As Guns N’ Roses’ triumphant Glastonbury set reminded everyone, the tracks from Appetite For Destruction aren’t just hard rock classics, they are songs embedded in popular culture – tunes your mum knows, riffs your weird uncle can hum, music that even your TikTok-obsessed niece knows the words to. But back in the 80s, the band were kicking their heels whilst they were forced to sit on their collection of soon-to-be-megahits. Well, we say kicking their heels – they were more likely to be found kicking people’s doors in to steal their booze and drugs.
They’d formed in 1984 and were signed in ’86 but then they found themselves in a period of limbo, as Slash told Metal Hammer’s James Gill. “From ’86 until ’87 seemed like a fucking eternity,” the guitarist recalled. The cause of this stasis was that everyone in town had heard about what the riotous, debauched upstarts were like, and no-one wanted to buckle down in the studio with them. “No one wanted to work with us, we had the worst reputation, we freaked everybody out who met us,” Slash continued.
