Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Film and music critic Saul Austerlitz recently published his book Money for Nothing (http://www.amazon.com/Money-Nothing-History-Beatles-Stripes/dp/082641818X) (A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes) which tells the history of the music video, delving into it's origins, function, stars, motifs, genres, conventions, and masterpieces. Guns N' Roses' trilogy, ?Don?t Cry,? ?November Rain,? and ?Estranged?, tops the author's 'Top 100 Videos List'. Here are a few excerpts from text:


Of all of music video's epic productions, of all it's pretensions to glamour and glitz, none are quite so gloriously overblown as Guns N' Roses' magnificently melodramatic trilogy of videos from their 1991 double album Use Your Illusion. Even "Thriller" paled in comparison with Axl Rose and Co.'s megalomaniac trio of clips, which tells a discombobulated, symbolically fraught tale of lost love and shattered dreams. Having risen to take hold of the mythical "Biggest Band in the World" title after the enormous success of their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses attempted to make a series of videos that would match the band's outsized ambitions in their gigantitude.

Film critic Stuart Klawans coined the tem ?film folly? to refer to hugely ambitious films like D.W. Griffith?s Intolerance and Mikhail Kalatozov?s I Am Cuba?epic productions stemming from vast budgets and gargantuan egos. Film follies, by their very nature, are always doomed to fail at some level, but their ambitiousness also renders them uniquely fascinating, and anomalous, the white elephants of film history. Guns N? Roses? videos ?Don?t Cry,? ?November Rain,? and ?Estranged? meet the definition of film folly beyond a shadow of a doubt. Where the average video confined itself to a narrow band of locations, and a modest budget, the Guns N? Roses trilogy ballooned to epic size, with all the trappings of a Hollywood blockbuster; multiple locations, fancy helicopter and crane shots, oversized length and outsized emotion. Their enormousness made them ripe for parody (a 1994 Spin article poked fun at their tangled, near-incoherent symbolism), but they remain marvels of the video?s ambitions to cultural significance and emotional heft. And with the ever-shrinking promotional budgets for videos in the new century, it is unlikely that their equal will ever be seen again. If the early era of music video was a gathering of strength, moving toward ever-bigger, ever-grander productions, these Guns N? Roses videos were the form?s apex, the high point in a curve that swung downward in their aftermath toward the smaller, more economical, less heroically ambitious videos of today.

...

Axl emerges from the trilogy of videos older, sadder?and wiser. Having had and lost his love, he saves himself, and although no longer in possession of his illusions, he lives to see another day. Loss is the through-line of the trilogy?the loss of separation, of death, of illusions. For all their bombast, ?Don?t Cry,? ?November Rain,? and ?Estranged? are deeply adult in their evocation of wounded spirits, their summoning of the bittersweet and the tragic a far cry from the fantasy wish-fulfilment of the average music video. Guns N? Roses? grandiose ambitions, which led them to release two overstuffed albums on the same day, and Rose?s tendency toward outsized displays of emotion, culminated in this trio of clips, the biggest and brightest follies in music-video history. Easy to disdain, but hard to hate, ?Don?t Cry,? ?November Rain,? and ?Estranged? are the epitome of the music video?s crass magnificence.

Source: GnrDaily.com (http://www.gnrdaily.com/news_detail.asp?id=519)

Wow!  "crass magnificence" 

That was excatly how I felt about them. Good article.

there were some very big words in that article, great to see :yes: : ok:

jeeze I remember being in high school and going to stores trying to find the "making fuckin videos" movies...good tiimes. :beer:

i only just dusted my copies down the other day to put on to dvd then my psp.
why dont they release these officially again?

I know, i still have not seen them. :rant:

i nkow they should release them on DVD

Axl probably put a stop to it.Telling the record company that the new album will be out shortly.And Axl dose'nt want the old stuff coming out around the same time.I think a few years down the road they will be re-released.

I dont think its even come up

It might not have come up but if I was Axl I would try to put all stops to old stuff coming out so fans and new fans can concentrate on this new Guns project.

'discombobulated'.....'gigantitude'...... 'anomalous'..... 'epitome of the music videos crass magnificance'

Fuck me dead who is this book pitched at........hardly your average music fan.

Overwritten.

So....did he like, like them or not?

