Guns N Roses' Use Your Illusion I And II (33 1/3)

Guns N Roses' Use Your Illusion I And II (33 1/3)
by Eric Weisbard

Guns N Roses' Use Your Illusion I And II (33 1/3)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Eric Weisbard
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-12-27
ISBN: 0826419240
Number of pages: 136
Publisher: Continuum

Book Reviews of Guns N Roses' Use Your Illusion I And II (33 1/3)

Book Review: Its not THAT bad
Summary: 3 Stars

I took a risk with this one because I thought the premise sounded interesting. I am a big fan of this series and liked Appetite for Destruction and had Use Your Illusion II when I was younger. If you are looking for a book about the making of the album, this certainly isn't it. This book was more about the significance of an album that sold 28 million copies but is currently regarded as a guilty pleasure at best. I bought it used for $1.50 and don't regret it.

I feel that some of the reviews here are misleading. The author talks about the band throughout the entire book and only talks about his own life and experience with the album for 5-10 pages (and even then there is a context related to the band). All that being said, its not a perfect book; it can be difficult to fully follow Weisbard's points and he tends to say the same things over and over. On the whole, its a mixed bag.

If you are interested in reading about the end of the era of "blockbuster albums" and like the 33 1/3's about Belle & Sebastian or Celion Dion(which have more to do with context and history of the albums), you might want to check this one out.

Summary of Guns N Roses' Use Your Illusion I And II (33 1/3)

It was the season of the blockbuster. Between August 12 and November 26 1991, a whole slew of acts released albums that were supposed to sell millions of copies in the run-up to Christmas. Metallica, Michael Jackson, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Garth Brooks, MC Hammer, and U2 - all were competing for the attention of the record-buying public at the same time. But perhaps the most attention-seeking act of all was Guns N Roses. Their albums Use Your Illusion 1 and 2, released on the same day, were both 75-minute sprawlers with practically the same cover design - an act of colossal arrogance.
 
On one level, it worked. The albums claimed the top two chart positions, and ultimately sold 7 million copies each in the US alone. On another level, it was a disaster. This was an album that Axl Rose has been unable to follow up in fifteen years. It signaled the end of Guns N Roses, of heavy metal on the Sunset Strip, and the entire 1980s model of blockbuster pop/rock promotion. Use Your Illusion marked the end of rock as mass culture.

In this book, Eric Weisbard shows how the album has matured into a work whose baroque excesses now have something to teach us about pop and the platforms it raises and lowers, about a man who suddenly found himself praised to the firmament for every character trait that had hitherto marked him as an irredeemable loser.
 
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