Songoftheday 6/8/18 - When I look into your eyes I can see a love restrained, but darlin' when I hold you don't you know I feel the same...
from the album Appetite For Destruction I (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 20
Today's song of the day comes from the rambunctious hard rock band Guns N' Roses, whose ambitious double record/separate release set Appetite For Destruction I & II had already spun off three pop hits with "You Could Be Mine" from Terminator 2, their cover of Wings' "Live and Let Die", and the top ten ballad "Don't Cry". In the spring of 1992, the album track "Pretty Tied Up" from Use Your Illusion II climbed to #35 the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard. The fourth physical release from the record would be the nine-minute epic power-ballad "November Rain". A song Axl Rose had been kicking around since the early 1980s, the track finally made it on to this album, though member Izzy Stradlin had since left the band to be replaced by Gilby Clarke on rhythm guitar. But it was Slash that provided the focus of the record, with three guitar solos that are used to great effect in the music video that cost in the seven figures...
So wait, the people in California are so fragile that she dies because she got caught in a rain for like, what, two minutes tops before she ran inside?
Anyhoo, "November Rain" became Guns N' Roses' eight top-40 pop hit in August of 1992, and the last before 2008's return with "Chinese Democracy". The single climbed to #15 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. A fifth single from the double set, "Yesterdays" from Use Your Illusion II, reached #72 on the pop Hot 100 and #13 on the Mainstream rock list; but internationally, it as a much bigger success, hitting #8 in the UK, #5 in Ireland, #6 in the Netherlands, and #7 in New Zealand . Finally, "Estranged", also from the second disc, made it to #16 on the rock radio tally in America, and top-40 in New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia. The clip for "November Rain" was an MTV Video Award for Cinematography. And clocking in at just under nine minutes, the song remains the longest top ten hit in rock history.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the band performing "November Rain" live in Japan in 1992...
Axl brought along Elton John to do the song for the MTV Video Awards in 1992....
Lastly, here's the reunited band mashing up "Layla" with "November Rain" at Rock in Rio in 2017...
Up tomorrow: Pop superstar hits the diamond, with some nostalgia.
Comments