GUNS N' ROSES

I don’t think I can overstate how much Guns N’ Roses shaped me.

I was never very popular or cool when I was young. In grade school, I didn’t have many friends, and those who were my so-called friends, I could never really connect with. They were on a different wavelength from me. I was an outcast to say the least.

Then came Guns N’ Roses in my life. I think the very first song I ever heard might’ve been either Welcome to the Jungle or Sweet Child O’ Mine. Those are usually the ones even non-fans know the tunes of. But man, the moment I heard the riff on Sweet Child, or the opening snarl of Axl on Jungle, it was like a lightbulb had gone off in my head. Most of my peers were listening to Fall Out Boy, Paramore, or some other indie rock band. I listened to my fair share of those, but they never hit me like the Guns did.

I felt woke. I felt as though these guys were outsiders who had made it, who had done things their own way, and who didn’t give a fuck about what people thought about them. I memorized and took to heart every melody and lyric of Appetite for Destruction, and their later albums as well. They had this attitude that none of the contemporary bands at the time did.

At the same time though, there was such precision in the way their songs were structured. They weren’t sloppy. You could tell an incredible amount of time and effort had gone into every lyric and every note. You could tell Axl very precisely knew when and how to use his massive octave range. How Slash’s guitar solos were never too long or too short, but just right. Appetite for Destruction’s success wasn’t a fluke, it was the work of a group of craftsmen.

To this day, they still have an incredible influence on me. They taught me it was alright not to give a shit about what other people thought, to do your own thing - to do what you felt was right. That you didn’t have to fit in to create amazing things; in fact, that fitting in maybe even hindered you from doing so. They helped give me the confidence to go out there and just be myself, opinions of others’ be damned.