The release, at midnight on September 17, 1991, of Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II was a big deal. Geffen Records may have put out GN'R Lies in 1988 to cash in on the phenomenal success of Appetite For Destruction, but every genuine Guns N' Roses fan knew that the sprawling Use Your Illusion twin-set - featuring 30 songs, and a run time of over two and a half hours - was the true follow-up to their killer debut. The albums duly entered the Billboard 200 charts at number 1 and 2 - II taking the top spot by virtue of selling 770,000 copies compared to the 685,000 first-week sales of I - cementing the Los Angeles band's status as one of the biggest bands in the world.
Some weeks later, LA resident Cynthia McCloud Woodman was understandably somewhat surprised to receive a phone call from her brother Billy claiming that he'd co-written one of the new Guns N' Roses' songs that local rock radio stations were spinning.
"He called me on a Monday," she told the Appetite For Distortion podcast last year, and he goes, Hey, remember I told you that I used to hang out with Axl Rose, and I used to play with them, and we'd write songs and stuff together? Well, I don't know, they were playing song on the radio, and it's my song that I wrote with him. It's my song, Yesterdays, and I wrote it with Axl in the mid-80s."
Had she not been introduced to Axl Rose in a Los Angeles club in the mid-'80s, McCloud Woodman might have thought that her brother was spinning her a yarn. At that time, Billy McCloud was playing in a rock 'n' roll band called The Prodigals Sons, and on the night in question they were supporting LA Guns, who Rose was singing with. For a few months in the mid-'80s, McCloud also was room-mates with Del James, who became close friends with Axl Rose, co-wrote songs with the singer, and went on to tour manage Guns N' Roses: McCloud told his sister that, after after hearing Yesterdays on the radio, he had called up the station's DJ to ask who had written the song, and was told that it was credited on the album to [Wes] Arkeen / James / Billy / Rose.
"He said, 'They only listed my first name. What am I supposed to do, that's my song?'" McCloud Woodman recalled.
