Guns N' Roses "The Spaguetti Incident?"

"The Spaghetti Incident?" is the fifth studio album by the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses. The album is composed of covers of older punk rock and hard rock songs.[1] "The Spaghetti Incident?" is the only studio album to feature rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke, who replaced original Guns N' Roses member Izzy Stradlin during the band's Use Your Illusion tour in 1991, as well as the last album to feature guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum. It is also the only Guns N' Roses album not to be accompanied by a supporting tour.

As of March 2018, the album has sold 6,100,000 copies worldwide.

Many of the tracks were recorded with original Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin during the Use Your Illusion I and II sessions and then were later re-recorded with Gilby Clarke. Those tracks were previously intended to be included in a combined Use Your Illusion album, consisting of three (or possibly four) discs, instead of the two separate discs they ended up being.

In 1992, the band prepared to release the leftover cover tracks as an EP, with Gilby Clarke replacing Stradlin's guitar tracks. They later decided on making the album a full release and recorded several more tracks for it. Bassist Duff McKagan sings on many of the album's tracks and Hanoi Rocks frontman Michael Monroe appears on "Ain't It Fun" as a guest vocalist. This was the last Guns N' Roses album to feature lead guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan, drummer Matt Sorum, and the only album to feature Gilby Clarke. It was also the band's last studio album until 15 years later with Chinese Democracy, and its last album until the live compilation album six years later with Live Era: '87-'93.

During the studio sessions the band also recorded instrumental tracks of the song titled "Beer and a Cigarette", originally by Hanoi Rocks. The vocals were not recorded and the song was left out of the record because the band didn't want the songwriter Andy McCoy to get the money. The band also did an instrumental version of the song "Down On The Street" by The Stooges which also was never released.


On the bottom of the cover art of the album, there is a code written with the Zodiac Killer's symbols, which has been deciphered as "fuck'em all".

The title is an inside joke referring to a food fight between Axl Rose and Steven Adler. Much was made of this food fight during Adler's lawsuit against the band in 1993, in which Adler's attorney referred to it as "the Spaghetti Incident". The meaning was explained by drummer Matt Sorum in a 1994 interview with Much Music and confirmed by Slash in his autobiography, Slash.

During a discussion between Rose, Slash and the album's cover designer in the "Making of Estranged" video, it is made clear that the correct form of the title is within quotation marks and with a question mark.


The album was released shortly after the conclusion of the Use Your Illusion World Tour which had lasted until mid-1993. The vinyl copy of the album was released on orange vinyl, and the CD was released with color designs and markings: black concentric rings around the outer edge, and an indigo and blood-red depiction of an evil jack-o-lantern eating spaghetti out of a hollowed-out, decollated head in the center, which would later be changed in the 1997 reissue to simply a plain silver colored CD.

An unadvertised cover of the Charles Manson song "Look at Your Game, Girl" was included on the album. The track was kept secret, including not being on advance tapes sent out to reviewers. Band manager Doug Goldstein stated "There is a bonus track on the album, but Axl wants it to speak for itself." and that "It wasn't done for the critics or anybody else. It was a bonus for the fans." The inclusion of the song caused controversy, with law-enforcement and victims-rights groups expressing outrage over its inclusion.


Rose claimed "the reason we didn't list that song on our album is we wanted to downplay it. We don't give any credit to Charles Manson on the album; it's like a hidden bonus track." The band considered removing the song from new pressings of the album, with David Geffen stating in a phone interview, "I would hope that if Axl Rose had realized how offensive people would find this, he would not have ever recorded this song in the first place. The fact that Charles Manson would be earning money based on the fame he derived committing one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th Century is unthinkable to me". Slash mentioned that the song was "done with naive and innocent black humor on our part". Rose stated he would donate all performance royalties from the song to a nonprofit environmental organization. Slash stated that the group intended to remove the song, before they decided to keep it once they learned that royalties from the song would be donated to Bartek Frykowski, the son of Wojciech Frykowski, a victim of Manson during the Tate Murders. Geffen Records released a statement mentioning their share of royalties would be donated to the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau. Years later, Rose said the song would be removed from new pressings of the album, claiming that critics and the media had misinterpreted his interest in Manson. Rose can be seen wearing a Manson shirt in the video for "Estranged" and during a concert in Milton Keynes, England, in 1993. Rose explained wearing the shirt as "trying to make a statement" because "a lot of people enjoy playing me as the bad guy and the crazy. Sorry, I'm not that guy. I'm nothing like him." Despite the statement that the track would be removed, "Look at Your Game, Girl" is still featured on pressings of the album.

