According to former manager Doug Goldstein, Rose was furious at being sidelined creatively (“I’d get these phone calls from the studio: ‘Have you heard this song Locomotive yet? How the fuck am I supposed to write lyrics to this shit?’”). Led out by a militaristic Sorum drumbeat with all the momentum of the title, Locomotive’s first curve ball was McKagan’s funk-metal bass line, setting up a scritch scratch guitar riff that nodded more to LA’s new breed like Jane’s Addiction than to Slash’s touchstones of the 70s. The heroin-soaked guitarist not only emerged from the stopover with the epic Coma, but also partnered his housemate to write a second marathon number. Shacking up with fellow addict Izzy Stradlin in a Hollywood Hills rental proved surprisingly productive for Slash. Young thought so: she’d later called this unlikely tribute “My Song”. Young’s dad did work in the porn industry, her mum was dead, and she was a drug user, but Axl sang the song with a weird kind of fondness, no less heartfelt in his own way than Elton had been on the song that inspired it. The singer obliged, though his original, “sappy” lyrics were ditched for altogether more brutal ones. “I said I wished someone would write a beautiful song for me,” she told Spin. ![]() Young was driving Axl to a gig when Elton John’s Your Song came on the radio. ‘Michelle’ was Michelle Young, a school friend of Slash and Steven Adler. The song that opens Appetite For Destruction’s second side is a seemingly vicious, vituperative take-down of a strung-out Sunset Strip wild child: ‘You stay out late at night and you do your coke for free,’ Axl sneers over a syringe-sharp riff, ‘Driving your friends crazy with your life’s insanity.’ Except that’s not the full story. ![]() My Michelle (Appetite For Destruction, 1987)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |