The Spaghetti Incident?

Inside Guns N' Roses' Scrappy Covers Album 'The Spaghetti Incident?'

Looking back on punky cover-album release valve from the most excessive band in America
By Christopher R. Weingarten

Very little about Guns N' Roses in the Nineties actually fits the story that people tell about the Nineties.

The band's Use Your Illusion I and II dropped within the four weeks between the tectonic-shifting combo of Pearl Jam's Ten and Nirvana's Nevermind, but GN'R were still afforded a solid three years of rock excess at its most excessive: A release day where they dropped more than 150 minutes of music, multiple million-dollar videos, diva moves that resulted in riots and even Slash bringing a mountain lion into the Four Seasons. Rock music was entering its insular, shaggy Richard Linklater phase, but Guns N' Roses remained proudly in James Cameron mode, complete with an actual Terminator 2 tie-in.

The Spaghetti Incident?, released in 1993, appeared almost as a release valve. This loose-limbed frolic through 13-or-so hard rock, punk and glam covers was the reminder that the big-budget band carving out nine-minute chunks of MTV was once stripped-down blues-metal dirtbags that made Los Angeles hair bands look like the spandex Monkees in 1986.


It began, as Slash said, as a way "to alleviate the pressure of making the Illusions records." In between recording eight-minute epics like "November Rain" and "Estranged" at Hollywood's Record Plant, the band jammed on blurs of vintage punk rock tunes. Though the actual session history is somewhat murky, the results would eventually feature whiplash-speed songs by the Stooges, Fear, the Misfits, U.K. Subs and more.

At some point, the long Illusion sessions took a toll on now-sober guitarist Izzy Stradlin, who reached his limit of constantly being on Axl Standard Time. "On Illusion, we did the basic tracks in about a month," he told Musician in 1992. "Then there was a time lag of about a year before the vocals were finished. I went back to Indiana and painted the house. If you've got a group and people are focused, it just shouldn't take that long. ... On tour, [Rose] had a real hard time finishing the sets. And he had a hard time getting onstage. So you're sitting there in the dressing room at a hockey rink and for, like, two hours the walls are vibrating while the audience is going, 'Bullshit! Bullshit!' That time goes slow when you're sober."

After Stradlin left, new guitarist Gilby Clarke dutifully re-recorded his parts on the covers they already laid down. "A lot of people think I erased Izzy's parts," Clarke told Songfacts. "That's actually not true. Izzy didn't play on a lot of them, so I got to just put my parts on songs that were recorded. So it was a little bit of both."

"When we were first doing it, it was supposed to be like a punk rock covers record," he continued. " But then it just kind of became a covers record, and I did suggest T. Rex. Back then I was wearing a T. Rex T-shirt, like, every single day. Matt used to joke, 'OK, we got it, we got it. You've worn the shirt every day.' And I did make the comment about ['Hair of the Dog'] because I always thought Axl sounded like the singer of Nazareth. Not even knowing that the band actually played that song way before I got in the band."

While a good chunk of The Spaghetti Incident? was ultimately recorded at the Use Your Illusions sessions, eventually the project was rounded out by recording songs like the 1958 Skyliners doo-wop classic "Since I Don't Have You" in-between tour dates.

"We cut 'Since I Don't Have You' in Boston on a day off," drummer Matt Sorum tells Rolling Stone. "Axl sent cassettes around and we went to a local studio and set up our own gear and cut the song. The crew was stuck somewhere, and I remember it being one of the best sessions. The engineer was a young guy in Boston we called at the last minute and showed up. I'll never forget the look on his face. It was like, 'Oh shit'"

A version of Johnny Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory" came from Duff McKagan's time-killing demos where he played guitar, bass and drums like his hero Prince. Axl, Dizzy Reed and acoustic guitarist Carlos Booey would lay down a cover of Charles Manson's "Look at Your Game, Girl," which they would use as a hidden track. Covering a notorious murder-conspirator would be one of the last big controversies in the band's original run.

