One In A Million being erased from history

[killuridols]

2 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

I told you I'm about the most un-political correct person on earth. To simply talk in a political correct manner is like a red rag to a bull with me (especially if it is in an estuary accent haha). ''Ee' quality n' Dye versity'', 'Elf N' Saef' Tee''. I've been forced to attend their courses. I hate their rubbish. I hate their newspaper, The Guardian. I hate their sour hatchet faces and their humorless dispositions 

Hey 😬 I'm sorry if I offended you yesterday, wasn't my intention (I'm sure you don't care though, lol)

What is that Equality & Diversity courses you talk about? Why you were forced to attend them? 

I know you are un-political correct and I am too but where's the line between being unPC and being disrespectful and offensive? I am all for being unPC against who deserves it, but, say, would you kick the wheelchair of a disabled person that is trying to cross the street? Where's the need of calling people the n--- word or the f-g word? I really can't see how the color of skin of someone is relevant to who they are as a person, good or bad, it is not defined by that so why use it as an insult 

2 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

I have made my feelings clear about ''One in a Million'' on multiple occasions here: it is hypocritical and putrid garbage (great guitar solo mind). But all this does is produce the Streisand Effect. People will be alerted to the omission of the track and consciously seek it out, either by downloading or picking up a cheap copy of Lies. In England we had the video nasties, banned films (we had heavy film censorship in those days), and every kid would go to excessive lengths to seek these films out even though most of them were trash. The very act of censoring publicised the thing. 

I was the first one in this thread to mention the Streisand effect  because that's exactly what happened but I think it will last a few days only and everybody will forget.

Not sure how many will go looking for Lies, though. I feel this band gets more irrelevant every day that passes by. I see that when it comes to youth now, parents and educators are more worried by the lyrics of rap/hip-hop/regatton than any other genre. That's what they consume, not GN'R.

1 hour ago, Axl's Agony Aunt said:

Reading Slash's autobiography I found him very sexist and perhaps homophobic, but haven't really heard him criticised for it.

We have a thread here in the forum called GN'R Women's Discussion and we have discussed Slash t-shirts, attitude and his shit IG feed. I don't know if male fans are aware of the way he is, but many female fans are.....

39 minutes ago, soon said:

A narrative that has been mentioned through this thread is about how Axls lyrics reflect an accurate picture of what a small town white boy would naturally view the world as and how he would be shocked to meet the big city. I would say that this song is by far is primarily derogatory, stigmatizing and prejudiced against small town white boys.  It does not portray the general reality

Spot on!

I was also born and raised in a small town, then "moved to the city" and I never thought those kind of things about the new people I found in town. I can relate to the part of the song about being "bugged" by others, like I always say, every time I go downtown there's like this mass of people wanting to get money from me, either by asking me directly, trying to sell me stuff and even trying to rob me. But I can't think of them in such pejorative and hateful terms. I understand that everybody's trying the make their living and not all of them have the same possibilities.

In my opinion, it all reduces to education and family. Axl lacked education and his raising was awful. Plus, he dropped school. Plus, he was a delinquent. He was a product of all those factors combined.

 

[DieselDaisy]

Slash is solely a skeletal sexist: he objectifies female skeletons.

[action]

[killuridols]

New age? 

Says the guy who ended up giving thousands of dollars to a couple of charlatans who promised him "happiness" and "peace of mind". Yeah, yeah, ok, Axl, lol.

[action]

4 minutes ago, killuridols said:

New age? 

Says the guy who ended up giving thousands of dollars to a couple of charlatans who promised him "happiness" and "peace of mind". Yeah, yeah, ok, Axl, lol.

don't take this personal, and with all respect, but guns n roses is a crew of people who were, for the best part of their career, sexist, arrogant, juvenile, drug using, hotel room destroying, trespassing (the band swam naked in a pool on some property they trespassed) and sometimes racist and homophobic like in OIAM.

I'm not sure why some people listen to them in the first place, let alone having meltdowns over fans calling for lowering the PC attitude a bit 

[Blackstar]

On 11/5/2018 at 1:09 PM, Axl's Agony Aunt said:

On the road you can feel like you're alone and everyone's against you sometimes, and I think that's what Axl was trying to capture.

