Destruction

I almost can't listen to this song, Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine".  It's almost too painful.

The record had, of course, been out a while by 1989 and we'd played it often.  Matter of fact, this was the year all four of us piled in the car to drive out to East Memphis and pick up a copy of G N'R Lies, which was pretty new at the time.  I thought "Used to Love Her" was one of the most brilliantly funny songs ever written.  Of course, there was a lot of partying going on at the time, we were all in our early twenties, so my opinions were sometimes clouded by how trashed I was.  Still - it is funny.

But Appetite for Destruction probably got most of the play, and really every song on the album reminds me of when the four of us were all together.  We were like a really, really dysfunctional family of sorts, all living in the same house - me, the longtime (now ex) boyfriend, and two of our best friends who were also a couple.

There are a lot of crazy and negative things about that period of time, too, but the four of us had a bond - like I said, almost a family - and we were basically inseparable.  Both of the males in the group were well on their way to developing what would eventually be some pretty serious drug and alcohol problems - the other female in the group not much better off - I seemed to spend most of my time trying to be the adult of the house, making sure we always had a roof over our heads, food in the cabinets and refrigerator - that sort of thing.  Most of the time, I was the only one who had a steady job that paid halfway decent as well.

Lots of quarters games and games of poker for shots going on around the kitchen table with Appetite blaring on the stereo in the background, I remember.  I recall the other male in the house - the one who wasn't my significant other - sitting in a chair against the wall of this very house I live in now, singing along to "It's So Easy".  So very many memories tied to both those G N'R albums.

I guess that even though I know there was all kinds of craziness and not-so-good stuff going on at the time, still I look back on that time in some sort of twisted way of when things were good.  Maybe it's just because we were all still together, before the drugs and the booze - and a murder charge and prison sentence for one, an unfortunate sequence of events that likely never would have happened if not for all the drugs and booze - split us all apart forever.

"Sweet Child O' Mine" - since it's the "big" one, and the one you hear all the time - I can barely stand it.  Not because I don't love the song - I do - but because of, well, everything.  Sometimes I'll go ahead and listen to it.  Sometimes I'll just turn the dial or hit "next" on the player.