'Sweet Child o' Mine': Reveal Little-Known Facts About the Guns N' Roses Classic
"Sweet Child O Mine" - famous classic Guns N' Roses, a sweet yet violent ballad from the band's debut album... As the third single from the record, "Sweet Child o' Mine" propelled the band to the top of the Billboard charts. It was with this song that the career of the Roses, who today are the legends of rock and roll, began ... An interesting fact, but Axl Rose was the only member of the group who believed that this ballad would become something more than just part of their debut album ... Not only him, but also the producer Mike Klink was sure that the song was special when he heard it for the first time... Every rock fan knows about "Sweet Child o' Mine", as well as about its influence. However, this classic has a rather curious history, which for many has remained undisclosed. So, below are facts about the iconic Guns N' Roses anthem that not many people know!
The song is based on a poem written by Axl for his then girlfriend Erin Everly.
While the band was preparing to record their debut studio album, Axl Rose met with Erin Everly - charming American model, daughter Dona Everly from the pop duo The Everly Brothers… History "Sweet Child O Mine" started when Axl heard a guitar riff invented by Slash, which strikingly reminded him of a love poem that he wrote for Erin ... Actually, on the basis of this poem, the text of the legendary hit was born! Subsequently Rose said:
"This is the first positive love song I've ever written, but I guess I've never had anyone to write something more positive about..."
Although the song became a huge hit, the relationship Axla with Erin did not last long. The couple got married in April 1990 years, but the marriage was annulled less than a year later.
According to Slash, the famous guitar riff was born from a "stupid joke"
Curious but famous guitar riff slash, opening "Sweet Child O Mine", started out as nothing more than a funny joke… The word to the guitarist himself Roses:
“The other day me and Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan came across a strange tune, such an unorthodox pattern, and I was trying to perfect it… Then Izzy started playing some chords and he started living his own life! Turns out Axl was upstairs the whole time and heard it and he had some ideas about it... The next day at rehearsal, he (Axl) said, "Hey, play that song you guys played yesterday in the living room" . We started playing it and it ended up being just the opening tune!”
slash remembered that the famous riff from "Sweet Child o' Mine" "started as a joke", and that thanks to Axl it "turned into a huge anthem"! Years later, this "joke" was voted the second best guitar riff in history (in a 2014 BBC poll).
According to Slash, recording the riff took him a whole day.
Slash was much more familiar with the tune when it came time to record the song. However, he still struggled with perfecting the opening riff that would define the album...
“Sweet Child o' Mine was easy to record apart from the guitar intro. It took me all day to calculate the time and be in the right place when the drums started playing!”
Duff McKagan thought the song was a joke
Bassist at first GNR, Duff McKagan, did not perceive "Sweet Child O Mine" seriously ... He later recalled:
How could you take her seriously? A song written in five minutes with only three chords... The opening riff was born from a joke! I thought, “What song is this? She will never be a hit! How wrong I was…”
Slash disliked the song for a long time, and compared recording it to pulling teeth.
McKagan said that writing "Sweet Child O Mine" took literally five minutes ... However, as the slash"Rehearsing and recording 'Sweet Child o' Mine' was more like pulling teeth!" For the Roses guitarist, this song was just a "sentimental ballad" and he "hated it for years"... "Sweet Child o' Mine" was a huge hit that helped GNR become famous, but it took Slash a while to really appreciate this song...
“I hated this song for years! You know, we've always been a real heavy, sort of AC/DC hard rock band! If we wrote any ballads, it was, as a rule, blues. Sweet Child o' Mine just didn't fit in with the rest of our kind of thing. And of course it would be the biggest hit we've ever had. Here is such an irony!
Mike Klink was fascinated by the song from the start
Most tracks for Appetite for Destructionincluding "Sweet Child O Mine", were recorded in just a few takes! And after Mike Klink listened to the recorded version of the ballad, he was sure the Roses had stumbled upon something great...
“That song made my hair stand on end!” he recalled in 2005. "It was magical…"
By the way: Clink was not the only one who thought this song was special...
"Sweet Child o' Mine was a hit for all of us! I thought this would be the gold of the album…” said Michael Barbiero, who mixed Appetite for Destruction with Steve Thompson.
It was their only single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
"It's So Easy", the first single from Appetite for Destruction, was not very successful. Second single - "Welcome to the Jungle" - turned out to be better, but the album still sold poorly ... And only "Sweet Child O Mine" changed the situation by taking first place on the Billboard Hot 100 (the ballad did not leave this chart for 12 whole weeks!)
Throughout my career Guns N' Roses the group had six singles that hit the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100! But… "Sweet Child O Mine" became their only number one.
Because of this song, Guns N' Roses was accused of plagiarism
Spring 2015 music site Max TV highlighted the similarities between "Sweet Child O Mine" and "Unpublished Critics" groups Australian Crawl: "These tracks have the same chord progression, the same wide solo break, verse melody, and lengthened one-syllable vocals in the chorus," the article says.
Track "Unpublished Critics" entered the album Sirocco 1981 of the year. And although James Rein, lead singer of Australian Crawl, admitted that GNR could hear Unpublished Critics before Sweet Child o' Mine, he didn't accuse them of plagiarism. He also had no plans to sue, commenting "I'm not going to challenge the Roses lawyers."
Rein also added that he did not pay much attention to "Sweet Child O Mine" after release. In turn, in 2015 bassist GNR Duff McKagan acknowledged that the similarities between the two songs are "amazing!", but added:
“We didn’t copy from them! I swear I first heard this song only a couple of days ago!”
During the recording of the song, the studio was "clean"
Guns N' Roses have always been known for their parties, drunkenness and use of illegal substances. But when Mike Klink was hired to produce their first album, he set his own rules... Klink insisted the studio be a "clean place".
"He kept us at arm's length," Slash admitted. “We had a lot of fun, but when we were in the studio - we didn’t have doping and stuff ...”
The video for the song became the first video of the 80s, the number of views of which exceeded one billion on YouTube
In October 2019, the official video clip "Sweet Child O Mine" became the first music video 1980s years, the number of views of which exceeded one billion on YouTube! In 2019, videos were viewed on average by about 600,000 times in a day!
Sheryl Crow sang the worst cover of "Sweet Child o' Mine"
American performer Sheryl Crow recorded a cover version of the song "Sweet Child O Mine"which was used in the movie "Big Daddy"!
In February 1999 Crowe won a Grammy Award for her version of the song, but... not everyone was a fan of her interpretation. In 2011 readers Rolling Stone called her version "Sweet Child O Mine" 4th worst cover song of all time...
