APPETITE FOR DISCUSSION
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APPETITE FOR DISCUSSION
Welcome to Appetite for Discussion -- a Guns N' Roses fan forum!

Please feel free to look around the forum as a guest, I hope you will find something of interest. If you want to join the discussions or contribute in other ways then you need to become a member. We especially welcome anyone who wants to share documents for our archive or would be interested in translating or transcribing articles and interviews.

Registering is free and easy.

Cheers!
SoulMonster

Welcome to the Jungle

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Welcome to the Jungle Empty Welcome to the Jungle

Post by Soulmonster Wed Aug 04, 2010 9:38 am

Welcome to the Jungle Newbor11
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
Albums:
Appetite for Destruction, 1987, track no. 1.


Greatest Hits, 2004, track no. 1.


Info:
One of the first songs the Appetite for Destruction lineup wrote together and the first song on the band's debut album, Appetite for Destruction. A staple in live shows since 1986, it is the song the band has played the most and one of the band's most well-known songs.

Written by:
Lyrics: Axl Rose; music: Slash and Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradin, Axl Rose and Steven Adler.

Musicians:
Vocals: Axl Rose; lead guitar: Slash; rhythm guitar: Izzy Stradlin; bass: Duff McKagan; drums: Steven Adler.

Live performances:
'Welcome to the Jungle' was played live for the first time at The Troubadour July 20, 1985. It is the most played GN'R song and has frequently been used as the show opener. In total it has, as of {UPDATEDATE}, at least been played {WELCOMETOTHEJUNGLESONGS} times.
Lyrics:

Welcome to the jungle
We 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

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

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knees, knees
I wanna watch you bleed
 
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's gonna bring you down!
Ha!


Quotes regarding the song and its making:

Talking about the lyrics:

About six years ago I hitchhiked the country and on part of that trip I ended up kind of stranded in the Bronx, in the jungle in New York, and this old black man came up to me and my friend, we were backpacking, we have no money just enough for a cup of cokes [?] and we were sitting there on the side of the freeway, up on the bridge, and the black guy, "You know were you are? You're gonna die, you're in the jungle, baby!"
Interview after show, November 24, 1987

I wrote the words in Seattle. It's a big city, but at the same time it's still a small city compared to [Los Angeles] and the things that you're gonna learn. It seemed a lot more rural up there. I just wrote how it looked to me. If someone comes to town and they want to find something, they can find whatever they want.
Geffen Press Kit, 1987

It's about Hollywood streets; true to life.
Geffen Press Kit, 1987

I slept one night in a schoolyard in Queens with a big fence around it. This black guy came up to me and said, 'You know where you are? You in the jungle! You gonna die!' So we put that in a song. Then I was in the [South) Bronx, right off the freeway where the big rock walls are and the buildings are all destroyed. There were all these cops and guys pissing on the street and little kids running around with sticks. We got stranded there on our way to Connecticut, so we climbed up the fuckin' wall and the little kids came up to us with the sticks and started bashing me in the knees, going, 'I'm gonna kick your ass, muthah fuckah!'
Circus Magazine, January 31, 1989; from an unknown 1986 interview

I'd hitchhiked the country, and I'd been in New York, and we went to Seattle, and I actually started writing it in Seattle. That was one of the first songs we wrote when Slash joined the band - and it was just when we were getting a firm grip on where we wanted to go with the music and stuff like that. It was originally "Welcome To The City," but then we figured later that we had "Paradise City" and "Move To The City." The line "Welcome to the jungle" is in a Hanoi Rocks song, but it wasn't taken from that as some people have said. It was like all of a sudden we came up with ''jungle" to replace "city" - and then the next day it was like, "Oh, man, there's a Hanoi song that says that,” but then we figured it would be OK. We don't like to rip things, and it definitely wasn't intentional. But, yeah, I kind of wrote the song about L.A., and we were at a point in our lives - here we are, kids on the street or whatever and you just see so many things happening around you that it's like the jungle. If someone  comes to this city looking for a decadent time, they can find it.
Cream, September 1989

Welcome to the Jungle is about Axl getting off the bus, you know, in Hollywood.


