Gun & Roses, September 17th, 1991

USPA NEWS - Guns N' Roses released 'Use Your Illusion I' and 'Use Your Illusion II' 35 years ago today. Issued together on September 17, 1991, the two albums packed 30 tracks into more than two and a half hours of music.

By their release in September 1991, both volumes of Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion had become the most anticipated follow-up to a debut that our fuddled old minds can recall. Typical of being the biggest band in the world, Guns N’ Roses went for it in a major way. Some might say too much, for the overblown nature of Use Your Illusion went some way to alienating people against the band, though that wasn't a difficult feat in Axl Rose’s case.

It’s true that from both volumes one could create a killer album, possibly to rival the debut, but the first of the two volumes (AKA the red and yellow one) highlighted all that was wrong with the band, which would eventually split them. The low-slung rockers of Slash and Izzy are at odds with the extravagant ideas of Axl, who saw himself as a cross between Queen and Elton John. The video for November Rain, anyone? An occasional success, but all too often a failure.

Across the two albums came “Don’t Cry,” “ Rain,” “Live and Let Die,” “Civil War,” “You Could Be Mine,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “Estranged.” Instead of trying to make Appetite for Destruction again, Guns N’ Roses delivered more than two and a half hours of music covering hard rock, blues, punk, acoustic music and epic ballads.