Guns N' Roses "Use Your Illusion II"

Use Your Illusion II is the fourth studio album by the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses. The album was released on September 17, 1991, the same day as its counterpart album Use Your Illusion I. Both of the albums were released in conjunction with the Use Your Illusion Tour. Bolstered by the lead single "You Could Be Mine", Use Your Illusion II was the slightly more popular of the two albums, selling 770,000 copies its first week and debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. charts, ahead of Use Your Illusion I's first week sales of 685,000. As of 2010, Use Your Illusion II has sold 5,587,000 units in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. Both albums have since been certified 7× Platinum by the RIAA. It was also No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart for a single week. It is the last Guns N' Roses album to feature rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin. It also included the last Guns N' Roses song to feature drummer Steven Adler, who played on "Civil War".

The album has sold 18,800,000 copies worldwide as of March 2018.

The Use Your Illusion albums were a stylistic turning point for Guns N' Roses. In addition, Use Your Illusion II is more political than most of their previous work, with songs like "Civil War", a cover of Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", and "Get in the Ring" dealing respectively with the topics of violence, law enforcement, and media bias. The thematic material deals less with drug use than previous Guns N' Roses albums. Use Your Illusion I featured mostly songs pre-Appetite for Destruction (with notable exceptions) while Use Your Illusion II featured more tracks written during and after Appetite For Destruction.

The band's cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" had been released almost a year earlier on the Days of Thunder soundtrack, while "Civil War" debuted at the 1990 Farm Aid concert. That concert also featured Guns N' Roses playing a cover of the U.K. Subs song "Down on the Farm," a studio version of which would later appear on the band's 1993 release of cover songs, "The Spaghetti Incident?". "Civil War" was released as a B-side to "You Could Be Mine". The song had also been released on a charity album called Nobody's Child, a fund-raising compilation for Romanian orphans.

"You Could Be Mine" was released in June 1991 and is featured in the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The song was not released on the actual soundtrack. The band also filmed a video featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger in character as the Terminator, with a loose plot featuring Axl Rose as its "target". However, he is saved from termination as he is deemed a "waste of ammo" by the T-800's lock-on system. The original subject matter of the song dealt with Izzy Stradlin's failed relationship with ex-girlfriend Angela Nicoletti.

The Use Your Illusion albums can be considered a single cohesive work, and certain elements of Use Your Illusion II underscore this intent. For instance, both albums have a version of the song "Don't Cry", and both have one cover song; "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney (Use Your Illusion I) and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Bob Dylan (Use Your Illusion II). Each also has at least one track sung by other members of the band: lead vocals on "So Fine" are performed by bassist Duff McKagan – the song, that was dedicated to punk rock musician Johnny Thunders, who died from a drug overdose before the recording of the album.

The song "Get in the Ring" finds the band lashing out at a career's worth of critics and enemies. Among those referred to by name are editors of several entertainment magazines. The industrial flavored "My World," the final track, was written and recorded in three hours, with Rose claiming those in the recording room were on mushrooms at the time.

To achieve the final mix of the album, the band had some difficulty, especially during the mixing stages of the production of both albums. According to a 1991 cover story by Rolling Stone magazine, after mixing 21 tracks with engineer/producer Bob Clearmountain, the band fired Clearmountain when he tried to replace the real drums with samples. According to Slash's autobiography, "one afternoon we discovered a notepad of his where he'd notated all the drum samples he planned to mix in over Matt's drum tracks" the band decided to scrap the mixes and start from scratch with engineer Bill Price of Sex Pistols fame.

Slash has stated that most of the material for the album was written on acoustic guitars in a couple of nights at his house (the Walnut House), after several months of non-productivity. According to Slash "Breakdown" was one of the most complicated songs to record on the album; the banjo, drum, and piano parts were hard to synchronize and drummer Matt Sorum "lost it" a couple of times trying to get the drums just right. The song "Locomotive" was written in a house Slash and Izzy Stradlin rented in the Hollywood Hills following the Appetite for Destruction tours. The song shows the group dabbling in funk metal.

