My Appetite For Destruction Story

So, Guns N' Roses debut album Appetite For Destruction was released 30 years ago. I contend that it is the best hard rock album ever made from start to finish. But that is not the point of my story.

I was in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area that summer (I was in college at the time) and listening to the now defunct (I think) Z-ROCK which had mandatory Metallica every hour (played one Metallica song every hour).

I kept hearing this song by this new band Guns N' Roses. Never heard of them, but, damn, that song was good. That trip also introduced me to Faster Pussycat, apropos of nothing.

I knew I would be entering radio wasteland on my trip home, so before I left I stopped by a record store and purchased Appetite, on cassette (I wore out two of those before I got a CD player).

Four hour drive and it played the whole time. I was so enamored with this album. I played it a lot the rest of the summer and when I returned to college was excited to share it with my buddies. Their reaction was pretty "meh". Whatever. There were a few of us that really dug it and listened to it all the time.

Fastforward a year. "Sweet Child O' Mine" was released as a single in August of 1988. MTV blew it up. Suddenly all the "meh" people had a copy of Appetite. At that point I was already on my second cassette.

Did I feel vindicated? Maybe, a little. I was just happy that this masterpiece of an album was being appreciated.

Side note: Slash's and Izzy's rhythm parts are not stereo. Slash is on the right and Izzy on the left. Slash's solos are stereo, Izzy's solo in "Think About You" is only on the left. So, if you're a real music nerd/audiophile, you can hear two different albums.