Now I could come back to the normal listing, I skipped day 116 because I posted it a couple of days ago by mistake.

365 Day Song Challenge

Day 117 - A song by a lead singer you think is too homely for words

Welcome to the Jungle - Guns N Roses


Not in a bad way, it is just that usually the lead is the most famous guy in a band, with Guns I feel like Slash is the most famous one so…


This song is about Los Angeles. It exposes the dark side of the city many people encounter when they go there to pursue fame. Guns N’ Roses knew this side of the city well: in 1985, they lived in a place on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles that they called “Hell House.” The house was often filled with drugs, alcohol and groupies.
Axl Rose wrote the lyrics when he was in Seattle, which gave him some perspective on the size of Los Angeles.
Slash (from the notes to Guns N’ Roses: The Hits): “I was at my house and I had that riff happening and Axl came over and he got those lyrics together, and then the band sort of arranged it. We got an arrangement for the whole band, ‘cause that’s how we work. Someone comes in with an idea and someone else has input and in that way everyone’s happy. That came together really quickly too, that was arranged in one day.”
In 2007 Rolling Stone magazine ran a feature on the 20th anniversary of Appetite For Destruction. They explained that a famous lyrics from this song originated when Axl Rose spent a night in a Queens schoolyard before joining the band. Said Rose: “This black guy said, ‘You’re in the jungle! You gonna die.’”

On 93.1 WIBC FM, a radio station in Indianapolis, Indiana, Jake Query a friend of Axle Rose, gave a different account, saying: “when Axl Rose hitchhiked to Los Angeles, California, on the last leg, a truck driver drove him to Los Angeles, and when Rose got out of the truck, the truck driver said ‘Welcome to the Jungle.”
Slash re-recorded his guitar parts as he was dissatisfied with his first attempts. To produce the vicious yet pure tone, the Guns ‘N’ Roses gunslinger used a Les Paul ‘59 replica plugged into a Marshall JCM aided most probably by some Jack Daniels.
The video was shot at Park Plaza and 450 South La Brea in Hollywood. The band’s first video, it was very successful, winning at the 1988 MTV Video Music Awards for Best New Artist Video. Guns N’ Roses performed the song on the show.(Songfacts.com)


Lyrics:

Welcome to the jungle
We’ve got fun ‘n’ games
We got everything you want
Honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find
Whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey
We got your disease

[CHORUS:]

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your
knees, knees
I wanna watch you bleed

Welcome to the jungle
We take it day by day
If you want it you’re gonna bleed
But it’s the price you pay
And you’re a very sexy girl
That’s very hard to please
You can taste the bright lights
But you won’t get them for free
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my, my serpentine
I, I wanna hear you scream

Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You’ll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me

[CHORUS]

And when you’re high you never
Ever want to come down, YEAH!

You know where you are
You’re in the jungle baby
You’re gonna die
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your
knees, knees
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my, my serpentine
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your
knees, knees
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your
It’ gonna bring you down-HA!

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus