Guns N' Roses/“The Spaghetti Incident?”/1993

I am alone in my love for this album.

After the bloated self-masturbatory slab of egomaniacal cheese that was Use Your Illusion I & II,  1993’s The Spaghetti Incident? felt like a return to form for the once untouchable G’n Fuckin’R. As the first post-Nirvana Guns N' Roses album, The Spaghetti Incident? was born during the height of the grunge rock movement — a movement that rejected everything the eighties stood for; greed, fashion, excess, blind consumerism, Reagan-era nationalism and top-down economics. In some respects, I think the album was an unsuspecting victim of the era in which it was released. Guns N' Roses — a band of street trash that hit the big time — went from being the only band that mattered in the late eighties to being poster-children for corporate excess and conceited rock star arrogance. Much of this was their own doing (or more specifically, Axl Rose’s). Ill-advised MTV mini-movie music videos for November Rain and Estranged were beyond ridiculous and not befitting a snot-nosed, drug-addled L.A. rock band.  The videos took the edge off of GnR’s bad ass-ery and transformed them to uber-rich, elitist, Hollywood celebrities. Fans who longed for the Appetite for Destruction GnR, now had to endure daily tabloid headlines and narcissistic music videos detailing the rollercoaster relationship between Axl Rose and supermodel, Stephanie Seymour.

In short, GnR became Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

It’s no wonder Generation X jumped ship and bought Nevermind.

The Spaghetti Incident? is a covers album comprised mostly of punk songs. This might seem like an odd choice to the often narrow-minded GnR metal-head fan base, but the punk format stripped GnR back down to its essence, and the band is better for it. Gone are the excessive orchestrations and indulgent arrangements that plagued Use Your Illusion I & II. Instead the band wisely embraces their punk rock influences and cover songs by the likes of The Dead Boys. The Damned, and New York Dolls.  The result is a re-energized Guns N' Roses reminiscent of the early Live! Like a Suicide era of the band.

The lead vocals on The Spaghetti Incident? are often split between Axl Rose and Duff Mckagan. They even share lead vocals on The Stooges classic, Raw Power. Their cover of U.K. Subs, Down on the Farm is loaded with attitude and is equally hilarious as Axl adopts a phony British accent. The best track on the album is a cover of The Damned’s Ain’t It Fun. The song just feels epic and Slash shines on lead guitar. Other stand-out covers include The Misfits (Attitude), The Professionals (Black Leather), and even 70’s radio rock staple, Hair of the Dog by Nazareth. There is also an excellent but controversial cover of Charles Manson’s Look at Your Game Girl.

The Spaghetti Incident? is Guns N' Roses last effort before Axl went completely bat-shit crazy and fired the whole band to embark on a seventeen year journey into the depths of naval-gazing self-importance that would ultimately and eventually result in the commercial bomb that is Chinese Democracy. It’s unfortunate because what should have happened, had the rock-n-roll stars aligned, is that GnR would have rediscovered their hard rock roots as a result of The Spaghetti Incident? and went on to make Use Your Appetite for Destruction II & III. 8.5/10