“If you lived in LA, in the trenches, you could relate to it. And knowing Axl, I could relate to exactly where it was coming from”: The electrifying early Guns N’ Roses song written in a basement that signposted how huge they would become

Guns N’ Roses posing for a photograph in 1987.

In the late 80s when Guns N’ Roses became the biggest hard rock band in the world, nobody saw it coming, least of all the band’s lead guitarist. Slash was 22 when GN’R’s debut album Appetite For Destruction was released in 1987. The album went on to sell more than 30 million copies worldwide and become the best-selling debut in US music history. But, as he says: “If somebody had told me it was gonna be this huge record, I’d have laughed in their face.”

Unlike other big rock albums of that year – such as Def Leppard’s Hysteria and Whitesnake’s 1987 – Appetite had a sound that was memorably once described as “rawer than a whore’s thighs”. It had the bludgeoning force of early AC/DC, the decadent air of a drug-sick Aerosmith, the volatile energy of the Sex Pistols and a fuck-you attitude eloquently expressed by foul-mouthed singer Axl Rose.