Live Era 1987-1993

Guns n' Roses

Guns N' Roses' career could be neatly summed up in a lyric from their song "Pretty Tied Up": "I just found a million dollars that someone else forgot." Indeed, GNR satisfied a grassroots hunger for bigger-than-life hard rock at a time when legions of alternative bands were enjoying their first burst of overweening critical attention and commercial cachet. The last and most spectacularly successful band to prosper from Hollywood's burgeoning 1980s Sunset Strip glam-metal scene wrapped a couple decade's worth of sometimes tired clichÃ©s around a tight, assaultive musical attack that enticed millions yearning for poor role models. And if their edgy songs often blurred fantasy and reality, the best of them had a street-level honesty that couldn't be denied. A de facto greatest-hits collection culled from performances recorded around the world, Live Era best documents the early, ferocious performing prime of GN'R's original quintet on its first disc, leaning heavily on their landmark Appetite for Destruction album to great effect. But the second volume often chronicles the band's steady decline into bloated self-parody and neo-Vegas "professionalism."--Jerry McCulley