Greatest Hits Reviews:

Allmusic.com

Of course, by the time (William Bruce) Axl Rose was galloping stage left to stage right in a pair of hot pants, hollering like the lunatic asylum’s most weird, pathetic and scary resident, replete with beard and lumberjack shirt, we knew it was all over. In truth it was all over the moment Appetite For Destruction had its original cover pulled back to the safety of the inner sleeve (the infamous robot-rape illustration), though the crucifix-&-skulls that remained, as decidedly camp as it may have been (though still nothing on Poison or any other of a dozen hair-metal stooges), still managed to upset the people it was meant to upset (even if that was only really your gran).

Guns ‘n’ Roses existed at such high-octane velocity that burn out was never merely an option; it was always an inevitability. Quite how they therefore managed to fade away, promises of Chinese Democracy (Smile for the Reagan generation, to the power of ten) still reverberating around those ears desperate enough to want to hear it, a decade and a half of diminishing returns after that debut album struck home like a dozen Molotov cocktails drunk by a stage girl who’s pants are fated to be pulled down in the green room within 30 seconds of them off staging, is a mystery. Or a myth. You choose.

It’s in the way that fag dangled from Duff’s mouth, that needle from Izzy’s arm, that guitar from Slash’s shoulder, that JD bottle from Adler’s hand, that girl/immigrant/cop/parent from Axl’s clenched and hateful and impotent and childlike fist. We all know the stories, pissing on people during first-class flights, drummer’s dying (nearly) or being poached from consistently successful and safe (by comparison) English rock bands, tempted by a whiff of infamy and danger and ludicrous, bathetic, terrible, fatal excess, the best songwriter leaving and the ego-driven frontman turning into Elton John and being unable to cope with the pressure and expectation and fame and money and drugs and girls. The stunning, iconic, masterful, legendary lead guitarist being named after a euphemism for taking a piss, and coming from Stoke-on-Trent.

So now that Interscope have dumped millions of dollars into an album that will never appear by a band that doesn’t exist lead by a frontman who refuses to perform, Geffen finally put together a Greatest Hits package. It is, of course, in the tradition of all half-assed and pointless Greatest Hits, chronological and stupid almost beyond belief. The opening four songs may be the greatest opening four songs of such a collection ever, but by the time the Dylan cover, the anti-war song, the one from the sci-fi soundtrack, the power-balled and the power-balled with three guitar solos (Slash, best man at the wedding, topless, strides out of the church and lets rip to the clear blue skies and swirling whorls of epic dust) are over and done with there are only the woeful punk covers and the inevitable Rolling Stones trudge (“Sympathy For The Devil”) left to see us out of the rock n roll door, it’s hard to remember why we came here in the first place.

And we came for “Paradise City”, still the only truly great stadium rock song ever written. We came for “Sweet Child O Mine”, still the only truly great power-ballad ever written. We came for “Welcome To The Jungle”, savage and stupid and honest and nasty, and we came for “Patience”, sensitive and sweet and honest and vulnerable. We would have come for “Rocket Queen” or either version of “You’re Crazy”, but they’re not here. We would have come for “Mr Brownstone” (goddamn yes we would) or “Nightrain” too, but they’re not here either. Hell, we might even have come for “One In A Million”, a tune so sweet with words so vile and putrid that- actually, no, we wouldn’t have come for that.

Sod it. Go back and buy Appetite… Buy the two Use Your Illusions as well, if you must, they’re cheap enough if you scour the bargain bins. Download “Patience”, the acoustic “You’re Crazy”, and skip past The Spaghetti Incident altogether. Guns ‘n’ Roses’ greatest hit was their first album.

Reviewed by: Nick Southall

Reviewed on: 2004-03-17

Stylus Magazine

Definitive Guns N' Roses
While waiting for Chinese Democracy, Geffen Records has given us a taste of the LA band's old hits

By Paul Zach

EVERY time someone predicts the death of rock 'n' roll, someone else comes along to prove that rock 'n' roll will never die.

After Led Zeppelin demonstrated how the music could soar in the early 1970s, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty saved it from plummeting down the middle of the road to extinction.

In the 1980s, U2 and REM delivered it from the evil of album-oriented rock radio.

Then, as the 80s turned into the 90s - and just before Nirvana and Pearl Jam sparked the rock renaissance of the last decade - a nasty, noisy band from Los Angeles filled the gap, however briefly.

Guns N' Roses, or GN'R in shorthand, was - let's leave it in the past tense despite the recent reunion attempts - hardly the best-loved or most-acclaimed rock band ever.

Critics accused Guns of shooting from the hip by ripping off riffs from every band from Aerosmith to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Fans quickly tired of Axl Rose's posturing.

But on a good night, when Rose slithered on stage and wrapped his shrill wail around the microphone, and Izzy Stradlin and Slash exchanged sizzling guitar fire, the band defined rock music.

