2018.05.07 - Blabbermouth - Controversial Song Apparently Left Off Guns N' Roses Boxed Set

Controversial Song Apparently Left Off Guns N' Roses Boxed Set

The newly announced "Locked N' Loaded" deluxe boxed set of Guns N' Roses' classic 1987 debut album, "Appetite For Destruction", also includes B-sides from the "Appetite" sessions, the 1986 "Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide" EP and three of the four songs from the band's 1988 acoustic EP "GN'R Lies". But one track from "Lies" has been left out of the new release, according to The Pulse Of Radio: "One In A Million", a song that was controversial at the time for lyrics containing racial and homophobic slurs.

The song contained the words "n***a" and "f****t" as well as anti-immigrant sentiments. Singer Axl Rose said at the time that he based the lyrics on his first impressions of Los Angeles when he arrived from small-town Indiana. In a 1989 Rolling Stone interview, he described "black men selling stolen jewelry, crack, heroin and pot," as well as having "very bad experiences with homosexuals," including an attempted rape.

Neither the title of "Lies" nor the live EP are referenced in a press release announcing the boxed set, with the sessions for "Lies" only mentioned in passing as the source of another song included in the package. This seems to indicate that "One In A Million" has been deliberately left out of the "Appetite" reissue.

https://blabbermouth.net/news/controversial-song-apparently-left-off-guns-n-roses-boxed-set