In a world that was dominated by hair metal in the late 1980s, Guns N’ Roses were the first group that actually managed to sound like an honest-to-God rock and roll outfit.
They were clearly cribbing from some of their influences like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, but judging by the amount of effort they put into every single song, they seemed like one of the only bands coming out of Los Angeles that actually had something to say. They wanted to provoke and didn’t care what people thought of them, but Axl Rose felt that some singers of his generation never capitalised on their potential.
Then again, Rose was always unafraid to speak his mind even when people were propping them up. He was never a fan of bands like Whitesnake and Kiss, and when the band eventually turned to making some of the most overblown music of their career, Rose was the first person to stand up for the genius of Elton John in an age when most bands were still copying Van Halen’s model of songwriting.
And as strange as it sounds, the influence from people like John was the reason why many of their signs worked so well. Slash may have been one of the most lyrical players in the music industry, but Rose’s melodies on tracks like ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ or ‘November Rain’ could go toe-to-toe with any balladeer from days gone by, almost as if Barry Manilow or Lionel Richie had grown up listening to a lot more Led Zeppelin.
But Rose wasn’t the only one trying to bring some ballads into the mainstream at the time. Everyone was still inundated with the biggest names in R&B circa 1988, but whereas people like Phil Collins and Sting were making softer rock and roll for the masses, George Michael was always slightly toeing the line between being a pure R&B artist and trying to tap into his love of bands like The Beatles on albums like Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1.
Michael did take a liking to Guns N’ Roses, but when he critiqued some of Rose’s ideas, the frontman said that the pop icon needed to add some rock flair to his sound, saying, “We love loud guitars. George Michael was telling me he really loved our melodies and wondered why we covered so much of it up with loud guitars, and I said because we love that. I told him he should put some more loud guitars in his music. He has such beautiful melodies, and it’d be nice to hear some loud guitars in there.”
A blistering lead guitar solo might not be the first thing people think of when listening to Michael’s music, but the thought of him making that transition wasn’t impossible back in the day. He already did one of the best cosplays of James Dean anyone had ever come across, but had he added a blistering lead to a song like ‘Freedom ‘90’, his fans would have been in for a much different story.
At the same time, Guns N’ Roses may have benefited from toning things down a bit in a few places. A song like ‘It’s So Easy’ demands to be played as loud as possible, but seeing how much they were able to slow their momentum on ‘Patience’, they could have easily come up with an album of only a handful of acoustic cuts of their favourite tunes and still have sounded alright.
Although it’s a tragedy that Michael moved away from music and didn’t release many albums during his lifetime, his turn towards rock would have been one of the most satisfying left turns in music. He certainly had the voice for it, and judging by how much he wanted to work with Daft Punk on ‘Robot Rock’, there will always be a few ‘what ifs’ in his story about where he would have gone in the future.
