboards.
By the time the sessions were finished,
the new album had become two new albums.
After being delayed for nearly a year,
the albums Use Your Illusion I and
Use Your Illusion II were released
in September 1991. Messy but fascinating,
the albums showcased a more ambitious
band; while there were still a fair
number of full-throttle guitar rockers,
there were stabs at Elton John-style
balladry, acoustic blues, horn sections,
female backup singers, ten-minute
art rock epics with several different
sections, and a good number of introspective,
soul-searching lyrics. In short, they
were now making art; amazingly, they
were successful at it. The albums
sold very well initially, but while
they had seemed destined to set the
pace for the decade to come, that
turned out not to be the case at all.
Nirvana's Nevermind
hit number one in early 1992, suddenly
making Guns N' Roses — with all
of their pretensions, impressionistic
videos, models, and rock star excesses
— seem very uncool. Rose handled
the change by becoming a dictator,
or at least a petty tyrant; his in-concert
temper tantrums became legendary,
even going so far as to incite a riot
in Montreal. Stradlin left by the
end of 1991, and with his departure
the band lost their best songwriter;
he was replaced by ex-Kill for Thrills
guitarist Gilby Clarke. The band didn't
fully grasp the shift in hard rock
until 1993, when they released an
album of punk covers, The Spaghetti
Incident?; it received some good reviews,
but the band failed to capture the
reckless spirit of not only the original
versions, but their own Appetite for
Destruction. By the middle of 1994,
there were rumors flying that the
band was about to break up, since
Rose wanted to pursue a new, more
industrial direction and Slash wanted
to stick with their blues-inflected
hard rock. The band remained in limbo
for several more years, and Slash
resurfaced in 1995 with the side project
Slash's Snakepit and an LP, It's Five
O'Clock Somewhere.
 Rose
remained out of the spotlight, becoming
a virtual recluse and doing nothing
but tinkering in the studio; he also
recruited various musicians —
including Dave Navarro, Tommy Stinson,
and ex-Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin
Finck — for informal jam sessions.
Remaining members were infuriated
by Rose's inclusion of childhood friend
Paul Huge in the new sessions when
both Stradlin and Clarke were excluded
from rejoining the band. And a remake
of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy
for the Devil" was essentially
the straw that broke the camel's back,
as Rose cut out some of the other
member's contributions and pasted
Huge over the song without consulting
anyone else. By 1996 Slash was officially
out of Guns N' Roses, leaving Rose
the lone remaining survivor from the
group's heyday; rumors continued to
swirl, and still no new material was
forthcoming, though Rose did re-record
Appetite for Destruction with a new
lineup for rehearsal purposes. The
first new original G N' R song in
eight years, the industrial metal
sludge of "Oh My God" finally
appeared on the soundtrack to the
1999 Arnold Schwarzenegger film End
of Days. Soon after, Geffen issued
the two-disc Live Era 1987-1993.
2000 brought the
addition of guitarists Robin Finck
(of Nine Inch Nails) and Buckethead.
2001 was greeted with Guns N' Roses'
first live dates in nearly seven years,
as the band (who consisted of Rose
plus guitarists Finck, Buckethead,
bassist Stinson, former Primus drummer
Brian Mantia, childhood friend and
guitarist Paul Huge, and longtime
G N' R keyboardist Dizzy Reed) played
a show on New Years Eve 2000 in Las
Vegas, playing as well at the mammoth
Rock in Rio festival the following
month. A new album was announced for
a summer release, but the date came
and went without any CDs hitting the
shelves. A summer tour of Europe was
planned, but before tickets could
go on sale Rose announced that the
tour was cancelled and the band went
into seclusion until New Years Eve
of 2001. They played almost the exact
same set as the year before, but they
still managed to brew up some news
by not allowing any former members
to watch the show. Slash tried to
get onto the guest list, and even
claims to have tried to sneak in through
a security guard. Manager Doug Goldstein
released a statement taking full responsibility
for the banning of former members,
claiming that he was not sure of their
intentions and he wanted to avoid
making Rose nervous.
 2002
started with no new Axl news, instead
seeing former members Slash, Duff,
and Izzy work together on new material
for Stradlin's new album. Rose eventually
ended up in music news as he fired
producer Roy Thomas Baker from the
group's newest recording sessions,
adding him to the superstar list of
producers that had been attached to
the project at various points (including
Moby, Mike Clink, Youth, Bob Ezrin,
and many others.) Slash's contributions
to Izzy's album didn't make the final
cut, but rumors of a new band featuring
former members McKagan, Sorum, and
Slash began circulating by the end
of the spring. A slew of Japanese
and British festival dates were set
in the spring, but the mysterious
new album continued to elude fans
as the release date was pushed into
the fall of 2002. Before those concert
dates rolled around, guitarist Paul
Huge left the group, quickly replaced
by former Love Spit Love member Richard
Fortus.
An appearance at
MTV's annual Video Music Awards helped
garner interest in the new lineup,
but a rusty performance from Rose
and an interview where he said his
new album wasn't coming out anytime
soon didn't do much to further their
cause. That summer, the band started
on their first tour in almost eight
years, and they managed to fulfill
all of their commitments in Europe
in Asia. Sadly, they caused a violent
and destructive riot in Vancouver
when Rose failed to show up for the
first date of their North American
tour. Tour openers CKY were especially
inconvenienced, as Rose had only asked
them days before to reroute from California
to Canada for the show. A few shows
managed to come together, with Rose
hitting the stage quite late at certain
dates. But Rose didn't show up for
a Philadelphia concert after allowing
both opening acts to go on beforehand.
The costly vandalism that followed
the announcement was enough to convince
tour backers Clear Channel to cut
their ties with the group, ending
the tour and convincing CKY to verbally
thrash the group on their website.
While he was up to his old shenanigans
with the retooled lineup, former members
Stradlin, Slash, Sorum and McKagan
finally put an end to the rumors and
announced that they were searching
for a vocalist for a new, Axl-free
band.
The years between
albums have grown into a running joke
in the music industry, Interscope's
frustration with the millions dumped
into the recording has become secondary
to Rose's reclusive insistence to
perfect his material. By leaving the
industry on such a strong note, Rose's
image has been frozen in time as the
frustrating, angry, yet sensitive
genius behind the microphone, an image
he might not be ready to live up to
as the years go by. Despite what happens
to most groups that have stayed out
of the limelight for ten years, the
legend of Guns N' Roses continues
to grow with each year. Whatever may
happen with the new lineup, the five
original members continue to enjoy
celebrity status despite having their
post-GN'R material show less than
enthusiastic sales. By writing one
of the most critical hard rock albums
of all time, they have secured their
status as the most vital force to
hit the mainstream rock scene in the
80's.
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