Robbie Thomas
November Rain (An Observation)
For the six or seven people reading this blog, I have been working 6-7 days, 12-hour days for the most part. Gotta keep making money! Need to save for a soon-to-be foreclosed house. Plus, buy stocks while they are cheap. Verizon went down due to the missed earnings and lack of Free Cash Flow. I’ll be keeping an eye on that stock.
Anyways, no more finance talk. On the way home one day after one of these grueling 12-hour days, I stumbled on November Rain by Guns & Roses. Being played on the Hair Nation on Sirius XM. It made me think about how prior to the release of that said song as a single. Prior to November Rain, I thought Guns & Roses as badasses. Songs like Welcome To The Jungle, It’s So Easy, Mr. Brownstone, and quite a few more. Let’s not forget when Axl jumped into the stage in St. Louis to beat up a guy with a camera. Of course, I couldn’t say the word badass back when I was 6-10 years old, I’d get slapped. I just kept that thought in my mind back in those days.
Then in late 1992, I saw Guns & Roses make a song mainly driven by piano and an orchestra, with the last few minutes being more guitar-oriented. When I saw it back when I was 10, I was seriously surprised. These badasses are making a soft song about love. Now, in the hair metal era, you can say Guns & Roses were one of the best, top 5. You had Poison, Warrant, Bon Jovi, and a couple of others who had quite a lot of hits during the Hair Metal era. With the four mentioned bands, you eventually would have a soft ballad to add to it. Warrant had Heaven. Poison had two with Every Rose Has It’s Thorn and Something To Believe in. With Guns & Roses prior to November Rain, I would say their soft ballad would be Patience. But that’s up to some debate.
And with Patience, I just thought at that time, that the least Guns & Roses would go when it comes to the ballad. But with November Rain, I was wrong. First of all, I don’t hate November Rain at all. I like that song. However, in the video and the song itself with the orchestra, piano, and female backing vocals, it was just strange as hell to me seeing Axl Rose and the band participate in a video like that. Axl Rose getting married, the dinner party that gets rained out, then the death of his wife. At that time in 92-93, I didn’t understand how the wife died, I would later read in my adult years that the wife ends up committing suicide. That would explain the other half of her face in the video where the camera pans towards it in that one shot.
Most people who are reading this post have seen the video, so I don’t need to explain anymore of it. For me both then and but not so much now, it was just surprising to see a Guns & Roses video showing a happy wedding and how the video ends. Guns & Roses did get past the Hair Metal era and were still able to get videos out there even in 93 and 94. Guns & Roses would put out the video to Estranged, another long song and good guitar work! I thought the song was good and the video was quite interesting, until the dolphin part.
Axl Rose jumping off a ship and swimming with dolphins. Also, Slash comes out of the sea and plays the guitar. Back in 1993-94, I remember me and some friends in my fifth grade class were goofing on that part of the video. And one of us was saying, Axl Rose swimming with Dolphins? What the hell! One of the things I wondered about at that time: was it Axl’s idea for both the videos of November Rain and Estranged? I was leaning towards that.
Some six or seven years later, VH1 would release the Behind The Music episode based on Guns & Roses. It would later confirm that Axl somewhere during the Use Your Illusion era, was pushing his music video ideas big time. Despite the rest of the band’s disagreement towards them. The band (minus Axl) was indifferent to having a string section as part of the Use Your Illusion tour.
Anyways, that is my two cents on November Rain and also we got to cover Estranged as well. One video by G&R that gave me the creeps at the very end was Don’t You Cry. That part where it shows Axl alive six feet under, then the next shot shows a baby emerging from the water of a bathtub. That shit still gives me the creeps!
Bye for now, I’ll try to make another blog post soon.
Robbie T.