Random Behind Scenes Of Guns N’ Roses Hit Single ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ (17 items)

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  (#13) The Band Members Were Surprised, And Not All Of Them Were Happy, When 'Sweet Child' Started Doing Well On Radio And On MTV

  Unlike Clink, GNR did not have any expectations about "Sweet Child O' Mine" becoming a hit. "We had no idea what [the song] would do for the album," McKagan admitted. "You should have seen the... difference [in crowd reaction] before, and after, that single came out." 

  McKagan said that prior to "Sweet Child O' Mine," very few GNR fans would turn out to shows where they opened for more popular bands like Aerosmith. But "afterwards everybody was on their feet with their cigarette lighters switched on. It was amazing, night and day. It happened that quickly."

  A few weeks after "Sweet Child O' Mine" was released as their second single in the US, Appetite for Destruction hit No. 1 on Billboard's albums chart. But while Steven Adler and Rose, who called his mother to share the news, were over the moon about their success, McKagan and guitarist Izzy Stradlin were not as excited.

  Stradlin didn't think it was cool, wasn't a punk thing, to have so much success. McKagan had a similar reaction, saying, "We're a rock-and-roll band. We've never written a song for commercial purposes. We... despise that."

  Slash, meanwhile, wanted nothing more than their success, saying, "I always figured we'd just be a cult band."
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  (#6) As Soon As He Heard The Recorded Track, Clink Believed GNR Had Something Special In 'Sweet Child' - And He Wasn't The Only One

  When he went into the studio with GNR to produce Appetite for Destruction, Clink wanted to make sure he captured the essence of the band, but without hammering it into the ground. As a result, most of the tracks, including "Sweet Child O' Mine," were recorded in just a few takes.

  After listening to the recorded track of "Sweet Child O' Mine," Clink was certain the band had hit on something great.

  "That song made the hairs on my arms stand up," he said in a 2005 interview with Q magazine. "It was magical."

  Clink wasn't the only one who thought the song was special. Michael Barbiero, who, along with Steve Thompson, mixed the album, told Q: 

  "Sweet Child O' Mine" sounded like a hit to all of us. So much so that I remember Axl asking me when we were finished if I thought the album would actually sell. I told him that, despite the fact that it was nothing like what was on the radio, I thought it would go gold. I was only off by 20 million records.
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  (#1) Slash Said He Was Messing Around With A 'Stupid Little Riff' And Rose Encouraged Him To Keep Playing

  Slash's famous guitar riff, which opens "Sweet Child O' Mine," started off as nothing more than a funny joke. 

  While talking about how well the band worked together, Slash explained to Guitar Center in 2008, "Anytime anybody came up with something, it was just like the rest of the band just innately knew what to do. Songs almost wrote themselves." In the case of "Sweet Child O' Mine," he recalled: 

  One afternoon I was sitting around with Izzy [Stradlin] and Duff [McKagan] and had stumbled on this sort of melody, this sort of unorthodox pattern, and I was trying to perfect playing it because it was sort of a finger-twister. Duff and I think Izzy started playing some chords behind it, and it started taking on a life of its own.

  Unbeknownst to me, Axl [Rose] was upstairs and heard it, and had some ideas... A couple days later or the next day at rehearsal, Axl goes, "Hey, play that song you guys were jamming in the living room yesterday," and so we started playing it. It just became this tune.

  Slash remembered that the riff  "started off as a... joke" and that thanks to Rose, it "turned out to be a huge anthem." Years after "Sweet Child O' Mine" was released, that "joke" of a D-flat riff was voted the No. 2 guitar riff of all time in a 2014 BBC poll.
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  (#7) Slash Said Recording The Riff Took Him An Entire Afternoon

  Although he found writing and rehearsing "Sweet Child O' Mine" difficult, Slash was far more familiar with the tune when it came time to record the song. He still struggled, however, with perfecting the opening riff, which would come to define the album. 

  "'Sweet Child O' Mine' was easy to record, apart from the guitar intro," he said. "It took me all afternoon to time it out and be at the right place when the drums came in."
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  (#15) The Official Music Video For 'Sweet Child' Was The First From The 1980s To Surpass One Billion Views On YouTube

  In October 2019, the official music video for "Sweet Child O' Mine" became the first music video from the 1980s to surpass one billion views on YouTube. In 2019 alone, the video averaged around 600,000 views per day.

  The music video shows the band rehearsing at Mendiola's Ballroom in Huntington Park, CA, surrounded by crew members. The band members' then girlfriends are also featured in the video.
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  (#16) GNR Was Accused Of Plagiarizing 'Sweet Child' From A Song By The Band Australian Crawl

  In the spring of 2015, Australian music website Max TV highlighted the similarities between "Sweet Child O' Mine" and a song called "Unpublished Critics" by the band Australian Crawl. "['Unpublished Critics' has] the same chugging chord progression, a similarly-sweeping lead break, the verse melody, and the elongated one-syllable vocal in the chorus," the article claims. It was quickly removed from the Max TV website.

  "Unpublished Critics" was on Australian Crawl's album Sirocco, which was released by Geffen Records in 1981, more than six years before "Sweet Child O' Mine" came out. Perhaps coincidentally, Geffen Records was also GNR's label.

  While James Reyne, the lead singer for Australian Crawl, told the Daily Mail that "it is not inconceivable" that GNR could've heard "Unpublished Critics" prior to "Sweet Child O' Mine," he did not accuse them of plagiarism. Nor did he plan to sue, saying, "I'm not about to take on the might of the [GNR] lawyers."

  Reyne told the Daily Mail that he hadn't paid much attention to "Sweet Child O' Mine" when it was released. "I didn't think 'oh my god'... I didn't really listen to the song, I was more looking at the video thinking, 'Are they stoned? Or on smack?'"

  In a 2015 interview, GNR bassist McKagan admitted that the similarities between the two songs were "pretty stunning." But he reiterated, "We didn't [copy] it from them! I swear, I never heard that song until a couple of days ago."

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