Allmusic.com
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
(3/5) Otherwise known as the album Axl tried to kill, Guns n' Roses'
Greatest Hits is essentially a last-ditch effort by Geffen to get some GNR product, any
GNR product out on the shelves. And, really, who can blame them? When they originally
planned to release the disc in time for Christmas 2003, they had been waiting 12 years for
a new album of original material from Guns n' Roses, and despite a flurry of activity in
the fall of 2002 — Axl unveiling his Frankenband at the MTV Video Awards then took
them out on a tour that imploded almost immediately — the label was still waiting for
the forever-delayed Chinese Democracy a year later, so they were set to rush it out for
holiday sales. While it didn't materialize for that season, it was ready to surface in
March 2004, when Rose, supported by his numerous ex-bandmates, filed a lawsuit against
Geffen claiming the record was unauthorized, would do damage to their reputation, and
distract from Chinese Democracy, which was, of course, no closer to completion than it was
a year prior. A week before its scheduled release, a federal judge denied the band's
request for an injunction, and the record came out on March 23, 2004. Was it worth a
lawsuit? For Geffen, probably, since it's good for them to get new GNR in the stores, but
it's also easy to see why the band was irked by Greatest Hits, since it bears all the
hallmarks of a slapdash compilation, hastily assembled by the label as a way to buy time
between releases. There are no liner notes, the cardboard packaging is flimsy, the
remastering isn't notable, and any compilation that contains more songs from The Spaghetti
Incident? than G N' R Lies is unbalanced. That said, it does offer the biggest hits —
"Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine," "Patience,"
"Paradise City," "Don't Cry," "You Could Be Mine,"
"November Rain," "Live and Let Die" — which may satisfy some
fans. Still, there's not only a number of hits and important songs missing — anywhere
from the charting singles "Nightrain" and "Estranged" to the essential
album tracks "It's So Easy," "Mr. Brownstone," and "Used to Love
Her," among many others — the preponderance of epics, ballads, and covers (a
full five of the record's 14 tracks are covers, including their horrid version of the
Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," previously unavailable on any GNR
record) gives an inaccurate portrait of the band, effectively neutering its reckless rage.
It also could be argued that this is all a question of semantics, since this is the
"greatest hits" not the "best of," and all of these tracks were big
radio hits and therefore fulfilling the promise of the title. However, Guns n' Roses
aren't necessarily a band that's well suited to hits compilations, since their albums
capture the raw, messy vitality of their music. Here, they sound tamer than they ever
were, even if the song selection does follow the charts closely. But even if you
sympathize with the band's argument that this is not an especially flattering picture of
the band, it's easier to sympathize with the label since there are undoubtedly some fans
that would like a hits comp, no matter how uneven it is, but the label has been stuck with
no more than a whisper of a promise of a new GNR record for so long they've been left to
manufacture their own. If that angers Axl, maybe he should finish that damn album while a
handful of people still care. |
The
cover of "Greatest Hits" simply just features the old Guns N' Roses logo.