YMMV / Guns N' Roses

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: "My World" coming in at the end of Use Your Illusion II - in contrast with the rest of the album's mix of hard rock and power ballads, it's a minute and a half of Axl Rose talk/rapping over industrial-style drum machines, synthesizers and sound effects. Axl wrote that song all by himself while nurturing a love of Nine Inch Nails, and put it on without informing the other band members. Slash only found out about the song after buying a copy.
• Broken Base: The fanbase is very split over the new GNR lineup and Chinese Democracy. On one side you've got the no Slash, so it sucks camp, the people who think Axl's jumped the shark, those who want a re-release of Appetite for Destruction, and those who simply don't like the new musicians and album. On the other, there are Axl fans, people who appreciate the talents of the "Hired Guns" and the new directions the music is taking, and people who just like Guns N' Roses regardless.
  • Now with the Not In This Lifetime Tour, fans are divided into two groups: the ones who don't consider it a real reunion without Izzy and Steven, and the ones who are just happy to have Slash and Duff back.
  • Melissa Reese seems to be this. Some people think she's a refreshing addition to the band and one of the most talented members so far, but others think that her keyboard playing adds nothing to the music, that her look and aesthetic don't match well with the band, and that she was only hired in an attempt to appeal to a more modern audience. Melissa herself states that she tries deliberately to not get in the way of the sound of the classic lineup songs, merely adding sonic layers for a wider sound, so she's mostly audible replacing Chris Pitman on Chinese Democracy songs, and playing the synths on "Paradise City".
• Covered Up: "Since I Don't Have You", "Ain't it Fun"; "Knockin On Heaven's Door" and "Live And Let Die" for some folks as well.
  • Although much less prominent, there's a small group of people that don't know that "Raw Power" and "I Don't Care About You" aren't originals.
• Ending Fatigue: "Paradise City" can be tiring sometimes. It looks like it's going to end on the double chorus, until Axl starts putting in some screaming and the song changes gear into a faster second act that lasts half as long as the main song, complete with a bit more lyrics, Slash's solo and a rather long outro.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Melissa Reese for the 2016 lineup. Probably by way of being the best singer ever to pass through the band.
  • Gilby and Matt are both pretty well respected considering they replaced other well liked members Izzy and Steven.
    • Guitarist Richard Fortus has also garnered some appreciation, at least from the guitarist community, for his accessible and down to earth attitude, especially during the 2016 tour.
• Epic Riff: "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Welcome to the Jungle" as well.
  • The riff for "Sweet Child o' Mine" is an interesting example, in that it started off as just Slash messing around. Axl had happened to hear it and write lyrics to it. The fans love of the song made it epic when the band thought it was just going to be album filler.
• Fandom Rivalry: Some with Nirvana, but even more with Stone Temple Pilots, best known as the band of the ex-vocalist of Velvet Revolver. Funnily enough, Axl was a fan of Nirvana and tried to get them to open for them on a tour, but Kurt Cobain refused because he felt their public image was ridiculous and outdated. And regarding the latter, Axl himself brought in the Velvet Revolver song "Slither" to the setlist once Slash and Duff returned.
• First Installment Wins:
  • Appetite for Destruction is to this day regarded as the best work the band has made. Its status as a Sacred Cow in hard rock and 80s rock cements this firmly.
  • "Don't Cry" had two versions, released separately on Use Your Illusion I and II, respectively. Both were released as singles, but the version from Illusion I was released first, and is the one that most people remember.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Axl's divorce from the woman who inspired "Sweet Child o' Mine" which stemmed from him beating her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Tommy Stinson's most famous band is The Replacements.
  • When asked back in 2012 when GNR would do a reunion tour, Axl said, "Not in this lifetime." Guess how that one turned out. GNR even lampshaded the irony by naming their first tour with Slash and Duff in over two decades the "Not in This Lifetime... Tour".
• Memetic Mutation:
  "He's in my ass, that's where Slash is! Fuckhead! Go home."
  • GIVE 'EM SOME REGGAE!!!
  • WELL, THANKS TO THE LAME ASS SECURITY, I'M GOING HOME!
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • "Paradise City" is not a happy song, being about feeling disillusioned with life in the city and wanting to go back to the small town you came from.
  • "One in a Million" was Axl's attempt to write about race and a changing America from his perspective as a small town naive white boy from Indiana arriving in Los Angeles for the first time. The song though would become popular with many in the White Nationalist movement and also many who felt Axl was speaking the truth to them and identify with the song's racist, homophobic, and nativist lines. The neo-Nazi group Skrewdriver later covering the song only added to this association. There is a reason the band has only played the song a few times and none within the last 30 years.
  • "Used to Love Her" might be fun to sing after breakups, as after all it's clearly meant as a joke. But at least two murderers had listened to the song prior to killing their girlfriends.
• Misattributed Song: They have never recorded "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" (Poison) or "Cat's in the Cradle" (Ugly Kid Joe).^note The original version of "Cat's in the Cradle" was by Harry Chapin. But that version would be less likely to be confused with GNR.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Let's just say there's a reason why they only performed "One in a Million" a few times between Appetite for Destruction and G N'R Lies, and not at all after.