Slash would say he provided the riff to lyrics Axl had, and that they came up with the song before it was arranged and modified by the rest of the band in rehearsal:

Welcome to the Jungle was some lyrics that Axl wrote just about moving from Indiana into Hollywood, and it’s like a mid-America white boy meets downtown Hollywood Blvd. I just came up with the guitar part at another time. We did it separately, I had the music and he had the words. Then we sat down together and that’s what happened.

It was actually the first time me and Axl wrote together, too, as Guns N’ Roses. […] it’s basically Axl’s stab at, like, putting into writing and putting into a song: Middle America white boy meets downtown Hollywood kind of thing. That’s about as indicative as that gonna get, you know.

"Welcome to the Jungle" is the first song that me and Axl wrote together. We still write the same way. We write a song in a day, in three hours of rehearsal, but it's not as desperate as it was.
Guitar For The Practising Musician, September 1988

[It] is an introduction to Guns N' Roses. That's the first song where Axl wrote lyrics and helped me to write. I had the riff part of it.
Geffen Press Kit, 1987

Welcome to the Jungle was one of those songs that – When we first got together, I’d come up with some riff, right? And Axl had some lyrics sittin’ around. And, so, I said to Axl, “Let’s work on some tunes.” So, he came over at my place and we worked on the song. Then we went to the studio, and, as Duff said, we - the band raped it, and then it came into (?). All our songs are basically the offshoot of someone’s [?].
Musique Plus, August 1987

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.
Guns N' Roses: The Hits - 1992

I normally don't think about [the creative process]. I go in and sort of adapt. When I'm practising at home, I like to play a lot of chromatic stuff. I stop in between different notes and come up with different ideas and stuff. I'll play however many notes in succession, and all of a sudden I'll catch four and realise there's something there...and I'll start fucking with that. Rocket Queen is indicative of that approach - basically just sitting around and playing, maybe zoning out, watching TV and playing guitar at the same time. All of a sudden, the ear catches something. Welcome To The Jungle has a lot of that, too. It's more or less the same kind of way I've always written; if I'm just tying notes together, not really paying attention, when you catch onto something you start there and begin working on an actual tune.
Total Guitar, January 1997

[Talking about the period after the 'Hell Tour' to Seattle]: Axl remembered a riff that I'd played him when he was living over at my mom's house, which was ages ago at this point: it was the introduction and the main riff to 'Welcome to the Jungle'. That song, if anything, was the first real tune that the band wrote together. We were sitting around rehearsal looking to write something new when that riff came to Axl's mind. " Hey, what about that riff you played me a while ago?" he asked. "When you were staying with me?" I asked. "Yeah. It was good. Let's hear it." I started playing it and instantly Steve came up with a beat, Duff joined in with a bass line, and away we went. I kept throwing parts out to build on it: the chorus part, the solo, as Axl came up with the lyrics. Duff was the glue on that song - he came up with the breakdown, that wild rumbling bass line, and Izzy provided the texture. In about three hours, the song was complete. The arrangement is virtually the same as it appears on the album. We needed an intro and I came up with one that day using the digital delay on my cheap Boss guitar pedal board. I got my money's worth out of that thing, because as crappy as it was, that pedal provided the tense echo effect that set the mood for that song and eventually the kickoff for our debut album.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York

I wrote that part [the intro with the delay] specifically with the effect in mind. I had one of those old, funky, grey, plastic Boss pedal boards, and one of the settings on it was delay. I turned it on and just started messing around. The line is pretty simple, but it sounded very cool with the echoed notes. What's funny is that there are those few extra notes at the very beginning-that diggita diggita-before the pattern kicks in. That's because whenever we would do that song I'd hit the first note a few times to make sure I was in time with the delay. And it just stuck as part of the intro.
Guitar World, 2007 (?)

