Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and II (2006)

Eric Weisbard's turn at the 33-1/3 plate is often fun to read but a bit too rock critic insider even for me. This essay is personal, ambitious, and ambitiously personal. His professed obsession with the mammoth mediocre Guns N' Roses drop of 1991 is eccentric and nuanced, though it's questionable whether the band or album merits that. As Weisbard sets the table and describes himself bopping across the rock critic landscape of the 1990s and 2000s, it's apparent he has specific intentions with words like "pop," "punk," and "metal." Not surprisingly, perhaps, he tends to disdain metal as beneath him even as he rushes to embrace punk. What Weisbard seems to like about GN'R and specifically Axl Rose and his various incoherent dramas is something energizing that he calls punk. I think celebrity might be the better word. As a conceit, most of this short book is specifically written before Weisbard has listened to the album again for the first time in years (as opposed to my way, spending two months with it in my shuffle playlist, where oh my brothers and sisters, it chafes). The book closes out with brief track-by-track notes on the behemoth. It's a strange way to approach an album, but then a strange way to approach is one thing the 33-1/3 series specializes in. I bet this one sounded good in proposal, a kind of memory / perception exercise. Weisbard's relationship with both the band and the album(s) is complicated—by class, by education, by the uncertainties of taste. Inevitably this book is more about Weisbard than anything else. After that it is more about celebrity than anything else, as that was the predicate for the whole Use Your Illusion ad infinitum in the first place—practically the last GN'R album, as it turned out. Weisbard is informative talking about the blockbuster album model. He seems to put the origin at Thriller whereas I would say Rumours or Tapestry, but he discusses how these albums attack commercially with a cascading array of singles, one after the other, producing hit streams (this has metastasized ludicrously on today's Billboard charts, where a new Drake album, for example, automatically earns him 15 or so spots in the Hot 100 for a week or two). However, hit streams and a blockbuster album did not really happen here. "Don't Cry" made #10 in 1991 and "November Rain" #3 in 1992. "Live and Let Die" crawled up to #33. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" did well around the world but not in the US. End of story, 30 tracks and three hours later. With the exception of the Dylan cover and maybe a few others (on all of which I am merely lukewarm) I don't care anything for this big bloated album. I admit I went to see the spectacle live in an arena in 1991—Axl got mad and ended the show early, so I got my GN'R money's worth at least. As for this 33-1/3 title I'm dutybound to say others in the series deserve to be read before it. It's working on 90% inspiration and you just can't win 'em all.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.