  • The Riverport Riot, to the point where people associated with the Riverport Amphitheatre and the incident in question are still sore about what had happened and every major venue in the city was reluctant to book GNR to perform there. There's still bad blood between GNR and St. Louis; a commercial being broadcast on KSHE in 2011 was interrupted simply because the music in the background happened to be "Paradise City", and on GNR's official site for their 3D concert film Appetite for Democracy, the state is apparently deliberately misspelt as "Misuri" in the section listing the showtimes. It would be 26 years before GNR would perform in St. Louis again.
• One-Scene Wonder: Often invoked. Slash's session work, even with some...unusual collaborators...remains popular and in some cases outshines the main artist.
• Protection from Editors:
  • Chinese Democracy is the prime example of what happens when an egotistical tyrant is given virtually limitless time and cash to record a follow-up album.
  • The twin Use Your Illusions are a lesser example of this, but it's clear that they had no leash.
• Replacement Scrappy: Arguably drummer Matt Sorum despite him being an accomplished drummer and generally well-liked among fans. Steven Adler though, was even more liked and many felt his swing style drumming fit the band's sound better than Sorum's more technical and polished drumming. Axl certainly seems to feel this way about Sorum; while he has described Slash, Izzy and Duff as "former members," he usually refers to Sorum as a "former employee." Ouch.
  • Pretty much every single member that joined during the Chinese Democracy era got this status from fans of the classic lineups, except Josh Freese and Richard Fortus. In Freese's case it likely comes from him never performing with the band in concert and his drumming only being featured on the track "Oh My God," due to his contributions being replaced on the album (his playing wouldn't be heard on anything else until early versions of several songs leaked in 2019). Richard gets a break because he replaced Paul Tobias, who was probably one of the most disliked figures of the NuGuns era by other members of the band (Slash publicly stated several times he hated him and Matt called him "the Yoko Ono of Guns N' Roses" and blamed him for its dissolution), and is seen by most as a marked improvement over him. Bearing a passing resemblance to Izzy also probably helps.
  • Believe it or not, this even popped up among fans of the CD era. The first lineup to perform with Axl after the last show in 1993 consisted of Buckethead, Robin Finck and Paul Tobias on guitars, Tommy Stinson on bass, Brain on the drums, and Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman on keys and various instruments. Half of them had been replaced by the end of the tour in 2011. As stated above, Richard is the only one not slapped with scrappy status by a large portion of the fans, while Ron, DJ and Frank (who replaced Buckethead, Robin and Brain, respectively) are seen by many as being a step down from their predecessors. Ron in particular got a lot of criticism for replacing Bucket's solo on Shackler's Revenge and Brian May's on Catcher in the Rye with pieces that some said sounded like senseless noodling that didn't fit with the songs (in his defense, replacing the solos was not his decision and he played his parts without being able to access the tracks for reference whenever he needed to). DJ had a considerable amount of hate thrown his way for his Tim Burton-esque top hat (something he never wore outside of GNR, which caused many accusations of him trying to rip off Slash's signature look) and later for his blatant advertising of Monster energy drinks and his own brand. These wardrobe centered promotions earned him the nickname "DJ Swagba" among his detractors.
  • Funnily enough, there seems to be a small portion of the fanbase that sees Slash, Duff and Melissa as this, preferring the CD era to have continued and potentially seen the release of the rest of the songs recorded during the album sessions, instead of the band going on what some see as a seemingly never ending nostalgia tour with no album release in sight. Not helping matters was the revelation in 2018 that the next album was being worked on for a 2016 release, but was then shelved in favor of the reunion tour.
  • Bumblefoot seemed to be this within GNR itself, not necessarily out of a desire to play with Buckethead again, but because the group had gotten used to the idea of performing as a seven man lineup since it had taken two years to replace him. Thal was a last minute addition made by Axl, joining just weeks before the 06 tour began. He was not welcomed with open arms by the rest of the band. According to him, the bullying and harassment he received only stopped after he had to assert himself through unknown means. It is known that the incident earned him the nickname "Shank," which is something he has refused to elaborate on even a decade later.
• Retroactive Recognition: A year before the release of the first Blind Melon album, Shannon Hoon contributed backing vocals to six songs on Use Your Illusion I ^note Plus the "alternate lyrics" version of "Don't Cry" from Use Your Illusion II, if you count that as a separate song, where he's credited in the liner notes simply as "Shannon". He's probably most recognizable on "Don't Cry", "You Ain't The First", and "The Garden". The "Don't Cry" video also featured Hoon performing alongside the band.
• Second Season Downfall: People have said the band should have went out with a bang instead of dragging its obviously decayed corpse for so long with the follow up albums.
• Signature Song: Tied between "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City", and "Sweet Child o' Mine", all of which are some of the most iconic rock songs of all time and have been featured or referenced in countless movies and TV shows. "November Rain" is also a very close contender, beating out "Sweet Child o' Mine" as the band's most-viewed song on YouTube.
• Song Association:
  • "You Could Be Mine" will forever be associated to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Especially thanks to the music video with the presence of the T-800 itself.
  • "Paradise City" has become affiliated to Burnout Paradise. The song is used as the theme to that game, which takes place in a fictional city called Paradise City.
• Win Back the Crowd: Axl definitely did this by mellowing out, burying the hatchet with Slash and bringing him back into Guns N Roses.

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