We had a bigger jet than Mötley Crüe

 We had a bigger jet than Mötley Crüe (Matt Sorum, Guns N Roses Drummer) 

I’ve just watched a interesting programme on Sky Arts about Guns N Roses trilogy of videos made from the Use Your Illusion albums.  Now you have to remember 1991 was a vastly different musical landscape to 2020, ok I’m going to write this in 2019 tense and all references are PRE Covid. 

1991 was a pivotal year for rock music and in many ways you could argue that 1991 was the peek of the 90s. At the time there was a lot of new things around, for me living in the UK the game changer was satellite television. In 1991 I got my first Satellite receiver because one of the biggest draws for me was the availability of being able to see MTV Europe that launched 2 years previous, Yes folks MTV used to stand for MUSIC TeleVision. And believe it or now, it was also free. The other gamechanger with satellite television was that it was in STEREO. I spent the summer of 1991 in my bedroom with my new Amstrad receiver and my brand new Sanyo Nicam Stereo VHS video recorder taping just about everything I could. There also wasn’t just MTV we also had channels such as NDR, W3, Rbb etc that showed Rockpalast/Rocklife and Old episodes of Beat Club. This was musical heaven for me, full length concerts in Stereo, Archive TV in top quality of older artists, and the then cutting edge of MTV. 

Getting back to 1991 there was 3 absolutely MASSIVE rock albums of that year. Metallica’s Black Album, Nirvanas Nevermind and Guns n Roses Use your illusion 1 and 2. I’d also wager that with the former 2 that Enter Sandman and Smells like Teen Spirit were the last 2 songs to be added to be banned list of songs in your high street guitar shop. !

Guns 'n' Roses ultimately became the biggest band in the world in 1991. They sold over 30 million albums that year plus the debut Appetite for Destruction was still shifting by the lorry load. 

Being a rock star in 1991 was exactly that, Guns 'n' Roses went from playing clubs to Stadiums in around 3 years. This is pretty much unheard of now, hardly any new bands get to that level thanks to the landscape of the music business being based around solo artists , Brands and Social Media, not based on talent, experience and kick arse songs. 

Guns are everything that rock and roll is about, everything is 110% big sound, big videos, Big tours and as Matt Sorum stated at the end of the programme ‘We had a bigger Jet than Mötley Crüe’. 

These 3 videos ‘Don’t Cry’ , November Rain & Estranged are a total work of art. They had a budget bigger than most major labels spend on talent now for the whole year. But these works of art that cost 10s of millions of pounds did the job, they became iconic. November Rain in the digital age became the first video to be streamed more than a billion times on YouTube. 

I’m not going to review these, most of you have seen them dozens of times. The point of this blog is just this, will we ever see a music video again made to these values ? We don’t have MTV anymore, not proper MTV. The sub 25 age group only appear to watch videos that last less than 1 minute. Songs are also deliberately short because it is perceived that people do not want to listen to a song that was more than 4 minutes long. This has always been a theory especially in radio that has been proven wrong so many times over the last 50+ years be it Hey Jude, Bohemian Rhapsody or even MacArthur Park. I was even told one of my recent releases was too long for radio, so I gave it to another Radio Presenter with a bigger show whom played it in full all 6 minutes! 

These films has 100s of Extras, they flew all over the place to get just the right shots, there was Helicopter shots everywhere. I mean now, do you ever see TV or film shot using a Helicopter when you can use a sub standard drone to get a shot not as good for a fraction of the budget ? Give me a chopper and a 35mm film camera any day. And that’s the other thing, all these films were shot on film so they unbeknown became futureproof in the HD age. One good example of this is the re edit of Wham’s Last Christmas re scanned in 4k looking amazing. These GnR videos would also look out of this world in 4k I’d gladly but the Blu-Ray.

I do wish they had done a blockbuster video for Coma as well. 

 

1991 was a golden age, an age that I really don’t think will ever happen again. Its become ‘Offensive’ to be a multi million air rock stars flying in Jets, selling millions of albums playing massive stadium and filming 20 million dollar music videos. For me this is the dream of everyone that wants to be in a rock band. It was my dream when I was 15 and its still my dream at 48. 

 As a footnote this is the 'Too long for radio' song I recorded. Follows and plays and shares always appreciated. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/2VnHgRpyBnn6AOGyr4xVeg