— Mike Soutar
I hadn't been gone a month and it was as if I'd never been there. I left the UK on August 4th and immediately went back to the life I'd left behind. The same friends I had nothing in common with (and even less so now), the same summertime routine of sleeping in, swimming lessons and slurpees, the same aimlessness that would fester for a good many years. It would be some time before the experience of living in Britain would sink in. As for the old world itself, it never knew I was there. This issue of Smash Hits bears little in common with the pop scene that I had just left behind. Groups were coming, groups were going, groups were returning, groups were pretending.
As everyone says, pop stardom is fleeting. The fame window only remains open for so long. In this issue's singles review, Mike Soutar examines a handful of acts who were just about done with their rides on the giddy carousel of pop. Johnny Hates Jazz had spent 1987 and the early part of '88 enjoying a string of hit singles and a big fat smash album before vocalist Clark Datchler decided he'd had enough. Now, they were back (BACK!!) with Phil Thornally doing the singing (I think he once had a cup of coffee in The Cure and would eventually write "Torn", the global hit for Natalie Imgruglia in 1998) but they were soon to discover that they weren't about to strike gold a second time. Soutar predicts it's either sink or swim for the latest Danny Wilson single (it's the former) and they would promptly vanish. The London Boys had had a pair of big hits but their momentum was about to disappear with third attempt "Harlem Nights Desire". As for The Jacksons, what in god's name were they still doing around in 1989 anyway?
Even some of the bigger names here were soon to fall off somewhat. Gloria Estefan's Cuts Both Ways was her best album yet but her music would never be the same following the terrible bus crash at the start of 1990. All this Batman nonsense wasn't doing Prince any favours and it would be some time before he got back on track. Madonna was peaking but she too was entering a rather fallow period that wouldn't be set right until close to the end of the nineties. Bobby Brown (see below) promised a future that never came — unless, of course, you happened to be anticipating a future of creative bankruptcy, violence and a craft service table of choice narcotics.
Boozing, dirt-bag hard rockers may have had it right all along. Their philosophy (to the extent that any of them had one) seemed to be get rich, party hard and make the most of every second until it all dries up. Even if they'd end up leaving a trail of rock 'n' roll casualties, the vast majority of them wouldn't have changed a thing if they could live it all over again. And no group seemed to live larger than Guns N' Roses.
Metal groups tend to take a while to catch on. Def Leppard toured all over the place and had two albums that sold respectably — in spite of their very un-metal titles — before they really started to take off with the 1983 album Pyromania — whose title is very metal. Similarly, Bon Jovi did a pair of LPs that hardly anyone bought before releasing breakthrough Slippery When Wet. GNR, however, were different. I always assumed they had some self-titled debut put out in 1985 that nearly got them released from their record label but there is no such album. In fact, Appetite for Destruction appeared to be a potential metal obscurity in its first year before mainstream audiences joined headbangers in purchasing it en masse.
The album came out in 1987 but it wouldn't start to sell until '88. It is, therefore, appropriate that their proper boom in Britain would be delayed until '89. "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Welcome to the Jungle" were minor Top 30 hits in the second half of 1988 but these were strictly being picked up by metalheads; the pop kids were just going to have to wait. Somehow or other, "Paradise City" was where they began to emerge in the UK. Its Top 10 success was then followed by a remix of "Sweet Child o' Mine" (with Slash's edited guitar solos making it preferable to the original in my opinion) and "Patience", taken from mini album G N' R Lies. The tunefulness of the former and the acoustic mournfulness of the latter was all well and good but what about the Guns N' Roses that drank and debauched themselves into a rock cliche?
"Nightrain" had already appeared as a double A-side with "Welcome to the Jungle" a year earlier. As was customary with the format (barring the odd "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane"), only one song got what little airplay there was to be had and it wasn't "Nightrain". The good news of being spurned the first time was that it still had legs as a single in its own right. Still, just because a record can be released doesn't mean it needed to be.
There's nothing especially wrong with "Nightrain" but it doesn't exactly scream potential hit. While as vigorous as any song with lyrics about being "loaded like a freight train" and "flyin' like an aeroplane" and "feelin' like a space brain" ought to be, it isn't particularly catchy the way earlier hits managed to be so effortlessly. Instead of being that tacked on single that no one needed, it would have been better off being that deep cut that fans reckon really ought to have been a single. It didn't do them any harm and performed better than it deserved (a signal of how big they had become was that a former double A-side and cut from Appetite for Destruction still had legs to get into the Top 20) but no one paying attention to the charts became Guns N' Roses fans because of it. Their fanbase was big enough by this time to guarantee some chart action especially since it's crammed with Axl Rose screaming and loads of high-octane guitar riffage. What more could people want?
Thankfully, they refrained from putting out more material from their first album. The group was beginning to stockpile fresh songs (in an earlier issue of Smash Hits, Rose admits to having a song called "November Rain" that he's determined to put out or else he'll "quit the business") that would result in the highly-anticipated twin release of Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, albums that were almost as big as Appetite for Destruction and which would spawn a string of Top 10 hits. Their inevitable self-destruction would be delayed until afterwards. Not that they have any regrets or anything.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Bobby Brown: "Rock Wit'cha"
It never occured to anyone at the time but Bobby Brown and Guns N' Roses were living parallel lives. Both released albums that took a while to get going (especially in Britain) and both were in the midst of their imperial periods when they released these rather substandard singles. Brown's run of hits was surprisingly diverse (the new jack swing of "My Prerogative", the cool R&B of "Don't Be Cruel", the whimsical "Every Little Step") so it stands to reason that a quiet storm number would be on deck. Anticipating Boyz II Men, it's the sort of thing that I've never warmed to in the hands of male vocalists. (Anita Baker, for one, did it way better) The British weren't convinced either as "Rock Wit'cha" only managed to limp into the Top 40. Brown's notoriety was enough to keep him a hit parade regular in the early-nineties but a GNR-esque collapse was coming. Those imperial periods come with a heavy price.
No comments:
Post a Comment