I've been thinking about Guns n' Roses a lot over the past few weeks - obviously because of the new album. I haven't bought it yet, but I have bought the single. It's not very good. Watching this interview, it struck me what a strange and contradictory man Axl Rose is. Praising his record label, seemingly genuine and warmly patriarchal over his band, the only time he slips up is his smugness over a silly incident in a hotel. He's obviously one of these characters (like Roy Keane, topically) who has a strong sense of 'integrity,' or rather a bunch of firmly held beliefs, not all correct, that he's lumped together into integrity. My favourite moment is in part 2 of the interview, when Axl very carefully describes his tattoos and how much thought went into them, and then comes back in, very deliberately, to tell any viewers not to get tattoos unless they've really thought about it.
That's obviously the same, somewhat nannying sense that later bloomed into the ludicrous, egotistical behaviour seen in the Argentinian shows on youtube.
Whatever became of Axl, Appetite for Destruction really stands up as a great hard rock album, the greatest of its day. There't not many records now, ever, where only three tracks aren't astonishingly good.
