The Use Your Illusion box set to be released on November 11, 2022

Some internet sleuths have found out that the released date is November 11 this year.

And here is the alleged track list of at least one of the "boxes" (super deluxe?):






So remastered version of the songs, two full shows (Ritz 1991 and Vegas 1992) as well as additional live versions. No sign of demos or outtakes. But the track list above could be incomplete.

The track list above has been confirmed. Here is information on the various packages: https://uk.gnrmerch.com/*/Music/

And release date of Nov 11 is confirmed.

No outtakes or demos.

That's the content the super deluxe 7-CD version:



Use Your Illusion: Super Deluxe 7CD + Blu Ray Box Set

€302.99
Delivery from €27.83

Release Date 11 November 2022

UYI Super Deluxe 7-CD box with 97 total tracks – 63 unreleased audio & video tracks. UYI I & II albums remastered for first-time ever. LIVE IN NEW YORK & LIVE IN LAS VEGAS albums are first-ever-released complete concerts for UYI-era GN’R. LIVE IN NEW YORK Blu-ray features full concert film in HD with surround & stereo audio. 100-page hardcover book with unreleased photos & images. Bonus items include replica Conspiracy Inc fan club kit, 10 double-design lithos, 4 backstage passes & much more.

Tracks

BLU-RAY VIDEO
1 LIVE IN NEW YORK
2 Ritz Theatre – May 16, 1991
3 Concert: 1.44:1 Pillarbox / 1080p / 24fps
4 Menu: “You Could Be Mine (Live in New York)” Music Video
5 Audio: Dolby Atmos 48kHz 24-bit / Dolby TrueHD 5.1 96kHz 24-bit / PCM Stereo 48kHz 24-bit
6 Regions: All
7 Run Time: 2hr 6min
8 PRETTY TIED UP*
9 BAD OBSESSION*
10 RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO HELL*
11 MR. BROWNSTONE*
12 DUST N’ BONES*
13 LIVE AND LET DIE*
14 PARADISE CITY*
15 VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN) / CIVIL WAR*
16 DRUM SOLO*
17 SLASH SOLO*
18 YOU COULD BE MINE*
19 I WAS ONLY JOKING / PATIENCE*
20 ONLY WOMEN BLEED / KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR*
21 DON’T CRY (ORIGINAL)* [features Shannon Hoon on vocals]
22 YOU AIN’T THE FIRST* [features Shannon Hoon on vocals]
23 MY MICHELLE*
24 ESTRANGED*
25 DOUBLE TALKIN’ JIVE*
26 SWEET CHILD O’ MINE*
27 WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE*
28 * Previously unreleased

CD 1
1 USE YOUR ILLUSION I
2 Original Album Remastered
3 RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO HELL
4 DUST N’ BONES
5 LIVE AND LET DIE
6 DON’T CRY (ORIGINAL)
7 PERFECT CRIME
8 YOU AIN’T THE FIRST
9 BAD OBSESSION
10 BACK OFF BITCH
11 DOUBLE TALKIN’ JIVE
12 NOVEMBER RAIN*
13 THE GARDEN
14 GARDEN OF EDEN
15 DON’T DAMN ME
16 BAD APPLES
17 DEAD HORSE
18 COMA
 
CD 2
1 USE YOUR ILLUSION II
2 Original Album Remastered
3 CIVIL WAR
4 14 YEARS
5 YESTERDAYS
6 KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR
7 GET IN THE RING
8 SHOTGUN BLUES
9 BREAKDOWN
10 PRETTY TIED UP
11 LOCOMOTIVE
12 SO FINE
13 ESTRANGED
14 YOU COULD BE MINE
15 DON’T CRY (ALT. LYRICS)
16 MY WORLD

CD 3
1 LIVE IN NEW YORK
2 Ritz Theatre – May 16, 1991
3 PRETTY TIED UP*
4 BAD OBSESSION*
5 RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO HELL*
6 MR. BROWNSTONE*
7 DUST N’ BONES
8 LIVE AND LET DIE*
9 PARADISE CITY*
10 VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN) / CIVIL WAR*
11 DRUM SOLO*
12 SLASH SOLO*
13 YOU COULD BE MINE*

CD 4
1 LIVE IN NEW YORK* (cont’d)
2 Ritz Theatre – May 16, 1991
3 I WAS ONLY JOKING / PATIENCE*
4 ONLY WOMEN BLEED / KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR*
5 DON’T CRY (ORIGINAL)* [features Shannon Hoon on vocals]
6 YOU AIN’T THE FIRST* [features Shannon Hoon on vocals]
7 MY MICHELLE*
8 ESTRANGED*
9 DOUBLE TALKIN’ JIVE*
10 SWEET CHILD O’ MINE*
11 WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE*