Michael Monroe, former frontman of Finnish glam-rock icons Hanoi Rocks, was in Los Angeles to record blues harp and saxophone on Use Your Illusion and played a vital role in The Spaghetti Incident?'s most emotional tune. Previously, Axl Rose had told him he never really listened to New York-via-Cleveland punk degenerates the Dead Boys, so Monroe dubbed him a cassette of their two studio albums, which they blasted while driving around Hollywood.

Monroe tells Rolling Stone: "When he heard, 'Ain't It Fun' ... he called Slash and said let's put the band together tomorrow, we gotta record this song."

Monroe split up the vocals as a duet for him and Rose. "Of course I wanted the line, 'Ain't it fun when you've broken up every band that you ever begun,'" Monroe says, laughing. "That was true for me at the time."

"Ain't It Fun" had special emotional weight for Monroe, who had lived with Dead Boys guitarist and vocalist Stiv Bators in London after the dissolution of Hanoi Rocks — and was his friend until he died in 1990. Monroe and Rose recorded their slow-swaying cover, surrounded by candles, face to face. "In some places he sounds so much like Stiv. I was like, 'Wow, it was not really a duet. It was like a trio.' Stiv was there in spirit, sure," says Monroe. The song became the album's first single.

"At that point, the Dead Boys were kind of becoming a footnote," founding member Cheetah Chrome tells Rolling Stone with a laugh. "At the time, it was kind of nice that somebody actually remembered us."

Having one of the biggest rock bands in the world cover your song was actually more than just nice. "Having your song on a Guns N' Roses album is a considerable chunk of change," says Chrome. "I moved down to Nashville, got resettled down there and was able to live and not work for a while. Definitely turned my life around a little bit. It got me through a rough time."

We wanted to call the record Pension Fund," Rose joked in 1994. "'Cause we're kind of ... helping these guys pay some rent. ... Some of those songs I liked, I got ridiculed and criticized for at the time those songs were out. So, it was kinda like, well, now maybe some of those people will listen to it."

"It's the energy and the defiance that punk rock had and that it didn't really hit the mainstream all that much," Rose said. "And we are, whether we like it or not, in some ways in the mainstream, so we've got to bring certain songs to people's attention."

Another person who got a check by the band around 1993 was former drummer Steven Adler, who was booted three years earlier for the nearly unfathomable feat of being on too many drugs for Guns N' Roses. He blamed them for his addiction and sued them, settling out of court to the tune of $2.5 million. The band at least got an album title out of the experience.

During the trial, McKagan was asked about a specific period in 1989. "Steven was doing a lot of crack cocaine at this point, and he'd keep his blow in the refrigerator. So his code word for his stash was 'spaghetti,'" McKagan recalled. "So then I'm in court, with a jury and the whole thing, and this fuckin' lawyer gets up, and with a straight face says, 'Mr. McKagan, tell us about the spaghetti incident.' And I started laughing."

After the album was released – and with Clarke now out of the band as well – Rose, Slash and McKagan would only record one more song together, a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" that appeared on the end credits of 1994's Interview With the Vampire. "If you've ever wondered what the sound of a band breaking up sounds like," Slash wrote in his memoir, "listen to Guns N' Roses' cover of 'Sympathy for the Devil.' If there is one Guns track I'd like to never hear again, it's that one."

"I couldn't have been more disappointed, pissed, frustrated and confused," Slash said in his memoir about hearing the song for the first time. Notorious tinkerer Axl Rose had childhood pal Paul Tobias double his guitar parts. "The only upside I saw to signing off on it was that it would accomplish what we'd been unable to do to any degree in the past seven months: It would actually get all of us into the studio."

"That was the last track we recorded together," remembers Sorum. "Duff, Slash and myself cut that the day before and Axl tracked separate. I liked our version but felt that song had already been recorded perfectly by the Stones."

Additional reporting by Kory Grow.

