Today Is...Use Your Illusions 1 & 2 Released

Take my hand and let's take a trip back to 1991 and look, who is that young lady standing outside HMV at midnight on a chilly September night wearing a pair of jeans with rips in the knees and a green flight jacket.
That would be me then, along with 20 other rather more grubbier looking GnR fans waiting for the doors to open at midnight and to swap a ten pound note and a few pound coins for the Guns 'N' Roses epic double album, Use Your Illusions 1 & 2.
I always knew it was going to be good because back then HMV only did the Midnight opening for a few of the very biggest and best and for me Gun N Roses were all about Slash, the coolest man ever to pluck a guitar string and knock out a guitar riff so sharp it threatens eyeballs whenever it comes on the radio The vinyl may have been upgraded to CD over the years but you would be hard pushed to come up with a set of albums that top arguably these last great epics in music history. Every song on the first album a real belter, the second not quite so much but two albums that legitimately lifted Guns N’ Roses from being a great rock band into probably the greatest ever.
Probably the greatest anti-war song ever penned, 'Civil War', and the opening lyrics of 'Look at your young men fighting, Look at your women crying, Look at your young men dying' should be etched on the forehead of every armchair general the next time war rears it ugly, ridiculous head.
Use Your Illusions 2 had some amazing songs (Civil war, You Could Be Mine, Knockin' on Heavens Door) but never landed quite as well as UYI 1 and the double album was the last proper Guns N Roses offering with the original line up although they put out the Spaghetti Incident full of 70s punk songs and named after an infamous Mötley Crüe groupie encounter...ask your parents.
The years of soaking their cornflakes in Jack Daniels, knocking seven bells out of each other while smoking 120 Benson & Hedges and still managing to put on a show before collapsing off stage into their own sick took it's toll and they imploded in acrimony not long after and although Axel Rose continued to plow his own furrow and finally put out 'Chinese Democracy' a few years ago, it wasn't the same.
Slash also did his own thing with other lead singers but it was like having a bottle of Moët & Chandon and drinking it from a mug.
Guns N' Roses were about the only band i would say i was sad about about when they broke up but as we were just launching into the Grunge scene it softened the blow a bit but for four glorious years they debauched their way around the charts, always drunk, mostly high, generally unkempt and smelling strongly of alcohol and their own vomit which is just how rock stars should be.