CD 5
1 LIVE IN LAS VEGAS
2 Thomas & Mack Center – January 25, 1992
3 NIGHTRAIN
4 MR. BROWNSTONE*
5 LIVE AND LET DIE*
6 ATTITUDE*
7 IT’S SO EASY*
8 BAD OBSESSION*
9 WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE*
10 DOUBLE TALKIN’ JIVE*
11 VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN) / CIVIL WAR / VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN)*

CD 6
1 LIVE IN LAS VEGAS (cont’d)
2 Thomas & Mack Center – January 25, 1992
3 DON’T CRY (ORIGINAL)*
4 WILD HORSES*
5 PATIENCE*
6 YOU COULD BE MINE*
7 SO FINE*
8 NOVEMBER RAIN*
9 INTROS / DRUM SOLO*
10 SLASH SOLO*
11 SPEAK SOFTLY, LOVE (LOVE THEME FROM THE GODFATHER)*
12 ROCKET QUEEN

CD 7
1 LIVE IN LAS VEGAS (cont’d)
2 Thomas & Mack Center – January 25, 1992
3 SAIL AWAY SWEET SISTER*
4 SWEET CHILD O’ MINE*
5 MOVE TO THE CITY*
6 HOTEL CALIFORNIA / ONLY WOMEN BLEED / KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR*
7 YESTERDAYS
8 MY MICHELLE*
9 ESTRANGED*
10 MOTHER* / PARADISE CITY

There's also a 12-vinyl version with the same content:



https://uk.gnrmerch.com/

Press release in Blabbermouth: https://blabbermouth.net/news/guns-n-roses-to-release-use-your-illusion-i-ii-box-set-featuring-63-previously-unreleased-audio-tracks-and-videos

WOW!

This Blu-Ray should be absolutely insane!

Finally someone decided to use that glorious footage!

The accompanying video for the live You Could Be Mine single, containing edited footage from the show at the Ritz, was released today:

Blackstar wrote:The accompanying video for the live You Could Be Mine single, containing edited footage from the show at the Ritz, was released today:

1) GLORIOUS
This is just as good as any footage of GNR that we will ever see. It doesn't get any better. Glorious, glorious footage, cinematography, camera work, you name it. Pure gold.

2) DISFUNCTIONAL
I can't believe that they didn't release this in 1992. Or in 1993. Or in 1994. Or in 1995. How disfunctional a band needs to be to keep this type of footage unreleased? In the pre/early internet days this would be a MEGA MONSTER SELLER on DVD format.

3) PETTY
The mix is identical to the audio-only version where Slash's guitar is much, much louder than Izzy's for most of the duration. This is so petty and low. At this point I have no hope that it will be any different for the rest of the show.

4) POOR JOB
Beyond erasing Izzy for most of the duration, the mix overall is poor: drums are too strident, backing vocals are barely audible at some parts (and then clearly audible at other parts) etc. A real poor job. Bad taste if you ask me.

5) PETTY II
Axl and Slash must have 80% of "air time", Matt about 10%, Duff about 7% and Izzy about 3%.

6) FABULOUS
The editing job is absolutely stellar

7) TRYING TOO HARD
Anyone noticed how they really made an effort to show scenes of Axl and Slash laughing and "having fun" and "being buddies" onstage? I think the overdid that a bit, huh?

8) THE REAL THING
I really, really hope that the Blu-Ray contains actual live footage and not one single frame of edited footage

Interview with Vincent Hocquet (Belgian artist who designed the zoetrope artwork for the UYI box set) in KW.be, Oct. 14. Credit to "lzandman" on Reddit for the image and English translation.



English translation:
------------------------------
VINCENT MAKES PSYCHEDELIC ARTWORK FOR LEGENDARY ROCK GROUP

And suddenly Guns N ' Roses is your customer Vincent Hocquet (50) has been active as a tattoo artist for 25 years, but the Koksijde resident also has a number of side projects as a visual artist. That is how he started studying the technique of Zoetropes five years ago. "These are optical illusions on a flat surface, which come to life when you look at them with the right light frequency. So this works like a phenakistiscope, which was invented by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau. However, I set up my sequence of images slipmats, which, as it were, show a GIF (moving image file, ed.) on your record player," he explains.