Yeah, I think - I'm taking it from where @MyPrettyTiedUpMichelle's interpretation left it - that the dominant pattern behind OIAM is that of "not belonging", expressed in a raw and primitive manner, which translated into self-victimisation and anger towards groups of people.

Axl's character, a "small town white boy" (with a certain upbringing) went to L.A., which wasn't just a big city, but a mosaic of various, ethnic and other, groups and minorities. But, athough some of those groups were suppressed and far from privileged, they had (from Axl's POV at least) their place in that mosaic and there was a sense of identification and of belonging to a segregated community/group. Then there was the general and socially diverse group of white folks. Axl was white, but he didn't fit there either, despite the group's diversity. The "small town white boy" was something that wasn't even acknowledged as an identity there.

Quote

[...] Then it says, "I'm a small-town white boy." People have taken that like that's waving a flag that I'm pro-white or something. To say "small-town white boy" at the time that l put that In that song was something you didn't say. You didn't say that when you were trying to play the rock clubs, you'd just gotten to Hollywood, and people are going, "You look like you just got off the boat. Are you some fucking hick from Indiana, or what?" Or whatever. I was saying, "Look, yeah, I'm this naive, confused, small-town white boy, and l have a lot of problems, so racists, don't point your finger at me and go off and say I'm one of you, or whatever. [...]" [Interview Magazine talks to Axl Rose, 1992]

That lead to a feeling of "nothingness" and of being the lowest of the low in the societal rank, even lower than the poor immigrants working in convenient stores and blacks selliing gold chains in the streets. And in the song that feeling came out (probably by choice) unprocessed, without taking into account those groups' backgrounds etc. He knew, though, that (feeling as) being in that position could be his fault, as people said he was lazy (=he wouldn't get a job) or a weirdo ("just me") or crazy (which he guessed he'd "always be").

But, at the same time, the small town was where he wanted to get away from, and that's why he was in L.A. And, by the time he wrote OIAM, he had lost even that "not acknowledged" identity and was alienated from his roots, the people and the environment of the small town. So he felt like "one in a million", not as in "better", positively special or (morally) superior, as he "didn't know right from wrong" anymore and it was "all the means to an end" for him, but more as in an "alien".

Quote

[...] ... then later on the chorus came about because I was like getting really far away, like ‘Rocket man’, Elton John. I was thinking about my friends and family in Indiana, and I realized those people have no concept of who I am anymore. Even the ones I was close to. Since then I’ve flown people out here, had’em hang out here, I’ve paid for everything. But there was no joy in it for them. I was smashin’ shit, going fuckin’ crazy. And yet, trying to work. And they were going, « Man, I don’t wanna be a rocker any more, not if you go through this ». But at the same time, I brought’ em out, you know, and we just hung out for a couple of months - wrote songs together, had serious talks, it was almost like bein’ on acid cos we’d talk about the family and life and stuff, and we’d get really heavy and get to know each all over again. It’s hard to try and replace eight years of knowing each other every day, and then all of a sudden I’m in this new world. Back there I was a street kid with a skateboard and no money dreamin’ ‘bout being in a rock band, and now all of a sudden I’m here. And it’s weird for them to see their friends putting up Axl posters, you know? And it’s weird for me too. So anyway, all of a sudden I came up with this chorus « You’re one in a million », you know, and « we tried to reach you but you were much too high .... »(...) So that’s like, « we tried to reach you but you were much too high », I was picturing ‘em trying to call me if, like, I disappeared or died or something. And « you’re one in a million », someone said that to me real sarcastically, it wasn’t like an ego thing.  [...]  [Stick To Your Guns by Mick Wall; Kerrang, 21st and 28th of April 1990]

And OIAM combined those two patterns, the fear and alienation he felt as a "small town white boy" when he went to L.A. and the alienation from his roots that he felt afterwards.

Edited May 12, 2018 by Blackstar
added

[killuridols]

4 hours ago, action said:

don't take this personal, and with all respect, but guns n roses is a crew of people who were, for the best part of their career, sexist, arrogant, juvenile, drug using, hotel room destroying, trespassing (the band swam naked in a pool on some property they trespassed) and sometimes racist and homophobic like in OIAM.

I'm not sure why some people listen to them in the first place, let alone having meltdowns over fans calling for lowering the PC attitude a bit 

Because we started listening to them when we were kids and still didn't know right from wrong?
I can speak only for myself, but maybe other fans share my same experience, as well.

