Help: November rain facts

[Zinia_29]

I'm gonna write an article about November rain in my mother tongue. It will include all the basic facts about the song like how it's written, del james story, the themes, it's influence etc. Can you provide me with some good sources? TIA

[janrichmond]

50 minutes ago, Zinia_29 said:

I'm gonna write an article about November rain in my mother tongue. It will include all the basic facts about the song like how it's written, del james story, the themes, it's influence etc. Can you provide me with some good sources? TIA

@Blackstar I'm sure you are the one to help here 

[ZODIAC]

The making of video should provide a lot of information...

[Blackstar]

Quotes about the song:

Tracii Guns: I remember, when we were doing that EP for L.A. Guns, like '83? Axl was playing "November Rain" -- and it was called "November Rain" ... you know, on piano. Way back then. It was the only thing he knew how to play, but it was his -- you know what I mean? He'd go: Someday this song is gonna be really cool. And I'd go: It's cool now, you know? But it's not done, you know, he used to say.And like anytime we'd be at a hotel or anywhere there'd be a piano, he'd just kinda play that music, you know? And I'd go: When are you gonna finish that already, you know? And he'd go: I don't know what to do with it. (Laughter) You know, but no -- you know, he's good. You know, Axl's definitely talented. [Spin article outtakes, June 1999]

Slash: [In 1986,] Tom [Zutaut] did manage to get us into the studio with Manny Charlton, the guitarist for Nazareth, at Sound City Studios on Whitsett and Moorpark out in the Valley. We worked on demos of 'November Rain', which was about eighteen minutes long in its original version, so needless to say we really needed to sit down and focus on arranging it. [Slash's autobiography, 2007]

Manny Charlton: I thought the stand-out songs were "Welcome to the Jungle" and "November Rain." Axl was playing the piano and Izzy was doing a little bit of background vocals and it was fantastic. That's when I went, "wow, there's proper songwriting skills here," and I thought that I would really like to produce them. [Marc Canter, "Reckless Road", 2007].

Tom Zutaut: We had “November Rain” and “Don’t Cry” before we even recorded Appetite, but I didn’t feel like those were songs you would put on a debut. They needed to start with an honest punk statement. Those ballads were overly complex and could alienate their audience outside of L.A. with the image of Axl behind a grand piano. Axl understand that better than anyone. He wanted GNR to start off punk, to counter hair metal. [L.A. Weekly, July 2017]

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. [November Rain: Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part II, June 1993]

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. [Slash's autobiography, 2007]

Slash: The thing with 'November Rain' was that, back then, it was, like, this 20-minute epic that just went on forever. We were never able to edit it down until we did it for the Use Your Illusion albums. [...] Tom Zutaut [Guns N' Roses A&R representative at Geffen at the time] was the one who said, "Let's save that for another record." And I think Axl was a little miffed about that. [Classic Rock Magazine, July 2007]

Axl: The song came about just out of a relationship and of how I felt in the relationship and, you know, I really cared about this person. And not being with this person made me think about being in Indiana and walking in November rain, seeing the ice on the trees and, you know, it was just - it fit to how I felt about that situation. [Rockline, November 27, 1991]

Axl: November Rain is a song about not wanting to be in a state of having to deal with unrequited love. Estranged is acknowledging it, and being there, and having to figure out what the fuck to do. [The Making Of Estranged: Part IV Of The Trilogy, April 1994]

Axl: 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'. [November Rain: Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part II, June1993]

Axl: When we got back to the States [after the Marquee shows in 1987], I was informed that Dan [McCafferty of Nazareth] had listened to our ballad 'November Rain' and liked it a lot. So I asked him if he wanted to sing with me, and he told me that he’d love to do it, if he could. [Popular 1, April 1988]

Axl: If [November Rain] is not recorded right, I'll quit the business. [Rolling Stone, November 1988]

