Guns N’ Roses – Sweet child o’ mine
#quotefromthe80s
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I'd stare too long
I'd probably break down and cry
#GunsNRoses #SweetChildOMine
Sweet child o’ mine marks, in Summer 1988, the turning point of the career of Guns N’ Roses. The band had a very clear destiny since the day of its creation, three years before. Starting with the names, because the history of Guns N’ Roses starts with two friends living in the same house and playing in different bands, the Hollywood Rose and the L.A. Guns. When L.A. Guns lead guitar, named Tracii Guns, tells his friend Izzy Stradlin that Guns need a singer, Izzy replies… Why don’t we share our own singer, Axl Rose, a childhood friend of mine. We founded our group together!
And so Axl Rose became the frontman of… two groups! (He will sometimes change group, like when he became singer of AC/DC in these latest years). From sharing a singer to merging groups, the step is easy. Merging L.A. Guns with Hollywood Rose, Guns N’ Roses were born in 1985.
They released their first studio album, Appetite for destruction, in 1987. Now we know it was an historic album, but it wasn’t so clear in 1987. They first release a couple of singles with moderate success, and in August 1988 they release this fantastic song as the third single. In few weeks it becomes no 1 in the charts, and becomes their trademark. Guns N’ Roses we all know were born, with a frontman who is a fantastic singer, but mostly is a fantastic rockstar! Some degree of transgression, but never too much. Actually Axl Rose always proved to be a very smart guy and never exceeded in anything, even if, of course, you need to do something weird if you want to be a rockstar!
The song was born from a romantic idea, something that Axl Rose was writing for his girlfriend at the time, who was the daughter of one of the Everly Brothers. Years later they got married but it ended badly. An important part of the song is obviously Slash’s solo at the beginning of the song, which really remained the signature of Guns N’ Roses after many years, but it must be said that he didn’t like it at all. It was just some kind of rehearsal that he had done, but then the other members of the group liked it so much that they insisted on keeping this solo in the song.
The video is kind of family made. The girlfriends of the band members appear in the video. They are acting live, it’s very rock and very 80s. At the beginning we can even see Izzy’s dog! We need to say that the video was directed by Nigel Dick, who had been the director of many videos, including Do They Know It’s Christmas, and all the great Tears for Fears videos, such as Shout, Everybody wants to rule the world, and Head over heels.
One last curiosity: a few months after launching this song Guns N’ Roses went on tour as supporters for Aerosmith. Aerosmith imposed a hard and fast rule: no drugs when Aerosmith were there. To get Guns N’ Roses to understand the concept, they created t-shirts where instead of the tour dates, there were all the periods when Aerosmith had been hospitalized for drug addiction. And that helped Guns N’ Roses stay off the drugs, and of course helped the tour that went great!
Guns N’ Roses on Wikipedia
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