'Welcome to the Jungle' started out with the main riff of the song, that descending riff, which I played for Axl at my house one afternoon. I have a vivid memory of that. At some point later on, the band was rehearsing and Duff came up with the breakdown section in the middle and I came up with the intro. That part was written with the delay in mind - I think I had just gotten one of those Boss delay units. It was one of those things were the synergy was such that the song came together in one afternoon. I remember the lyrics being especially poignant because they were written about Axl's experience in the streets and his whole summation of moving to Hollywood.
Guitar Edge Magazine, March 2007

I remember we were at this rehearsal space and Axl asked me about this riff I had, the one that would become "Welcome to the Jungle." I started out with it and I had three parts to it, it and everybody had input into it. It just became a song. It's a really strange arrangement. I don't think there's one orthodox arrangement on that record, and it's because everybody had input. I'd start out with a riff and maybe a verse part, and things would take on a life of their own. It was very spontaneous,
Leslie West interviews Slash, August 2017

[...] I think I had this [plays verse rhythm] I had that part and I was trying to think of an intro. [...]  And so I was just trying to think of an intro and that just came, I don't remember spending a lot of... too much time. I mean, that song came together when we, remember Nicki Beat? We were rehearsing at Nicki Beat's place in Silver Lake and we would have three hours booked there and a lot of the material on Appetite for Destruction came during those sessions and- [...]  It was just all of us coming in to rehearse. And Welcome To The Jungle was a riff that I had already had, that I played for Axl at one point, you know, and he mentioned at Nicky's, "Play me that riff that you had the other day," and so we started working on that riff and I just [plays intro] You know, it just came pretty quickly.


But Duff would insist it was he who came up with the riff:

Actually, my first single that I ever did it was in 1979. I played bass and my name was Nico Teen. The band's name was the Veins. And I wrote a song on the single, the B-side. It’s called “The Fake” and, if you hear the chord progression, it's what Jungle… it finally became Jungle, Welcome to the Jungle, fantastic. So I started writing, really quite badly, but-

We have agreed to disagree on a lot of things. I’ll give Slash credit, and he’ll give me credit, and we’ll take credit other times when the other guy’s like, “Wait—fuck, dude.” So, there’s this song I wrote when I was about 14 and recorded it with my first ever band, the Veins. [It was] the B-side of this single, a song called “The Fake.” If you ever get your hands on it, you’ll hear the “Welcome To The Jungle” riff. I always thought the riff was too good, so in my 19-year-old recollection, I thought I brought that riff in from “The Fake.” I’m pretty sure I did. It’s too late to argue. We split the publishing evenly, so none of us have had to, thank God. That was probably the smartest thing we did. You don’t hear any arguments about who wrote what, or who gives a fuck.
The Onion A.V. Club, May 2011

One of our signature songs [...] had an even longer gestation [than 'My Michelle'] - part of it went back to the very first song I ever wrote. Now in L.A. seven years later, the main riff from that first song came back to me as we were putting together another tune about the hardscrabble lives we lived. As with 'My Michelle,' one of Slash's amazing chiming staccato riffs became the intro, and the main section of the song hurtled along atop the riff from my Vains song 'The Fake,' now played on bass. Axl had some lyrical fragments he'd been working on since the Seattle trip, and we created an extended bridge around those - a dreamlike section echoing the words 'when you're high' devolved into a churning, nightmarish wash of sound of which Axl howled, "Do you know where you are?"
Duff's autobiography, "It's So Easy", 2011, p. 97

Welcome To Jungle, the verse riff is from this old punk rock band.


Introducing the song:

This song is for LA.: This is called 'Welcome to the Jungle'.
Los Angeles Street Scene, September 28, 1985


Talking about recording the song:

It's the perfect introduction to Guns N' Roses. [...] It came across, I think it was, on the third take. We did the whole album that way. Second or third take. That's where spontaneity comes from. If you don't get it by then, you've lost the feel of it.
Hit Parader, March 1988

I also used one [a six string bass] on Appetite; "Welcome to the Jungle"'s got one. You can hear this "brriinnng" in the chords when it goes to the slow parts; that the six-string bass.
Guitar World, February 1992

We started to demo all the songs that we were considering for Appetite, and went through them with Mike [Clink] pretty much as we'd done them before with very few changes. The only creative shift that occurred was one of Alan [Niven]'s suggestions actually. In 'Welcome to the Jungle,' originally we repeated the section where Axl sings "When you're high, you never want to come down." Alan suggested taking one of them out. He was right. It made the song tighter.
Bozza, Anthony, & Slash (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment: New York, pp. 167


Niven would also discuss his involvement in arranging the song:

There was one song though that I was a little concerned about, and I felt that it was going to be an important song, and I felt that there needed to be something said about it. And that was actually Welcome to the Jungle. And originally it was, to my memory, a verse-chorus, verse- chorus, verse-chorus. And I felt uncomfortable about that arrangement, and in a pre-production rehearsal I asked Slash and Axl to look at that. And they came up with a really tasty little guitar bridge to break up it being just verse-chorus, verse-chorus, verse-chorus. Now, that was the only time that I ever had a comment.


