Track Listing

1. Welcome To The Jungle
2. Sweet Child O' Mine
3. Patience
4. Paradise City
5. Knockin' On Heaven'S Door
6. Civil War
7. You Could Be Mine
8. Don't Cry Original
9. November Rain
10. Live And Let Die
11. Yesterdays
12. Ain't It Fun
13. Since I Don't Have You
14. Sympathy For The Devil

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #746 in Music
• Brand: Dig
• Released on: 2004-03-23
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Explicit Lyrics, Original recording remastered

Album Description
It may surprise some to realize that Guns N’ Roses released only four full-length original albums, and two of those debuted simultaneously. But they were enough to forever change rock ‘n’ roll. Even more shocking is that one of the great bands in rock history, with its last studio album issued 10 years ago, has never had a "best of" compilation. Now it has. Welcome to the jungle with Greatest Hits (Geffen), released March 23, 2004. With 14 selections housed in a digipak, Greatest Hits features all eight of the band’s Top 40 Billboard Hot 100 tracks (five of them RIAA-certified "gold," i.e., sales of more than 500,000 units). Along with spanning the group’s five album releases, Greatest Hits also marks the debut on a Guns N’ Roses album of the band’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ "Sympathy For The Devil" for the 1995 film Interview With The Vampire.

Amazon.com
If time is the true test, then Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits confirms that they really were one of the greatest rock & roll bands in the world. While, in retrospect, fellow graduates of the class of 1987 are about as cool as poodle perms and spandex, the L.A. bad boys still rock like gods. Listening to the sun-drenched chords of "Paradise City" and the ensuing stadium-sized swagger is enough to make wearing leather trousers and bandanas seem like a good idea. Of course, it helped that for them sex, drugs, and rock & roll was a way of life, not a fashion statement. As Axl Rose wails "I wanna watch you bleed" on "Welcome to the Jungle" like a chain-smoking lunatic possessed, it's hard not to believe he meant it. Yet equally, it was his surprisingly poetic nature that made genuinely touching love songs of "Patience" and "Sweet Child of Mine."

Though none of their subsequent albums matched the drug-crazed genius of Appetite for Destruction, they did, as the Greatest Hits reminds, have their moments. From the bloated Use Your Illusion I & II came ultimate rock ballads "Don't Cry" and "November Rain," along with the primal rage that was "You Could Be Mine." And while the covers of the The Spaghetti Incident? were largely forgettable, the fact that their final single was a seedy sneer through the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" seems spectacularly fitting. --Dan Gennoe

About the Artist
In the late-'80s Guns N' Roses changed the face of hard rock--and the scary thing is, they weren't even trying. For better or worse, nearly every rock band at the time tried to cop the quintet's raw, street-wise intensity, which took the bad-boy image to its most extreme.

Formed in the mid-'80s from the ashes of various Hollywood bands, including L.A. Guns, the original line-up included frontman Axl Rose (born Bill Bailey), guitarists Slash (Saul Hudson) and Izzy Stradlin (Jeff Isabelle), bassist Michael "Duff" McKagan and drummer Steven Adler. They already had a reputation for both their powerful live shows and fiery temperaments by the time Geffen signed them in 1986. The group's first full-length album, Appetite For Destruction, was released in 1987. It took a year for the record to reach Billboard's No. 1 slot, but after that, there was no stopping it. There was no stopping the band, either. Whether Slash was uttering four-letter words on national television or Rose was threatening to break up the band over various members' rampant heroin abuse--in front of a packed house at the L.A. Coliseum when GN'R was opening for the Rolling Stones, no less!--trouble seemed to dog them. Rose especially had a habit of railing against the media, then creating mayhem that the media found impossible to ignore. The decadent stories the band related in their debut album, and the subsequent Use Your Illusion I and II, were frighteningly real. So were the occasional bursts of pain and sensitivity illustrated in many of their songs.

It was inevitable that this volatile bunch would crash. The first to get fired was Adler when he couldn't control his drug abuse. Matt Sorum replaced him. Stradlin left next to form a solo project, Izzy Stradlin & The Ju Ju Hounds. Gilby Clarke came on board for a while. By the time the group went on its 1993 stadium tour, co-headlining with Metallica, it had become an overblown entity--they added two keyboardists and a horn section, and it was all too much. The group hasn't put out an album of new songs since 1991, and turmoil continues to follow them. Clarke is no longer in the band and no one seems to know for sure if Sorum is still around or not. Slash left late in '96; it is rumored that Nine Inch Nails' Robin Finck will replace him. Nevertheless GN'R (or what's left of it) has promised to make a new album in '97. The big question is: Does anyone still care?

This Biography was written by Janiss Garza

Customer Reviews

Don't buy it if you're a Guns N' Roses fan
If you're a Guns N' Roses fan, there's only 2 reasons why you should buy this album...

- You're a G'N'R collector
- You have a friend who likes G'N'R, but doesn't own any of the albums. So this album is a great present indeed.

A true fan already owns at least "Appetite For Destruction", "Use Your Illusion I & II" and perhaps "Lies". "The Spaguetti Incident" was just a plain bad album, but if you liked "Since I Don't Have You", you might as well go to ITunes or Napster and download it.

People on the previous posts complain a lot for this album not including more songs from "Appetite For Destruction" or "Use Your Illusion" but let me remind them... THIS IS A HITS ALBUM!! ...which includes pretty much every single song played on the radio. There's a lot of fan favorites not included here, but that's just because THEY WEREN'T HITS!

Yet this is a great pick for anyone who is just about to get introduced to this band. Guns N' Roses could have been the biggest thing since 'The Beatles', but we all know how that story ends. So don't even bother to wait for 'Chinese Democracy' to come out.

LOOK AT THE FREAKIN' TITLE!
Oh, come on! Look at you all, complaining that your fave GNR song isn't on it!

Look at the title of the CD. It says: 'Guns n' Roses' Greatest Hits', doesn't it? That means it has - guess what? - the greatest hits of Guns n' Roses, not the 'specially crafted Guns n' Roses CD especially for YOU and nobody else'.

Just check any UK Top 40 Singles Chart Archive (try www.everyhit.com and type in Guns n' Roses in the 'Artist' slot) and it will show you how each of their singles rated in the Public Charts.

Compare the list of their hit singles to the Greatest Hits album and you'll see that the line up is virtually identical. Cool, Eh?
Now, where on that list do you see 'Estranged', 'Coma' or 'Mr Brownstone'? Nowhere.

'Nuff said.

Guns N' Roses Key Hits Are All Here And Remastered Too!
While other reviewers put down this Guns N' Roses collection for various reasons, I still felt since their biggest hits are included in this package (even if some are cover versions) and remastered I'm not complaining. I also picked this cd up at a local store for an extremely low price so I felt I got alot of music for the money! Hits such as "Paradise City", "Welcome To The Jungle", "Sweet Child O' Mine", "You Could Be Mine", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (a Bob Dylan cover), "Live And Let Die" (a Paul McCartney And Wings cover), "November Rain", "Don't Cry" and "Sympathy For The Devil" (a Rolling Stones cover) are here plus five more songs. The sound quality is excellent due to remastering and it's all put together in an attractive digipack. If you enjoy eighties rock such as Poison, Cinderella, Motley Crue and Dokken then you'll enjoy this collection.