Feb. 03, 2010 - Issue #746: Spine

Guns N’ Roses

Guns N’ Roses
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, Guns N' Roses

Guns N' Roses
"The Spaghetti Incident?"
(Geffen)
Originally released: 1993

Music is a slippery beast. The same group of musicians can play the same bunch of notes two times in a row, and one of those performances can very easily stand out while the other elicits little more than shrugs all around. The equation gets even more complicated when musicians are swapped in and out of bands, or a song travels from its original version through the instruments of another group—sometimes it's good, sometimes not so much.

And it can be hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that works or doesn't. Sometimes its just a feeling that arises as several musicians lock in with each other.

In the case of Guns N' Roses, when the band hit the streets with 1987's Appetite for Destruction the original quintet's raw sound was a breath of fresh air in a landscape where rock 'n' roll was both slick in production and stiff in style. There was a decided focus on grooves on GNR's debut, and that was something that had been sorely missing at the time.


The thrill of the band is apparent in a 1988 performance at the Ritz in New York, filmed for MTV as the band was on the rise. Chaos is a word that comes to mind as the instruments practically collide with each other, the band barely holding together, yet somehow rearing a unified head as it tumbles along. Watching that group was almost like watching a smash-up derby: it's exciting because it might fall apart at any second.
But then the band began to fracture, first losing drummer Steven Adler in 1990 and then guitarist Izzy Stradlin in 1991. There was a rather subtle shift in sound, the band becoming plenty more polished and professional onstage, hitting all the right notes, but also far less exciting.
It was with 1993's "The Spaghetti Incident?" that it became clear just how lost the band was; what had originally been planned as an EP of old-school punk covers, blasted out with Stradlin still on guitar during the recording of the already bloating Use Your Illusion two-album set, finally emerged as a full-length record. Stradlin's guitars were wiped off the early recordings and replaced by his stand-in, Gilby Clarke, and the disc was filled out with some newly recorded material.

The end result? Well, an album that captures a band in decline, really. It's not a good record, but there's something fascinating about that. "The Spaghetti Incident?" is the sound of a last gasp, one final attempt to corral the band and summon its original punk-rock spirit. But it was already too late: Nirvana had already filled the void for careening punk-rock, and the polished, pieced-together recordings that GNR offered up were nowhere near enough to reclaim the band's old status as scene leaders. While most of the notes are in the right spots—and the few tracks sung by bassist Duff Mckagan summon some raging, pent-up energy—but it just doesn't feel right, and the band sounds insignificant for the first time.
"The Spaghetti Incident?" stands as a document of a band that had made it as far as it did by sheer force of will, the unified front the members had formed on the LA streets eroded by success  as they teetered on the brink of destruction. In hindsight, it's an interesting time capsule of a group struggling to emerge from the shambles. V

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