Izzy [Being asked if there really gonna be a 15-minute song on the next album filled with synthesizers and strings]: (Laughing) Could be. There's talk. We constantly disagree and keep changing from one day to the next. [Superstar Facts & Pix, 1988]

Duff: There’s a couple of softer songs [for the next album], this piano kind of ballad that Axl wrote. It’s a real nice song. [Rapido, 1989]

Axl:  I want [Jeff Lynne] to work on “November Rain”, and there’s, like, three or four possible other songs that if that works out I’d like to use him on... [...] Yeah [for string arrangements]. This record will be produced by Guns N’ Roses and Mike Clink, OK? But I might be using synthesizer – but I’m gonna say I’m using synthesizer and what I programmed. It’s not gonna be like, “Oh, you know, we do all our shows live,” and then it’s on tape. That’s not the thing. I just want to... you know, jump into today. I have never had the money to do it before. And I thought maybe someone like Jeff Lynne could help. [...] [Being asked about the quote in Rolling Stone that he'd quit the business if it wasn't recorded right] That was then. At that time it was the most important song to me. [Being asked if he still stuck by his threat] Yeah. That's the the fuckin' truth. That's the fuckin’ truth, all right. [Interview with Mick Wall, January 1990; Guns N' Roses: The Most Dangerous Band in the World, 1991]

Slash: November Rain' has been around since before Appetite. It's been worked on here and there. It used to be twenty minutes long. I came up with most of the picking lines that go throughout the song when Axl was playing on piano and I played it on acoustic. Usually you get an idea in a day, whether or not the song's worth doing. If you decide the song is worth doing, then you work hard on it during the course of a night, to get it to where's everybody's comfortable. It evolves after that. When we'd finally gotten an arrangement for 'November Rain', years later I came up with a couple of new parts. When we went in the studio, I came up with most of those solos. The tail-end solo, that high-pitched thing, I came up with when Axl came up with the piano chords a long time ago. [Guitar For The Practicing Musician, April 1992]

Slash: [November Rain] was a song that, when it first surfaced – you know, first came up in Axl’s playing on the piano – it was way before Appetite for Destruction came in, and we’d been dicking around with it for years. It used to be, like, 25 minutes long. And, finally, everything that’s on the record - almost everything, all the melodies and all that - just came off the top of my head when I first heard the piano, and I did it all on acoustic. So that’s just the way that I heard it. And when we finally decided to record it, and we had an arrangement, it pretty much came naturally. There’s some new stuff in there, but not too much. [MTV, May 21, 1992].

Slash: It’s a song that when it first surfaced it was Axl playing the piano. It was way before Appetite For Destruction came out, and we’ve been ditting around with it for years. It used to be like 25 minutes long. Everything’s that’s on the record, most of it, all the melodies and all that, just came off the top of my head. When we finally decided to record it, it pretty much came naturally. There’s some new stuff in it.  [Guns N' Roses: The Hits - 1992]

Slash: The songs that are more subtle are the ones where I really have to buckle down and make sure I've got it, especially if the guitar part's the main voice of the song. On songs like "Estranged" and "November Rain," I have to stop for a second and slow myself down, make sure that I hit the notes correctly so that they don't go out of tune, or the vibrato's not too hectic. [Guitar For The Practising Musician, November 1992]

Slash: Right from its inception, when Axl and I first played November Rain, the same guitar melodies that are in the recorded version came through. There was definitely a spark between the two of us. It was hard to arrange that song and Estranged, because they were so open-ended and we had to cut November Rain. But those were Axl's epic piano pieces and they were both breakthrough guitar solos for me. Real melody solos, y'know? I had some good sounds and they were melodically very spontaneous. [Music Radar, September 2011]

