(Album ©1987, Geffen Records)
1987 was a weird year in popular music. 
The top selling album for the calendar year was Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet (released in ’86) and, while the mid-’80’s were split between the era of hair metal and mainstream mega-stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen, by 1987, hair metal was already beginning it’s inevitable decline. Take for example the rest of the top 10 best-selling albums in 1987, which were almost anything but hard rock. Only Cinderella’s breakthrough record Night Songs was even in the top 10 – the rest were mostly mainstream rockers Paul Simon, U2, Genesis, Bruce Hornsby & the Range, and Huey Lewis & the News, along with easy listening (Anita Baker), dance/pop (Janet Jackson’s Control) and one of the first big crossover rap albums, the Beastie Boy’s debut album Licensed to Ill.
The hair bands that had been among the dominant bands of the mid-’80’s were still on the charts in 1987 – Poison’s Look What the Cat Dragged In and Whitesnake’s eponymous album were in the lower half of the top 20, but so were Kenny G, Madonna, Luther Vandross, and Lionel Richie. Further down the charts, Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls was kicking around, as were records by Stryper and Ratt, but hair metal, and hard rock in general, was waning. It was getting too slick, too pretty, too safe. Bon Jovi wasn’t down and dirty rock-n-roll like 1970’s AC/DC or Aerosmith, or late ’60’s Rolling Stones. They were a party rock band from the Jersey Shore, a louder, faster Springsteen. And please don’t get me wrong – I loved and still love Bon Jovi. I just know what they were and what they weren’t. And what they weren’t in 1987 was edgy or dangerous or especially metal.
Additionally, in the second half of the year, some of the aforementioned ’80’s megastars released new albums. Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, Michael Jackson’s Bad, Madonna’s Who’s That Girl soundtrack, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, Def Leppard’s Hysteria, Aerosmith’s big comeback with Permanent Vacation, Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, INXS’ Kick, George Harrison’s comeback record Cloud Nine. Of all of those records, only Hysteria was even a hard rock record. OK, maybe Permanent Vacation too…Alice Cooper released Raise Your Hand and Yell but it didn’t do much of anything. Dokken released Back for the Attack but I refuse to discuss that any further in this post even though it sold well thanks to the Freddy Krueger-inspired “Dream Warriors” single.
And then here comes this rough, unknown band from LA with a brash album full of attitude and aggression, and I really believe that it changed everything in popular music. This is the third time I’ve written about this album on this blog, talking about the effect seeing the “Welcome to the Jungle” video for the first time had on me when I came across it one late night on MTV during my first semester of college. I was fascinated and a little taken aback. But I couldn’t get the song out of my head, and had to have the CD, which I bought the next day.
They followed up “Welcome to the Jungle” with “Sweet Child of Mine” – which was presented via a much more palatable, less threatening music video. Slash was an obvious icon with his face obscured by his hair under that top hat, and Axl was simply mesmerizing – with such a unique voice and his crazy snake dance. They had a junkie-slouch look, yet still looked cool. And every song on that album was good – no fillers. They were unique for their time.
Appetite took months to catch on, but once it did, hair metal was as good as dead. Guns came from the exact same place as the Ratt / Motley Crue / Poison nexus on the Hollywood Strip, but were so much more authentic and rockin’ and dangerous than any of those bands were, especially by the time of Girls, Girls, Girls. Guns was also more authentically Aerosmith than the Aerosmith of the mid-’80’s was. Their music – they – were simply awesome.
Appetite for Destruction ended up selling at least 22 million copies, with some reports going as high as 30 million units, making it one of the 30 or so best selling albums of all time, and the third-best selling debut album ever – behind only Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell and Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill. Appetite has aged well – the songs still jump out of the speakers, assuming you like your rock-n-roll loud and dirty. “Sweet Child of Mine” and “Paradise City” are all-time great rock-n-roll songs, guaranteed to get a bar or a group of people singing along. And I’ll never forget the way that “Welcome to the Jungle” made me feel excited about music again, just as music was getting a little too glossy and dull at the same time.
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