The cover art of both Use Your Illusion albums is a detail of Raphael's painting The School of Athens. The highlighted figure, unlike many of those in the painting, has not been identified with any particular philosopher. Both covers are the work of Estonian-American artist Mark Kostabi. The album's liner notes hide the message "Fuck You St. Louis" amongst the thank you notes, a reference to the band's controversial performance near there at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in July 1991 during the Use Your Illusion Tour.

The title of the album was the focus of a joke on an episode of the sitcom Arrested Development that aired well over a decade after the CD's release. When magician Tony Wonder (played by Ben Stiller) had to come up with a name for his home video, he decided to name it Use Your Illusion II, citing that Use Your Illusion I had already been taken, apparently unaware of the fact that Use Your Illusion II is also the name of an album. In the end, he used the title Use Your Allusion.

The song "You Could Be Mine" was featured in Terminator 2: Judgment Day in a scene in which John Connor listens to this song while fixing his dirt bike at his foster parents' house. The song was also played during the scenes in which Connor rides around the city with his best friend, and over the ending credits (after the theme music concludes). An interesting reference to the band itself takes place in the movie's plot as well, as the Arnold Schwarzenegger character successfully manages to hide a shotgun in a large box of roses and therefore rescues a co-protagonist. Years later, "You Could Be Mine" appears in Terminator Salvation, paying homage to its being featured in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Track listing

Side one

1. "Civil War" Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan 7:42
2. "14 Years" Rose, Izzy Stradlin 4:21
3. "Yesterdays" Rose, West Arkeen, Del James, Billy McCloud 3:14
4. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (Bob Dylan cover) Bob Dylan 5:36

Side two

1. "Get in the Ring" Rose, Slash, McKagan 5:42
2. "Shotgun Blues" Rose 3:26
3. "Breakdown" Rose 7:04

Side three

1. "Pretty Tied Up" ("The Perils of Rock n' Roll Decadence") Stradlin 4:48
2. "Locomotive" ("Complicity") Rose, Slash 8:42
3. "So Fine" McKagan 4:08

Side four

1. "Estranged" Rose 9:23
2. "You Could Be Mine" Rose, Stradlin 5:43
3. "Don't Cry" (Alternate Lyrics) Rose, Stradlin 4:45
4. "My World" Rose 1:24

Total length: 1:15:55

Guns N' Roses "Appetite For Destruction"

Appetite for Destruction is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses. It was released on July 21, 1987, by Geffen Records to massive commercial success. It topped the Billboard 200 and became the best-selling debut album as well as the 11th best-selling album in the United States. With about 30 million copies sold worldwide, it is also one of the best-selling records of all time. Although critics were ambivalent toward the album when it was first released, Appetite for Destruction has since received retrospective acclaim and been viewed as one of the greatest albums of all time.

Axl Rose stated that many of the songs on the album were written while the band was performing on the Los Angeles club circuit, and a number of songs that would be featured on later Guns N' Roses albums were considered for Appetite for Destruction, such as "Back Off Bitch", "You Could Be Mine", "November Rain" and "Don't Cry". It is said that the reason for not putting "November Rain" on it was because they had already agreed to put "Sweet Child 'O Mine" on it and thus already had a ballad on the album (however, both Use Your Illusion albums would contain more than one ballad).

The band started searching for someone to produce their debut, mostly recommendations made by Geffen executive Tom Zutaut. Demos were recorded under both Manny Charlton and Spencer Proffer, with some work made with the latter being issued in the EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. One of the interviewed prospects was Kiss' Paul Stanley, who was rejected after insisting on changes to Steven Adler's drum setup and the songs. The band considered Mutt Lange, but he proved too expensive to hire. Eventually Mike Clink, who had produced several Triumph records, was chosen, for being the first to record the band exactly the way they wanted.

After some weeks of rehearsal, the band entered Daryl Dragon's Rumbo Recorders in January 1987. Two weeks were spent recording basic tracks, with Clink splicing together the best takes with his razor blade. Clink worked eighteen-hour days for the next month, with Slash overdubbing in the afternoon and evening, and Rose performing vocals. Slash struggled to find a guitar sound before coming up with a Gibson Les Paul copy plugged into a Marshall amplifier. He spent hours with Clink paring down and structuring his solos. The total budget for the album was about $370,000. According to drummer Steven Adler, the percussion was done in just six days, but Rose's vocals took much longer as he insisted on doing them one line at a time, in a perfectionism that drove the rest of the band away from the studio as he worked. Final overdubs and mixing were done at Mediasound Studios, and mastering at Sterling Sound, New York City.

