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

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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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  (#2) Rose Composed The Lyrics For 'Sweet Child' Based On A Poem He Wrote For His Then Girlfriend Erin Everly

  At the time the band was getting ready to record Appetite for Destruction, Rose was in a relationship with Erin Everly (daughter of Don Everly from the pop duo The Everly Brothers). When he heard the guitar riff Slash had come up with, he was reminded of a love poem that he tried to write to Everly. He based the lyrics for "Sweet Child O' Mine" off of this poem.

  Rose admitted, "It's the first positive love song I've ever written, but I never had anyone to write anything that positive about, I guess." Indeed, it is the polar opposite of his other musical work, which includes ballads like "Back Off B*tch."

  Although the song became a huge hit, Rose's relationship with Everly did not last. The couple married in April 1990, but the marriage was annulled less than a year later.
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  (#3) Duff McKagan Thought The Song Was A Joke

  Like Slash, the bassist for GNR, Duff McKagan, did not take "Sweet Child O' Mine" very seriously at first. As he later admitted to Hit Parader: 

  It was written in five minutes. It was one of those songs, only three chords. You know that guitar lick Slash does at the beginning? It was kinda like a joke because we thought, "What is this song? It's gonna be nothing. It'll be filler on the record."

  Slash was just messing around when he first wrote that lick.
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  (#4) Producer Spencer Proffer Suggested The 'Where Do We Go? Where Do We Go Now?' Breakdown At The End Of The Song

  Before they decided to go with Mike Clink as their producer, the band worked with Spencer Proffer to record some demos. When he heard "Sweet Child O' Mine," Proffer thought the song needed a breakdown after Slash's solo.

  In his autobiography, Slash remembered they were sitting in the control room trying to figure out what to use as the breakdown section when Rose started ad-libbing, "Where do we go." He described the scene:

  Axl said, more to himself than the rest of us, "Where do we go now?... Where do we go?"

  "Hey," Spencer said, turning the music down. "Why don't you just try singing that?"
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  (#5) Rose Referred To Lynyrd Skynyrd Tapes To Make Sure They ‘Got The Heartfelt Feeling’ For 'Sweet Child'

  Rose went to an unusual source to try and find the right sound for "Sweet Child O' Mine" - a Southern rock band from Florida that had become famous in the 1970s for "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird."

  "I'm from Indiana, where Lynyrd Skynyrd are considered God to the point that you ended up saying, 'I hate this... band!'" Rose told an interviewer in 1987. "And yet for 'Sweet Child'... I went out and got some old Skynyrd tapes to make sure that we'd got that heartfelt feeling."
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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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  (#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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  (#8) Slash Compared Writing The Song To Pulling Teeth

  McKagan said writing "Sweet Child O' Mine" took all but five minutes, and the band wasn't awfully confident of its potential. Although they were able to compose the tune quickly, "writing and rehearsing to make it a complete song was like pulling teeth," according to Slash. 

  To Slash, the song was just a "sappy ballad" and he "hated it for years." The process of putting it together might not have seemed worth the effort at the time, but as the public responded to the hit, the guitarist warmed up to it. 
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  (#9) Clink Banned Substances From The Studio While GNR Was Recording 'Appetite for Destruction'

  GNR were already famous in the Los Angeles rock music scene for their live act, and some were touting them as rock's "next big thing" when the band went into Rumbo Studios in Los Angeles in August 1986 to start recording Appetite for Destruction, their debut album. 

  GNR was well known for their heavy partying, drinking, and use of illicit substances. But when Clink (who had already worked on Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger") was hired to produce their first album, he laid down the law and insisted the studio be a clean space. 

  "He kept us at arm's length," Slash admitted. "We partied really hard, but when we were in the studio, we were pretty much together. There was no doping and all that stuff."
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  (#10) Rose Hated The Music Video Edit Of 'Sweet Child' Because It Removed Much Of Slash's Guitar Solo

  The original version of "Sweet Child O' Mine" was nearly six minutes long. In order to improve the chances of the song getting played on the radio and put into rotation on MTV, it was cut to slightly more than four minutes. The edit removed much of Slash's guitar solo, a decision that the band, particularly Rose, objected to.

  In a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone, Rose admitted:

  I hate the edit of "Sweet Child O' Mine." Radio stations said, "Well, your vocals aren't cut..." My favorite part of the song is Slash's slow solo; it's the heaviest part for me.

  There's no reason for it to be missing except to create more space for commercials, so the radio station owners can get more advertising dollars. When you get the chopped version of "Paradise City" or half of "Sweet Child" and "Patience" cut, you're getting screwed.
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  (#11) The Original Concept For The Music Video Involved Transporting Illicit Substances

  Geffen Records rejected the band's original concept for the "Sweet Child O' Mine" music video. According to Rose, the video was originally supposed to incorporate transporting controlled substances. 

  The story involved an Asian woman carrying a baby into a foreign country, and at the end, the child would be revealed as an empty corpse filled with the stash.
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  (#12) 'Sweet Child' Is The Only GNR Single To Hit No.1 On The 'Billboard' Hot 100

  "It's So Easy," the first single off Appetite for Destruction, wasn't incredibly successful. While the album's second single, "Welcome to the Jungle," fared better, the album didn't start out selling very well.

  "Sweet Child O' Mine" was the third single released and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for 12 weeks.

  Over the course of their career, GNR has had six singles crack the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, but "Sweet Child O' Mine" is the only one to hit No. 1.
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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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  (#14) Slash Hated 'Sweet Child' For A Long Time

  "Sweet Child O' Mine" might have been a massive hit that helped propel GNR to fame, but it took a while for Slash to really appreciate the song. "I hated it for years," he admitted to Q magazine in 2005. "But it would cause such a reaction - just playing the first stupid notes used to evoke this hysteria - so I've finally gotten to appreciate it."

  In a 2014 interview with WEBN radio host KiddChris, he said, "I didn't hate it, but I wasn't fond of 'Sweet Child O' Mine.' And that gives you a good idea of how credible my opinion is... the actual riff itself I love." He continued:

  You know, [GNR] was always a real [heavy], sort of, AC/DC kind of hard rock band with a lot of attitude. If we did any kind of ballads, it was bluesy. This was an uptempo ballad... But at the same time, it's a great song - I'm not knocking it - but... it just did not fit in with the rest of our, sort of, shtick. And, of course, it would be the biggest hit we ever had.
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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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  (#17) Sheryl Crow Won A Grammy For Best Female Rock Performance For Her Cover Of 'Sweet Child,' But It Was Negatively Received By Many

  Sheryl Crow recorded a cover version of "Sweet Child O' Mine" that was used in the Adam Sandler film Big Daddy. In February 1999, Crow won the Grammy Award for best female rock vocal performance for her version of the song.

  But not everyone was a fan of Crow's interpretation. In 2011, the readers of Rolling Stone voted it the fourth-worst cover song of all time, finishing behind Miley Cyrus's cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Limp Bizkit's version of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes," and Madonna's cover of Don McLean's classic "American Pie."

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