OPTICAL ILLUSION

Vincent originally gave these special works of art as gifts to the many bands that came to perform with him. "I have already made such animation films for a lot of Belgian artists such as Dez Mona, The Bony King of Nowhere or Johannes Verschaeve. I always spend a few weeks on that from idea to implementation. In the meantime I also made slipmats with photos of my tattoos, I entered a competition for Queen, and I translated Jack White's video clip Lazaretto into an elongated Zoetrope in my style," says the music fan. After all that free work, there were also assignments for Shtevil, Wouter Berlaen and Jef Neve, and last year a remarkable order suddenly fell into Vincent's mailbox: "Someone from Universal wanted to talk to me about a project for a major band. The next day I had a group discussion with him and an art director. Only then did I hear that it was about Guns N' Roses and that they wanted to involve me in the anniversary box of the double album Use Your Illusion, which came out thirty years ago. Of course I was immediately enthusiastic, because I had that album on cassette at the time and so it was part of the soundtrack of my childhood."

BREAKTHROUGH

Vincent was given carte blanche for the elaboration of the slipmat, which will soon be included in the deluxe set of the box. "Yet I made six versions before I sent one that I was sufficiently satisfied with," he laughs. "I suspect that they just ended up on my webshop via Google or YouTube. I'd rather not disclose the exact amount of money that I get for this, but I certainly have pride in working. Moreover, I hope that this will lead to even more orders, so it can be a breakthrough for my digital work.'

The slipmat appears with four colored vinyl records in the deluxe set of the anniversary box. It won't be released until November 11, but can already be pre-ordered. Previous work by Vincent can be found at www.thefisherkingstore.com

Any Italian fans around here? Not sure what this is about but it is likely that it has something to do with the box set!

source = https://www.famousfix.com/topic/classic-rock-magazine-italy-november-2022

Double Talkin' Jive from Las Vegas 1992 has been released in Australia/New Zealand, Asia and Eastern Europe (it will be available in the other regions at midnight depending on the timezone):

Blackstar wrote:Double Talkin' Jive from Las Vegas 1992 has been released in Australia/New Zealand, Asia and Eastern Europe (it will be available in the other regions at midnight depending on the timezone):

That was great

This is probably the first time where I can listen to Gilby's guitar very clearly in one song.

The difference between what he does on this song and what Izzy does on this song (check Rio 1991, both nights) is nothing short of massive.

Half the time Gilby plays the same things as Izzy and the other half he just doesn't.

When Gilby plays the same thing as Izzy, it feels like something is off, not right, I can't explain what it is. Maybe he is always a bit ahead or a bit behind the so called "pocket"...

When Gilby plays different stuff then it just drags

Listening and watching Gilby interviews over the years I learned to respect him as a musician, as a person (seems like a nice guy), but, fuck, it just drags

It's pretty obvious that Gilby was telling the truth on that interview about learning the songs where he says something like "nobody in the band really knew what izzy played live"... it is pretty obvious here!

The new version of November Rain (with a real orchestra) will be available at midnight (It's already been released in some regions)

The "new" November Rain sounds great! But I think they should have included the original version as well.

The orchestra sounds beautiful indeed

Not very different from the "original", but there are spots where you hear new things

This song is so ingrained in my mind that these new things feel weird and out of place on the two listens that I just did

But I guess that is just a matter of getting used to them

Thankfully Axl didn't re-record his vocals

There are some noticeable changes in the mix though, specially on the drums sound

The drums appear to be overall lower in the mix when compared to the "original" version

It seems to me that they lost a bit of their "thunder" feel in this new mixing

From 2m to 2m30s specifically they seem to have buried the drums to the point where you can barely hear them

And there is at least one other spot right after that where they do the same

Some guitars also have been buried at some spots

I am all for changes in live music but I am not sure if I like this redoing of studio music

This new mix appears to have deleted some specific "pieces" of music that I am "expecting" to hear, that I am used to and that "guide me" through the song.

Blackstar wrote:I think they should have included the original version as well.

agreed

Blackstar wrote:

https://twitter.com/StevenWilsonHQ/status/1588861683828670471

this guy did such a job mixing the drums that some fans are claiming that Frank Ferrer has re-recorded them!

ludurigan wrote:
this guy did such a job mixing the drums that some fans are claiming that Frank Ferrer has re-recorded them!

Actually the drums sound better to me

Review in Loudersound/Classic Rock:
---------------------------------------------

Guns N' Roses: a super deluxe reminder of a band who were never the same again
If the original 30 Use Your Illusion tracks weren’t enough for you, here’s a box set that adds 47 contemporaneous live performances

4/5 stars

By Neil Jeffries

On 17 September 1991 Guns N’ Roses simultaneously released a pair of double albums, covering a huge range of styles, with writing credits by the four principal members. It was some response to the charge that, in taking four years to properly follow-up their Appetite For Destruction debut, the band were a busted flush.

Appetite had changed the world in 54 minutes. Use Your Illusion I (7/10) and II (8/10) spent more than two and a half hours making it busier – and GN’R grandiose. The Illusion albums are guilty (in places) of misogyny and overindulgence. The 30 songs remain hard to love played end to end.

