The Making of 'Appetite for Destruction'

Released on July 21st, 1987, Appetite for Destruction went on to sell well over 15 million copies in this country alone, becoming one of the best-selling debuts ever. The album looked both forward and backward: The punky rawness of its sound and the pained artistry of its lyrics made it a bridge between commercial Eighties hard rock and the alternative music of the next decade. But Appetite was also among the last classic rock records to be mastered with vinyl in mind, to be edited with a razor blade applied to two-inch tape, to be mixed by five people frantically pushing faders at a non-automated mixing board. "We used classic instruments and classic amps," says the album's producer and engineer, Mike Clink. "Our approach was reminiscent of stuff that was done in the Sixties and early Seventies."Adds assistant mixing engineer Deyglio, who earned a credit as "Victor 'the fuckin'engineer'" on the album: "It could almost be seen as the last of one of those types of records, from Layla to Abbey Road on down. It could be seen as the last great rock record made totally by hand."

Guns saw themselves as reviving rock's vanished rebel spirit. "Rock & roll in general has sucked a big dick since the Pistols," guitarist Izzy Stradlin told Rolling Stone in 1988; in the same article, Rose said that he had watched the Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter "about a hundred times." "Me, Axl and Slash, we knew what we wanted since we were eleven, twelve years old," says Steven Adler. "And we went balls out for it, and there was nothing or no one that was going to stand in our way. I wanted to be fuckin' Roger Taylor from Queen. We wanted to be like Aerosmith, Kiss, Zeppelin — bands like that."