GUNS N’ ROSES is putting together a deluxe reissue of the “Use Your Illusion” albums for a tentative summer 2022 release.
Slash shared the news of the set’s arrival during an interview with Biff Bam Pop! editor-in-chief Andy Burns.
Speaking about the fact that the “Use Your Illusion” reissue won’t be out to coincide with 30th anniversary of the LPs’ original release, the GUNS guitarist said said: “It got delayed by the pandemic but it is coming out, I think this summer. There’s a bunch of cool live stuff on it — a couple shows. The Ritz [in New York City] from the ’90s, like early ’90s, and a show that we did in Las Vegas back in 1989, I think it was. And it’s actually the show that I met my ex-wife at, so I was really hard-pressed to even do the fucking record.”
Slash was apparently referencing the last of the three warm-up shows GUNS N’ ROSES booked at the Ritz in New York prior to embarking on its “Use Your Illusion” tour in 1991. The May 16, 1991 concert was notable for being the night singer Ax Rose broke a foot after taking a flying leap during the band’s performance of “You Could Be Mine”.
As for the Las Vegas show that is included in the set, Slash was apparently talking about the January 25, 1992 performance at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is where he and his his now-ex-wife Perla Ferrar first met.
Back in 2011, when the “Use Your Illusion” albums were celebrating their 20th anniversary, Slash told U.K.’s Total Guitar magazine: “I don’t know which [of the two albums] I prefer. I haven’t listened to the ‘Use Your Illusion’ albums for so long, I don’t even know what’s on each. I know people like the blue one over the red one. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
“I was just totally obsessed with the creation of the ‘Illusion’ records and when I got into that studio, I was completely absorbed with everything to do with them, all the time,” he said. “Because it had been so long.
“We’d made ‘Appetite [For Destruction]’ and then toured for years and for me, and I know for a couple of the other guys we’d crashed and burned. So we were pulling ourselves out of the fucking quagmire and going back to work.”
“It was definitely exploratory compared to ‘Appetite’,” he said. “I mean, honestly, I’d have preferred to do a record with just 10 fucking songs that were a bit more straightforward, but it was an opportunity to finally get the band to work again.”
Slash revealed that there was a disagreement within the band over how much extra instrumentation should be put on the tracks.
“The problem was with Izzy [Stradlin, GUNS guitarist],” Slash said. “Because the album reached such gargantuan proportions as far as the production and complexity and the massive expectations [that] Izzy started to bow out. He was harder to find, because that was against his rock and roll philosophy, which I totally agree with.
“We got through the basic tracks and I think that’s what gave the albums such a natural feel. But when we started getting into the time it took to do overdubs and vocals, he sorta disappeared.”