Eric Weisbard wrote:LISTENING TO The Spaghetti Incident? is like hearing Use Your Illusion I and II refracted through cover versions. The first song, Axl Rose's pipe-bending 'Since I Don't Have You', a 1950s oldie, finishes with a sustained note lifted directly from 'Don't Cry'. Duff McKagan's tribute to the late New York punk rocker Johnny Thunders, 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory', invokes 'So Fine', an Illusion song McKagan dedicated to Thunders. 'Attitude', a Misfits cover, was featured on the UYI tour and video. And anyone who ever browsed through the Illusion CD booklets should find the title of the new album's first single, 'Ain't It Fun', familiar: The phrase, attributed to Stiv Bators, appears at the end of the credits page. It's kind of the informal motto of the Use Your Illusion albums, and now Guns N' Roses would like you to know where it came from. "A great song can be found anywhere," writes GNR in the liner notes to The Spaghetti Incident? "Do yourself a favor and go find the originals."
So let's start there, because, in fact, Stiv Bators did not write 'Ain't it Fun'. And the Dead Boys version GNR cites is not the original. Peter Laughner and his collaborator on the song, Cheetah Chrome, were, in 1975, part of a group called Rocket From the Tombs. Bators was very briefly tried out as the band's vocalist, before Rocket From the Tombs went back to David Thomas. After Rocket broke-up, some members, including Chrome, formed the Dead Boys, with Bators singing. Laughner and Thomas formed Pere Ubu, the greatest art-punk band America never knew about.
The song 'Ain't It Fun' is worth contemplating in any version. The music harkens to a Stooges classic, 'No Fun', as a dazed singer tries to find his tongue. "Ain't it fun when your friends despise what you've become/Ain't it fun when you know you're gonna die young/Somebody came up to me and spit right in my face/But I couldn't even feel it/Such fun." It's hard to find one of the Rocket From the Tombs bootleg recordings of the tune; my vinyl version is number 324 of a 600 copy set. And that's how Peter Laughner would have wanted it. He did die young, in 1977, at age 24, after too much drugs, drink, and chasing after a CBGB vision of underground living. Lester Bangs wrote his obituary: "Peter Laughner had his private pains and compulsions, but at least in part he died because he wanted to be Lou Reed."
When Use Your Illusion was released in September 1991, I wondered if anyone out there could still prefer to be Lou Reed instead of Axl Rose. Months later, Nirvana, a band who've probably listened to Rocket From the Tombs, went to No. 1. And nowadays, a band called Rocket From the Crypt — see a reference there? — is being touted as a next big thing. The fact that Axl Rose idolizes Stiv Bators scarcely qualifies as cool at all. Scenesters who hear about the uncredited Charles Manson song the GNR album ends with will probably sniff that Redd Kross thought of it first.
But maybe that's why I like Guns N' Roses. Remember, this is a crew who first made it big with a metal power-ballad, 'Sweet Child o' Mine', whose video featured the boys looking like punks (not a wise commercial decision at that point), right down to a CBGB T-shirt. The covers here — Nazareth, T. Rex, Stooges, New York Dolls, the Damned, Fear, Misfits — demonstrate GNR's conviction that early-'70s metal and its sworn enemy, punk rock, were essentially the same beast, connected through glam and testosterone. In the wake of grunge, this is hardly a revolutionary view. But moving to punk from metal took more guts and imagination than Seattle's reverse. And if The Spaghetti Incident? mostly reveals that posturing white boys with bad attitudes can be found throughout rock history, give Axl Rose credit anyway: Unlike most metal artists, who accept ghettoization, he'll place his loud mouth against any Baudelaire bohemian with an amplifier.
Not that GNR gravitates toward cerebral punk. McKagan's exuberant lead vocals on the Misfits and Damned numbers show off his garage-band past. You can feel Slash slobbering behind the versions of Fear's 'I Don't Care About You' ("Fuck you") and a quickie that jams Soundgarden's 'Big Dumb Sex' ("I'm gonna fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you") into a T. Rex glam-bang. Real pleasant.
But then there's the immortal Axl. His lead on 'Down On the Farm' by UK Subs, a worthy obscurity that's more about mental homes than cops, touches on one of Rose's great themes: The same qualities that define him as a rock star almost got him institutionalized. His vocal on the Manson cover, origins aside, turns out to be an unusually jazzy slide over samba beats. And if 'Raw Power' and the Steve Jones-Sex Pistols scrap 'Black Leather' are extraneous, 'Human Being' isn't. David Johansen changed his name to Buster Poindexter to avoid association with creeps like Axl, but there the rose gunner is anyway, mewling to the Dolls' classic that I think inspired Illusion's 'Don't Damn Me'. "If I want too many things/It's because I'm a human being." He is?

