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. The Spaghetti Incident?, released in 1993, appeared almost as a release valve. 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 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. Very little about Guns N’ Roses in the Nineties actually fits the story that people tell about the Nineties.

Guns n roses symbols