Talking about the song:

I consider the song to be the most representative of what we're like.
Geffen Press Kit, 1987

I guess the most intense one [from Appetite] is "Welcome to the Jungle," which also happens to be sort of our anthem. It deals with life on the streets of Hollywood.

Much as I love New York City, I cringe at the thought of "Welcome to the Jungle" being played to pump up fans at Yankee Stadium. It is then that I am the opposite of pumped, and I always think to myself, "No. That song wasn't written for YOU guys!"
Hometown Songs for Hometown (Sports) Fans, Reverb Column, Seattle Weekly, November 2010

I liked 'Jungle' from the first time I heard it when it just came out.
Teraz Rock Magazine, July 2012


Welcome to the Jungle Newbor11


Last edited by Soulmonster on Mon Feb 19, 2024 2:40 pm; edited 40 times in total
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Post by Soulmonster Fri Feb 03, 2012 3:23 pm

From a review of Etta James' last record:

What a pity that the world lost this 73-year-old legendary American songstress to complications from leukaemia last month.

But at least she left the music world on a high note: The Grammy-winning At Last singer's last album is strong, spirited and soulful. Her resonant renditions of slow-jams like Ray Charles' In The Evening are testament to her great talent.

The best part? The unexpectedly bluesy, altogether-fierce cover of Guns N' Roses hit, Welcome To The Jungle.

Source: http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Showbiz/Story/A1Story20120203-325612.html
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Post by Soulmonster Mon May 07, 2012 4:26 pm

Another cover:

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Post by Soulmonster Wed May 08, 2013 1:32 pm

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Post by Soulmonster Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:30 pm

Jeff Giles wrote:30 Years Ago: Guns N’ Roses Film Their ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ Video

On Aug. 1, 1987, Guns N’ Roses stepped in front of the cameras at the shoot for the music video that would launch their incredible career.

That clip, for the Appetite for Destruction track “Welcome to the Jungle,” served as proof of Geffen Records’ cautious investment in the rookie band. Destruction had only just entered stores a few days earlier, and the record’s first single, “It’s So Easy,” had already fizzled out on the charts; at the time, few suspected GNR’s powerful potential.

Perhaps for that reason, director Nigel Dick — already an MTV veteran through his work with Tears for Fears — kept things relatively simple at the shoot, lining up a performance at the Whisky a Go Go where they could be filmed running through the song onstage and playing it in front of fans. Between the live footage, the band members were shown on the streets of Los Angeles, reclining with runway-ready women, or — in frontman Axl Rose‘s case — mainlining cable news in front of a pile of televisions, Clockwork Orange style. All pretty standard stuff for the era, but as was so often the case with Guns N’ Roses, there were some hairy moments along the way.

Former manager Alan Niven, who credits himself with the idea of copping a Clockwork Orange vibe and blending it with Midnight Cowboy and The Man Who Fell to Earth, recalled guitarist Slash being a particular problem during the shoot. Niven told Rolling Stone that at one point, Slash “sort of kidnapped” a vehicle being used in the shoot — and the next day, after Niven banned alcohol from the set in response, he turned around and asked for a beer.

At another point, Niven recalled Slash wandering into the middle of L.A. traffic, waving a bottle of Jack Daniel’s at “terrified rush hour motorists” — a situation only brought to Niven’s attention by a member of the crew.

“I explained, in short syllable Anglo Saxon, and with a certain degree of firmness, that this was behavior that was not suited to the circumstances,” said Niven. “Slash looked me silently in the eye, then turned and walked home – some six or seven miles away.”