Neil Jeffries wrote:Neil Jeffries throws a mood-swing over GUNS N' ROSES' 'The Spaghetti Incident?'!

The Spaghetti Incident?
Greffen GFFICID 24017

After the almost ??? wait for the 'Use Your Illusions' albums, it's a bit of a shocker to find this ready on schedule - even if it was started as long ago as 1990...
But what the hell, it's worth the wait - in gold!
A covers album of songs by your heroes would be a cheap shot to sidestep the writing process in almost anybody else's hands, but Guns N' Roses have done it with real class. Given the names of those they've covered, you'd think you could predict the tracks - but GN'R have rarely been predictable. But rest assured in their hands, all these cuts sound inspired.
Ironically, they've cut no corners either, and have made an album which can stand proudly alongside both the '..Illusion' records. Hell, you might even prefer it.
Duff's vocals to 'Attitude' could sum up the whole record. It would have made a perfect title track, but the absolute star is W.Axl Rose whose ever-changing vocals demonstrate more than ever. On first listen you'll need the line notes to be certain its Axl you're listening to. Sometimes it isn't (!).. but the range of characterization he injects when he does is staggering.
Biggest shock of all is the album's opening cut, 'Since I Don't Have You' which, after a short Slash solo, turns into brilliant piece of '50's Doo-Woo Pop where Axl sounds almost like Buddy Holly. Elsewhere, his impersonations of UK Subs frontman Charlie Harper on 'Down On The Farm' (also not unlike Mick Jagger is anchoring ?Gock? or knee mode) and of Nazareths's Dan McCafferty on 'Hair Of The Dog'( with a new hyperspeed ending) are just so impressive.
As well as the the ??? fave 'Attitude', Duff sings lead on the frantic n' faithful 'New Rose' and plaintive n' poignant, 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory'. Michael Monroe and Slash also help Axl with some lead vocals (on 'Ain't It Fun' and 'Buick McKane' respectively) - but when the later ?????? into 'Big Dumb Sex', its unmistakably Axl who spits 'I know what to do, I'm gonnal f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k you'
He's equally unmistakable on 'Human Being', where he's back in full high-pitched 'My Michelle' mode. It's a killer track that, like all the best fairground rides, it doesn't really go anywhere but suffers not at all for chucking you off dizzy and battered at the same place you got on. Ditto 'Raw Power' (albeit a much shorter ride), where Duff helps Axl out and adds: 'Yo Iggy check it out,' in tribute. ??????
In fact, it's ???? any of the artists on "The Spaghetti Incident?" would feel ??????? improves on most originals - and he has a real blast with Bolan's spit-in-your-eye riff on 'Buick...' and adding a nod to The Beatles 'Daytripper' at the end of 'Hair Of The Dog'
Standard track is almost certain that opener, 'Since I Don't Have You', purely because it is so unlike anything GN'R have ever done. It would made a superb single - but they've opted first for the slow Blues-to-bitchy Rock of their Stiy Baters tribute. 'Ain't It Fun'.
They've also opted no to tell you about an extra bonus acoustic track which picks up after the vicious rendition of 'I Don't Care About You'. It's uncredited and - I'd guess - an original, possibly called 'Sad Game'. Whatever with the lyric, 'What a mad illusion, living in my confusion...' it draws a very real curtain over the lengthy and ultimately triumphant follow-up-to 'Appetite' saga.
****1/2

Neil Jeffries.

GUNS N' ROSES
'The Spaghetti Incident'

Label: Greffen

Release Date: November 22

Writing:
The album contains no GN'R originals, just cover versions. See track-listing for original artists.

