Live Era '87-93

"The horror!" Listening to this mammoth double live CD from Guns N' Roses, I feel like Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now.

It's not that I despised Axl, Slash & Co. In fact, I spent many a biker-jacketed teenage day in the midst of their brand of LA angst, and these memories are part of the reason why this album frightens me. Listening to Axl's paranoid 'Out Ta Get Me' calls up those heady days of my first cigarette (I got sick), my first brush with alcohol (I got really sick), my first teenage disco (I got a slap), acne (thankfully, gone now) and angst (unfortunately, still present).

My real problem with Live Era, however, is that it is Guns N' Roses in their epic period, when every song had to be at least six minutes long, contain a minimum of three twiddly guitar solos and finish with a big, brash bombastic crescendo ('November Rain', come on down). Even the taut, edgy 'Welcome To The Jungle' and the crowning 'Paradise City' sound like they've been over-indulging in Christmas festivities, and their take on 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' is nothing short of bloated.

How these guys became stadium-fillers around the globe I cannot really understand. Their songwriting is nothing short of puerile, particularly when compared to contemporaries like U2 and REM ("I see you standin' there/ You think you're so cool/ So why don't you just fuck off" - 'It's So Easy'); and apart from Slash, they weren't up to much musically.

Then you have the issue of Axl's voice: at least in the studio, he had a wealth of engineers to turn his whinge into a whine, but here, 12 songs into a two and a half hour set and with who-knows-what narcotics clogging up his system, there is no escape from his nasal outpourings.

During their spell at the top, Gn'R had a handful of brilliantly brainless, infectious rock songs like 'Sweet Child O' Mine', 'Yesterdays', 'Rocket Queen' and 'Mr Brownstone', while 'Patience' proved they could pen a mean ballad, but this double-album is far from their creative peak. It's not even really valid as an exercise in nostalgia - it will just have you reaching for your vinyl copies of Appetite For Destruction or Lies to hear these songs at their best.