When I started listening to GN'R I was a little kid. At the same time, I had started learning English a couple years before (English for children, that is), so obviously the main attraction for me was the music. I barely understood the lyrics, not only because of the language but because the subjects of the songs were foreigner to me. I could not identify with anything from AFD or Lies, that's why my favorite were the UYI albums. They have songs that are more introspective and were a bit more relatable to my case. It was much later in life that I revisited lyrics and realized who GN'R actually were. All those things that you named above.

I don't know who's having a meltdown here but I don't see why people should be told what to do and how they must feel about certain songs. I know some of you use the "PC" term in a pejorative sense, in order to shut down those who think OIAM is a piece of shit, lyric-wise. Yes, that is MY OPINION, probably you think the lyrics are wonderful, blah blah and I can't do anything about that. Discussing the lyrics is not telling people TO NOT LISTEN to the song. That is irrational and overall impossible.

So I guess we will have to agree to disagree. In my vision, OIAM has nothing to do with PC excess, it is clearer than water. It is very explicit and really doesn't leave much room for any doubt.

Edited May 11, 2018 by killuridols

[DTV88]

There was a lot of negative reaction after that acoustic gig was aired before Lies came out. It's still kinda hard to understand why Axl would choose to keep the racist and homophobic slurs, rather than changing the words a bit for the record. Then again, this was a time when N.W.A. was getting big here in the US and portions of the African American community really started to take ownership of the "N" word. (No, I am not defending Axl, just offering my opinion). Was it meant to stir shit up and bring more attention to GnR? Of course. Does he regret using that word now? Obviously. The difference between Axl and the rest of us is that the regrettable choices we made 30 years ago aren't necessarily out there for the whole world to see and comment on. 

In the end, I agree with the decision to not include OIAM in the re-issue even though I really do love the musical arrangement.

I mean seriously, if Facebook and Instagram were around when I was a kid, I'd be doing my best to erase some major "errors in judgement" 

[Eric Cantona]

All I can say is that if I wrote a song 30 years ago about n1ggers and f4ggots (no matter what the intention may have been), I'd be burying it too.

There would have been controversy even if they rereleased OIAM. Just imagine the headlines; "BIGOTED ROCK BAND RELEASES RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC TUNE". It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. 

I like the song, though, Axl's voice shines and I love the final verse.

[willl]

I still like the song, I think it's one of Axls best vocal performances.

I've no doubt that the lyrics were written intentionally to cause offense and generate headlines though. Niven admitted on some podcast years ago that they planted "fake news" in the UK press in order to generate heat back in the day. I think it was a rumor that Axl killed his dog and they sent it to The Sun newspaper knowing it would cause a national outcry? The UKs press headlines then ensured that there shows sold out, full of angry spitting Brits, which in turn allowed the band to return to the US on the back of a "sold out" tour overseas.

[Padme]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/05/11/axl-rose-small-hopeful-example-for-our-fractured-nation/wPwZY2XvDVelvZXzRqjIoI/story.html?p1=BGMenu_Article

This guy also wants UTLH to be removed. And he gets a lot more philosophical

[Chris 55]

17 hours ago, DTV88 said:

 Does he regret using that word now? Obviously. The difference between Axl and the rest of us is that the regrettable choices we made 30 years ago aren't necessarily out there for the whole world to see and comment on. 

In the end, I agree with the decision to not include OIAM in the re-issue even though I really do love the musical arrangement.

I mean seriously, if Facebook and Instagram were around when I was a kid, I'd be doing my best to erase some major "errors in judgement" 

I don't think Axl regrets it at all. He removed the song from future pressings because the song was easily misunderstood. 

[Chris 55]

3 hours ago, Padme said:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/05/11/axl-rose-small-hopeful-example-for-our-fractured-nation/wPwZY2XvDVelvZXzRqjIoI/story.html?p1=BGMenu_Article

This guy also wants UTLH to be removed. And he gets a lot more philosophical

He's also misinformed. Manson didn't write "Look at Your Game, Girl"

[Axl's Agony Aunt]

18 hours ago, Blackstar said:

Yeah, I think - I'm taking it from where @MyPrettyTiedUpMichelle's interpretation left it - that the dominant pattern behind OIAM is that of "not belonging", expressed in a raw and primitive manner, which translated into self-victimisation and anger towards groups of people.