Slash: There were a few songs that were very involved guitar-wise on those albums. 'Estranged' was a big, long song. I used a Les Paul Gold Top on it; I recorded all of the melodies on the rhythm pickup with the tone turned all the way down. 'November Rain' was tough, too, as was another Axl song called 'Breakdown.' Those were all piano driven and they needed accompaniment; the guitar and bass parts had to be thought out and done precisely. Those songs were all pretty fucking cool, I have to say, but they took some work. (...) 'November Rain was recorded in one day but we put in long hours ahead of time to get all of the arrangements just right. The funniest thing is that the guitar solo that ended up on the record is the exact same one that I played the first time I heard the song years before. [Slash's autobiography, 2007] 

Duff: Axl came up with the skeleton form of it when the band was just formed, he came up with the piano version of it. But there was never any band version of it. [...] It's not an easy song to play as a rock and roll band. It's like heavy guitar, bass, drums, and you know all this loud shit and it's a gentle song. [...] It was difficult but I think we did a good job of bringing a certain subtleness to the song from the usual brashness of what Guns N' Roses is. [...] I play with a lot more...finesse. […] Like I said, we never approached it really until we were done touring with Appetite, and then it was time to approach all these new songs and all the old songs that we had not completed. One of those was November Rain. […] We didn’t, like, dive into it until we got back in line and got a new drummer. […] It’s a real subtle song and you can’t attack it like we attack most of our songs. […] There’s certain parts of the song that you do attack. I approached differently than I would the other songs. [November Rain: Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part II, June 1993]

Matt: It was such a long song. It was pretty hard to put together for Guns N' Roses, because it was all [...] Axl playing piano. That was totally new and different to Slash and Duff [...] Needs a lot more drums, needs a lot more tom-toms. I set up more tom-toms. 'Cause Axl said to, 'Try to make this sound like Nigel Olson type drumming'. [...] "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me", that type of thing, big fills, big huge tom fills. One of Nigel's trademark back on these albums was the way he played the same fill a bunch of time. If you listen to 'November Rain' it is the same tom fill about 25 times. Pretty much a signature fill. [...] And that is the only time Axl said 'play it sort of like this'. […] And then when he played the piano and everything, I did get that hint of, like, his Elton John influence, cuz he was heavily influenced by Elton John to write that song. [November Rain: Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part II, June 22, 1993]

Matt: The track I get the most amount of grief for, from drummers, is November Rain. The reason I did that tom fill so many times is I felt it was a musical part. A lot of drummers were like, 'Why'd you play the same fill so much?!'" Me and Axl were sitting in the studio late one night, having a couple of drinks and listening to Elton John, a song called Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me." Axl goes, 'Do you hear that?' I'm like, 'Yeah, I love Nigel Olson, man'. He says, 'Do that on the song we're going to record tomorrow!' We'd rehearsed it but I didn't have all the fills and stuff, it was just a groove. In the end of November Rain I get into that whole marching band trip. [Rhythm Magazine, July 2009]

Matt: You know, the first time I heard November Rain, I thought: "What is this shit? What does Axl is doing behind the piano? I want rock!" But I was new in GNR and I thought "Matt, you leave The Cult and now you're in the greatest hard rock band of the world…" He sat at the piano and I was thinking "This is shit". Then the song came out, and it's the biggest thing we've ever done! [Hard Rock, September 1996]

Matt: At El Compadre, in the parking lot where Axl played me November Rain for the first time. 20 yrs ago. Slash and Duff were inside drinkin Tequila shots And I sat in his car to hear the mix. [...] That fill was Axls idea As a musical phrase that carried on through the trilogy , Don't Cry and Estranged. Those albums UYI 1 n 2 Have sold 20 million combined. [...] remember kids drumming isn't all about fancy drum fills and splash cymbals ask Charlie Watts, Ringo and Phil Rudd. [Twitter, August 2012]