Recording:
Eight of the tracks were recorded during the sessions for what became the 'Use Your Illusion I' and '..II' albums. (first sessions were on 13 January 1990 at Rumbo in LA). These tracks all originally featured former GN'R rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Two other covers - Wings' 'Live And Let Die' and Bob Dylan's 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' - were used on the '...Illusion' albums, but the rest, all Punk tunes, were kept back and slated for release as what became heralded as 'The Punk Covers EP'. Instead, on completion of the marathon '..Illusion' world tour, GN'R went back into the studio, got Gilby Clarke to redo most of Izzy's guitar parts, and added four new songs to make a more varied album: 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory' (which might otherwise have been on Duff's solo album), 'Since I Don't Have You', 'Hair Of The Dog' and 'Buick McKane (Big Dumb Sex)'. The tracks were done in numerous studios all over North America, but chiefly at A&M in Los Angeles.

Track-listing:
'Since I Don't Have You', 'New Rose', 'Down On The Farm', 'Human Being', 'Raw Power', 'Ain't It Fun', 'Buick McKane (Big Dumb Sex)', 'Hair Of The Dog', 'Attitude', 'Black Leather', 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory', 'I Don't Care About You'.

Production:
All tracks by Mike Clink and Guns N' Roses, except 'Since I Don't Have You' (by GN'R alone) and 'You can't Put Your Amrs Around A Memory' (by Duff and Jim Michell).

Producers previous credits:
Clink and Guns N' Roses do have some previous ?work?: they are the team that brought you all the GN'R Greffen product...???? with total worldwide sales of nearly 50 million. Like the tracks on the '...Illusions' sets, the ?tracks? on 'The Spaghetti Incident?' were mixed by Englishman Bill Price in ??? Sound.

Cover Art:
Photo of a plate of spaghetti, could be Heinz, may be Crosse & Blackwell...

Previous Releases:
'Live ?!'@ Like A Suicide' (Uzi Suicide, 1986)
'Appetite For Destruction' (Greffen, 1987)
'GN'R Lies' (Greffen, 1988)
'Use Your Illusion I' (Greffen, 1991)
'Use Your Illusion II' (Greffen, 1991)

DO YOURSELF A FLAVOUR!
The sleeve to 'The Spaghetti Incident?' bears the message: 'A great song can be found anywhere. Do yourself a favour and go find the originals.'
Your ever-helpful RAW scribe humbly points you in the right direction, telling you the artist who first recorded the song, in what year, and - wherever possible - where you might best look for the original:

'SINCE I DON'T HAVE YOU' by THE SKYLINERS
American ??? band. Axl remembers the original, which dates from way back in 1958, and so does Art Garfunkel, who had a hit with this in 1978.

'NEW ROSE' by THE DAMNED
Although claimed to be the first ever Punk hit single - released in 1977 - it failed to dent the UK Top 75. The original 45 is very rare now, but you can still find it on the The Damned's first album - originally on Stiff Records - 'Damned, Damned, Damned.'

'DOWN ON THE FARM' by UK SUBS
First recorded in 1982 for the 'Endangered Species' LP on ?them?.. Recently re-recorded for their current album 'Normal Service Resumed' on Jungle Records'

'HUMAN BEING' by NEW YORK DOLLS.
Last sung on the second LP, 'Too Much Too Soon', 1974 on Mercury.

'RAW POWER' by IGGY POP AND THE STOOGES
Title track of the band's 1973 third LP on ?GRS?

AIN'T IT FUN by THE DEAD BOYS
From 1987, as on the US Punksters first album, 'Young Loud and Snotty(?)on ire.

'BUICK MCKANE (BIG DUMB SEX)' by T REX (SOUNDGARDEN)
The T Rex track was originally on 1973's 'The Slider' album on EMI. Second half of the ?sequal? was first heard on the Seattle quartet's 'Louder Than Love' out in ?1969? on A&M.

'HAIR OF THE DOG' by NAZARETH
Title track of the Scottish band's 1975 Hard Rock classic, originally on ?Mooncrest?, now available on ???Classics.

