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Which UYI tracks already existed in the AFD era?


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I know these songs already existed during or even prior to the AFD era:

Don’t Cry
Bad Obsession
Back Off Bitch
November Rain
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (cover - played live during AFD era)
You Could Be Mine

Are there others that existed during that era, but did not get recorded until UYI I & II?

I'm just curious which songs on UYI had already been around for a while (but never released) versus which ones were written and recorded specifically for UYI.

Thanks.

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The Garden

Yesterdays

Perfect Crime

Dead Horse

Right Next Door

November Rain

Shotgun Blues

There's also a slight chance that Estranged already existed and was played during the AFD sessions, but just as a diddy Axl played in the piano. The rest of the songs were composed in Chicago when the band moved there in 1989 to compose and re work the tunes for the UYI albums.

There's a ton of songs that weren't released that were written before AFD too. You can find them on various bootlegs.

Hope this helps.

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The Garden

Yesterdays

Perfect Crime

Dead Horse

Right Next Door

November Rain

Shotgun Blues

There's also a slight chance that Estranged already existed and was played during the AFD sessions, but just as a diddy Axl played in the piano. The rest of the songs were composed in Chicago when the band moved there in 1989 to compose and re work the tunes for the UYI albums.

There's a ton of songs that weren't released that were written before AFD too. You can find them on various bootlegs.

Hope this helps.

Are you sure about Dead Horse, Right Next Door to Hell and Shotgun Blues??? I know Perfect Crime was played in '86. Also, not sure about Yesterdays & The Garden. I think those are '89 tunes...

To my knowledge, the UYI tunes in existence during AFD were November Rain, Bad Obsession, Perfect Crime, Don't Cry, You Could Be Mine & Back off Bitch.

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Nearly all of em. After they got famous it was difficult to write new material together. Luckily they had a huge catalogue to choose from from their club days. And solely worked on getting those songs recorded. That's why UYI is such a mess.

I think Axl took a similar approach to Chinese democracy by writing a bunch of material before releasing the album. That way the second and possibly third record would consist of material already written no matter how busy things got.

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YCBM is rumored to be AFD era song due to the lyrics written in the AFD liner notes, but Marc Canter said he never heard the song before UYI.

Right next door to hell was written around 1990, Written about some woman who was Axl's neighbor at the time.

Shotgun Blues was an illusion era song.

Civil War was written during sound checks during the AFD tours, According to Slash.

Ain't Goin' Down is a UYI demo which never made the cut, but was written Pre- AFD.

PRE- AFD Songs:

Don't Cry

Perfect Crime

Bad Obsession

Back Off Bitch

Nov. Rain

The Garden

Yesterdays

KOHD

Edited by 31illusions
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I never understood all the hate for Shotgun Blues. It's the GNR equivalent of a filler track. Which is to say still pretty damn good. Get in the Ring was a Duff punk song that Axl used as a forum to vent about the press. At the time it was pretty relevant and considered decently badass. I agree that it sounds a bit dated and maybe even silly some twenty years later and I think Guns did the right thing by never playing it live. But still a very solid album track. I think Ain't goin' Down was still a lyric overhaul and some arrangement work away from being a solid UYI tune.

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I never understood all the hate for Shotgun Blues. It's the GNR equivalent of a filler track. Which is to say still pretty damn good. Get in the Ring was a Duff punk song that Axl used as a forum to vent about the press. At the time it was pretty relevant and considered decently badass. I agree that it sounds a bit dated and maybe even silly some twenty years later and I think Guns did the right thing by never playing it live. But still a very solid album track. I think Ain't goin' Down was still a lyric overhaul and some arrangement work away from being a solid UYI tune.

"I got the shotgun blues

Shotgun blues

I said I don't know what I did

But I know I gotta move

I got the shotgun blues

Shotgun blues

I can't wait here forever

I got too much here to lose"

"You can suck my ass

I think it's so low class"

And ain't goin down needs a lyrical overhaul? The lyrics in get in the ring and shotgun blues are downright embarrassing, and musically they make Slash's solo work look like Physical Graffiti. Ain't goin down is at least in the same spirit or vein as the AFD stuff. Shotgun blues and get in the ring are blemishes on gn'r's discography that dates them and exposes some of their biggest flaws. They didn't believe in such a thing as a bad idea. Unless Axl was writing about how sad he was or izzy was writing lyrics, the lyrics could be outright juvenile, and lastly when the group was not working as a full cohesive unit, you end up with 3 power chord "punk" songs with million dollar production and Axl telling someone to suck his ass.

