Would you play One in a million to non GNR fan friends ?

[SoulMonster]

5 hours ago, Nice Boy said:

yeah the 3rd person excuse doesn’t stand up imo. It’s blatantly based on Axls thoughts and experiences of arriving in LA. He should have been honest and said, “ that’s exactly how I felt as a green midwestern kid turning up in the metropolis. But now I’ve grown up a bit, accustomed to life here and don’t hold those immediate prejudices. I’m mates with ice cube blah blah”

But that's more or less what he eventually said. 

4 hours ago, BangoSkank said:

Agreed. It's OBVIOUSLY about a fictional character

No, it was about Axl. 

[SoulMonster]

4 hours ago, RussTCB said:

The fact that it's not fiction is just your opinion and I hold the opposite opinion. 

Posting this here, too, then.

Axl might have been writing from the perspective of a character, but that character was himself as he came to the big city. As far as I know, Axl never excused himself by arguing that he was writing from another person's perspective, that it was the views of some fictional character and that it wasn't a reflection of his own opinions. In that sense, he owned the lyrics. [It was Duff who would later claim it was written from a third person's experience.]

But Axl did argue that the he didn't mean to insult all black people and that his previous homophobia was a result of past experiences. He also said that the song came out much more forceful than intended. Furthermore, he knew the lyrics would be controversial and apologized on the cover of GNR Lies for generalizing and would apologize again later. Lastly, he would also claim he had changed and that the backlash has caused him to read up on black history. Because of all this, the song was never played again live (after the four, or so, initial live appearances) and Axl considered pulling it off the record but eventually decided that art came first even though he knew that would just cause him to be more criticized.

Axl from the RIP interview in 1992: "l wrote a song that was very simple and vague. (...)l think I showed that quite well from where l was at. The song most definitely was a survival mechanism. It was a way for me to express my anger at how vulnerable l felt in certain situations that had gone down in my life. It's not a song l would write now. The song is very generic and generalized, and I apologized for that on the cover of the record. Going back and reading it, it wasn't the best apology but, at the time, it was the best apology I could make."

And again, if you want to read all of this straight from the horse's mouth and not through my summary, go here: (49) 09. AUGUST-DECEMBER 1988: LIES AND THE SPOTLIGHT (a-4-d.com) and (49) 09. AUGUST-DECEMBER 1988: LIES AND THE SPOTLIGHT (a-4-d.com).

[SoulMonster]

A few more quotes from Axl so hopefully we can lay this at rest.

Axl:  I was pissed off about some black people that were trying to rob me. I wanted to insult those particular black people. I didn't want to support racism. […] The racist thing, that's just stupid. I can understand how people would think that, but that's not how I meant it [Rolling Stone, April 2, 1992].

Axl: Yes, [the reaction to the lyrics] definitely helped me to be able to change. I went out and got all kinds of video tapes and read books on racism. Books by Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X [Interview Magazine, May 1992].

Axl: l wrote a song that was very simple and vague. (...)l think I showed that quite well from where l was at. The song most definitely was a survival mechanism. It was a way for me to express my anger at how vulnerable l felt in certain situations that had gone down in my life. It's not a song l would write now. The song is very generic and generalized, and I apologized for that on the cover of the record. Going back and reading it, it wasn't the best apology but, at the time, it was the best apology I could make [RIP Magazine, 1992].

Again., it was Duff who would later suggest Axl had written from the perspective of a character.

And again, all the quotes can be found here: (49) 09. AUGUST-DECEMBER 1988: LIES AND THE SPOTLIGHT (a-4-d.com)

[SoulMonster]

And here's a longer explanation of who he was addressing with the "hooray for tolerance!s", "cops" and "immigrants" lines:

Axl: 'One in a million' is about...... I went back and forth from Indiana eight times my first year in Hollywood. I wrote it about being dropped off at the bus station and everything that was going on. I'd never been in a city this big and was fortunate enough to have this black dude help me find my way. He guided me to the RTD station and showed me what bus to take, because I couldn't get a straight answer out of anybody. He wasn't after my money or anything. It was more like, "Here's a new kid in town, and he looks like he might get into trouble down here. Lemme help him get on his way." People kept coming up trying to sell me joints and stuff. In downtown L.A the joints are usually bogus, or they'll sell you drugs that can kill you. It's a really ugly scene. The song's not about him, but you could kinda say he was one in a million. When I sat down after walking in circles for three hours, the cops told me to get off the streets. The cops down there have seen so much slime that they figure if you have long hair, you're probably slime also. The black guys trying to sell you jewelry and drugs is where the line 'Police and hooray for tolerance!s, get out of my way' comes from. I've seen these huge black dudes pull Bowie knives on people for their boom boxes and shit. It's ugly […] I don't have anything against someone coming here from another country and trying to better themselves. What I don't dig is some 7-11 worker acting as though you don't belong here, or acting like they don't understand you while they're trying to rip you off. [Axl mimics an Iranian] "Wot? I no understand you". I'm saying "I gave you a 20, and I want my $15 change!" I threatened to blow up their gas station, and then they gave me my change. I don't need that [RIP, April 1989].

