While they probably pale in comparison to their predecessor as well as some of the more iconic albums that were released around the same time, I consider Guns n’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion albums–released 35 years ago today–formative. Especially Use Your Illusion II, which was the first full album I dubbed from a friend’s tape using my parents’ stereo. It was probably the first hard rock/metal album I owned, and definitely the first one I had with a “Parental Advisory” sticker on the cover (even though I didn’t own the actual tape). Prior to that, my miniscule cassette collection was pretty safe: Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and random movie soundtracks like Top Gun, Footloose, and Over the Top. Nobody was confiscating those the way parents were searching through my classmates’ bedrooms for Girls Girls Girls or Appetite for Destruction.
I had very little knowledge of anything music at the time–to be fair, I’ve always been behind the curve–and I hadn’t heard anything from the band beyond “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, and “Paradise City.” But because they were controversial and more “adult” with their content, I think some part of me reveled in owning something my mom would have questioned and the sneaky way I went about procuring it. As if it was an issue of Playboy or something.
Anyway, I listened to my copy of Use Your Illusion II on a loop for weeks, probably annoying the hell out of anyone in the house when I played it in my room and damaging my ears when I threw it in my Walkman. I’d soon dub my friend’s copy of the other Illusion album and wear that one out as well, but eventually would settle on listening to a handful of songs from both. “November Rain,” which I talked about in the third episode of my podcast all the way back in 2013 (check) was one of them. Another was the corresponding epic piano-heavy ballad from Use Your Illusion II: “Estranged.”
The second-longest song in Guns N’ Roses’ catalog (the 15-minute “Coma” is the longest), “Estranged” runs for nine and a half minutes and is a piano-forward power ballad (perhaps an epic ballad) that is about lost love and loneliness. I was obviously drawn to it because of the piano (“Breakdown,” another track on Use Your Illusion II drew me in the same way) and remember being blown away by both how long it was and how complicated it seemed. It was a “two-sided” song on my copy–I was a complete amateur when it came to dubbing things and had to split the song between the end of side A and the beginning of side B of the tape–and like “Coma,” just … kept … going. By the time I’d finally get the album on CD (part of my Columbia House 13), “Estranged” was in my top 5 favorite songs by the band.
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Sixty years ago today, rock and roll lost three of its earliest stars when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash. In this episode, I take a look back at that event by focusing on how I learned about it as a kid in the 1980s and teenager in the 1990s. I begin by talking about my history with each of the artists and that era of music and then spend time going through the event via the 1999 episode of VH-1’s Behind the Music. Finally, I look at the song that gave “The Day the Music Died” its name: Don McLean’s “American Pie”.
It’s time to throw your Sublime CD into the stereo of your teal Mustang and then do the Macarena while downing some Molson Ice because we’re going back to the summer of 1996. Join me and my special guest–my wife, Amanda–as we take a look at the lineup from the 1996 HFStival and then discuss the music of that summer.