Axl:  We’re nailing [November Rain], man. It’s like, I got a brand new piano, Yamaha... [...]  And I tried out Billy Joel's piano and some other pianos and they were real weak. And I got a brand new piano and we nailed it. And I'm talking with Jeff Lynne about the string arrangements for it. But we got it right. And because of Erin's and my relationship I got the last verse, you know... And it's like, I got it right.  [...] (Chuckling) November Rain has to be right. [Being asked about the quote in Rolling Stone that he'd quit the business if it wasn't recorded right] It’s the truth. I mean, like, it’s theirs, like, if someone screws to make a mix-up I’m out of here (laughs). [The Howard Stern Show, July 1990]

Axl: [Being asked if he'd really quit the band if November Rain wasn't done properly] Well, it wasn’t necessarily quit the band. It was just that, like, to do that song the way I wanted to do it. I knew that we were going to need a lot of freedom and a lot of time to learn how to do things that we didn’t know how to do, or I didn’t know how to do. I mean, there’s, like, 31 different string sections on there, and I had to do them on keyboards, because I knew I didn’t know how to communicate with an orchestra well enough. And just I knew that years ago in starting writing the song that it was going to take a lot for us to pull it off the way I could hear it in my head, you know. And that’s just like, I knew that, like, when I said I’d quit the business, it was because I knew that the only reason that I wouldn’t get this right is if I wasn’t allowed to. [Rockline, November 27, 1991]

Axl: 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. [November Rain: Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part II, June 1993]

Axl: "You know without Axl and Slash we wouldn't have November Rain and Estranged." Well, you don't know what the fuck I went through to get that guy to play those songs. You don't know about the argument we had at A&M studios, because Duff and Slash came to me going, "We're not gonna do that song Axl, we're not gonna do this song, no, no, we're just not gonna do it."... [Pepsi Arena, Albany, NY, USA, November 27, 2002]

Slash: [Axl] did the same [adding synthesizers] for 'November Rain' with all of those fucking string arrangements - they were all synth. I've heard songs with real strings that sound less authentic. [Slash's autobiography, 2007]

Axl: 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. […] I realized I only had one week, and I’m just no way I was gonna learn how to communicate with an orchestra. So we brought in, like, eight synthesizers. […] For eight hours I just sat there and played strings to November Rain over and over and over, and picked every single string sound to create my own 130 piece orchestra. […] We went through, like, three thousand sounds. We had to sit there and go, “Wait, is that one sound more real than that one?” [November Rain: Makin' F@*!ing Videos Part II, June 22, 1993]

Axl: Vocally, l purposely wanted the sound I have on that. I'm very happy with it, even though it's very abrasive. [...]  One of the things like about the vocal roughness in 'November Rain' is that anyone can think that they can sing it as good or better. They can feel like a part of it. [RIP - Sep/Oct/Nov, 1992]

Duff: I think you give [“November Rain”] to Axl. That was his thing. He worked on it for so long, but that’s Axl. It’s a three-chord song, you know? But it took seven years or something, and at some point, you’re kind of like, “All right, dude, it’s a beautiful three chords.” The guy’s one of the best vocal melody writers ever, I think. By the time we finally recorded that song, it was like, “Okay, good, we finally got that up and out of the way.” You could tell it was gonna be a big song when we recorded it. [The Onion A.V. Club, May 2011]

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About Del James' story and the video:

- Full transcript of November Rain: Makin' F@*!ing Videos:

https://www.a-4-d.com/t3938-1993-06-22-november-rain-makin-fing-videos-part-ii

- Axl's introduction to Del James' book:

https://www.a-4-d.com/t4126-1995-01-01-introduction-to-the-language-of-fear-axl

- Also here:

https://www.a-4-d.com/t4997-14-november-1991-april-1992-the-biggest-band-in-the-world#19653

[Darth Fring]

5 hours ago, Zinia_29 said:

I'm gonna write an article about November rain in my mother tongue. It will include all the basic facts about the song like how it's written, del james story, the themes, it's influence etc. Can you provide me with some good sources? TIA

There is really only one source you need.

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/donald-trump-november-rain-video-1059876/