Axl's character, a "small town white boy" (with a certain upbringing) went to L.A., which wasn't just a big city, but a mosaic of various, ethnic and other, groups and minorities. But, athough some of those groups were suppressed and far from privileged, they had (from Axl's POV at least) their place in that mosaic and there was a sense of identification and of belonging to a segregated community/group. Then there was the general and socially diverse group of white folks. Axl was white, but he didn't fit there either, despite the group's diversity. The "small town white boy" was something that wasn't even acknowledged as an identity there.

That lead to a feeling of "nothingness" and of being the lowest of the low in the societal rank, even lower than the poor immigrants working in convenient stores and blacks selliing gold chains in the streets. And in the song that feeling came out (probably by choice) unprocessed, without taking into account those groups' backgrounds etc. He knew, though, that (feeling as) being in that position could be his fault, as people said he was lazy (=he wouldn't get a job) or a weirdo ("just me") or crazy.

But, at the same time, the small town was where he wanted to get away from, and that's why he was in L.A. And, by the time he wrote OIAM, he had lost even that "not acknowledged" identity and was alienated from his roots, the people and the environment of the small town. So he felt like "one in a million", not as in positively special or (morally) superior, as he "didn't know right from wrong" anymore and it was "all the means to an end", but more as in an "alien".

And OIAM combined those two patterns, the fear and alienation he felt as a "small town white boy" when he went to L.A. and the alienation from his roots that he felt afterwards.

Yeh, totally. I watched Rich Hall's California Stars again this week, and he was saying similar about Merle Haggard providing an I-am-what-I-am identity for the Okies/Country-folk in the hippy era, about 1 hour 13 mins in the documentary.

 

[Blackstar]

14 minutes ago, Chris 55 said:

He's also misinformed. Manson didn't write "Look at Your Game, Girl"

He did. 

[soon]

1 hour ago, Chris 55 said:

I don't think Axl regrets it at all. He removed the song from future pressings because the song was easily misunderstood. 

Its not removed from future pressings.  Just not included in an AFD box set is all.

[Axl's Agony Aunt]

21 hours ago, killuridols said:

Hey 😬 I'm sorry if I offended you yesterday, wasn't my intention (I'm sure you don't care though, lol)

What is that Equality & Diversity courses you talk about? Why you were forced to attend them? 

I know you are un-political correct and I am too but where's the line between being unPC and being disrespectful and offensive? I am all for being unPC against who deserves it, but, say, would you kick the wheelchair of a disabled person that is trying to cross the street? Where's the need of calling people the n--- word or the f-g word? I really can't see how the color of skin of someone is relevant to who they are as a person, good or bad, it is not defined by that so why use it as an insult 

I was the first one in this thread to mention the Streisand effect  because that's exactly what happened but I think it will last a few days only and everybody will forget.

Not sure how many will go looking for Lies, though. I feel this band gets more irrelevant every day that passes by. I see that when it comes to youth now, parents and educators are more worried by the lyrics of rap/hip-hop/regatton than any other genre. That's what they consume, not GN'R.

We have a thread here in the forum called GN'R Women's Discussion and we have discussed Slash t-shirts, attitude and his shit IG feed. I don't know if male fans are aware of the way he is, but many female fans are.....

Spot on!

I was also born and raised in a small town, then "moved to the city" and I never thought those kind of things about the new people I found in town. I can relate to the part of the song about being "bugged" by others, like I always say, every time I go downtown there's like this mass of people wanting to get money from me, either by asking me directly, trying to sell me stuff and even trying to rob me. But I can't think of them in such pejorative and hateful terms. I understand that everybody's trying the make their living and not all of them have the same possibilities.

In my opinion, it all reduces to education and family. Axl lacked education and his raising was awful. Plus, he dropped school. Plus, he was a delinquent. He was a product of all those factors combined.

 

Thanks, I hadn't seen it, and will look it up. 

On your last point, I agree that it was probably because Axl was young and it was his first big trip away from home. There are bad people amongst the groups he mentioned, but also good, as there are amongst all demographics. 

