Some songs become so classic that it’s hard to imagine there was a point in their gestation where a bunch of confused band members were staring at each other in a rehearsal room mouthing, “Are you playing a C or a G there?”. The Guns N’ Roses classic Welcome To The Jungle is a case in point. It’s such a cocksure, swaggering titan of a rock anthem so explosive that you’d assume it was one of the reasons behind the big bang, not cobbled together over a few years by a bunch of LA-based delinquents looking for their big break.
But writing in his 2011 memoir It’s So Easy (And Other Lies), G N’R bassist Duff McKagan says the iconic opening track from Appetite For Destruction had one of the longest gestation periods for any of Axl & co.’s songs. “Part of it went back to the very first song I ever wrote,” he recalled. “Now in LA seven years later, the main riff from that first song came back to me as we were putting together another tune about the hardscrabble lives we lived.”
The main riff McKagan refers to, the snaking pattern of the song’s verse, was lifted from a song he originally wrote for his Seattle punk trio titled Vains, now repurposed and put centre-stage on a song that would become known round the globe. “One of Slash’s amazing chiming staccato riffs became the intro,” he said, “and the main section hurtle along atop the riff from my Vains song The Fake, now played on bass. Axl had some lyrical fragments he’d been working on and we created an extended bridge around those – a dreamlike section echoing the words “When you’re high” devolved into a churning, nightmarish wash of sound out of which Axl howled, “Do you know where you are?”.
The song struck an immediate connection with the fledging group’s growing band of diehards. “We played the song live for the first time when we opened a show at the Troubadour on a Thursday night in late June 1985,” McKagan wrote. “…Jungle went over great and from then on crowds would get agitated as soon as they heard Slash’s intro riff.”
It’s a fevered anticipation that hasn’t died down in the four decades since. When they visit the UK and Europe again next summer, everyone will be waiting for that epic intro to kick in. Whet your whistle below:
Guns N’ Roses – Welcome To The Jungle – YouTube 