The Number Ones: Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

According to one of our preferred musical sources:

The first #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 was about Don
Everly. When she was a Los Angeles teenager, Sharon Sheeley had a brief
affair with Don Everly, who was one half of the Everly Brothers, a past
Number Ones artist. Everly was only three years older than Sheeley, but he
was married at the time. (People grew up quick in the ’50s.) The affair
ended badly, and Sheeley wrote “Poor Little Fool” about her time with
Everly. Sheeley then convinced Ricky Nelson to record the song. In August of
1958, when Billboard compiled its three existing singles charts into the Hot
100, “Poor Little Fool” happened to be the #1 song in America.

Almost exactly 30 years later, the #1 song in America was about Don Everly’s
daughter. In 1988, more than a year after Guns N’ Roses released their debut
album Appetite For Destruction, the LA band scored their one and only #1 hit
with “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” a song inspired by Axl Rose’s relationship with
Erin Everly. For the song’s lyrics, Axl used a poem he’d written about how
Erin’s hair reminded him of a warm, safe place where as a child he’d
lie-ee-eye and pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass him
by-ee-eye. Maybe that’s some sort of cosmic loop closing, or maybe the
Everly family just had a way of inspiring pop songs. (It would’ve been funny
if the song had been called “Sweet Child O’ Don Everly’s,” but it probably
wouldn’t have reached #1.)

Erin Everly met Axl Rose at a party in 1986, around the same time his band
signed with Geffen for $75,000. Guns N’ Roses blew through their advance
quickly, and the whole band was still living in a dilapidated one-bedroom
apartment together. For a while, Erin would take care of Axl financially. In
the ridiculously cool and casual “Sweet Child O’ Mine” video, all the
girlfriends of the band members appear; Erin is the one with the dark hair
and the video camera. Eventually, in 1990, Erin and Axl got married at a Las
Vegas chapel. Axl filed for divorce less than a month later, and the
marriage quickly got annulled. A few years later, Erin sued Axl for physical
and emotional abuse. Axl settled.

 

In the context of Appetite For Destruction, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is a
moment of great warmth and tenderness. Through the rest of the album, Guns
N’ Roses depicted themselves as drooling and hungry young street hyenas who
would fuck a hole in a brick wall and who treated women as a means to an
end. (The worst line on “It’s So Easy” — “Turn around, bitch, I got a use
for you” — is probably the most infamous example.) But on “Sweet Child O’
Mine,” Axl is a lost little kid, and he only feels any sense of peace or
refuge when he’s with Erin. That’s the dichotomy of Axl Rose, a notoriously
dangerous and self-destructive rock ‘n’ roll wildman who sang with a
searing, overwhelming vulnerability. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” isn’t exactly a
power ballad, but it’s the moment that Axl Rose allowed his whole image to
crack. That’s why it remains Guns N’ Roses biggest song, and probably their
best.

There’s a common perception that Guns N’ Roses were the outliers on the Los
Angeles glam-metal scene, that they were the band who pierced through all
the hair and the makeup and who brought the realness. I don’t think that’s
entirely true. Guns N’ Roses definitely radiated danger, and they were
easily the best of those Sunset Strip bands. GN’R weren’t too interested in
shredding or prancing or pouting, and they seemed more dialed into Stonesian
blues-slither than any of the bands that were still trying to be Van Halen.
By the time the “Sweet Child O’ Mine” single came out, some of them had even
stopped floofing up their hair.

But Guns N’ Roses played all the same clubs as every other band on that
scene. Tracii Guns, of LA Guns, was Guns N’ Roses’ original guitarist, and
gave the band half of its name. Before joining GN’R, Slash had tried out
for Poison, just barely losing the lead-guitarist spot to CC DeVille. GN’R
were friends with Faster Pussycat. Guns N’ Roses’ whole
cocky-young-predator pose wasn’t terribly different from what those other
bands were doing, even if they drew more directly from the classic rock
and punk influences that had always existed in glam metal. They were part
of that world, and their music really just shows how good the music from
that world could be. (LA Guns’ highest-charting single, 1989’s “The Ballad
Of Jayne,” peaked at #33. Faster Pussycat’s highest-charting single,
1989’s “House Of Pain,” peaked at #28. Poison will eventually appear in
this column.)

William Bailey came from a fucked-up and abusive and repressively
Christian family in Lafayette, Indiana. (When Bailey was born, the #1 song
in America was Joey Dee And The Starliters’ “Peppermint Twist – Part 1.”)
Bailey was a troubled kid who loved rock ‘n’ roll, and he and his best
friend Jeff Isbell split town in the early ’80s, moving to Los Angeles.
There, Bailey became W. Axl Rose, and Isbell became Izzy Stradlin.

