I've Been Told About You

All this talk of music over at Tangled Up in Blue has me thinking about when I realized Guns & Roses was a joke. Though I was distracted by Nirvana when the bloated, piano-laden "Use Your Illusions" came out and thus didn't notice how sucky they were, with the arrival of the "Hair of the Dog" cover, I could deny it no longer. For those of you who were too young to remember when Guns & Roses hit the scene (or too old), you have to imagine what popular music was like for us. There was Michael Jackson and Duran Duran and a lot of shit that they just had to strip the vocal track off of to make it fitting for elevators. Then--I think I've told you this story before--we were sitting in junior high chorus and Tara what's-her-face took an opportunity to slip in "Appetite for Destruction" when the director went to the office for some reason and there it was. Now, we didn't know what "it" was, but we knew immediately, all forty of us little girls that whatever we were listening to was different than anything else we'd ever heard and that our parents would not approve. Axl Rose single-handedly jump-started puberty for many of us that day. And then... and then... he just got weird and bad. "Hair of the Dog" is one of the most awesome songs ever recorded. I defy you to put the Nazareth version on in your car and not speed. If there are two of you in the car, one of you will automatically take the "Now your messing with a... now your messing with a son of a bitch" part and the other of you will take the "pa pa pa pow Son of a Bitch" part and neither of you will feel the least weird that one of you is singing a guitar part. That hook. . . you hear that hook and you just know you're in for a good time. But the GNR version... It goes back to my complaint about "American Woman." When Lenny Kravitz sings it, you know he's standing across the room from a woman he really wants to fuck. When the Guess Who does it, that guy is already naked, sweaty, and got his mouth right by her ear. Lenny's sexy. I don't know why he can't sing that song like he's fucking that woman, but he doesn't. Anyway, when the guy from Nazareth sings "Hair of the Dog," he sings it like the girl he's faced with is a challenge to him, someone who's piqued his curiosity. The problem with Axl is that I don't think he's ever come across to me like a man who knows a good challenge when he sees it. And when I heard him do that song, I just knew he didn't get women. He didn't know what he was doing. I mean, obviously, the man knows what he's doing physically with a woman. But I mean, after Appetite, he tried so hard to be an Artist, to make music that would Do something. But he didn't know, I guess, that he'd already done that back before he was trying so hard.