Friday, July 20, 2018

Guns N' Roses - Gn'R - 1986

With the release of Guns N' Roses debut album Appetite for Destruction We saw the decline of Hair Metal and the brief rise of Sleaze Rock and a brief two year period when hard rock was stripped of the glam and returned to its roots. In 1989 that all collapsed with the emergence of Grunge and the Seattle invasion.

Before the release of Appetite, Gn'R released a four song EP made up of two original songs and two covers with crowd noise dubbed in to make it sound like a live recording. Released on a vanity label backed by Geffen Records to maintain interest in the band while they recorded their debut album.

But could they have released a full independent first album?

Side One
01 Shadow Of Your Love
02 Nice Boys
03 Don't Cry
04 New Work Tune
05 Move To The City

Side Two
01 Reckless Life
02 Mama Kin
03 Back Off Bitch
04 Ain't Goin' Down No More
05 The Plague

Reality Notes

Another installment of my alternate debut album series. Gn'R's record label Geffen spent two years polishing the band and songs for Appetite. During this time they recorded a lot of demos. Four of these songs were released on Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide, the EP mentioned above. With the recent release of the Super Deluxe Edition of Appetite we have three discs of outtakes from those two years of development. I had most of these on a cassette bootleg back in the late 80s. While most of those outtakes are alternate versions of album tracks there is a small handful of unused songs alongside those songs used for the EP but without the crowd noise of the faux live EP.

So, are there enough songs to flesh out the EP to album length? Almost. And how does this affect Lies? I'll address that in a moment. I ended up with a ten song LP of mixed quality songs. Fortunately most of those songs are pretty darn good. Unfortunately, two of those, New Work Tune and Ain't Goin' Down No More are instrumentals. Another song, The Plague, is only 47 seconds long and all together the LP clocks in at 33 minutes and 16 seconds. Not exactly a full album which is probably why they released an EP instead of a LP.

Because this is an independent release we have some leeway in quality control. If I took out the instrumentals the album becomes barley 26 minutes long so I had to keep them in. I buried one on each side of the album and removed the gaps between the songs before and after to make them feel a part of them so they don't stand out. I also took a few of the spoken intros from a few songs and attached them to other songs. Overall the flow is pretty good.

The four songs from the EP but without the crowd noise comes from a bootleg. I preferred the sound of the tracks from there, the versions on the deluxe discs sounded a bit too polished. The last song to address is Back Off Bitch. While it sounds like a fun song to play in the clubs, its quality is questionable, obviously an off the cuff throw away type song. But hey, this is an indy release so it works here in a way.

There are two more songs I could have used in place of the instrumentals but they are crappy obvious covers of Heartbreak Hotel and Jumping Jack Flash. As much as I would have liked to remove the instrumentals, I also wanted to avoid an album that is almost half covers. If they were better song choices I might have included them but how many versions of Heartbreak Hotel do we need? I could have also used versions of Knocking on Heaven's Door and Whole Lotta Rosie but I would have had to resort to live versions which I didn't want to do and again, too many covers.

For the cover I utilized the logo found on the EP against a black background. Now what can we do about Lies?

There are a few acoustic tracks we can use to expand side two of Lies to a 30 minute mini LP. there are two versions of November Rain, a 9 minute piano version and a 5 minute acoustic version. I went with the acoustic version. Move to the City comes from 1988 and was most likely in the running to be included on Lies. An acoustic run though of Jumping Jack Flash rounds it all out.

Lies
01 One In A Million
02 November Rain
03 You're Crazy
04 Patience
05 Used To Love Her
06 Jumpin' Jack Flash
07 Move To The City

The last change in future albums is I see no need to include two versions of Don't Cry on Use Your Illusions. We can drop the "Original Lyrics" version. November Rain can stay, this version is different enough for both to exist.

Sources
Appetite For Destruction (Super Deluxe Edition)
Lies
Suicide Demos '86 (Bootleg)

24 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, he doesn't have it indexed per se, but Albums Forgotten Reconstructed has a Lies II which I think actually slides nicely alongside this alternate debut and the reworked Lies as well...

    http://www.albumsforgottenreconstructed.com/

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    1. I check in on Rodvi now and then and saw his post. He did take a very different approach with little to no overlap with mine.

