19 September 1991
Oh, so blustery power ballads are edgy and cool now, are they? Well, no. It’s just what rock bands do when they become big and lucrative. ‘Don’t Cry’ and ‘November Rain’, so similar as to be interchangeable, are the two signature songs from this phase of the meanest, baddest rock band in the world becoming a lumbering, knuckle-dragging stadium act: less ‘Welcome To The Jungle’, more George of the Jungle. Slash may look wasted and Axl unhinged, but that’s just cartoonish window dressing; ‘Don’t November Cry Rain’ is lighters-and-waving soft rock, no better than Bon Jovi. The expensive and misogynistic videos, the whim of releasing two albums at once, the notions of calling those albums Use Your Illusion I and II… it all speaks to how bloated Guns N’ Roses had become by then: the fat Elvises of the Viper Room.
Meanwhile, also in September 1991, a scuzzy-looking US alt-rock band called Nirvana release their new single, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. I enjoy thinking of pea-brained dinosaurs like Guns N’ Roses scrabbling in the primordial dirt, blissfully unaware of the grunge asteroid looming in the sky towards them.