In short one could say it was poor lyrical handiwork from Axl to want to attack these particular people and then end up attacking an entire race and all immigrants and all cops. But that's also why he on the cover of Lies apologized for his generalizations. And maybe the original idea was that when the lyrics were sung less forcefully (as was the intention from before the song was recorded), people would be more willing to cut him some slack and accept he didn't mean to literally attack everybody. As it turned out, the emotional vocal delivery combined with the lyrics got him in big trouble,

[RussTCB]

4 hours ago, Nice Boy said:

Well with respect, what aspects of it are fictional? Because as I mentioned above, Axl has referred to incidents with black guys and cops hassling, hostile foreign store owners, and sexual assault by predatory gay men.. I wish I could write it off as fiction / just a character but that doesn’t correlate to things he’s said happened to him..

We don't have to agree on this, it's opinion based. 

[Nintari]

Yes, and it's a great piece of art. Great art is not suppose to make you feel cozy. It's suppose to make think and feel, and that song definitely makes a person think and feel.

I would, however, make sure to take the time to explain why Axl said what he said so the person doesn't get the wrong impression. lol

[SoulMonster]

3 hours ago, RussTCB said:

We don't have to agree on this, it's opinion based. 

Sure, and Axl's opinion is that he wrote about his own experiences and feelings at the time and not anyone else's. 

[Stay.Of.Execution]

4 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

I threatened to blow up their gas station, and then they gave me my change. I don't need that [RIP, April 1989].

 

lol. I miss young Axl

[Rayno]

My World is a way more suitable for the nonGNR audience.

[YOUCOULDBEMINE.]

I wouldn't play it because of Axl's poor choice of words and the fact that 50-75% of my friend group isn't white.

But, here in Europe the slurs for black people and homosexuals don't hit as hard as they do in the US. The situation is very different from the US.

I mean, in the UK they smoke fags and eat Spotted Dick.

[Free Bird]

I already did multiple times because it's a great song

[Gnrcane]

On 3/4/2022 at 11:44 PM, Arnuld said:

This. I never thought this song in anyway was reflection of Axl’s or the band’s view on race, sexual orientation, or immigration. Instead I believe it was supposed to be told from the perspective of a character who was probably based on people Axl grew up with in rural Indiana. The lyrics are highly controversial but were not as controversial in 1988. Younger “woke” people would be offended by the song but they are offended by everything anyway. The music in the song is absolutely incredible especially Slash’s guitar solo.

"Woke" people are probably offended by SCOM because of the use of "she" as a pronoun. What if the object of the lyrics identifies as non-binary?

[axl666]

I've always interpreted the middle section of Madagascar as Axl's repudiation of One in a Million. 

I

Edited March 6, 2022 by axl666

[prez]

At the first Metlife show in 2016 there was a black guy in the parking lot blasting OIAM out of his car. Not sure if he was making a statement, trying to be ironic or if he just enjoyed the song.

[adamsapple]

It wouldn't be the song I'd introduce GNR with, that would be Estranged, SCOM, YCBM oder WTTJ. But yeah, I'd play it. It's a good song. If you're "offended" by a song (any song for that matter) then you're very unlikely to ever set foot in my house or my car anyway.

Funny story: When I first heard OIAM I didn't speak english yet and I thought it was a love song. The singer sounded so angry and vulnerable, so passionate and heartbroken at the same time, kinda hard to explain, but I remember I loved everything about it, that sound and all that energy was just amazing. Years later when I learned what this song was actually about I had to laugh about myself, but I still liked the song, still do.

 

 

[invisible_rose]

I wouldn't have any issues playing it to someone who could understand the inflammatory lyrics for the way in which they're used. The song stands up on its own as a good song, with certain lyrics excluded, but in terms of those lyrics, I think it's shows a very important shift in social awareness and acceptance. 

I have very little doubt the lyrics are about Axl's firsthand experience of coming to LA from a small town, along with his small town mentality. I don't find the song inherently racist, homophobic, xenophobic, I find it highlights those prejudices.

The song was of its time. We've moved on since then. Clearly Axl has, and had done so probably before he even wrote that song. 

[Sosso]

People have to understand that playing with stereotypes and supporting them are two different things. 

[janrichmond]

I love Axl's vocals on it but I do see it as racist, so no,

I wouldn't play it for my friends because some of my friends are who he's singing about

7 hours ago, YOUCOULDBEMINE. said:

I mean, in the UK they smoke fags and eat Spotted Dick.