There’s also an elephant in the room: Axl Rose’s voice. It’s an angle grinder that disfigures many fine songs and does horrible things to Wings’ Live And Let Die. But hey, he wrote the epic ballads Don’t Cry and November Rain (here augmented with a real orchestra) and Estranged and Coma – an amazing piece of work – and invited Alice Cooper aboard to make The Garden near-perfect.

‘Super Deluxe’ means a box set that contains the originals remastered, a 100-page book and assorted reproduction ephemera. But it’s the two never-before-released complete live sets you’ll treasure – if you can afford around £250 for the CDs, or more than £400 for the 12-disc vinyl version.

Both the vinyl and CD boxes include Live In New York from the Ritz Theatre on May 16, 1991 and Live In Las Vegas from the Thomas & Mack Center on January 25, 1992, plus a Blu-ray video of the full Ritz show.

The feverish club atmosphere of New York (9/10) gives it the edge over Las Vegas (8/10). The former was effectively a public rehearsal, Vegas a full-blown 18,000-seat arena show. At the first, newly installed drummer Matt Sorum and keyboard player Dizzy Reed backed Axl, Slash, Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan. By the time they got to Vegas several months later, Stradlin had left and had been replaced by Gilby Clarke.

At The Ritz they played 12 Illusion tunes (including Pretty Tied Up, Right Next Door To Hell and Dust N’ Bones). The much longer Las Vegas show had only 11 and a lot more of Appetite.

Oddly, despite all the new material, they opted to play 10 covers/snippets: adopting the Wings tune and Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door as Duff sang the Misfits’ Attitude and Clarke showcased the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses, while Slash bookended Civil War with some Voodoo Child licks.

For GN’R, the times they were a-changin’. Best to freeze them here.

https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/guns-n-roses-a-super-deluxe-reminder-of-a-band-who-were-never-the-same-again

Review in Rolling Stone:
------------------------------

Guns N‘ Roses’ ‘Use Your Illusion’ Box Set Is An Image of A Band Refusing To Give Up Its Place In the Jungle
Seven-disc megalith includes two full live concerts that show why the band survived the Nineties rock narrative

BY KORY GROW

It took Guns N’ Roses less than a year to go from hard-rock paupers, targeted by L.A. street urchins with stuttering taunts of “Welcome to the jungle, you’re gonna die” (or, worse, “feel my serpentine?”), to become the Most Dangerous Band in the World. They were unprepared for fame. Their debut, 1987’s Appetite for Destruction, was crude and rude; its sci-fi cover illustration depicted a sexual assault, its lyrics reveled in misogyny and heroin abuse, one song (“Rocket Queen”) contained literal audio pornography, as a woman pants while Axl Rose behaved in the studio like Axl Rose. It should have been lucky to go gold. But because songs like “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Paradise City” were undeniably fantastic, and because such cancelation-worthy hijinx was still welcome —encouraged even — in the Eighties (remember Sam Kinison?), it went to Number One and has since achieved nearly double-diamond sales. In March of ’87, they were playing the West Hollywood club the Roxy; by September, Long Beach Arena. In half a year, they’d become rock & roll nouveau riche.

Many millions of album sales and oh, so much “Patience” later, GN’R were still processing their metamorphosis as they were releasing the evil-twin confessional testaments, Use Your Illusion I and II. At a May 1991 New York City gig, included in this new super deluxe editions of the new Use Your Illusion box set, guitarist Izzy Stradlin slovenly addresses the crowd after a ragged “My Michelle”: “Fuckin’ three years ago, fuckin’ Appetite came out,” he says. “Fuckin’ no one would give the band fuckin’ shit for notoriety or anything. … It was you guys that fucking made us happen. So that being the case, the band got really fuckin’ big. I mean it blew my fuckin’ mind. … So now what we’re doing is we’re fucking touring on an album that hasn’t been released, because when we started out in clubs, that’s how we started.”

“And the moral of the story,” Rose adds, “is never believe anything you read in Spin magazine.”

This, in the Year Punk Broke A.D., was months before Nevermind, and a year before Kurt Cobain, on the exact same journey as GN’R, rocked a “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” T-shit on Rolling Stone’s cover. But even as grunge and punk revivalism supposedly unseated mainstream rock in the Nineties (or so the myth goes), Guns N’ Roses, who’d been covering punk groups the U.K. Subs and the Misfits for years, were playing in stadiums alongside Metallica (another band that covered the Misfits, as well as punks Fang years before Nirvana). Mainstream rock, with all its primordial influences, was still bigger than ever and would remain so for at least a couple more years. This box set, memorializing the 30th anniversary of Guns N’ Roses’ overwhelming and intimidating Use Your Illusion albums — arriving, in true GN’R fashion, a year late — presents some interesting alternate facts for the alternative explosion.

