Live Guns Roses

Guns N' Roses - Live Era '87-'93 is a four record live album by Guns N' Roses, released on November 23, 1999. The album was the first official Guns N' Roses release since "The Spaghetti Incident?" released on the same day in 1993. Former guitarist Slash notes that the album is "not pretty and there are a lot of mistakes, but this is Guns N' Roses, not the fucking Mahavishnu Orchestra. It's as honest as it gets." The dates and locations of the tracks are not revealed in the liner notes, and are only referred to simply as being "Recorded across the universe between 1987 and 1993". However, the majority of the tracks on the four records are sourced from the extensive Use Your Illusion Tour of 1991-1993. Only two tracks come from 1988 live recordings - "Used to Love Her" and "You're Crazy".

Guns N' Roses - Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide is a four-song EP released by Guns N' Roses on December 16, 1986 on the label, UZI Suicide. (This was ostensibly a self-released record but UZI Suicide was actually part of Geffen Records.) When referred to by the band members talking about the EP, they have simply called it Live Like a Suicide. The record itself was limited to only 10,000 copies, and it came out only in vinyl and cassette formats.

The double-disc Live: Era '87-'93 was designed to do two things – satiate die-hard fans longing for old-school GNR, while clearing decks for a new studio album. It sounds good in theory, yet it suffers in its execution, since it relies on tapes "recorded across the universe between 1987 and 1993…

Guns N' Roses is an American hard rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The classic lineup as signed to Geffen Records in 1986, consisted of vocalist Axl Rose, lead guitarist Slash, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Steven Adler. Today, Axl Rose is the only remaining original member, in a lineup that comprises Use Your Illusion–era keyboardist Dizzy Reed, lead guitarists DJ Ashba and Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, rhythm guitarist Richard Fortus, bassist Tommy Stinson, drummer Frank Ferrer, and keyboardist Chris Pitman. The band has released six studio albums to date, accumulating sales of more than 100 million records worldwide, including shipments of 45 million in the United States, making them one of the world’s best-selling bands of all time.

Once Appetite for Destruction finally became a hit in 1988, Guns N' Roses bought some time by delivering the half-old/half-new LP G N' R Lies as a follow-up. Constructed as a double EP, with the "indie" debut Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide coming first and four new acoustic-based songs following on the second side, G N' R Lies is where the band metamorphosed from genuine threat to joke…

Once Appetite for Destruction finally became a hit in 1988, Guns N' Roses bought some time by delivering the half-old/half-new LP G N' R Lies as a follow-up. Constructed as a double EP, with the "indie" debut Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide coming first and four new acoustic-based songs following on the second side, G N' R Lies is where the band metamorphosed from genuine threat to joke. Neither recorded live nor released by an indie label, Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide is competent bar band boogie, without the energy or danger of Appetite for Destruction. The new songs are considerably more problematic. "Patience" is Guns N' Roses at their prettiest and their sappiest, the most direct song they recorded to date. Its emotional directness makes the misogyny of "Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)" and the pitiful slanders of "One in a Million" sound genuine…

This is a historic release, the first official appearance of recordings by Hollywood Rose, the band that would later mutate into Guns N' Roses. These were cut in 1984, when the band was led by Axl Rose and guitarists Izzy Stradlin and Chris Weber, with Johnny Kreis on drums, and these are the recordings that initially got Hollywood Rose playing the L.A. club circuit; Tracii Guns, the guitarist who later split to form L.A. Guns, would come along later, along with bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler. Hearing this original five-song demo, it's easy to see why Vicky Hamilton, the group's first manager, took them under her wing – they were harder, tougher, rawer, and meaner than any of the metal coming out of Los Angeles during 1984.