He saw them as bloated, interesting failures when considered by the standards of the medium, particularly during the time they were originally released. Yet he did seem to enjoy the story they unfold, signing them off as a guilty pleasures. The comparison to Intolerance was a good one, DW Griffith's epic ran at 3 hours (in 1915!) and cost him a great deal of his personal money. The film received a pretty lukewarm reception at the time, while today Griffith's legacy is primarily seen as a highly ambitious, often campy yet altogether fascinating. Watching Griffith's previous endeavour, The Birth of a Nation, where the Ku Klux Klan arrives in the end to say the day, one only wonder; "How in the Hell did he get away with that?"


"Film follies, by their very nature, are always doomed to fail at some level, but their ambitiousness also renders them uniquely fascinating, and anomalous, the white elephants of film history. Guns N? Roses? videos ?Don?t Cry,? ?November Rain,? and ?Estranged? meet the definition of film folly beyond a shadow of a doubt."

I love it when pseudo-intellectual, ivory-tower egghead music critics rip on GN'R for being pretentious!

'Unassuming' is not the first thing that comes to mind when watching the November Rain video.

great to hear this

Well, the vids for "Don't Cry" and "November Rain" still hold up today, in my opinion, but "Estranged" was a mess back in 1993, with the silly "AXL" Converse sneakers and the dolphin fiasco. Completely overblown, and that's unfortunate, because it is an epic song.

estranged starts off good (with the cool water lense effect etc), then becomes hilarious where gnr walk towards a plane and a giant dolphin shoots out lmaoooo and all of a sudden slash is soloing on an auto moving footpath, then axls diving off huge boats into the water with spandex shorts on lmao!

Don?t Cry,? ?November Rain,? and ?Estranged? are the epitome of the music video?s crass magnificence.!!

yeahh!!

I don't know... to me the Estranged video was just as cool... if not cooler... with the oil tanker/rescue helicopter/Axl's mansion/definitions/etc. I just think it gets an especially bad rap out of the three because by 1993/94 music and music videos etc. had completely shifted away from the over-blown production mega video style (Michael Jackson/Madonna/Guns N' Roses) to stripped down grunge. Estranged just ended up sticking out like a sore thumb in a way that Don't Cry and November Rain never did just 1-2 years earlier. Now that the whole grunge/stripped down thing has passed... and videos are as monotonous and forgettable as ever... I think the trilogy does stand out as an artistic high point for that style.

I thought it was a pretty fair and accurate article. Guns took a lot of risks with the ENTIRE UYI album/videos/tours/etc. Some things worked. Some things didn't. But no one can dispute the fact that it was an incredibly exciting time in rock music. No one knew what Guns was going to do or try to do next. A world premeire of a GN'R video in the early 90's was an EVENT... There's absolutely ZERO of that in rock music these days...
?

I don't like the UYI videos.  When I watch the videoes DVD, I stop at Patience.

But I totally agree with your statement there.  I remember having my friends tape the premiers so I could see them.  It was a lot of fun.

I stop at Patience too.

Sometimes I watch Garden of Eden.

I hear you. I know a lot of people who feel that way. What's amazing about Guns is that beyond these over the top trilogy videos... they really became famous first for their more "stripped down" videos off of AFD and Lies.

It will be interesting to see what direction they choose to take with the Chinese Democracy videos... if we ever get any. I suspect that we won't see much of the band or possibly even Axl... probably just let the music do the talking with some cool montages in the back or whatever... but who the hell knows. ???

A world premeire of a GN'R video in the early 90's was an EVENT... There's absolutely ZERO of that in rock music these days...
?

Damn, that is so true. Remember knowing that at 8:00 p.m. was going to be the premiere of the new GNR video. Fuck everyone was calling everyone about it. Me and my bro would be going fucking nuts with anticipation. All the fucking VJ's were so fucking onboard. MTV News would be constantly announcing it. Fuck, awesome times. IT was like the music world stopped when they had a new video. It was wild when Michael Jackson had one too and GNR was almost just the same.

Yes. I can remember the premier for YCBM video.


/bringbackadler

I love those Videos....to tell you the truth, when I watch Welcome to the Videos, I skip ahead to Don't Cry most of the time (not that I dislike the others, just like the Illusion vids better) I love how in depth they were, not just live shots. I don't like music videos that are all live shots, I'd much rather just watch a bootleg or real pro shot video then. The video for Estranged rocks, and I'll admit it, I love those fuckin Dolphins :)

Funny, I can remember the EXACT date of the MTV world premiere for "Paradise City": December 17, 1988.