After a short and ugly detour with the Lies EP and its bigoted “One in a Million” (from which GN’R have since quietly distanced themselves), they decided to record Literally Every Song They Know for the Use Your Illusion behemoths. Listening now, the albums are impressive in their breadth and excess: Dylan and Wings covers, two versions of the same five-minute power ballad “Don’t Cry,” an Alice Cooper guest poem on “The Garden” (followed on the track list quixotically by “Garden of Eden”), equal doses of misogyny n’ vulnerability throughout, all of “November Rain” from its sound effects to Slash’s heart-rending coda, and a still-bizarre industro-rap invitation into Rose’s “socio-psychotic state of bliss” (whatever that is.)

On Appetite, they’d reinvigorated hard rock by becoming a punk-rock Aerosmith; now they were the Stones, Elton John, Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols, N.W.A, and Nine Inch Nails, depending on the song and sometimes at the same time – but still always sounding like Guns N’ Roses. Slash’s long, mournful notes on “Estranged” still sting; Duff McKagan’s iconic hollow bass sound mightily props up “You Could Be Mine”; Stradlin’s hepcat vocals still make finding a head and an arm in a garbage can on “Double-Talkin’ Jive” seem kinda cool; Matt Sorum’s snare-drum thwapping in the chorus to “Dead Horse” remains an effective metaphor; Rose still sounds convincing in his promise that “there’s a heaven above you baby” while breaking your heart on “Don’t Cry”; and they all sound certifiably bonkers calling out Spin founder Bob Guccione, Jr. on “Get in the Ring” like schoolyard bullies. The only thing different in the original albums here is “November Rain,” which now features a real orchestra, instead of Rose’s keyboards, and while the depth of sound is astounding and the strings sound lush and, frankly, gorgeous, it’s hard not to want to hear the airy flute up front the way it was on the original.

The albums, in hindsight, present the paradox of a band of outsiders who have become the biggest band on the planet but still want to be rebels (see also: Neil Young’s fable of Johnny Rotten, and Kurt Cobain’s fable of Kurt Cobain). It’s a portrait of an identity crisis and it eventually tore them apart. But at the time, they rose to the challenge and reaped the rewards, even if by all accounts the Use Your Illusion albums are still Too Much Music.

Together the albums spanned nearly three hours — just about the running time of playing the White Album and Exile on Main St. back-to-back. You’d think with so much material that a box set would include demos and work-in-progress versions of songs, but this collection instead focuses on Guns N’ Roses, the live band. (Incidentally, the gigantic Appetite for Destruction box from a few years ago contained rough versions of “Don’t Cry” and “November Rain,” since they were written in 1986. It’s likely they used their best demos for that release and perhaps the ever-estranged Stradlin didn’t feel like sharing his UYI demos for “Pretty Tied Up” and “Double Talkin’ Jive” for this.)

The two lengthy live shows on the bonus discs here present GN’R at interesting points in the use and abuse of their illusions. The New York gig (which you can also watch on a Blu-ray) was one of three rehearsal “club” dates for the tour that would ultimately divide the band, and it took place at the 1,400-person-or-so-capacity Ritz. Rose tells the crowd he doesn’t like showing up to rehearsals (shocker) so this was his warmup but he nevertheless delivers an impressive, throat-shredding performance throughout, even after injuring a leg mid-gig. He even sounds like he’s having fun. He does the Cool Hand Luke “failure to communicate” monologue himself in “Civil War,” which also features Slash riffing on Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” They play “Estranged,” perfectly arranged with all of Slash’s seagull squalls (and, more impressive, the audience is perfectly fine listening to a 10-minute song they’ve never heard before). They jam a little of Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed” before “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and Blind Melon frontman Shannon Hoon (then unknown) joins them to sing the high parts to the “Don’t Cry” chorus. There’s sense of bonhomie between Rose and the band — the album will be out soon and they’re ready to cross the finish line.

On the next concert recording, captured in January 1992 (just a few months later) in Las Vegas, everything sounds bigger. “You wanted the best … ” a road manager intones, as if it were a Kiss concert. “Well, they couldn’t make it, so you’re stuck with these guys.” By that point, Stradlin also couldn’t make it either (he’d sobered up and quit the band in November, to make a solo album that featured Ron Wood). For the concert that night, he was replaced by Gilby Clarke (his Ron Wood in GN’R). They tell the audience that it’s the biggest crowd the venue has ever held so they’ll play louder. But for a bunch of Would-Be Professional Rock Stars, they still sound like they’re having fun — just a little more polished, as their heroes in Aerosmith, the Stones, and Alice Cooper had taught them to do on their tours together. And it works. (That interest in filthy lucre is also where they depart from the nascent “alternative” scene; like the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, who bemoaned the Clash’s anti-capitalistic stance at the advent of punk, GN’R wanted to get rich n’ famous.)