Many of the songs on Appetite For Destruction began as solo tracks that individual band members wrote separate from the band, only to be completed later. These songs include "It's So Easy" (Duff McKagan) and "Think About You" (Izzy Stradlin). "Rocket Queen" was an unfinished Slash/McKagan/Adler song that was written from their earlier band Road Crew, whereas "Anything Goes", written by Hollywood Rose and included in their compilation album The Roots of Guns N' Roses, was later re-written for Appetite. Most of the songs reflect the band's personal experiences and daily life, such as "Welcome to the Jungle", some of the lyrics of which Rose wrote after he encountered a man in New York shortly after arriving there from Indiana in 1980, and "Mr. Brownstone", which is about the band's problems with heroin. Lyrics to some of the songs focus on the band members' younger years, like "Out ta Get Me", which focuses on lead singer Axl Rose's constant trouble with the law as a youth in Indiana.

The album's originally cover art, based on Robert Williams' painting Appetite for Destruction, depicted a robotic rapist about to be punished by a metal avenger. After several music retailers refused to stock the album, the label compromised and put the controversial cover art inside, replacing it with an image depicting a Celtic cross and skulls of the five band members with (designed by Billy White Jr., originally as a tattoo), each skull representing one member of the band: Izzy Stradlin, top skull; Steven Adler, left skull; Axl Rose, center skull; Duff McKagan, right skull; and Slash, bottom skull. In a 2016 interview, Billy White Jr. explained, "The cross and skulls that looked like the band was Axl’s idea, the rest was me. The knot work in the cross was a reference to Thin Lizzy, a band Axl and I both loved.”

The photographs used for the back of the album and liner notes were taken by Robert John, Marc Canter, Jack Lue, Leonard McCardie, and Greg Freeman. The original cover was supposed to be on the 2008 vinyl reissue, though the record label replaced it with the "Skulls" art at the last minute.

The band stated the artwork is "a symbolic social statement, with the robot representing the industrial system that's raping and polluting our environment." In albums which were issued on double sided media (vinyl records and audio cassettes) the two sides were not conventionally labeled "A" and "B", but "G" and "R". Tracks 1–6 which compose side "G" all deal with drugs and hard life in the big city ("Guns" side). The remaining tracks, which compose side "R", all deal with love, sex and relationships ("Roses" side). In an interview with That Metal Show in 2011, Rose stated his original idea for the cover art was to be the photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding, which was on the cover of Time magazine in 1986, but Geffen refused it saying it was "in bad taste".

Track listing

Original release

All tracks are written by Guns N' Roses, except where noted.

'G' side

1. "Welcome to the Jungle" 4:31
2. "It's So Easy" Guns N' Roses, West Arkeen 3:21
3. "Nightrain" 4:26
4. "Out ta Get Me" 4:20
5. "Mr. Brownstone" 3:46
6. "Paradise City" 6:46

'R' side

1. "My Michelle" 3:39
2. "Think About You" 3:50
3. "Sweet Child o' Mine" 5:55
4. "You're Crazy" 3:16
5. "Anything Goes" Guns N' Roses, Chris Weber 3:25
6. "Rocket Queen" 6:13

Total length: 53:52

Gorefest "Rise To Ruin"

Rise to Ruin is the seventh and final studio album released by Dutch death metal band Gorefest. It was released in 2007 through Nuclear Blast. The album was released on September 25, 2007 in the US.

Track listing

1. "Revolt" - 5:27
2. "Rise to Ruin" - 4:48
3. "The War on Stupidity" - 4:14
4. "A Question of Terror" - 5:35
5. "Babylon's Whores" - 9:09
6. "Speak When Spoken To" - 4:19
7. "A Grim Charade" - 5:08
8. "Murder Brigade" - 4:15
9. "The End of It All" - 5:46

Bonus tracks digipak edition

1. "Surrealism" - 04:29
2. "Dehumanization" - 03:32

Recording information:

Recorded in March, 2007 at Excess Studios in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Vocals recorded in April, 2007 at Antfarm Studio in Aarhus, Denmark.

Produced by Gorefest.