[DieselDaisy]

But you are not erasing anything? You are merely publicising the song by omitting it; you are merely allowing the same old arguments about the song to bubble up again in 2018 by removing it. It counts for nothing unless they can suddenly gather together all of the millions of copies of Lies and destroy them whilst deleting every mp3 of the track from everybody's computer. 

The song ''One In A Million'' is as ubiquitous as it has ever been!

 

[killuridols]

7 hours ago, downliner said:

Niven admitted on some podcast years ago that they planted "fake news" in the UK press in order to generate heat back in the day. I think it was a rumor that Axl killed his dog and they sent it to The Sun newspaper knowing it would cause a national outcry? The UKs press headlines then ensured that there shows sold out, full of angry spitting Brits, which in turn allowed the band to return to the US on the back of a "sold out" tour overseas.

Yes, Axl told that story about him killing dogs during the China Exchange conference he gave in the UK in 2016.

I still think that even if it was solely for publicity, OIAM is over the top when it comes to do something "just for publicity". You need a real high degree of internal hate to write something like that.

5 hours ago, Padme said:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/05/11/axl-rose-small-hopeful-example-for-our-fractured-nation/wPwZY2XvDVelvZXzRqjIoI/story.html?p1=BGMenu_Article

This guy also wants UTLH to be removed. And he gets a lot more philosophical

I guess it is a female writer but the name is deceiving. I liked the article. Good arguments and examples used.

1 hour ago, Axl's Agony Aunt said:

Thanks, I hadn't seen it, and will look it up. 

On your last point, I agree that it was probably because Axl was young and it was his first big trip away from home. There are bad people amongst the groups he mentioned, but also good, as there are amongst all demographics. 

Lol, it's a 200+ pages thread plus the Part 1, which is locked. That one has an index in the first page that could help finding topics.

Yes, that's always been my point. People are people, regardless of their skin color, nationality or sexual tendencies. And Axl probably learned the biggest lesson of his life when he met Beta.

Isn't it ironic how he ended up embracing the immigrants and how it is a family of immigrants the only family he will ever have?

That's certainly the cosmos sending him the biggest of F--- Y--'s 

Edited May 12, 2018 by killuridols

[Blackstar]

19 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

But you are not erasing anything? You are merely publicising the song by omitting it; you are merely allowing the same old arguments about the song to bubble up again in 2018 by removing it. It counts for nothing unless they can suddenly gather together all of the millions of copies of Lies and destroy them whilst deleting every mp3 of the track from everybody's computer. 

The song ''One In A Million'' is as ubiquitous as it has ever been!

The headlines and press would have been about ten times as many if OIAM had been included in the AFD reissue, because it would send the message that the band promoted and re-introduced that song in 2018. I can imagine the titles, "GnR still racist" etc. 

Now it makes headlines because it's been omitted. People may discover it because of that, but not because the band intended them too, and that makes a difference. 

[Len Cnut]

23 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

Slash is solely a skeletal sexist: he objectifies female skeletons.

On the topic of objectifying women, if that kinda thing is really that troublesome then maybe just not listen to rock n roll at all?  I mean who in rock n roll history hasn't done that?  The choices are few and all the greats did a fair deal of it...and all along down the through the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s where rock n roll died.  There were alternative movements that fought against it but it was the standard right through the history of it.

[Len Cnut]

9 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

The headlines and press would have been about ten times as many if OIAM had been included in the AFD reissue, because it would send the message that the band promoted and re-introduced that song in 2018. I can imagine the titles, "GnR still racist" etc. 

Now it makes headlines because it's been omitted. People may discover it because of that, but not because the band intended them too, and that makes a difference. 

You need to look exactly at the types of headlines we're talking about here and who cares about them, saying that it 'made headlines' is a bit of a misnomer, it wasn't on the front page of any newspaper I can claim without actually knowing with a fair degree of certainty because, quite frankly, no one cares about Guns n Roses.  It wouldn't have been THAT big a news item either way.

[killuridols]

They should do like the Germans with 'Mein Kampf'..... Openly release new special edition accompanied by annotated educational guide.

Period. Everybody wins.

Edited May 12, 2018 by killuridols

[Len Cnut]

7 minutes ago, Ratam said:

Plenty lazy "journalist's"........

Yes he did, who else wrote it?!

[killuridols]

More like lazy fans, always ready to jump on whoever criticizes King Axl 🙄