This live album, which spans three CDs, is the Guns N’ Roses we know today: big and deafening. They cover “Live and Let Die” (loudly) and the Misfits’ “Attitude” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (which also includes tangents into “Hotel California” and “Only Women Bleed” and Rose demanding, “Gimme some reggae!” twice.) Rose plays a deft classical piano intro to “November Rain.” “Rocket Queen” replaces groupie gasps with Slash on a talk box and now lasts nine minutes. Rose approximates a Schwarzenegger impression before the Terminator 2 song “You Could Be Mine.” Slash plays the Godfather theme. Everyone takes a break in “Move to the City” for the horn section to do a jazz-funk jam. And Rose whispers “alone” dramatically on “Estranged.” GN’R’s musicians each hit bum notes here and there, but who really cares? It’s loose, baggy, and fun. It’s a reminder that rock & roll can and should be unpredictable (the GN’R hallmark) and that it could reach as many people as the downer rock that followed it (and never got quite as big).

By this point, the band had been called up from the streets and had risen to the occasion. They were still working together, and, gosh, maybe even liked each other. Three decades since their release, we know understand how the Use Your Illusion albums represented the most of what they could do, and they secured their legend. If they had called it quits completely after the tour, like the Police did after Synchronicity, and avoided all the nasty press digs, it could have been a clean break and we probably still would have gotten Chinese Democracy. But Use Your Illusion was a testament to their determination, which is still their driving force. Not grunge, not Spin, not good taste (or even bad taste) could hold them back then or now. This is a portrait of the kings of the jungle.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/guns-n-roses-use-your-illusion-super-deluxe-box-set-review-1234629081/

Interview with Jeff Fura from Universal, who oversaw the project (had done the same with the Appetite box set):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Axl wanted to record a real orchestra on November Rain": Inside the new Guns N' Roses boxset

by George Garner
November 18th 2022

When it comes to rock albums of the 1990s, they don’t come much more iconic than Guns N’ Roses’ double-album opus Use Your Illusion I & II. And this month, both are getting the deluxe treatment.

A new box set edition offered by Universal Music includes 97 songs, 63 of which are previously unreleased, plus a 100-page book with unseen photos and more besides.

Since Official Chart Company records began in 1994, Use Your Illusion I has sold 395,834 copies to date, while Use Your Illusion II is on 402,781.

Here, Jeff Fura, senior director of A&R at Universal Music Enterprises, takes us inside one of the year’s blockbuster catalogue campaigns, covering remastering, vault raiding and how they plan on bringing their music to a new generation…

Use Your Illusion 1&2 are already regarded as classics – what do you think this one brings to the table? Does it put the record into a new perspective?

“When we identify iconic albums such as UYI I & II and dive into building these extensive Super Deluxe boxsets, it’s due to the fanbase wanting more of their favourite music. This is the first time in the 30-plus years these albums have been available that they’ve ever been remastered, that is one of the most important improvements we’ve done to both of these iconic albums: making them sound the best they can sound with today’s audio technology. To do this, we got the original 1991 flat stereo analogue master tapes transferred to high-resolution 96kHz 24-bit, and Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound remastered from these files. And as several fans appear to want to point out, these original 1991 stereo analogue master tapes did not get lost in the 2008 UMG vault fire, they are very much safe and sound including the original analogue multi-tracks master tapes – all of GN'R’s music catalogue masters are safe and sound in the UMG vault. Upon getting Ted’s remaster, everyone was thrilled and blown away by how the remastering truly made these two albums so much more impactful as rock masterpieces. Then, when Axl reached out to us reminding everyone that the orchestra in November Rain was a synth orchestra and he would like to record a real orchestra, that brought another new dimension to that song and UYI I. The results of the new and real 50-piece orchestra combined with all of the original multi-tracks including the 1991 synth orchestra gave this song a truly impressive and fuller sound – not so new that it’s unfamiliar, but now as it always should have sounded.”

What aspect of release are you most excited about when it comes to new unreleased material?

