When Guns N' Roses exploded from the Sunset Strip with lyrics like, "West Coast struttin', one bad mutha, got a rattlesnake suitcase under my arm," they were a vision of piss n' vinegar at a time when Steve Winwood was topping the charts. Apart from Axl Rose's mile-high coiffure, Appetite for Destruction was the opposite of everything going on in the mainstream: it sounded raw, nasty and dangerous. They were a fully formed statement, capped off with an exclamation point. And a little over a year after it came out, "Sweet Child O' Mine" would be the Number One song in the U.S.