Rocket Queen
| "Rocket Queen" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by Guns N' Roses from the album Appetite for Destruction | ||||
| Released | July 21, 1987 | |||
| Recorded | Rumbo Studios, Canoga Park, California; Take One Studio, Burbank, California; Can Am Studio, Tarzana, California | |||
| Genre | Heavy metal, hard rock | |||
| Length | 6:13 | |||
| Label | Geffen Records | |||
| Writer | Axl Rose Slash Duff McKagan |
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| Producer | Mike Clink | |||
| Appetite for Destruction track listing | ||||
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"Rocket Queen" is the closing song of Appetite for Destruction, the debut album of the rock band Guns N' Roses.
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[edit] Background
According to frontman W. Axl Rose:
I wrote this song for this girl who was gonna have a band and she was gonna call it Rocket Queen. She kinda kept me alive for a while. The last part of the song is my message to this person, or anybody else who can get something out of it. It's like there's hope and a friendship note at the end of the song. For that song there was also something I tried to work out with various people—a recorded sex act. It was somewhat spontaneous but premeditated; something I wanted to put on the record.—W. Axl Rose An Interview With The Gunners, Hit Parader - March 1988[1]
A credit in the booklet for Appetite for Destruction reads "Barbi (Rocket Queen) Von Greif", implying that she was "this girl" Rose mentions in the quote. Slash stated in his autobiography that he and Duff McKagan wrote the main riff to "Rocket Queen" when they first got together in the short-lived band Road Crew with Steven Adler, prior to Slash and Adler joining Hollywood Rose.[2] Slash states that, while Von Grief was only eighteen at the time, she had a notorious reputation and was "a queen of the underground scene back then. She'd eventually become a madam, but Axl was infatuated with her at the time."[3] She was also mentioned in the acknowledgments section of L.A. Guns' self-titled debut album.
McKagan has stated the song was influenced by the "grooves" of funk group Cameo.[4]
[edit] Sexual recording
Rose brought a woman named Adriana Smith, who was drummer Adler's girlfriend at the time, to the studio and had sex with her so that the sounds that Smith made could be recorded and put over the bridge of the song. Steve Thompson, an engineer of the album, said:
Axl wanted some pornographic sounds on Rocket Queen, so he brought a girl in and they had sex in the studio. We wound up recording about 30 minutes of sex noises. If you listen to the break on Rocket Queen it's in there.[5]
Another engineer, Michael Barbiero, did not want to record the sex session, so he set up the microphones and left the task to his assistant, Vic Deyglio.[5] Deyglio said the studio was "like a Ron Jeremy set", and he even had to enter the booth to adjust a microphone on which Rose and Smith had crashed into.[6] The Appetite for Destruction liner notes jokingly acknowledge Deyglio's contribution by crediting him as "Victor 'the fucking engineer' Deglio".[5]
It was later stated in the music magazine Classic Rock, as well as Rolling Stone, that the person who had been recorded performing sex noises on the song was indeed Adriana Smith, an on-off girlfriend of drummer Steven Adler, who also allegedly had an intimate relationship with frontman Rose.[7][6] Smith revealed in an interview that Adler "freaked out" when he discovered about the recorded sex session, and she spent some years using alcohol and drugs "because I had this extreme shame and guilt and stuff."[6]
[edit] Live
"Rocket Queen" is often played at Guns N' Roses concerts, despite never being released as a single. At a handful of shows during the Use Your Illusion Tour, Axl Rose would sometimes rap a small part of their unreleased song called "It Tastes Good, Don't It?" in the middle of the song. This can be seen on the Use Your Illusion II DVD.
Notably, it was during this song that Axl stage-dived after a fan with a camera, touching off the Riverport Riot in St. Louis in 1991.
It is also played by Slash during his solo tour.
[edit] References
- ^ Meaning Behind Songs - N.I.R
- ^ Slash; Bozza, Anthony (2007). Slash. Harper Entertainment. p. 87. ISBN 978-0007257751.
- ^ Slash; Bozza 2007, pp. 120-121
- ^ (Davis 2008, p. 73), "Duff and Steven jammed together almost every day, playing along to funk numbers by Prince and Cameo, especially Cameo's "Word Up," getting into hard rock grooves that almost swung, an extreme rarity among L.A. bands of the day.(Duff McKagan would later say that "Rocket Queen" was mostly based on Cameo's groove.)"
- ^ a b c Spitz, Marc (July 1999). "Just A Little Patience". Spin. http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/articles/showarticle.php?articleid=71.
- ^ a b c "Filthy Sexy Cool". Rolling Stone Australia, October 2007, Issue 670. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/15690883. Retrieved 2007-10-08.
- ^ "I slept with Axl to get Steven jealous...". Classic Rock, July 2007, Issue 107. 2007-06-09.
[edit] Sources
- Davis, Stephen (2008). Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses. Gotham Books. ISBN 978-1-592-40377-6.
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