Hosts: Neil & Chris
Duration: ~56 minutes
Release: 17 June 2024
This week Neil and Chris crank the headphones, fight off chest infections and march straight into Guns N Roses' Appetite for Destruction, treating it as both scruffy gang story and studio nerd dream. Between tales of forgotten interfaces, Tascam detours and finally hearing themselves in their own ears, they sketch why this record still feels wild compared with slick Sunset Strip peers.
They trace the band from half broken rehearsal rooms full of strippers and fish tank antibiotics, through Geffen's last big money gamble, to the moment one 3am MTV spin of Welcome to the Jungle flipped the album from flop to phenomenon. Along the way you get school bus memories of kids in bandanas playing Sweet Child O Mine on battered acoustics, and a real sense of how this record rewired teenage ideas about what rock could be.
Neil and Chris spend time with the opener It's So Easy, pulling apart Duff's nihilistic lyrics, West Arkeen's co writing role and why that first UK single told you this was not just another hair metal band. They move through the brutal honesty of My Michelle, talking about writing a song a friend did not want to hear, and onto Rocket Queen, where Adriana Smith's infamous moans were captured live in the vocal booth while engineers quietly kept the tape rolling.
Sweet Child O Mine gets the kind of loving forensic treatment you would expect. The hosts talk rival origin stories for the riff, from Slash's finger warm up pattern to Duff's Seattle idea, then focus on how the arrangement and evolving outro solo turn a simple figure into one of rock's most recognisable moments. Throughout, they keep coming back to Slash's feel more than speed, the lazy on top of the beat swing and the way those LA2A and 1176 chains let the guitars snarl without losing clarity.
Appetite for Destruction sits at the point where LA glam, punk attitude and bluesy feel collide, and this episode makes the case that its imperfections are exactly what give it staying power. By walking through the censorship battles, MTV brinkmanship and low key technical choices, Neil and Chris show how a supposedly uncommercial, too dangerous band accidentally made the biggest debut album of all time.
Revisiting it now, with middle aged throats, hi fi ears and a lifetime of other records to compare against, they argue that Appetite still sounds startlingly alive, roomy and human in a world of gridded drums and brickwalled masters. It is a love letter to a record that feels like a gang kicking down the studio door, but also a reminder that magic often comes from the mess you can never quite recreate on purpose.
Perfect for: Listeners who still feel a jolt when they hear that jungle riff, guitarists obsessed with feel first soloing and classic Marshall crunch, or anyone curious how a scruffy LA gang accidentally reset the bar for debut rock albums.