Rarely has a record been as venerated and hated as the first album of Guns N’Roses , “Appetite For Destruction”. Thirty-one years after its release, when it is reissued in five birthday formats *, this record always provokes extreme reactions in the rock press, which shouts to the genius by listening to its hymns “Paradise City”, “Welcome To The Jungle “and” Sweet Child O’Mine “, either rifles” a group of posers “that has only recycled Aerosmith’s riffs with such machinist and simplistic lyrics of Mötley Crüe’s level.

After three decades, one thing is certain: this album has more than scored a generation. He left his imprint on the history of rock, as well as the “Nevermind” Nirvana, unfortunately opposed him so often when today, the former drummer of the group, Dave Grohl, invites the Guns N’Roses on stage to take back “It’s so easy”.

Not only was “Appetite For Destruction” a huge international success, selling 30 million copies, but it brought back into the limelight high-energy, sulphurous rock in an era – the 1980s – marked by the sanitized pop and new cerebral wave.

An enriched album

For proof, during the two excellent shows that the group has just given in France – at the Download Festival, near Paris , and at the Bordeaux stadium – there were as many young people who saw for the first time these legends of rock as quadras nostalgic for their MTV years.

The opportunity to set the record straight: if Guns N’Roses can be sometimes grandiloquent, it’s not a metal band but a rock band, which draws as much from the roots of blues as punk, as prove it their covers on this tour, from Damned’s “New Rose” to Who’s The Seeker.

On record as on stage, “Appetite For Destruction” is still on the road. It is obvious to listen to this remastered anniversary edition of the album, enriched with 49 unreleased recordings, including 2 titles from the first test sessions with Mike Clink, and 25 sessions in studio in 1986 with the same producer. For the more connoisseurs, few real discoveries except the studio version of “Shadow Of Your Love” and the two initial versions of the epic ballad “November Rain”.

These two versions, one on the piano, the other on acoustic guitars, recorded in 1986 while the ballad will be released only five years later on the album “Use Your Illusion I”, show a band and a singer. an impressive creativity.

Officially formed in 1985, Guns N’Roses are not just “photogenic bad boys” when they record their first album. They are excellent musicians, led by an unmanageable singer but with a unique body, a voice of viper ready to bite.