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Nearly all of em. After they got famous it was difficult to write new material together. Luckily they had a huge catalogue to choose from from their club days. And solely worked on getting those songs recorded. That's why UYI is such a mess.

I think Axl took a similar approach to Chinese democracy by writing a bunch of material before releasing the album. That way the second and possibly third record would consist of material already written no matter how busy things got.

what do you mean by mess!?

UYI's are one of the biggest masterpieces EVER in the history of rock music!

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They used to play Heavens door during AFD or before too?

It was first played at the Marquee, June 19th 1987, circa a month before Appetite's release, but after Appetite was recorded.

When was Civil War written?

When they were in Australia, December 1988 during the tail end of the Appetite tour.

Some of these are news to me. Any source for the garden or shotgun blues?

The Garden exists as a Hellhouse demo and there is also footage of Axl and Wes Arkeen playing it in a bar from New York 1988, so it would be an educated guess that it preceded Appetite. I have never seen any evidence about Shotgun Blues - in fact, there is not much info on that song at all.

YCBM is rumored to be AFD era song due to the lyrics written in the AFD liner notes, but Marc Canter said he never heard the song before UYI.

YCBM was written at SIR when they were in pre-production for Appetite.

Edited by DieselDaisy
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Nearly all of em. After they got famous it was difficult to write new material together. Luckily they had a huge catalogue to choose from from their club days. And solely worked on getting those songs recorded. That's why UYI is such a mess.

I think Axl took a similar approach to Chinese democracy by writing a bunch of material before releasing the album. That way the second and possibly third record would consist of material already written no matter how busy things got.

what do you mean by mess!?

UYI's are one of the biggest masterpieces EVER in the history of rock music!

Haha I love UYI! But it's all over the place in terms of style and rhythm. They are difficult albums to describe. Not hard rock, it's just so many different ideas on these two albums. I love em! But it really is a mess in terms of material.

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The Garden

Yesterdays

Perfect Crime

Dead Horse

Right Next Door

November Rain

Shotgun Blues

There's also a slight chance that Estranged already existed and was played during the AFD sessions, but just as a diddy Axl played in the piano. The rest of the songs were composed in Chicago when the band moved there in 1989 to compose and re work the tunes for the UYI albums.

There's a ton of songs that weren't released that were written before AFD too. You can find them on various bootlegs.

Hope this helps.

Are you sure about Dead Horse, Right Next Door to Hell and Shotgun Blues??? I know Perfect Crime was played in '86. Also, not sure about Yesterdays & The Garden. I think those are '89 tunes...

To my knowledge, the UYI tunes in existence during AFD were November Rain, Bad Obsession, Perfect Crime, Don't Cry, You Could Be Mine & Back off Bitch.

Let's just say that I'm pretty sure about what I'm saying. Dead Horse was really old, it was from like 1983, just like Shotgun Blues, Axl had written those tracks with other musicians before he was in Rapidfire. Right Next Door To Hell was brought by Izzy when he met Timo during the AFD sessions. They worked on the song together and the rest of the band including Axl reworked the tune before UYI, but it was actually composed in '85. The first time they played Civil War together was in a soundcheck in Australia, back in 1989.

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Dead Horse is an old one, yes:

Slash: (...) 'Dead Horse', a tune which Axl had done the guitar and lyrics for years earlier before we'd ever met [bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York. p. 299].

Yesterdays was a song that dated back to when Duff and Arkeen was living together.

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Who the fuck writes a song as accomplished as November Rain that early in his career? A genius.

And who the fuck leaves it off the album? A mad man.

Shit....guys, I think maybe the signs were there all along.

It was AFD's producer who convinced Axl not to put November Rain on AFD.

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Who the fuck writes a song as accomplished as November Rain that early in his career? A genius.

And who the fuck leaves it off the album? A mad man.

Shit....guys, I think maybe the signs were there all along.

It was AFD's producer who convinced Axl not to put November Rain on AFD.