Axl and Izzy formed a short-lived band called Hollywood Rose, and then Axl
spent some time singing for LA Guns. When LA Guns’ manager demanded that
the band fire Rose, Tracii Guns just started a new band with him. That was
Guns N’ Roses. In their time on the LA club circuit, Guns N’ Roses went
through a bunch of different musicians before coalescing into their
classic five-piece lineup. Soon afterward, they landed their Geffen deal
and recorded Appetite with Mike Clink, a producer who’d worked with the
Canadian band Triumph.

Appetite came out in July of 1987, and GN’R’s first two singles, “It’s So
Easy” and “Welcome To The Jungle,” both flopped. The band wasn’t much of a
priority for their label, but thanks to pressure from one Geffen exec, MTV
added the “Welcome To The Jungle” video to its late-night rotation. The video
popped, and the band started to gain steam. In April of 1988, Appetite went
platinum. Then the “Sweet Child O’ Mine” single came out, and the band went
straight into the stratosphere.

Slash famously came up with the “Sweet Child” riff while fucking around
during a jam session at the band’s house on the Strip. The rest of the
band told him to play it again, and they built a groove around it. Axl,
listening from upstairs, used that poem he’d written about his girlfriend
and fit it to the song. For years, Slash claimed to hate “Sweet Child O’
Mine.” The song, he thought, went against the sound that the band had
established for themselves. He’s right, and that’s part of what makes
“Sweet Child” so magical. The cold-sweat boogie-punk attack that Guns N’
Roses deployed on Appetite For Destruction was insanely powerful, and yet
“Sweet Child” makes the whole thing work even better. It adds dimension,
character, majesty.

There are certain songs that just seem impossible to me, songs that I
can’t believe human beings just sat down and wrote, and “Sweet Child” is
one of them. Everything about the song works. If you listen on headphones
and just focus on Duff McKagan’s bass playing, for instance, you’ll hear
the man executing some beautifully rubbery James Jamerson-style moves —
subtle melodic and rhythmic choices that help build the song in ways that
you might not consciously perceive. Izzy Stradlin’s clean guitar strums
add to the song’s folksy grace. Steven Adler’s drums move, and the band
could never find the same strut once they kicked him out. That riff
might’ve been an accident for Slash, but it’s a thing of beauty.

Just as much as the riff, though, Slash’s “Sweet Child” guitar solo has
inscribed itself on my brain. Slash is easily my favorite metal-adjacent
guitarist of all time. On that Sunset Strip scene, Slash is the one who
never got diddly and pyrotechnic with it, the one who understood how a
solo could help build a song melodically. On the “Sweet Child” solo, Slash
uses his wah-wah pedal to make his guitar sound like Axl Rose’s voice — an
injured-cat howl that’s equal parts ferocious and mournful.

Axl’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine” lyrics are simple, but they’re simple in that
oddly profound way. Guns N’ Roses were a horny band, but “Sweet Child O’
Mine” is not a horny song. When he describes Erin Everly, Axl never talks
about how she looks. It’s how she makes him feel. She makes him think of a
time when he was young and innocent and happy. Now and then, when he sees
her face, it takes him away to that special place, and if he stares too
long, he’d probably break down and cry.

The girl in the song sends Axl. She takes him away. To him, she’s the sky,
the warm and safe place far from the muck and grime of his earthly
existence. But it’s not enough. When he’s deep in his zoned-out rhapsody,
Axl comes crashing back to earth. He loves this person, but where do they
go now? He asks the question again and again on the song-closing
breakdown. He never figures out the answer.

On “Sweet Child,” Axl’s voice is a howling rasp, but it’s fragile, seconds
away from breaking. Axl is one of the all-time great rock howlers, an
emotive whirlwind who sounds freaked-out even when he’s playing tough.
Axl’s vulnerability is one of the secret weapons of Guns N’ Roses. Even
when he’s painting a picture of himself as a force of demonic decadence,
you want to take care of him, to protect him. “Sweet Child” takes that
subtext and makes it the text. It’s a perfect song, a tiny miracle.

The “Sweet Child” video is pretty amazing, too. (Director Nigel Dick had
already made Tears For Fears’ videos for “Everybody Wants To Rule The
World” and “Shout,” and his work will appear in this column a great many
more times.) The clip is just the band rehearsing and hanging out with
their girlfriends, but they look about as cool as human beings can look.
Even in domestic mode, they keep their mystique. Slash pulls off a top hat
better than anyone else in recorded history, Abraham Lincoln included.
Izzy Stradlin masters the art of the cigarette dangle. Duff McKagan wears
a CBGB shirt, and Izzy Stradlin wears a TSOL shirt, thus affirming the
punk connection that you could really always hear in Guns N’ Roses’ music.
When I was a teenage punk, I took those shirts as evidence that I could
continue to like Guns N’ Roses, that I would not be compromising my
punkness by keeping those affections intact. (For a minute there, this was
a big concern for me.)

