Talkin' Jive: Guns N' Roses, Part 1

   No, your eyes have not deceived you. This is really happening. There are now three classic lineup members of Guns N' Roses playing together. Axl Rose, Duff McKagan, and Slash are now touring together to rock the collective socks off of 25 North American cities this summer. And I couldn't be happier. As a huge Guns N' Roses fan, I just couldn't believe the news that 3/5 of the classic lineup was back together under the GNR banner (the 2012 Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame show doesn't count). But now that it's finally happening we can now start celebrating. And it seems that retail stores are all too happy to assist with the sudden surge in GNR music being stocked on all the shelves (yeah I still buy physical music formats. You wanna fight about it?). This includes everything from the classic albums, to the reinvented modern sound of Chinese Democracy, to the just plain odd stuff like the greatest hits album and other weird crap. So for these next couple of weeks or so, I'm gonna share my thoughts on some of the more peculiar GNR-related music that I've happened to listen to.

   This week I'm gonna talk about the compilation album Greatest Hits. Greatest Hits was released against Axl's wishes in 2004, as record executives were getting frustrated with the long-awaited-yet-constantly-postponed release of Chinese Democracy. This was actually the first Guns N' Roses album I ever listened to, and at the time I thought it was great. The music rocked and it made me want to go out and buy the other albums, which I soon did. It wasn't until I became a hardcore fan that I realized that this compilation package was lacking and could have been much, much better.

   My first complaint is that the track list contains too many cover songs. All in all, five of the album's fourteen songs are covers. Five! That's 36% of the stuff on here, written and made by someone else. If it was just one or two, then I could accept that. But 5/14?! The only one of those cover songs that deserves to be on this Greatest Hits album is “Live and Let Die” because that one was actually quite popular. Maybe it's just me, but cover songs should either be doled out piecemeal or just bundled together into an entire album – like 1993's The Spaghetti Incident? – and not taking up a substantial fraction of the total run time. And of a greatest hits album, no less! When I buy a greatest hits album of a band like Guns N' Roses, it's because I want to hear what Guns N' Roses sounds like. Not the Skyliners, the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan!

   This relates to the second problem: the selection of tracks is a bit peculiar. Although the album's length is fair (14 tracks) and pretty much all the key hits were included – “Welcome to the Jungle”, “Sweet Child of Mine”, “Paradise City”, “November Rain” – the mix could have been better. Aside from the overabundance of covers there's a bunch of random songs just thrown on here not because they captured the spirit of the band in its heyday, but rather simply because these songs were released as singles. “You Could Be Mine”, “Yesterdays”: who cares about those? Getting rid of those two and most of the cover songs could have made room for some underrated GNR classics that truly represented the band at its finest. They could have included songs like “Reckless Life”, “Night Train”, “Mr. Brownstone”, “Double Talkin' Jive”, “Bad Apples”, “Coma”, or “Locomotive”. A greatest hits album full of these songs would have been brilliant.

   But all of these complaints aside, Greatest Hits isn't bad. It was really successful too. It debuted at number three on the Billboard charts – despite getting almost zero promotion – and topped the charts in several other countries. With over 5 million copies sold in the US, it's proof that there still very much exists an appetite for hard rock. If nothing else, it's good that there's an album like this to fuel the public's taste for good old hard rock. This particular greatest hits album is listenable enough. Just keep in mind that you're being cheated out of a proper set of essential Guns N' Roses songs. Honestly, if you're interested in this band and want to hear more, then I'd recommend just buying the original studio albums, Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I & II. They're some of the finest hard rock albums ever made and it's so easy to find them (especially now).

   That does it for Greatest Hits. Hope you enjoyed it. Next time I'll go over the soundtrack/bootleg/whatever known as Guns Box: Attitude for Destruction.