Guns N' Roses: Greatest Hits

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * *)

If there was a rock'n'roll prize for not knowing when to quit, Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose would be the reigning champ.

He's still on a shaky comeback trail with a band of hired hands, while the G N' R album Chinese Democracy that has been in the offing since last century has cost some US$13.5 million ($21.8 million) so far and is unlikely to be troubling us anytime soon.

So it's little wonder the label behind what was once America's biggest hard rock band thought it was high time it realised on its troublesome act.

It's in good company - Velvet Revolver featuring former Gunners Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum along with Stone Temple Pilot singer Scott Weiland have a debut album out soon, which may help to cover some rehab bills.

There was some brief unity among Rose and former bandmates Slash and McKagan - whom he had banned from shows - last month when all three joined in a lawsuit to stop the release of this 14-track collection. The suit was dismissed.

As their objections indicate, this greatest hits contains no new material. But that hasn't stopped the album, which is already flying off the CD shelves of service stations all round the world, and it's lodged itself at the top of the New Zealand charts for a likely extended stay.

Of course, having all the band's big moments together has its benefits - no more skipping through the sprawl of tracks of the not-a-double Use Your Illusion I and II released simultaneously back in 1991, just as Nirvana and the Seattle squad were about to make them look even more like yesterday's men overnight.

But Guns N' Roses were always a band that wanted to be part of the rock'n'roll establishment. The reason they got so popular so fast was a winning combo of rebel stance and pop hooks.

Though they put out The Spaghetti Incident, an album of punk covers, during their early-90s meltdown phase, they sounded more comfortable offering up their stadium-sized versions of Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die and the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil - which make up three of the 14 tracks here.

But of course, they did have their own great songs - even if the best of them suffer from that aforementioned inability to know when enough is enough.

Opener Welcome to the Jungle still thrills as Rose's petulant feline singing howls Slash's churning riffs.

With its intro and countless Slash solos Sweet Child O' Mine gave another generation of teenage guitarists something to annoy music-shop staff with apart from Stairway to Heaven. And Paradise City weirdly starts off sounding like jangling country rock before it goes all powerchords and Aerosmith-boogie, throws in that stupidly infectious chorus then double-times it out of there.

But then there was that other side to G N' R - the ballads. Some, like Patience, were nice enough in a show-the-groupie-your-sensitive-acoustic-side kind of way, even with the whistling solo up front.

Some, like November Rain, seemed to stretch on for the month its title suggested. It implied that rather than becoming the Stones of their generation, Guns N' Roses wanted to be the next Meat Loaf. Photographic evidence suggests Rose is still working on this ambition.

As an album, it captures all too well the G N' R career arc. Pointless, messy ending and all.

Label: Geffen