When “Sweet Child” hit #1, Guns N’ Roses were on tour as Aerosmith’s
opening act. Pretty soon, they were more popular than the headliners.
Rolling Stone sent a writer to one of those shows to interview Aerosmith,
but in November of that year, the magazine put GN’R on the cover.
(Aerosmith will eventually appear in this column.) After “Sweet Child” hit
#1, Geffen started pushing “Welcome To The Jungle” again, and the single
finally took off, reaching #7. (It’s a 10.) Shortly afterward, “Paradise
City,” the simplest and most purely fun single on Appetite, peaked at #5.
(It’s a 9.) Appetite kept selling. A year after “Sweet Child O’ Mine” had
its two weeks at #1, the LP had moved eight million copies in the US
alone. Today, Appetite is 18 times platinum, and it’s the highest-selling
debut album in history.

For the rest of their brief and chaotic run, Guns N’ Roses remained a
pop-chart force, but they never returned to #1. The band followed
Appetite with the 1989 stopgap LP GN’R Lies, the one where Axl managed
to get jarringly racist and homophobic in the space of one line. (Axl
Rose was a fantastically talented young man who was also an
out-of-control asshole. There’s a lot more to be said about his whole
thing, but that’s my basic take.) From Lies, the soft acoustic single
“Patience” reached #4. (It’s a 10.) In 1991, the band came back with the
twin Use Your Illusion albums, and two of the ballads from Use Your
Illusion I made the top 10. (“Don’t Cry” peaked at #10, and “November
Rain” peaked at #3. Both are 8s.) GN’R haven’t gone top-10 since then,
but even when they finally returned with the long-awaited and widely
rejected 2008 album Chinese Democracy, the title track still made it to
#34.

Guns N’ Roses have had a long history that’s both too convoluted and too
widely known for me to get too deep into it here. Instead, I’ll get
personal. In July of 1992, I saw GN’R play at RFK Stadium in Washington,
DC. It was the opening night of the band’s tour with Metallica and Faith
No More, and it was my first concert. I was 12, and I’d gotten straight
A’s on my 7th-grade finals, so I’d browbeaten my dad until he agreed to
take me. My dad did not want to be there, and when Metallica’s set ended
and GN’R took another two hours to make it to the stage, he kept saying
we should leave. He thought they weren’t going to show up. He thought
there’d be a riot. (There was a riot at the Montreal date of that tour,
when James Hetfield caught himself on fire and when Axl refused to
finish the GN’R set afterwards.)

We’d taken the Metro to the show, and the last train was leaving at
midnight — or that’s what my dad said, anyway — so we had to leave the
stadium after maybe five songs. I remember hearing “Welcome To The
Jungle” starting up when we were halfway across the parking lot, and I
was crushed that I wasn’t inside. I did, however, get to see Axl launch
into a long and furious rant about the city of St. Louis, the site of
the previous Guns N’ Roses riot. Axl began by saying something like:
“They told me not to say anything derogatory about St. Louis. Well, St.
Louis can suck my dick.” It went on from there. My dad is from St.
Louis. He didn’t take it well.

By time time I saw them, Guns N’ Roses were falling apart. Steven Adler
and Izzy Stradlin were already out of the band, and the remaining
members were dealing with various levels of addiction and with the fact
that they simply were not mentally equipped to function as a
professional stadium rock band. GN’R managed to release one more album,
the slight 1993 covers collection “The Spaghetti Incident?”, before
everyone but Axl quit and Axl’s newly recruited band of ringers spent 15
years working on Chinese Democracy, an album I listened to maybe three
times. When Guns N’ Roses went into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in
2012, Axl Rose declined the induction, and almost everyone else from the
previous lineups reunited at the induction ceremony without him.

In 2016, Slash and Duff McKagan rejoined Guns N’ Roses. The quasi-reunited
band headlined Coachella, and then they toured stadiums around the world.
They came onstage on time, and they played sets that left people happy.
Nobody rioted. Guns N’ Roses kept doing that, again and again. At one
show, Steven Adler rejoined them onstage for a couple of songs. (Izzy
Stradlin had played with the band a few times before Slash and Duff
rejoined, but he’s never taken part in any further reunions.) The touring
kept going for years, right up to the pandemic, and it’ll probably start
again before long. At this point, the Guns N’ Roses reunion show has been
running for about the same amount of time as the band’s original run in
the spotlight. Against all possible odds, all the classic-lineup members
of Guns N’ Roses are still alive, and 60% of them are in a professional
stadium rock band.

If Guns N’ Roses ever decide to release new music, an idea they’ve
publicly toyed with for a while, then it could still be huge. They’re
still huge. In 2019, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” became the first music video
from the ’80s to rack up a billion views on YouTube. Last year, the band
published a children’s book called Sweet Child O’ Mine. Guns N’ Roses
really don’t need to release new music. Because of what they’ve already
done, they’ll be rich forever.

GRADE: 10/10 Courtesy of https://www.stereogum.com/2148494/the-number-ones-guns-n-roses-sweet-child-o-mine/columns/the-number-ones/