In the end, whoever was responsible for the ideas and whatever the problems that might have occurred along the way, the “Welcome to the Jungle” video lived up to Niven’s stated goals, blending the urban decay, aggressive nihilism, and dystopian overtones of its influences into a piece of work that fit within the established template for a hard rock video of the era while still suggesting that this was a band capable of breaking every rule. Fittingly, it stayed off the airwaves for months, as MTV execs refused to put it in rotation and Appetite languished in the lower reaches of the charts.

According to A&R exec Tom Zutaut, who signed Guns N’ Roses and proved one of their most dogged evangelists at Geffen during those make-or-break early days, the label was ready to abandon promotional efforts after nine months — a span in which Appetite for Destruction moved roughly 200,000 copies and was “seen as a failure.” Informed by his boss that the company was pulling the plug on the album, Zutaut went over his head and called label chief David Geffen, convincing him to make one last push; Geffen, in turn, called MTV’s CEO, who agreed to air the “Welcome to the Jungle” video at 4AM ET.

“The next day, I had multiple phone calls from my office,” Zutaut told LA Weekly. “I got in around four in the afternoon, and the head of promotion told me the video had lit up MTV’s switchboards. He was yelling hysterically and said MTV finally added the video into rotation after just one play of ‘Welcome to the Jungle.'”

After simmering for months, Appetite finally exploded, with third single “Sweet Child o’ Mine” hitting No. 1, “Welcome to the Jungle” breaking the Top 10 after being re-released to radio and “Paradise City” rounding out the record’s trio of crossover hits on the way to 30 million copies sold (and counting). Guns N’ Roses — and mainstream rock — would never be the same after “Jungle” finally reached the airwaves, but even on that L.A. shoot, Dick knew he was watching something special.

“I became, for a while, the go-to guy for that kind of band, and I’d get all these awful band managers coming up to me, ‘The job you did for that band was amazing, man, so you’ve got to do for my band what you did for Guns N’ Roses,'” he told Rolling Stone. “You just go, ‘Oh my God.’ If the guy ain’t Axl, he ain’t Axl. You can be the best video director in the world, but if the singer doesn’t have his oats together, you’re f—ed.”
Source: http://ultimateclassicrock.com/guns-n-roses-welcome-to-the-jungle-video/
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Post by Soulmonster Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:34 pm

More about the making of the music video:

"I came up with the idea of stealing from three movies: Midnight Cowboy, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Clockwork Orange," GN'R's then-manager Alan Niven says of the "Welcome To the Jungle" video. On the set, all hell broke loose. "Slash got completely out of it and tried to steal the motor home that we were shooting," director Nigel Dick says. "Suddenly the motor home took off and lurched across the street and made a U-turn and came scrunching to a halt. Slash sort of kidnapped the vehicle. The next day, I said, 'All right, we'll have no drink on set, we've got to be together.' The first person to come up to me is Slash, and he's apologizing. He says, 'I'm sorry I took the motor home up into the hills, I hope I didn't damage it too much.' I remember thinking, 'He crashed the motor home? Fuck!' He hadn't -- this was part of his vision of the night before. He said to me, 'So I understand we can't have drinks on the set. Can I have a beer, man, please? I can't remember what my response was, but I'm sure he got his way."
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/guns-n-roses-video-history-behind-the-scenes-of-the-appetite-clips-20070803
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Post by Soulmonster Fri Jun 22, 2018 8:47 am

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Post by Soulmonster Fri Nov 22, 2019 10:13 am

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Post by Soulmonster Fri Nov 22, 2019 10:18 am

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Post by Soulmonster Thu Dec 19, 2019 8:19 am

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Post by Soulmonster Fri Feb 07, 2020 10:09 am

Avenged Sevenfold Singer: How Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" Changed My Life
M. Shadows: "I used to jump up on my bed and air-guitar to Slash solos"

Not surprisingly, considering his band's free-wheeling, kaleidoscopic sound, Avenged Sevenfold's M. Shadows has been shaped by all kinds of music over his lifetime and career — from Pantera to Elton John. Count among that list Guns N' Roses (duh), and particularly their smash hit "Welcome to the Jungle" off their unfuckwithable 1987 debut full-length Appetite for Destruction. When we talked to Shadows about the 10 songs that have shaped him as a person and an artist, he included that iconic single among his picks. Below are his thoughts on its profound impact on him.

