This time, we are taking a look at the opening song from the Guns N' Roses debut record Appetitte for Destruction, released in 1987.

Where did the title/lyrics come from?

The lead singer Axl Rose was visiting a friend near Seattle. While he was there, he started writing lyrics that told a story of the life in the Hollywood streets. He describes the life in Hollywood as a fight for survival with such lines as ‘Ya learn to live like an animal/In the jungle where we play.’ The title and the inspiration for the song came from an encounter with a homeless man while Rose and his friend were stepping off a bus into New York. The homeless man tried to scare the two by yelling at them: "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die!"

Song Writting

Welcome to the Jungle was one of the first songs written by the classic line up (Slash, McKagan, Rose, Adler). The song writting began in 1985 when Slash's mother let Rose live in the basement in their home. One day Slash started playing a riff to Rose on the acoustic guitar. Both of them like the riff and took it to the band rehearsal where it developed from a riff to a song. While most of the song was composed by Slash the breakdown was credited to bassist Duff McKagan. According to McKagan he came up with the breakdown way back in 1978 when he was in a punk rock band the Vains. The whole song took around three hours to complete in total.

The Music Video

Their record label Geffen Records had a hard time selling the video to the MTV, but after a while the network agreed, that they will show the video only one time at 5:00 AM on a Sunday morning. Surprisingly, the video recieved a lot of attention, in spite of the early morning airtime on a Sunday morning. The network later recieved multiple calls from people demanding that they show the video again.

The video tells a story of how Rose steps of a bus into the city at night. He is aproached by a drug dealer (Izzy Stradlin), trying to sell drugs to Axl which he rejects. He stops by a store to see clips of a band playing live. After he watches the video, he transforms from a simple lad to a city punk.