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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