We do, we also have hooray for tolerance!s which are a spicy meatball type thing 

[Blackstar]

There was one instance where Axl allegedly said that he wasn't talking as "himself" on the song - that's what he had told Billy Joel:

He also said in this interview that the song was inspired by his own and his friends' experiences, and his feelings over those experiences, and was portraying a character like himself:

AXL: O.K. So anyway, homophobia? The song is very generic. it's very vague, it's very simple, it was meant to be that way, it was written that way. It was like, O.K., I'm writing this song as l want to -- l want this song to be like "Midnight Cowboy." That guy was very naive and involved in everything. The cowboy. My friend who got robbed, he was like Dustin Hoffman's character. l wanted the song to be written from that point of view. l wrote it to deal with my anger and my fear and my vulnerability in that situation, that l still felt uncomfortable with, that happened to me. That was the "police and hooray for tolerance!s" line. But now we move on to another line that says, "immigrants and hooray for tolerance!s, they make no sense to me/ they come to our country and spread some fucking disease." O.K., l wrote that, being a songwriter, and being an abstract songwriter and using my artistic license. The "immigrants" line, the part that says they come to our country -- wait, I just said my own verse wrong. I said what someone else said it was, that I'm really upset about. Sorry. It says, "Immigrants and hooray for tolerance!s, they make no sense to me/ they come to our country and think they'll do as they please / like start some mini-Iran, or spread some fucking disease / and they talk so many goddamned ways / it's all Greek to me." O.K.? I can understand not understanding what the hell I meant in that, because I jumbled two thought patterns together.

[Blackstar]

One of the best takes I've read on OIAM (from the "Use Your Illusion" book by writer Eric Weisbard):

How would the world have reacted if Neil Young had recorded and released “One in a Million”? Now that I’m playing GN’R music I can propose that this most radioactive of recordings sounds like him, the skittery acoustic groove and electric overlays and topics resembling the track “Crime in the City” on his album Freedom, which came out in 1989, a year after Lies. Even more than Kurt Cobain, Young writes characters: a cop in the street who gets paid by a ten-year-old drug dealer, a fireman who “got thrown out of Sunday school for throwing bibles at the preacher” and ultimately uses his hose to blast people, a producer who requests a hungry songwriter in the same mouthful that ends, pricelessly, “send me a cheeseburger and a new Rolling Stone.”

Axl Rose, defending “One in a Million,” said on occasion that he too was writing about a character, but it’s an awfully recurrent character, the one he plays in the video to “Welcome to the Jungle,” for instance. The perspective matches accounts he has given of his life: shuttling between Lafayette and Los Angeles, a small-town kid scarred by religious zealotry finding himself in the most urban of settings, attacked at times by black hustlers, molesting homosexuals, and bullying street cops, feeling less native to his surroundings than immigrant store owners, worried about his sanity and way too high way too often. Hungry as that songwriter. But also – and Henry James (I’m thinking the introduction to The Princess Casamassima) declared this the only kind of street urchin worth writing about – “One in a Million.” Capable of seizing his own story you “radicals and racists.”

So put it this way. The former Billy Bailey writes about the character W. Axl Rose – or gets others to write about him; “Patience” was composed by Izzy Stradlin, but its topic is Rose’s relationship with Erin Everly. And what a character. WAR. A character as fluid as the singer’s vocal tones: schizophrenic, it is often implied. But never the subject of a representation, like some sharecropper in framed photo or an earnest songwriter’s fantasy. This case study owns his own copyright.

The song is impressively complex. There are two bulky sixteen-line verses and a third eight-line verse, each carefully doubled: two different groups of people are linked for scorn in each stanza (“cops and hooray for tolerance!s,” “immigrants and hooray for tolerance!s,” “radicals and racists”), and these portions of the verse are themselves paired with an ongoing narrative about the character/Axl’s past and values. The chorus is equally divided, seemingly sung by one part of Axl/the character to another part, or perhaps the man to the myth. For a song that Axl had to know was going to land him in a lot of trouble, this way was no throwaway.

It has often been said that the group never performed it, and that Slash in particular – half black and an immigrant’s son – was offended by it. (Slash, a child of the music biz, whose mom dated David Bowie for a time, could be seen in fact as exactly the kind of diverse Californian whose place in the mix made the Axl persona uncomfortable.) In fact, footage exists of the group performing “One in a Million” in an acoustic set at CBGB on October 30, 1987, long before Lies came out but around when it was recorded. The camera is facing Slash’s back, so there is no way to see his reaction to the song that he is accompanying, but the crowd – thrown by the initial “cops and hooray for tolerance!s,” even though Axl builds a reaction into the song; “that’s right,” he sings, as if to say yes, I intended to say that – has caught up by the time he sings “immigrants and hooray for tolerance!s,” and giggles appreciatively. It’s the Pussy Galore, Big Black, pigfuck era in post-punk terms. A lot of shit has been said at CB’s; this is just more. Rose has his full uniform on, sunglasses, bandana, soldiering expressionless through the verses, though he smiles at the cheesiness of the “one in a million” sentiment to those singing along.

