Guns n' Roses - Perfect Crime (1989)

Guns n' Roses released their second album, GN'R Lies, in November 1988, through Geffen Records. Coming right after the stupendous success of their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, it was a hit almost by default, and also featured a song that would become one of their best known: "Patience". However, those who looked carefully saw that it was nothing but two EPs put together. The first one being their debut release, in 1986, a faux-live performance of four songs, and the other side being an acoustic session, where they play three new tunes and a version of "You're Crazy", from AFD. Those three new songs were of quality on the same level as the material on their first LP, despite the polemic lyrics on the closing track, "One in a Million", which used racist and homophobic slurs. As a stopgap released, it worked pretty well and gave them even more momentum than they already had, without much work having to be involved in it. As a result, the album charted considerably well and catapulted lead single "Patience" to a #4 spot on the singles chart.

However, not everything was roses in the band by then. Impressively enough, drugs had already begun to take hold of some of the members, most notably drummer Steven Adler and guitarist Slash. That meant that whichever time they had outside their hectic schedule, was spent getting into trouble and doing drugs, more of the latter than the former. After their massive world tour ended in December 1988 in Australia, they were exhausted, and as a result, took prolonged holidays from each other. They only reconvened in April of the next year, for an appearance in an awards show and an opening slot for the Rolling Stones. As a result, the band members drifted apart considerably during that time, and their addictions were spiraling out of control. Tentative writing sessions for a new album happened, and despite warranting some songs, they were nowhere near as inspired as before. An attempted recording session later the year went nowhere, and the band still wasn't sure as to where to go, and plans for an album were once more put on hold.

They would finally reconvene in the studio in April 1990 with a brand new batch of songs, and stay in the studio for almost a whole year. In addition to the newer material, they recorded a lot of older songs, even some that were written five years before Appetite! With that, they recorded some 30-odd songs, and decided to turn their followup to AfD into a double album. With that, the twin Use Your Illusion albums were released in 1991 to critical and commercial success, being a risky move that paid off. Certainly, the last four years of hype helped UYI's reputation, and many people wondered why they'd taken so long to record another album. So, what we'll be debating here is: what if Gn'R had released a second studio album in 1989? They certainly had enough material to do so, and had they not released the "Lies" EP, they'd certainly have the time to record it, in between stops of their tour. We will try to keep this album as closely related to Appetite as possible, with only twelve songs, and only songs written before April 1989. Here's what we've got:

You Could Be Mine (Use Your Illusion II)
The Garden (Use Your Illusion I)
Don't Cry (Use Your Illusion I)
Bad Obsession (Use Your Illusion I)
Perfect Crime (Use Your Illusion I)
Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Use Your Illusion II)
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Used to Love Her (GN'R Lies)
Patience (GN'R Lies)
Back Off Bitch (Use Your Illusion I)
Yesterdays (Use Your Illusion II)
November Rain (Use Your Illusion I)
One in a Million (GN'R Lies)

Bonus tracks:
Ain't Going Down (GN'R Pinball Machine)
Hair of the Dog (The Spaghetti Incident?)

Stradlin, McKagan, Rose, and Slash playing live in early 1989

First of all, we need to select the material for the album. Any and all songs written before the April 1989 sessions that yielded "Civil War" and "Bad Apples" are fair game, and we will set the recording of such an album to sometime in February/March of the same year. That means "Patience", "Used to Love Her" and "One in a Million" from Lies, recorded in 1988, are obvious inclusions, alongside "You Could Be Mine", "Bad Obsession" and "Perfect Crime", all of which were written at the same time as the material on their debut album, and "Yesterdays", "November Rain", "Back Off Bitch", "The Garden" and "Don't Cry", which are from a time when Guns n' Roses didn't even exist yet, some dating as far back as 1985 and 1982! Their cover of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" can also be included, as they played it live as early as 1988 in Japan, and UYI outtake "Ain't Going Down" and their cover of "Hair of the Dog" can be even added in as options as well, seen as the former was written in 1987, and the latter was played live infrequently during their tours. That gives us a pool of more or less 14 songs to choose from, when compiling Perfect Crime.

With this, we can attempt to sequence an album. Starting off with "You Could Be Mine" and its drum intro is the obvious way to start this album, as is "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" finishing off side one, with "Used to Love Her" and "One in a Million" taking their usual spots as side two openers and finishers. I sequenced the rest by what flowed together well, spacing out ballads and rockers, and chose to exclude "Ain't Going Down" and "Hair of the Dog", using the former as a b-side. However, if you feel "One in a Million" is too controversial, you can sub "Ain't Going Down" in for it, switching "November Rain" to the final track. As for the arrangements, they'd mostly stay the same, with the exceptions of "Used to Love Her", which would sound much more like "Brown Sugar" than "Dead Flowers" in an electric arrangement, and "One in a Million", which would sound different in a non-acoustic arrangement as well. But other than that, I can see both "Don't Cry" and "November Rain" being much less overproduced, just simple piano ballads with no string arrangements, as they were in their 1986 demo forms we have heard before.

Overall, Perfect Crime sounds like a much more "proper" follow-up to AfD than what we got with both Lies and UYI, being much more varied than the former, and much more focused than the latter. I do believe that had they released this in 1989, it would have been as big of a hit as Appetite, seen as the band was on top of the world back then, and had only just started playing stadiums. Either way, they could release this and still release another record in 1991 with only the stuff they wrote after this, which shows how much material there is in the Illusions records. The album was titled after the song of the same name, as I felt it sounded pretty good, and the cover was a concert poster from 2016 I repurposed, just adding a name to it. Clocking in at almost an hour, I believe this album's first single would've been "You Could Be Mine", followed by either "Yesterdays" or "Patience", as those are the more commercial songs in the record. All in all, it's a shame the band chose to wait out the years they were on top locked away in a studio, but considering what happened in the 2000's, we can be grateful they managed to release Use Your Illusions so quickly.

Sources:
- Use Your Illusion I
- GN'R Lies
- Use Your Illusion II
- "The Spaghetti Incident?"
- GN'R Pinball Machine