Guns n Best of

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…

Guns N' Roses' debut, Appetite for Destruction was a turning point for hard rock in the late '80s – it was a dirty, dangerous, and mean record in a time when heavy metal meant nothing but a good time. On the surface, Guns N' Roses may appear to celebrate the same things as their peers – namely, sex, liquor, drugs, and rock & roll – but there is a nasty edge to their songs, since Axl Rose doesn't see much fun in the urban sprawl of L.A. and its parade of heavy metal thugs, cheap women, booze, and crime…

AC/DC were not the only Australia-based rock band that specialized in boogie-based hard rock and tales of hard living – as evidenced by the underrated Rose Tattoo. While Rose Tattoo enjoyed success in their homeland and in Europe, the group – fronted by a chrome-domed chap named Angry Anderson – barely managed to cause a blip on the rock & roll radar stateside…

Guns N' Roses, often abbreviated as GNR, is an American hard rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1985. The lineup, when first 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. Guns N' Roses have released six studio albums, accumulating sales of more than 100 million records worldwide, including 45 million in the United States, making them the 41st best-selling artist of all time…

The Appetite For Destruction: Deluxe Edition features 2CD's of highlights from the box and Super Deluxe Edition with the album newly remastered for the first time ever, selections of B-sides and EP tracks, and 7 unreleased recordings from the 1986 Sound City Session, “Move To The City (1988 Acoustic Version)” from the GN’R Lies session and “Shadow Of Your Love” from the November 1986 first ever recording session with the album’s producer Mike Clink. Also features expanded art with unreleased photos from Axl Rose's personal archive and memorabilia.

At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop-metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock & roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynistic, and violent; they were also funny, vulnerable, and occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit, "Sweet Child O' Mine," showed. While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out dueling guitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose screeched out his tales of sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city…

Over the course of three albums and an EP, Ugly Kid Joe managed to parlay their pronounced Guns N' Roses fixation into something of a career. On their best songs – "Everything About You," "Neighbour," and "Milkman's Son" – they blended cartoon rebellion and a sense of humor best described as pre-adolescent into powerhouse singles full of tasteless good fun. Perfect for that time of life when all one wants to do is go around breaking things. Though routinely flagged as a hair band, their twin-guitar attack and fondness for funky, bottom-end heavy riffing also places Ugly Kid Joe among the forefathers of the late-'90s rap-metal explosion. As Ugly as They Wanna Be showcases the band in all their juvenile glory – from their surprise hit version of Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" to their tight cover of Black Sabbath's "NIB" to "Busybee" – pretty much the best Guns N' Roses song Guns N' Roses never recorded – all the hits are here, present and accounted for.

This powerful four disc anthology is the very best of Guns N Roses broadcasting live on air. In the face of the overwhelming dominance of dance music they helped revive the mainstream appeal of rock music and, in the process, they created some of the most potent live broadcasts in the history of rock music. Featured here are the complete versions of three legendary broadcasts between 1989 and 1991 including all the hits from the first three albums which helped propel the band to superstardom. This digitally remastered anthology forms the ultimate collection of live versions of the hits performed from 1989 to 1991 and is essential listening for every Guns N Roses fan.