The lines from the song that aren’t controversial, that actually might have wound up on a Young tune, because they have something of his cadence, go: “it’s been such a long time / since I knew right from wrong / It’s all just a means to an end / I keep on movin’ along.” You don’t have to love, admire, or even respect Axl Rose to see that “One in a Million” is an incongruity: an oldest school rock and roller with an intensely Christian upbringing and, say, Jerry Lee Lewis’s sense of music as a sin willingly undertaken and thus that much more damnable, who also has it in him to pull back from that position and make corporate decisions with the manicured coldness of a David Geffen then or a Jay-Z now. But who on a third level, to underline this again, is driven by artistic urges he refuses to rein in, wherever they may lead. Ultimately Axl Rose inhabits “the beast in me,” to cite Johnny Cash, who practically became a postage stamp for his American Recordings, which began with a song about shooting Delia and then having a drink, not so unlike the “I used to love her, but I had to kill her” song and dance that GN’R brought us on Lies.

[thunderram]

On 3/4/2022 at 8:45 AM, Gordon Comstock said:

 

I have blue collar friends that are anywhere between 20-50 who like GNR and wouldn't care if OIAM was played, whereas "woke" people would definitely be offended. 

 

I gotta ask, are all these same "woke" people offended every time the same words and/or their variations are used in today's hip hop/r&b/rap and pop culture?

I often wonder why these activists aren't railing against current day artists use of the words.

IDC if it's the 'A' or the hard 'ER' version. Either it's ok for everyone to use artistically or nobody should be using it. Same goes for the other slurs used in OIAM.

It is completely laughable that those most offended by the use of a word actually use the same word themselves. I won't even debate with those people. Because they're highly hypocritical and unreasonable.

However those that do not use those words have a valid argument.

Given the history of the 'N' word, I personally would like to see the ALL versions eradicated and never used by anyone. I typically hear a similar opinion from black folks old enough to have actually lived during Jim Crow. It's the newer generation that doesn't get it. Because they didn't have to live through the same experiences.

Circling back to AXL's use of the word, his explanation has been well-chronicled. And he was supported by numerous artists back during that time, including many notable black artists that defended his freedom of speech.

While I personally wouldn't use that word and choose to express myself differently, I will always defend AXL's use of the word for as long as it is still considered acceptable by anyone else to use artistically. Again, either everyone should be able to use it artistically or nobody. There shouldn't be differing rule sets applied subjectively and inconsistently.

Lastly, I definitely wouldn't go out of my way to play OIAM to those I'm sure have never heard it and aren't aware of the context and history behind it.

Edited March 7, 2022 by thunderram

[YOUCOULDBEMINE.]

22 hours ago, janrichmond said:

I love Axl's vocals on it but I do see it as racist, so no,

I wouldn't play it for my friends because some of my friends are who he's singing about

We do, we also have hooray for tolerance!s which are a spicy meatball type thing 

I did not know that, that's even worse 

[Stay.Of.Execution]

12 hours ago, thunderram said:

 

I gotta ask, are all these same "woke" people offended every time the same words and/or their variations are used in today's hip hop/r&b/rap and pop culture?

I often wonder why these activists aren't railing against current day artists use of the words.

IDC if it's the 'A' or the hard 'ER' version. Either it's ok for everyone to use artistically or nobody should be using it. Same goes for the other slurs used in OIAM.

It is completely laughable that those most offended by the use of a word actually use the same word themselves. I won't even debate with those people. Because they're highly hypocritical and unreasonable.

 

That's gotta be one of the dumbest things ever written. If you haven't it figured out until 2022, you must be living under a rock or something. 

[Nintari]

On 3/6/2022 at 12:44 PM, invisible_rose said:

The song was of its time. We've moved on since then. Clearly Axl has, and had done so probably before he even wrote that song. 

Have we though? Outside of the woke people--who are really more like trolls in the garbs of angels--people don't seem to give much of a damn. In 1988, the N word was considered wrong, and the people who used it (Marge Schott) paid the same price that people today pay when they use it. The only difference between the world then and the world now, is corporations have decided to--for reasons beyond me--appease the woke trolls by pretending they're on their side. Everything else, as far as the stuff we're talking about here, is pretty much unchanged.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Nintari

[TeeJay410]

The lyrics are outright racist and homophobic and it’s no accident that it was left out of the box set. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by TeeJay410