"It's the quintessential GN'R song. My dad had heard it on Headbangers Ball one night, and he just flipped out and bought the tape. That song probably made me who I am today, because it made me become obsessed with Guns N' Roses, and obsessed with rock & roll, in general. I used to jump up on my bed and air-guitar to Slash solos. I would steal the tape, and then my parents found out I had it, so my dad made me an edited version of the tape — he took all the cuss words off it. And then I got GN'R Lies, and he didn't want me to have that at all, because of the lyrical content."
Source: https://www.revolvermag.com/music/avenged-sevenfold-singer-how-guns-n-roses-welcome-jungle-changed-my-life
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Post by Soulmonster Fri Jan 08, 2021 9:20 am

New quote from Slash:

Welcome to the Jungle was some lyrics that Axl wrote just about moving from Indiana into Hollywood, and it’s like a mid-America white boy meets downtown Hollywood Blvd. I just came up with the guitar part at another time. We did it separately, I had the music and he had the words. Then we sat down together and that’s what happened.
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Post by Soulmonster Sun Feb 06, 2022 1:50 pm

I slept one night in a schoolyard in Queens with a big fence around it. This black guy came up to me and said, 'You know where you are? You in the jungle! You gonna die!' So we put that in a song. Then I was in the [South) Bronx, right off the freeway where the big rock walls are and the buildings are all destroyed. There were all these cops and guys pissing on the street and little kids running around with sticks. We got stranded there on our way to Connecticut, so we climbed up the fuckin' wall and the little kids came up to us with the sticks and started bashing me in the knees, going, 'I'm gonna kick your ass, muthah fuckah!'
Circus Magazine, January 31, 1989; from an unknown 1986 interview
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Post by Soulmonster Mon Feb 07, 2022 5:47 pm

I guess the most intense one [from Appetite] is "Welcome to the Jungle," which also happens to be sort of our anthem. It deals with life on the streets of Hollywood.
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Post by ludurigan Tue Jul 19, 2022 5:24 pm

Found this cool Timo Kaltio (the musician who wrote part of Right Next Door To Hell with Izzy) and the interviewer asks him about some "controversy" about the "Welcome to The Jungle" song title.

Source = https://www.melodylane.it/NEWSITO/index.php/857-timo-kaltio

MELODY LANE: Have you ever talked to IZZY about the controversy over the title of the song WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE? ... Was it taken from the verse of the song UNDERWATER WORLD by HANOI ROCKS? “…”Welcome to the ocean, Welcome to the sea, Welcome to the jungle, Deep inside of me…”
TIMO KALTIO: Well, I don't know, yeah, it just happened to talk about it ... As far as I know IZZY didn't really agree with using the words WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE because it seemed like they were ripping something from HANOI ROCKS but AXL always claimed that those words came from the title of a book he was reading at the time, and that HANOI song had nothing to do with that. Honestly I don't know the book, I tried to look for it on the web but I never found it; anyway what I know for sure is that GUNS were big fans of HANOI ROCKS and that verse is pretty clear ... But who knows?
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Post by Soulmonster Sat Sep 10, 2022 7:16 pm

Welcome to the Jungle is about Axl getting off the bus, you know, in Hollywood.
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Post by ludurigan Fri Apr 07, 2023 9:53 pm

Welcome to the Jungle Axl-slash-hollywood-rose-1984-marc-canter_1048x

Tracii Guns has just said that Axl and Slash wrote "Welcome to the Jungle" in Hollywood Rose, before Guns n' Roses even existed

I have the impression that that goes frontally against what pretty much everyone else says on the subject -- that "Jungle" was the first song that they wrote after the "appetite" line-up got together.

Right?

According to Tracy it was earlier than that!

"Izzy and Axl were in a band called Hollywood Rose and when Slash was in Hollywood Rose, they wrote “Welcome To The Jungle”. But for some reason, when we* got together as Guns N’ Roses, we didn’t play “Welcome to The Jungle”. I don’t know why. I don’t remember but that was always a favorite song of mine that they had."

* I believe that by "we" Tracii means the first "Guns n' Roses" lineup of himself, Axl, Izzy etc, without Slash

I just love how different people tell different stories about the same events!

