Luckiest Music Generation: Guns 'n' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle
I can't add to any of the discussion about this song or the album it comes from, from either a musical or sociopolitical standpoint. Everything that could be said has been said.
What I will say is that G'n'R were the last dominant rock band of the modern music era. They were the band just about everyone who was anyone was listening to, ca 1987-1990, and with good reason. They had it all: Solid musicians and a soon-to-be legendary vocalist with stunning talent, pretty-boy good looks and the kind of serpentine dance moves that would make parents everywhere hide their daughters.
They were also everything a rock band was supposed to be: Grungy, kinda sleazy and borderline dangerous to be around. They had enough hair to create a toupee factory, wore lots of skin-tight black leather, had massive quantities of tattoos, and didn't hide that they smoked cigarettes and drank to excess. The implication was always there that they were big time druggies, too. It was undoubtedly all old-fashioned marketing, but they were genius at it.
All that aside, what I remember the most about G'n'R during this time period was an incident with my mother and then-toddler son. Mom inflicted herself on me with an extended visit in the fall of 1989. My son and I picked her up at the airport, and, of course, she couldn't wait to tear into me about something--anything. She chose how I was playing "that music" with my son in the car, probably the local FM rock station.
I rolled my eyes, and decided to really freak her out.
"Hey, kiddo? What do we think of Guns 'n' Roses?"
Instantly, a 2 y/o fist pumped the air and he let out an Axl-worthy "Hunh!" grunt.
I was never so proud of him in my life. Anytime I hear or think about G'n'R, this is the image that immediately pops into my head. Even now, my son loves to tell people this story, with a laugh at the end about how his mom made him a headbanger at an early age.
He did that fist pump because he had heard Appetite for Destruction so many times that he knew when he was hearing G'n'R from the first few chords of any song on the album. All I had to do was put AfD on the CD player or into my car's cassette deck, and, as soon as he heard the opening riff, especially for "Welcome to the Jungle," he was pumping the fist and head-banging along.
I am not musically talented. His father had pretensions of it, but didn't have any more talent than I did. Somehow, we got a musically gifted child out of the deal, and I firmly believe it was because my son literally grew up with me playing all kinds of music around him for nearly every waking second we were together. He's proof that the kind of music that trains the ears into musical talent doesn't have to be rarefied classical or jazz, but can be grungy, hedonistic hard rock. Of course it can be the "good" stuff that fosters musical talent, too, but what really matters is the exposure to the acoustic landscape, far more than what's playing.
Anyway, here's the song announcing that G'n'R and Appetite for Destruction were not the same old thing we'd heard before:
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