- G - Guns 'N' Roses

The tried and tested rule of early work is better than later is seen perfectly in Guns 'N' Roses. With Axl seeming to lose the plot and self destructing. What is marketed as Guns today is a shadow of what they were.

So if by any chance you've not experienced rock Axl style head straight for 1987's essential Appetite For Destruction with no weak tracks and no filler this is a must have; classics Paradise City, Sweet Child O' Mine and Welcome To The Jungle. The following year's G N' R Lies gave a taste of the band live. By releasing Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II at the same time presented a big gamble for fans in what seemed a huge body of new material. Looking back now, the combined albums contain more classics November Rain, Live and Let Die, Civil War  and You Could Be Mine.

This is where caution starts, I personaly like 1993's punk covers album The Spaghetti Incident? despite getting mixed reactions from the music press. Probably the obscure choices helped, I wasn't familiar with most of the original tracks so the album felt fresh. The Damned's New Rose, the Stooges Raw Power and  The New York Dolls Human Being are possibly the best known with other covers of T-Rex, Sex Pistols, Skyliners, UK Subs, Dead Boys, Nazareth, Misfits and Fear.

A few studio and live compilations followed after which Axl lost the whole band and spent some 15 years producing  Chinese Democracy that I mention only to warn against buying. This is the only Guns album I struggle to return to. Instead, if you can find a copy, the excellent live bootleg For Motherfuckers Only is a recording at Deer Creek Music, Indiana from May 1991. This is how I'll remember Guns 'N' Roses.