I Do Not Like Mondays

Man, I do not like Mondays. So to refocus, here’s something I do like, from waaay back in the day.

This is “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N´Roses. Pretty much everyone knows it, or at least did at one time, and it’s easy to see it as some sort of musical influence if you’ve known it at any age of awareness.

This song hit the scene in the U.S. in 1988, but the album it’s from, Appetite for Destruction, had been around for nearly a year at that point, not really doing much of anything yet.

The band released a few songs from the album in the U.K. and Germany before Sweet Child O’ Mine came out in the United States and elsewhere. There’s a reason for that, but I’ll come back to it.

I consider this song almost the height and end of classic rock, sort of an instant neo-classic rock hit with a big, newer, harder sound but also still reminiscent of older music. Listen to lead singer W. Axl Rose (William Bruce Rose Jr.) and picture Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin; listen to lead guitarist Slash (Saul Hudson) and think of Jimi Hendrix.

By contrast, another huge G N’ R song from this same album, “Paradise City,” has a very different sound, with its driving guitar riff squarely in hard rock territory and almost pushing into metal.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” is built off of an eight-note melody that repeats and varies. It’s a great hook and could almost define that term, but rather than a recorded and/or looped hook, it’s played for real on an electric guitar. You can get into it before the lyrics start, maybe even before the drums come in — just what a hook’s supposed to do.

So the song is very followable and scores high in terms of fast musical recognition, and has a sort of classic, familiar sense to it that feels like a hit. It became the biggest hit Guns N’ Roses ever had. So why did they wait so long to release it, and release other songs from the album like “Welcome to the Jungle” first? Well, those other harder-core songs were more in line with the band members’ intended image.

For instance, in several interviews in the years that followed, Slash basically dismissed “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as an “up-tempo ballad.” In other words, he saw it as too soft and sweet, and this was a “bad boy” band.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” is mainly a love song, although back in the day I wasn’t sure if it was about a daughter or a lover. The video and subsequent discussions with the band confirm it is the latter.

Regardless, I will agree with Slash a little bit regarding the song’s line, “Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place where as a child, I’d hide — and pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by.” I’ve always liked storms and usually enjoy watching and listening to them (unless I’m caught in them), and never in my life can I remember hiding from one and being afraid of it, even praying for it to pass.

But you cut the song some slack because it works so well, and it’s simple but poetic imagery. I knew this song first from the airwaves, and it was at least several years later as a teen that I got my own copy of the album as a CD, which I still have.

And by the way, the “Sweet Child O’ Mine” track on the disc is very different than typical radio versions and the official video on YouTube. The CD track is about a minute longer and contains a repeated chorus after the second verse followed by a second mini solo from Slash.

A major part of this song happens in the video at 02:34 and in the CD track at 03:35 as Slash tears into a solo on his Gibson Les Paul, playing on for a minute and four seconds. Maybe Slash didn’t like the song’s upbeat, ballad-type setup prior to that point, but this is a pinnacle moment for him as a guitarist. It’s a scorching, sometimes moaning, sometimes screaming solo, a model sound of a sweetly distorted and perfectly overdriven electric guitar, and it’s not just wild playing but remains musical — and it takes the song to another, somewhat darker shade, with Axl then repeating “Where do we go? Where do we go now?”

It builds and leads to another signature moment in the video at 04:28 and the CD track at 05:29 as guitar(s) and Axl’s voice sing together for two seconds, transitioning back to a “sweet child o’ mine” repetition and winding up to Axl’s trademark vocal finale that stretches “child” into 15 syllables and closes out the song.

It’s a little difficult to get at the lyrics exactly, simple as they are. There’s a line printed in the album jacket as “I hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain,” but to me that’s always clearly been “I’d hate to look into those eyes,” and those are the lyrics as shown in the video. That’s very subtle but changes the meaning significantly. If it was written as printed with the album, “I hate to see,” it means he’s seen pain in her eyes and hates it, but if it’s “I’d hate to see,” as in “I would hate to see,” it’s speculative, meaning he’s never seen pain in her eyes. See?

Sometimes little nuances like that make a difference, and other times they just reflect your preference. The beginning of the first verse’s second stanza, “Now and then when I see her face, she takes me away to that special place,” I’ve always heard and preferred as “it takes me away to that special place.”

And in the video, the chorus line is shown as “sweet child of mine / sweet love of mine,” but that is printed in the album specifically as “sweet child o’ mine / sweet love of mine,” reflecting the song’s title.

Nuances and meaning aside, and whether band members like(d) it or not, it’s a standout song that gets cool right from its first note, which is a rarity. Buried pretty deeply into the 1980s, it doesn’t fit in with other typically ’80s-sounding music, instead more echoing older music and helping lay the groundwork for rock to come.

Guns N’ Roses’ greatest impact and momentum came from Appetite. Some better-known subsequent hits they had, interestingly enough, included “Patience” and “November Rain,” clearly also ballad-type songs, with more of that signature guitar work and sound from Slash in “November.” When Hudson is on it, it’s hard to find more definitive examples of electric guitar truly leading and shaping music, pairing well with Rose’s distinctive vocals, which at times climb into a very difficult range.

Content © Aaron G. Marsh