Slash: 'November Rain' had been ready to go on Appetite for Destruction, but since we already had 'Sweet Child O' Mine,' the majority of us agreed that we didn't need another ballad. Besides, the original demo of that song was eighteen minutes long give or take, and none of us cared to conquer it in the studio at that point. It had been a song that Axl tinkered with for years, whenever there was a piano present; it had been around forever and it was finally getting its due. Axl had been annoyed when Tom Zutaut suggested that we hold it until the next album, because that song meant a lot to him. He let it go, though he resented that decision for years [bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York. p. 298]

Axl: When we went in to do [Appetite for Destruction] it was coming down to between [November Rain] and Sweet Child. And I knew November Rain wasn't done. I didn't want anybody to help me write it. And at the same time I knew that it was going to take a lot of work to do what I wanted to do and I really didn't feel capable, and that people around me where understanding what I wanted to do, so we decided to save it. [...] I knew the only reason I couldn't get it recorded right was if I couldn't gather enough belief in the people around me to take the time and put the effort in to get it right on tape. [...] Tommy Lee was a major influence on the song. The first time I saw 'Home Sweet Home' and watched the part he did on the piano it made me realize that I could take what I did know about piano and focus it into something simple but very serious. Because I think the part that he does on 'Home Sweet Home' is beautiful, it's very simple, but it's the right part. And that's the approach I took to 'November Rain', that's what got me started when I saw that video on MTV and started on 'November Rain'. What is really wild about it is being just overwhelmed by the sounds, and working with all these new sounds. I mean, I am a rock band breed, just working with, for the most part Guns N' Roses works with guitars, drums, vocals, bass, but working with strings, [?] horns and certain bells, it's almost like it is magical [Making fucking videos, 1991?]

Much more bout the song here: http://www.a-4-d.com/t113-november-rain#131

Get in the Ring was a Duff punk song that Axl used as a forum to vent about the press.

He was put up to it according to an interview

Axl: 'Get In The Ring' was a song that was… basically put together by Slash and Duff, and I came up with the low vocal part. And Slash and I wrote that part together. We wrote different verses. And we wrote a whole song that when the whole band actually had the song together, the words didn't fit the arrangement of the song. And so, we were in Toronto, playing a show in Toronto. And we had one last song to finish recording, that was 'Get In The Ring'. So, we went in the studio and just kind of started putting things together. And then Duff decided that I should express my feelings about how we've been treated by the press, because that was his initial concept for the song, and that I should just go for it. And I was kind of like: "Are you sure? You sure I should do this?". And then Tom Zutaut, of Geffen, was there and he was like: "Go for it." So I got behind the mike and went for it. And everybody was really happy and we just decided to do it. And this naming names, and things like that, were because most bands can't afford to express how they feel about how they're treated in the press, because they need the press so much. And I know that this could hurt us, but we're in a position where I think we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to an element of the public...[GN'R on WNEW 102.7 - September, 1991]

Axl: That was not my idea, you know, that was Tom Zutaut and Duff McKagan's idea. Because there was this blank space in the song, and I was 'We've gotta do something,' and they were like 'Why don't you just go in and go off on Andy Secher and Bob Guccione Jr?' and 'Sure, yeah, yeah' and eventually I did and everybody was happy with it. But when it hit the fan everybody disappeared. And I was naive and didn't realize the political wars going on between the different publicists at the record labels and their relationships with The Rolling Stone and Spin, and whatever, so I was set up but no one stepped forward to say anything [TMS with Eddie Trunk, November 2011]

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Who the fuck writes a song as accomplished as November Rain that early in his career? A genius.

And who the fuck leaves it off the album? A mad man.

Shit....guys, I think maybe the signs were there all along.

It was AFD's producer who convinced Axl not to put November Rain on AFD.

"Don't Cry" was left off of AFD. I don't know if "November Rain" was finished.

Edited by dalsh327
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Who the fuck writes a song as accomplished as November Rain that early in his career? A genius.

And who the fuck leaves it off the album? A mad man.

Shit....guys, I think maybe the signs were there all along.

It was AFD's producer who convinced Axl not to put November Rain on AFD.

"Don't Cry" was left off of AFD. I don't know if "November Rain" was finished.

You can find more info on SoulMonster's (I believe ?) site, Appetite for Discussion. It wasn't finished and according to Slash, Tom Zutaut didn't want it on AFD, and Axl was a "little miffed about that".

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