Guns N' Roses - "Use Your Illusion II"

The second half of Guns N' Roses 1991 double release (a double album released as two single CDs) titled "Use Your Illusion I&II." Part 2 is a very different affair, while Part 1 largely retained GN'Rs blues hard rock 2 seems to take its cue from Queen and Elton John. Most of the tracks seem to take the excellent "November Rain" as a blue print which is a plus, and many of them are Rock Love Songs or more sophisticated Power Ballads, Axl's Grand Piano is featured on many of the songs.

The song writing for the most part is much stronger than on Part 1, where some of the lyrics seemed cobbled together to just get a song recorded. Here most of the songs seemed well thought out. The songs are largely slow to mid-tempo ballads and many are quite long (3 songs run nearly 10 minutes and most songs are over Five Minutes) which could have hurt the album but the longer songs are usually the better ones. "Civil War" is an ambitious social commentary which is quite good, "14 Years" and the excellent "Yesterdays" are power pop with a strong GN'R edge. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is good (of course its Dylan) but misguided electric guitar hero version. "Breakdown" is a wonderful Elton John tribute. Then there are the two "November Rain" songs "So Fine" and the truly excellent multi sequence "Estranged."

Like Part 1, there is also a half albums worth of filler and clutter, "Shotgun Blues," "Pretty Tied Up" "Locomotive" and "You Could Be Mine." The alternate version of "Don't Cry" is so minutely different that it really does not need to be here. There is the pure childish crap of "Get in the Ring" in which Axl calls out all his critics by name and tells them @*%&$ Off, over some guitar riffs. He literally uses the F-Word on every other line. The album closing "My World" is truly a WTF moment, it is Axl moaning over weird noises for a few minutes. Sadly it seems like the precursor to all that late 90s goth crap that became popular in certain circles.

Overall like Part 1, Part 2 has excellent guitars and Axl's killer voice. This is more ambitious and thus more rewarding when the songs work, but when they don't they are ten times worse. This is the perfect iTunes album because you can grab the good half album and let the rest fade away. Like I said in the previous post "Use Your Illusion I&II" could have been a perfect single album; but as the albums stand when Guns N' Roses are good they are unbelievably excellent and have some of the best songs around, when they are bad they are BAD.