The sounds they created were at once as ugly as a crown of thorns and as gorgeous as a rose.

With grunge waiting in the wings, GN'R delivered only three full-fledged albums and a few odds and ends before, like many great rockers that came before, imploding.

The attempts at reuniting keep fizzling.

A long-promised new album called Chinese Democracy is threatening to join the Beach Boys' Smile in the ranks of rock 'n' oblivion, even as Universal's Interscope has dumped millions into its production.

In the meantime, Universal's Geffen Records apparently is trying to recoup some of that cash by releasing the band's first Greatest Hits collection.

The album pulls together 14 tracks from GN'R's Appetite For Destruction - the 1987 album that took until 1988 to become an instant classic - and Use Your Illusion II and I, its second and third best albums in that order.

Also included is a sprinkling of music from GN'R Lies and The Spaghetti Incident covers album. Finally, there's the Guns' reworking of the Rolling Stones' Sympathy For The Devil for the Interview With A Vampire movie. Sweet Child O' Mine shows off Rose's vocal histrionics at their most irresistible in a song he wrote and sang for his bride, Erin Everly, the daughter of Don Everly of the legendary Every Brothers. The marriage lasted only three weeks.

Another ear-opener and all-time personal favourite is Civil War. It begins with an old woman who sounds like she's speaking lines for a Ken Burns' documentary, and Ennio Morricone-style whistling.

Then it crashes into an anthemic diatribe against wars of all sorts, from the domestic to the political.

The album also underlines GN'R as one of the best cover bands ever, notwithstanding Sympathy which is one of the worst covers ever.

The band's take on Knockin' On Heaven's Door rivals, if not exceeds, Dylan's original.

Live And Let Die is no contest - GN'R brings the kind of tough edge to the song that John Lennon would have brought to Paul McCartney's track if they'd recorded it as the Beatles.

Otherwise, the collection is a bare-bones affair - no rare unreleased tracks, no demos, no surprises, not even liner notes or a decent photo of the band.

Like any 'best of's' it only leaves real rock lovers hungering for remastered reissues of the Appetite and Illusion albums - and we sure could use a little Chinese Democracy too.

The Straits Times (Singapore)

Guns N Roses
Greatest Hits
(Geffen)

Never has the word 'stopgap' been so apt. With the five-years-in-gestation Chinese Democracy album by single remaining G'n'R member (Axl Rose) reaching mythical status, and with gigs cancelled and the band in disarray, Geffen have little choice but to offer us this album. Not such an easy task when you consider that these 'bad' boys have only managed 5 albums in 17 years (actually only three proper ones). Their Stone Roses-challenging work rate makes for slim pickings for any would-be compiler, so no one's going to be surprised at the tracks on offer here.

Of course being notorious for your anti-social behaviour and third world-supporting drug habit is a pretty good excuse for a low work rate. And didn't these boys come along and save rock'n'roll? Casting a timeworn eye over these offerings suggests that history may not see it quite that way. The fact is that, in context, G'n'R were a very American aberration. Always hailed as some mutant hybrid between hard rock and punk attitude, Slash and Co. were more the illegitimate offspring of earlier, poodle-haired LA monstrosities such as Motley Crue. The look was pure cartoon; Johnny Thunders meets Keith Richards in a transsexual bar. Any reference to punk makes the common error of mistaking acting like a five year old after a long birthday party with challenging cultural mores in a constructive manner. No one ever changed the world with a bottle of Jack Daniels and an inability to say 'no thanks, I've had enough'.

What is really bewildering is how they conquered the world back then. This kind of stadium rawk was frankly dated by the late 80s, so why did we take them to our hearts? The clue's in three of the first four tracks (''Welcome To The Jungle'', ''Sweet Child O' Mine'', ''Patience''). All lifted from their breakthrough album Appetite For Destruction they show a band who, although they hated each other and had a singer with a voice like Bruce Dickinson on steroids, still knew that if you had a good riff and a lovely melody there was no stopping you.

Unfortunately, after that no one could. While their Neanderthal stance was a brief respite to the over-pc 80s (check the unpleasant original cover to the first album) nobody told the band it was a joke. Four addled years later they gave us the unwieldy Use Your Illusion (I & II) double offering with ill-advised cover versions and maudlin ballads (showing off Axl's sensitive side, natch). Only their Terminator II-marketed ''You Could Be Mine'' retained the fire of their early work. And even that starts with the lovely lines: 'I'm a cold heartbreaker - fit to burn - and I'll rip your heart in two. And I'll leave you lyin' on the bed.' Charming...

So, less a guilty pleasure than a warning to all people who think spandex, heroin and anger management problems are like, cool, man. These days a band like the Darkness, who retain a sense of irony, wit and their own transience in the scheme of things, make a man whose name is a naughty anagram and has mates with names like Izzy, Slash and Duff look a little silly. Their day has truly passed...

Reviewer: Chris Jones

BBC.co.uk