Secondary source: Tracii Guns recalls some of the songs L.A. Guns played in their early days that became Guns N’ Roses tracks

Primary source: L.A. GUNS Tracii Guns Interview- New Album BLACK DIAMONDS- Randy Rhoads Film, Early Guns N' Roses

Guns n' Roses talk starts at 24m51s

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Post by Blackstar Sun Apr 09, 2023 1:02 am

Very interesting, @ludurigan.

I'll add it to the interview section, too.
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Post by ludurigan Sun Apr 09, 2023 3:00 am

Blackstar wrote:Very interesting, @ludurigan.

I'll add it to the interview section, too.



Yeah I found that quite interesting as well.

That kinda remembered me when I read a fantastic biography on Carmen Miranda, a Portuguese-Brazilian singer and movie star that made her way into Hollywood.

The book goes on on detail to say how Carmen's American agents completely embellished her upbringing/life story (exaggerating a lot of stuff and going as far as completely creating made-up stories that never happened) to -- in their eyes-- make her more interesting/palatable/etc to the American press and to American audiences.

I believe Geffen could very well have instructed the boys to do the same or they themselves may have decided to do it. What sounds more interesting? To say that "Jungle was the first song we wrote together as a band", or to go on and say "oh that is a song we wrote about a year before Guns n' Roses even existed when we were in another band"?

I also found interesting how Tracii apparently refused to answer the question about how much of a hand he had in writing and/or arranging the songs that later became Guns n' Roses songs.

He sort of leaves in the air that yes he had a hand but it is never clear what he actually did, if he wrote anything or helped arranging the songs etc

It is interesting that he gives the It's so easy example (he says something like "nobody knows who wrote what or how much on that song") but West Arkeen is credited on that song as a writer, while he,Tracii, doesn't have (as far as I know) any writing credits on any song ever recorded by Guns n' Roses, right?

Anyway, talking about Tracii, I have to say that this song and this video are hysterical = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq16JlLdXl4
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Post by Soulmonster Thu Aug 17, 2023 3:39 pm

Welcome To Jungle, the verse riff is from this old punk rock band.
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Post by Soulmonster Tue Sep 05, 2023 5:24 pm

Slash talking about how he came up with the intro to Welcome while rehearsing at the Love Palace:

No, it's just, I think I had this [plays verse rhythm] I had that part and I was trying to think of an intro. [...]  And so I was just trying to think of an intro and that just came, I don't remember spending a lot of... too much time. I mean, that song came together when we, remember Nicki Beat? We were rehearsing at Nicki Beat's place in Silver Lake and we would have three hours booked there and a lot of the material on Appetite for Destruction came during those sessions and- [...]  It was just all of us coming in to rehearse. And Welcome To The Jungle was a riff that I had already had, that I played for Axl at one point, you know, and he mentioned at Nicky's, "Play me that riff that you had the other day," and so we started working on that riff and I just [plays intro] You know, it just came pretty quickly.
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Post by Soulmonster Fri Feb 02, 2024 2:04 pm

[...] the fact that the intro to Jungle is used so universally here in America and sporting events all these years later is pretty stunning. And just from a small personal level, when I'm in a hockey arena and I hear Slash's riff start - and I have heard it before a couple of times - it's amazing because when I hear the combination of a crowd responding to their team responding to the music it still gives me goosebumps as if I were in an arena watching the band. Which is very bizarre to me that after all these years that I can sit there and literally break out in goosebumps just like back in the day.
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Post by Soulmonster Mon Feb 19, 2024 2:39 pm

Alan Niven stating that he suggested changes to Welcome to the Jungle and that the band agreed:

There was one song though that I was a little concerned about, and I felt that it was going to be an important song, and I felt that there needed to be something said about it. And that was actually Welcome to the Jungle. And originally it was, to my memory, a verse-chorus, verse- chorus, verse-chorus. And I felt uncomfortable about that arrangement, and in a pre-production rehearsal I asked Slash and Axl to look at that. And they came up with a really tasty little guitar bridge to break up it being just verse-chorus, verse-chorus, verse-chorus. Now, that was the only time that I ever had a comment.
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