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    2. Well, these reconstructions/revisions are now canon to me LOL

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    3. My end goal for all of my constructions is to be able to slip them into the main discographies without having songs repeated from other albums. Glad you're enjoying them.

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  2. I notice by your last sentence that you are unwilling to wade into the UYI single album debate LOL

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    1. There's just too much there and most of it is A material. I think the better approach would be to break them down into three separate albums with the leftovers used foe B sides.

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    3. As I was just handed a copy of 'The Spaghetti Incident?', is there any way to use it to append the UYIs in the triple album manner you mention, or am I getting ahead of myself? LOL

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    4. Each volume of UYI is actually a double album in itself. If you limit the albums to 50 minutes each (CD era album length) you'll end up with more than enough songs leftover for another album. No need to try and squeeze in any Spaghetti Incident songs.

      How you divide them up is entirely up to you.

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    5. I would be interested in your ideas/arrangement for the *triple* UYI, if you get so far...

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    6. And colorwise, it would need a magenta or violet artwork, if that would be a proper color since it would be the combo of the red from UYI 1 and the bluish from UYI 2 LOL

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    7. I regretted the mention of using TSI, as I reread your point about reconstructing without leaning on covers for filling these albums out, so never mind that...

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    8. It might be a while (or sooner, I'm running low on ready made projects and ideas in general) but I'll look into it. The big decision would be do I group the songs by theme and style or do I attempt to balance each album with a bit of each? It's been a while since I gave them a listen.

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    9. Same here, though one of my initial reconsiderings waaaaaaay back in the original day LOL, was definitely grouping the Stradlin/Stones-y songs as they did stand out from the rest, to me at least :)

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    10. I just took a look. If we remove Don't Cry (Original) and Back Off Bitch (I forgot they remade it for UYI) and we divide the rest evenly we end up with and average album Length of about 47 minutes with maybe two 9 track discs and one 10 track disc. It took them three years to release UYI after Lies. If they released one a year we can give two albums new titles and covers.

      The first album should include November Rain, Don't Cry (Alt) and Knocking on heaven's Door as they all go back to pre-Lies. I'm not sure how the rest fit into the timeline.

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    11. Found a nice timeline track list. Might have to rethink this one if I can find some more early songs. Also gives some idea to arrange the UYI tracks.

      http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/misc/recordingsessions.html

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    12. Casual glancing, all of UYI is recorded between September '90 and June '91, with no specificity as to when within that period, but it at least gives a sort of framework if you want to group each of the songs by some metric(s) and try to distribute them evenly across each yearly album from within that 9 month period...

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    13. Might be a few weeks but I think I see something emerging. The first LP is almost obvious (there are ten songs that were started before or just after Lies), the next two will have to go by preference.

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  3. Gave the indy debut the two proper listens to get a fair opinion.

    Dug out my old boombox from the early-to-mid 90's, and my Bluetooth cassette adapter for my iPod, sat on my back porch and blasted it like the old days...held up well, sounded and felt like I was back in the day.

    Took it out for a drive on the highway, sounded perfect.

    Mission accomplished LOL

    Now I wonder if I should now fold your new Lies and Rodvi's More Lies into a 'double album' I'd call Every Little Lie, from say 1990, retaining the artwork so visually as I listen the artwork would change as I go from one 'disc' to the other, ala if you mash UYI into a unified 'double', though as you said above, each disc is a double by length anyway, but you get what I mean LOL

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    1. Nice. I'm glad it held up. altUYI is shaping up.

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  4. I'll have to give this a spin. It's been a long time since I listened to GnR

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    1. Hey, AEC, messaged you over on your blog on the post on Marvin Gaye's "You're The Man" reconstruction. Since you do seem to be active lately, would you mind following up? Thanks. :)

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    2. DOn't know why it doesn't show, but I'm Fredrick Beondo, from the replies above LOL

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