“The new and real orchestra in November Rain was something very hard to keep close to our chest for more than a year while we’ve been working on the release, but it’s paid off in dividends as the fans are loving it. Typically, the purists usually express their opinions pretty fast and loud – often not in favour of changing something as epic as a song like November Rain, but we’re not seeing that this time; the fans truly seem to be loving the song all over again and even more with the real orchestra. When we reissued Appetite For Destruction in 2018, the emphasis was on all the incredible studio rarities we found, less so on including live recordings, other than live tracks that were originally released as B-Sides. The band’s request to focus on live material for UYI as the bonus material was spot on. The 1991-1993 UYI Tour truly showcased how amazing this band is live and solidified them as the best hard rock band in the world. Considering this era of the band has never released a full concert front-to-start and now fans get two complete concert albums, plus a concert film in glorious HD, is simply an amazing treat for Gunners worldwide and something we’re all proud of producing for the guys. And then there’s the aforementioned concert film. About 13-14 years ago, I was asked to review and catalogue some GN'R video and film masters that were being moved from a third-party vault facility to our UMG vault – at this time I discovered the 35mm film prints of the May 16, 1991 Ritz Theatre in New York concert. In 2020, when the project was greenlit, the very first piece of bonus content we jumped into were these Ritz film assets to determine if we truly had the full show on 35mm film and the multi-track audio masters – we did and we started down the path of making this concert film first by transferring each film reel to 4K UHD for ultimate picture quality and then editing it all together to what we now have in the boxset on the Blu-ray disc. Once we had the concert film approved by the band, we set out to make a music video, not only as a way to highlight the concert film early in our marketing efforts, but also for You Could Be Mine to have an official music video at DSPs. While that song has an epic music video, it features footage from the film Terminator 2 for which the film studio won’t clear the rights to generate revenue from DSPs like YouTube. This song very much deserves to have a music video and the live version of the song from this concert is truly incredible and another piece of unreleased content tied to the project that we are all super excited about.

“As an extra bonus note – the Ritz May 1991 concert was originally filmed to capture the band’s performance footage that appears in the original 1991 YCBM music video alongside film footage. Then for the two smaller format Deluxe Edition versions of the UYI albums, we try to keep these configurations to 2-CDs as a series, so with the two concerts in the boxsets being 2 CDs and 3 CDs respectively, a 2-CD set wouldn’t work when combined with each respective album’s need to be on CD 1. We had these other shows from Wembley, Paris and Brazil that were great but we already had two full shows to include in the boxsets, so we selected incredible live performances from each of the five shows to fill up CD 2 in each Deluxe Edition that corresponds with the songs on UYI I and II. Where we needed a bit more content to fill-up CD 2, we selected great cover songs that happened throughout the tour including guest performances from Steven Tyler and Joe Perry from Aerosmith and Lenny Kravitz.”

So how involved are the band in the reissue? What have they brought to it?

“The band are 100% involved on every detail. Their contribution to the project goes through all phases: research, development, mixing and mastering, artwork and marketing. They are busy with loads of show dates, so they are spreading the news and details via their collective band and personal socials and Duff McKagan is even spotlighting the project on his satellite radio show. It’s the support of the band, knowing their brand, their look, their sound, that makes this project as special as it is. Furthermore, the various UMG territories are doing incredible marketing initiatives, some notable ones are Japan’s HMV showcase where they have an 8-foot version of the boxset and in LA there’s a 16-foot version of the boxset’s cover – both allowing you to walk from one-side to the other seeing how the illusion of the two cover designs come to life in a grandiose way, both of which support fan social posting for these experiential moments. The marketing efforts will continue on into the upcoming weeks including a microsite for fans to get into sharing their memories, from getting these albums originally to experiencing the tour and also the reissues.”

We’ve seen huge catalogue success this year with Kate Bush and Metallica getting the Stranger Things boost. To what extent do you think these latest reissues can bring in a new generation of GN'R fans? How well has their music been picked up by Gen Z on streaming so far?

“Anytime we can get the music back into the market with a fresh remaster and exciting amount of bonus material, all generations of music fans get to celebrate together on why they love this music and band. We were very fortunate in getting a similar placement with GN'R at multiple poignant moments throughout the new Thor: Love And Thunder movie over the summer – this gives younger fans, casual fans and diehards a reminder on why this band’s music is so iconic. Now, we get to celebrate these albums by allowing the diehards a way to get new and upgraded material in the music, video content and packaging dynamics; while also allowing new fans the ability to own these albums instead of borrowing their siblings’, parents’ or friends’ copies. All of this elevates the streaming performance. It’s also nice to note that we are on the verge of the original 1991 November Rain music video to make another milestone – it was the first music video from the pre-YouTube era to cross the 1-billion view threshold in 2018, now it’s on course to be the first music video from pre-YouTube era to hit 2-billion views – we’re just shy of this achievement by 40-million views. And in its first 12 days, the 2022 version of the video with the real orchestra audio has surpassed 7.6 million views. These achievements only happen when all generations get into the ring.”

