One night my good friend Jacob met me for dinner and said, “Dude. You must have this. I picked it up at Best Buy for super cheap, and it looks insane. It’s probably horrible but hilarious.” I looked at the cover, and it said, “The Many Faces of Guns N’ Roses: A Journey Through the Inner World of Guns & Roses.” At first, I thought, “Hey. This might be pretty cool.” I’m not a huge G N’ R fan, but I thought it was a cool compilation… until I flipped it over.
The compilation is made up of three CDs, so I’m going to go ahead and break this shit down for you.
Disc 1. The Family Tree I
Ok, so I’m not really sure what this has to do with a family tree. I mean, I guess a family tree consists of branches and roots and shit. This disc has a few tracks of the band that started this whole thing off, Hollywood Rose. This makes a lot of sense as this is a part of the Guns N’ Roses tree, but then it gets really fucking weird. We have Gilby Clarke pretty much playing on songs that he had nothing to do with from the GNR catalog, and then you have these odd “pay per session” lineups. Kevin DuBrow (who was a legend in his own right) singing “Welcome to the Jungle,” Slash and Roger Daltrey playing “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” and then you have LA Guns doing their own song, “Sex Action.”
Weird. Were times so hard on the legendary Who frontman that he had to do an Alice Cooper cover with Slash? Other than Slash, I have no idea what this has to do with a “family tree.” We even have LA Guns covering the Guns N’ Roses song “My Michelle.” Ouch. Add insult to injury by covering a song by the band started by your former singer who got bigger than you. I’m so confused. The rest of this disc is just a bunch of terrible cover versions of Guns N’ Roses song and terrible covers of songs that really have nothing to do with Guns N’ Roses at all. By the way, how fucking shitty of a band is LA Guns?
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Disc 2. The Family Tree II
Ok, so as of this disc, the only sign of a “family tree” that I am seeing is that Tracii Guns is playing Guns N’ Roses songs (he wasn’t even in the band), Gilby Clarke is playing Guns N’ Roses songs that he only performed live, and Slash shows up on a few tracks. It’s all really kind of sad, and this 2nd disc solidifies that fact. This disc kicks off with LA Guns covering Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Just typing that I thought I was having a stroke. This is what the very last person to do karaoke at some suburban bar at 3 am sounds like. It was so funny I had to listen again.
Aside from some actual Hollywood Rose songs which are actually kind of cool like “Rocker” and “Shadow of Your Love,” this disc is just some awful karaoke. Let me give you a few examples. “Mr. Brownstone” by Bang Tango, Tracii Guns, and Gilby Clarke. “Used to Love Her” by Gilby Clarke, Tracii Guns, & John Corabi, “Patience” by the same aforementioned line up (they must have cut a two for one deal), and “Wanted Dead or Alive” by LA Guns. Man, after hearing that one, I went scrambling for the Bon Jovi to clean my fucking ears out.
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Disc III: The 80’s Metal Scene
The third and final disc is nothing but a K-Tel like a mix of just random bands called “The 80’s Hair Metal Scene.” Let’s see, we have Poison, Warrant, Bullet Boys and then we have Dangerous Toys and Cinderella, neither of whom are from anywhere near California. It’s not a horrible mix of songs at all, but this disc pretty much could have been its own release as like a Masters of Hard Rock release, although I would consider Pretty Boy Floyd masters of anything besides sucking.
I am still trying to wrap my head around this shit collection. Either way, they figured SOMEBODY would buy this thing, and I guess this time around that “somebody” was my buddy Jacob. I mean, who wins in this situation? The person who paid very little to make fun of these really shitty cover versions of songs or the musicians who made these shitty covers? Did Roger Daltrey add this to his resume? Was this even really Daltrey?
I don’t know the history of releases like this. I do know that some shitty label put out some tribute albums to shitty bands like White Lion or a Tribute to Nelson or some dumb shit like that. These guys from other bands come in, they record horrible covers of songs, and I guess they get paid a tiny bit? Maybe lunch at Subway? Maybe a few old roaches found inside of an old copy of Rocks by Aerosmith? Did they pay them in take out Chinese food or some dried up skunk weed? I mean, I can’t imagine that John Corabi goes into the studio and sings “I Used to Love Her” because he thinks it’s a great song. Maybe these guys had rent to pay, and maybe Roger Daltrey lost a poker game with Slash or something.
The Many Faces of Guns N’ Roses is quite hilarious. It’s one of those things that I can totally see critiquing with my buddies in Beavis and Butthead fashion while getting really high. This collection is one of those things that I’m just baffled as to why it even exists. The packaging is excellent but honestly, it probably cost more to make it look good and misleading than what they made off of the sales. In a nutshell, the many faces of Guns N’ Roses are fucking ugly, and as far as this family tree is considered, nothing is showcased here except for the shit used to fertilize it.
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