On September 17, 1991, Guns 'N' Roses released the bloated Use Your Illusions I & II. Most fans went out and bought both albums, Geffen elected to release both instead of a double album, for, of course, cash considerations.
Use Your Illusion I clocked in at 75 minutes.
Use Your Illusion II clocked in at 75 minutes.
Most fans couldn't digest all 150 minutes, because there was a LOT of filling between that meat. By the time most fans had reached You Could be Mine on Use Your Illusions II, they were done. When is the last time you listened to both albums in one sitting?
But I would argue that if you took the very best of Illusions I & II and made a singular "Purple Album" that would have had the best 50 minutes of songs on it, it would have equaled its top selling peers in sales that year.
THE PURPLE ALBUM
Perfect Crime - I - 2:23
Pretty Tied Up (The Perils of Rock N' Roll Decadence) - II - 4:47
Right Next Door to Hell - I - 3:02
You Could Be Mine - II - 5:43
Garden of Eden (Without Paper Version) - I - 2:54
Live and Let Die - I - 3:03
Bad Apples - I - 4:26
Dead Horse -I - 4:17
Knockin' On Heaven's Door - II - 5:35
Locomotive - II - 8:40
Coma - I - 10:12
If the Purple Album, at 53 minutes long, was released as a stand alone in 1991, there still would have been enough material for 2 more albums in the vault. G'N'R 92 and G'N'R 93 could have been the next two on deck with all new material. Metallica's Black Album sold 33 million and Nirvana's Nevermind sold 30 million. Use Your Illusion I & II sold 15 million each. That's not a total of 30 million people, that's 15 million buying 2 albums.
You would argue: Where's November Rain? I hated that song, that could have waited until G'N'R 92. The Purple Album would have been better than the Black Album.
But you're missing the point. Guns 'N' Roses' best 50 minutes would have sold 30 million, same as 1987's Appetite for Destruction. If you put out three 50 minute albums in 3 years, that could have been upwards of 60-70 million in sales and stemmed the alternative tide that was washing over America.
The Spaghetti Incident? That could have been pushed to 1995.
Why is this important 30 years later? With the exception of Shackler's Revenge off of the forgettable, and overproduced, Chinese Democracy album. Guns 'N' Roses has been downright terrible over the past 3 decades. (With 'rumors' of new music coming.)
That's why you get repackaged live albums and redundant Greatest Hits albums every few years.
Even G 'N' R's own management team figured out their Use Your Illusions mistake, a few years late, releasing Use Your Illusion's Greatest Hits in 1998. That album wasn't great either, it was bloated at 65 minutes and was mostly filled with their sad bastard songs.
I am telling you, right now, the Guns 'N' Roses well is dry.
I don't know how to say this in a nice way, but a bunch of California Sober Guns 'N' Roses members in 2024 ain't churning out anything good unless you lock them in a warehouse with a pile of hard-core drugs and a bunch of 25-year-old groupies.
Even Buckethead and Tommy Stinson are gone.
What are we even doing here with this article?
Hard to say, I lost my train of thought at the outline and almost scrapped this thing 3 different times.
(Okay, The Purple Album wouldn't have been better than Nevermind or The Downward Spiral, but it would have been the best Rock, not Alternative, Album of the 90's)
Comments