GN'R notably go all out on their reissue – in your mind is it no longer good enough to just do vanilla represses? Is there a sense that you have to go more all out than ever before when it comes to these box sets?

“Keeping classic albums in print is still extremely valuable, especially to fans who can’t spend the premium on the bigger boxsets or deluxe/expanded editions. We have to continue to get GN'R’s music to all fans of all walks of life and make sure it sounds the best it can with today’s audio technology. There are tons and tons of ways for consumers to spend their money, so we take developing these boxsets very seriously, and it’s bands like GN'R who put their trust in us and allow us to spread our creative wings to find fun and exciting ways to celebrate their masterful music and the brilliant album artwork. The band knows their brand, their image, their lifestyle better than anyone else, which is why we are so grateful for their contribution on projects like these, because we do our best to come up with cool ideas on how to reissue projects like this – but the band either likes our ideas or takes it to another level with a tweak to our idea or offer a new one we never thought of. The collaboration is amazing and the results are what you see with the two UYI Super Deluxe boxsets, two UYI Deluxe Editions and regular album reissues in various formats.”

https://www.musicweek.com/labels/read/axl-wanted-to-record-a-real-orchestra-on-november-rain-inside-the-new-guns-n-roses-boxset/086990

Review on "Best Classic Bands" website:
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Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Use Your Illusion’ (Super Deluxe): A Big Statement Gets Bigger

by Jeff Burger

Guns N’ Roses released Use Your Illusion I and II, their third and fourth albums, simultaneously, on Sept. 17, 1991. They’re not the only act to have employed this two-at-once approach, which is ostensibly designed to offer alternatives to fans who might be put off by the price of a double LP. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and others have tried the same thing. But nobody has achieved quite as much success with this gambit as the Los Angeles–based Guns N’ Roses, most of whose fans turned out to have no interest in choosing one of the records over the other.

Within about three weeks of their release, the albums occupied the top two positions on Billboard’s Hot 100 list. They stayed on the chart for more than two years and have together sold more than 35 million copies—enough to keep the band well-supplied with royalties during the 17 years that passed before their next record of original material.

Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II—which between them offer 30 tracks and more than two-and-a-half hours of bluesy hard rock—make a big statement, but it pales alongside a new “super deluxe” edition, which features an enormous amount of content (and an enormous price to match). The set, released Nov. 11, 2022, includes seven CDs, with a playing time of nearly seven-and-a-half hours, plus a Blu-ray disc, a hardcover book and enough posters, lithographs, photos and other collectibles to decorate a good-sized room.

The CDs include remastered versions of the two original albums, plus a pair of full-length concert recordings, one from New York’s Ritz Theatre in May 1991 and one from Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center the following January. The Big Apple show is also featured on the Blu-ray, which is not widescreen but does offer pristine high-definition surround sound.

Two caveats before we discuss the good stuff. First, like the original albums, this “super deluxe” release is rather bloated and uneven, and all but the most fanatical fans are bound to want to skip some tracks because they’re musically below par, misogynistic or both. Guns N’ Roses’ worst moments, such as heavy-handed rockers like “Pretty Tied Up” and “Right Next Door to Hell,” can sound like outtakes from the Sex Pistols.

Also, particularly given how much this package does include, it’s surprising that it embraces no studio outtakes and omits some Paris, London and Rio de Janeiro concert material that’s on new two-CD “deluxe” editions of Use Your Illusion I and II. If you want everything, in other words, you must pony up for both “deluxe” and “super deluxe” releases, which means you’ll be paying twice for the remastered original albums.

That said, there’s a lot to like—and a fair amount to love—in the big box. The studio version of the anthemic nine-minute “November Rain” has been newly augmented by an orchestra and sounds better than ever, and the original albums also offer such highlights as the ballad “Don’t You Cry,” and the guitar-driven “Civil War” and “Estranged.”

If you’re a fan, though, you probably already have the 1991 LPs and will be more interested in the 47 concert tracks, all but four of which are previously unreleased. They include strong versions of such numbers as “November Rain”; Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”; “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” which singer Axl Rose wrote for his future (and now ex-) wife, Erin Everly; and the ballad “Patience,” which opens in this live rendition with a snippet from Rod Stewart’s “I Was Only Joking.” The concerts also sprinkle in truncated covers of such numbers as Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed,” the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” and “Sail Away Sweet Sister,” from Queen, a group Rose has called his favorite.

In his best moments, Rose sings up a storm and is a compelling stage presence. And the rest of the band is on fire, particularly lead guitarist Slash, whose frequently stunning work here marks him as one of hard rock’s best guitarists.

https://bestclassicbands.com/guns-roses-use-your-illusion-review-11-30-22/