Guns N Roses
Pull a thread
Andy Wallace mixed Nevermind because he had made Slayer records: the producer chain behind six weeks of 1991
Between 12 August and 24 September 1991, five albums arrived that rearranged what rock radio sounded like. The thread nobody pulls runs through the people at the mixing desk, and it starts on a thrash record from 1986.
The six weeks, in order
Start with the calendar, because the calendar is the part people misremember.
Metallica released the self-titled album everyone calls the Black Album on 12 August 1991. Pearl Jam released Ten on 27 August. Guns N’ Roses put out Use Your Illusion I and II on the same day, 17 September. And on 24 September, a Tuesday, Nirvana’s Nevermind and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik both landed (1991 in music).
The Guns N' Roses drum chair: seven occupants, forty years, one honest autobiography
Frank Ferrer left in March 2025 after nineteen years behind Guns N’ Roses. Line up everyone who held that stool before him and you get a clearer account of what this band has been than any interview Axl Rose has ever given.
The first one left before there was anything to leave
In March 1985, a drummer named Rob Gardner joined a new Los Angeles band. He played a handful of shows, cut an unreleased demo, and quit in May. He was gone before Appetite for Destruction existed, before the songs on it existed, before there was a reason to stay. The guy who replaced him was a childhood friend of the guitarist.
Use Your Illusion and Ænima: September 17, Five Years Apart, and What Rock Did in Between
On September 17, 1991, Guns N’ Roses released two albums at midnight and sold about 1.45 million copies in a week. On September 17, 1996, Tool released one album with a painting on the cover and a comedian at the center of the title track. It is the same date on the calendar, and the gap between them is the story of 1990s rock.
Midnight, September 17, 1991
Guns N’ Roses released two albums that Tuesday. Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II went on sale at midnight, on Geffen, and record shops stayed open to sell them. Thirty songs across the pair. Illusion I alone runs 16 tracks and 76 minutes and 9 seconds, which is roughly as much music as a CD could physically hold at the time.
September 1991: Guns N' Roses Sold 1.45 Million Records in a Week, Then Nirvana Released Nevermind
Thirty-five years ago this week, the biggest band on the Geffen roster put out two albums on the same Tuesday. Seven days later, the same label shipped 46,251 copies of a record from Aberdeen, Washington.
Tuesday, September 17, 1991: two records, one day
Guns N’ Roses did something on September 17, 1991 that nobody had really tried at that scale. They released Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II on the same day, on Geffen Records, as two separate full-price albums. Thirty songs across the pair. A nine-minute “November Rain”, a nine-minute “Coma”, an Alice Cooper cameo, a Bob Dylan cover, a Paul McCartney cover, a Charles Manson credit, and a piano ballad written from the point of view of a man mourning his own wedding. Excess was the plan, and the plan worked.