Use Your Illusion I

Guns N' Roses 在1991年9月17日推出的双专辑《Use Your Illusion I》和《Use Your Illusion II》显示了这支一夜走红的乐队的野心，乐队为了这套专辑整整准备了3年的时间，专辑录制的难度可想而知。工作一开始乐队成员关系就非常紧张，Izzy Stradlin（guitars）希望专辑的风格能更靠近乐队原来的那种带有强烈的 Blues 的 Hard Rock，而 Axl Rose 则希望能像Queen和Elton John那样的多样化，还好最后两者都达成拉了共识。这儿有五个都很有个性的小伙子，在最后总是能够很好的相容，如果说专辑有什么不足的话那可能就是专辑作得太艺术化了，热爱《Appetite for Destruction》的歌迷显然无法消化。专辑中不仅有他们传统的冲动的快歌，也有象《Don't Cry》这样的慢版抒情经典，还有气势宏大的《November Rain》，同时还翻唱 Paul MaCartney的《Live and Let Die》，素材复杂，曲风多变，编排精心，值得歌迷用4年的时间来等待它。特别是其中的Guns N' Roses最出色的两首歌《Novermber Rain》和 《Don't Cry》。有这两首你已经又赚了一张专辑。
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

The "difficult second album" is one of the perennial rock & roll clichés, but few second albums ever were as difficult as Use Your Illusion. Not really conceived as a double album but impossible to separate as individual works, Use Your Illusion is a shining example of a suddenly successful band getting it all wrong and letting its ambitions run wild. Taking nearly three years to complete, the recording of the album was clearly difficult, and tensions between Slash, Izzy Stradlin, and Axl Rose are evident from the start. The two guitarists, particularly Stradlin, are trying to keep the group closer to its hard rock roots, but Rose has pretensions of being Queen and Elton John, which is particularly odd for a notoriously homophobic Midwestern boy. Conceivably, the two aspirations could have been divided between the two records, but instead they are just thrown into the blender -- it's just a coincidence that Use Your Illusion I is a harder-rocking record than II. Stradlin has a stronger presence on I, contributing three of the best songs -- "Dust n' Bones," "You Ain't the First," and "Double Talkin' Jive" -- which help keep the album in Stonesy Aerosmith territory. On the whole, the album is stronger than II, even though there's a fair amount of filler, including a dippy psychedelic collaboration with Alice Cooper and a song that takes its title from the Osmonds' biggest hit. But it also has two ambitious set pieces, "November Rain" and "Coma," which find Rose fulfilling his ambitions, as well as the ferocious, metallic "Perfect Crime" and the original version of the power ballad "Don't Cry." Still, it can be a chore to find the highlights on the record amid the overblown production and endless amounts of filler.