'ATTITUDE' by THE MISFITS
One of the Glenn Danzig-?? cuts on the much sought after 12" 'Beware' EP released in 1980

'BLACK LEATHER' by STEVE JONES AND THE SEX PISTOLS
The unusual credit hints at the the fact that this was not part of the classic Pistol Incarnation.
Originally on a bonus record on a 1980 singles collection called 'The Pistols Pack', released to great apathy before Jones and fellow ex-Pistol Paul Cook formed another short-lived band, The Professionals. Also covered by The Runaways on 1978's 'And Now...The Runaways'

'YOU CAN'T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A MEMORY' by JOHNNY THUNDER
From the ex-New York Dolls guitarist's guest star-studded 1978 solo album 'So Alone', originally on Sire. Re-released on CD Warner Bros in 1992.

'I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU' by FEAR
Originally recording in 1982, Fears back catalogue has been re-issued in mary formats, but this was first on the band's eponymous debut album on Restless. There's a live version on 'Live For The Record' (recorded in 1986, ???, also on Restless, 1991)

Brad Tolinski wrote:IT WAS A rallying cry for dirtbags of all persuasions. With their 1988 debut, the now-legendary Appetite For Destruction, Guns N' Roses established themselves as the age's industrial-strength pop culture trash compactor, GN'R devoured slop from America's vast teenage landfill and vomited a grand, greasy slab of platinum-coated solid waste. Chunks of L.A. glam-metal, Midwest alienation, Seattle punk all were compressed into a violent soundtrack for the beer-swilling, dirty masses. In short, an all-encompassing bag of venom for a rootless Generation X.
Appetite was a hard act to follow, and, not surprisingly, Lies and Use Your Illusion I and II didn't really do the trick. The Illusion albums were impressive in their scope and ambition, but they never captured the debut's ferocity. Like the Las Vegas Elvis, I and II were big, bloated, and somewhat directionless; void of the lean, sinister power and street humor of their first effort. The Guns' garbage disposal was jammed with self-righteous anger and arena rock grandeur at the exclusion of Destruction's streetwise piss and vinegar.
Now, with The Spaghetti Incident? it appears that GN'R's "appetite" has returned.
On the surface, this new Guns album is simply a tribute to some of the music that originally inspired them to pick up their instruments. Cynics may declare it simply to be a holiday gift of punk anthems and glam obscurities, designed to hold the band's fans over until they record their next magnum opus. But Incident is much more. Like battery acid, this "tribute" album strips away Illusion's pomp and circumstance and returns the band to the mean streets where they belong. By recording songs by The Dead Boys, Iggy Pop, Fear, and the Misfits, among others, the band liberates itself from the pressure of being Guns N' Roses. And they rise to the challenge of their new circumstances by attacking each song like a pack of starved dogs tussling for rancid meat.
Their performances are terrifying, funny, and terrific. Their versions of The Damned's "New Rose" and The New York Dolls' "Human Being" are clearly the work of musicians who've been on the road for over two years. Tight, fast, and furious, they flatten the listener with the machine-tooled precision of a Japanese supertrain.
Slash, in particular, shines throughout. The many months of roadwork have honed his chops to an extraordinary degree. Although he is still pretty much restricted within the confines of the blues pentatonic, his phrasing and fluidity have improved by leaps and bounds. Whether he is pounding out barre chords like a fifth Ramone on The Damned's "New Rose" or soloing majestically on the album's centerpiece, "Ain't It Fun," he is consistently spot on.
On "Human Being," Slash and rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke are locked in with telepathic synchronicity. The two guitars become one, bobbing and weaving as they insert fills without ever losing the groove. In addition, Slash delivers some of his finest lead playing to date, his creamy-sounding Les Paul chewing up tape like Eric Clapton on steroids. When Axl lets loose with a long, slobbering "Yeaaahhhh!" at the song's finale, you know exactly what he is talking about.
What is a compactor without a little white trash? GN'R were born to cover Nazareth's unwashed classic, "Hair Of The Dog." The earth rumbles. Slash's talk box barfs blood and razor blades. And Axl screams, "Now you're messin' with a son of a bitch," until his face turns blue. In the kingdom of rock and roll, this is a good thing.
It may seem a little odd to gush over an album that is intended to be a curio, but I see The Spaghetti Incident? as an important turning point. It is the sound of a band that has regained their sense of humor and sense of purpose.