G N'R Lies

Notable mentions in the thank you list: Doug Goldstein and everyone who participated in the success of Appetite For Destruction.

Recording Info

The Cover

Slash: We did the cover for a good reason. We've been in the center of attention for so long. We've had so much hype and sensationalism centered on us over the last few years that it became really ridiculous. All of it was bullshit. We've heard that we've all died in car crashes, that we're all drug addicts and that we all have AIDS - and, of course, it's all untrue. This EP cover was our chance to turn it around and stick it back in everyone's face.¹

Slash: The band's just sorta like, the center of attention, as far as, you know, sort of controversy in rock n' roll and stuff like that. And they make up all these stories. I found out today that I died again today. And, you know, Axl dies all the time. There's all this crap going around. People love to make up stuff about you. I don't know why. We're the band that seems to be the center of all that attention.²

Slash: The artwork on the EP is done like a british tabloid kinda thing.³

Duff: Like the Inquirer or something.⁴

In Their Own Words

Axl: The reason we released the 'GN'R Lies' EP was so that we don't get pigeonholed into one type of music that people expect from us. We like all kinds of music and we'll play all types of music.⁵

Slash: We wanted to put something out between the last tour and the next album. We heard that kids were having to pay $50 to $100 for original copies of our first EP, Live Like A Suicide. We also wanted to do some new songs that showed another side of us. So what we did on Lies was re-release the four songs that had been on Suicide, and we added four new songs that are very different from anything we've done before. These are songs we just felt like doing. This is a rock and roll band, but there are a lot of different influences within Guns N' Roses. We write a lot of our songs on acoustic guitar, so doing Lies seemed a natural thing for us.⁶

Axl: The EP [Live Like A Suicide] is a piece of shit compared to the album... that's the most contrived piece of shit we've done yet. It ain't a live record-if you think it is you're crazy. What we did was go into a room, record ourselves and put 50,000 screaming people on top.

Slash: This EP is just to hold everyone off until we get the next album done. Since this record's done so well, we stayed on tour longer than we expected. That pushed our recording plans back a bit. We want everyone to understand that this EP isn't our second album - it's just to fill the gap until that record's done. We've already gotten a lot of songs written for that one and they're really good. We think it's safe to say that we're gonna be around for a long time to come - no matter what everyone says about us.

Duff: The acoustic stuff we did in like, a day, right. It wasn't a huge project. It's just a thing to show another side of the band, sort of. Also, our next album is not gonna be out for a while, there's this huge void space we'd like to fill in a bit.⁷

Slash: We just had these songs, that I didn't really think should go on the acutal album. And we needed to put something out.

Slash: It's not meant to be taken seriously. It's real sloppy. It got us talking in the background, guitar picks dropping and y'know, stuff like that. It's out of tune a lot of places. And, you know it's just us sort of hanging out, getting drunk and playing.⁸

Slash: It wasn't done expensively. It's not like, a major album. It's not anything... It's just like, a sort of filler.⁹

Axl: We've been talking about the songs as 'acoustic', but on three of them there is electric guitar. That's the way we've tried
to get people mentally prepared for the songs. We've written some mellow songs that seem to grab people's hearts. It's just
something we planned on doing for a long time. We wrote some of the songs during or before the recording of Appetite and
revised them until we felt they were strong enough to put out. The reason we did it is because we wanted to.¹⁰

Gilby: Izzy wrote songs like "You Could Be Mine," "Pretty Tied Up" and "Patience" and those are still in the live-repertory. As I said Guns wouldn't have been anything without Izzy, and in spite of the things that has happened between them there's no reason to exclude his material.

Slash: We did "Lies" during this period [after the Perkins Palace shows 1987]. We got the acoustic stuff all down and I did my guitar over dubs. That kept me occupied for a fucking second. [...] The guitar parts on "Lies" took me exactly two weeks; if anything, I was so excited to be back in LA that I ripped through them too quickly - I wish it had all taken longer.¹¹

Slash: After nurtring us through making the record, then waiting a year for it to take off, Tom Zutaut wasn't going to let this upswing lose momentum: he convinced us to package the acoustic recordings we'd just done with the "Live! Like A Suicide" album and release it immediately. We called it Gn'R Lies and it was released on November 29, 1988. The album hit the top five a week after it was released, and suddenly this band that Geffen had nearly dropped was breaking records: we were the only act to have two albums in the top five at the same time during the entire 80s.¹²

Slash: The material actually came together a little easier this time. We knew what we wanted to do, so every time we had a break from the road we'd all get together in an L.A. rehearsal hall and try to get some new songs together. The four musicians in the band would work on some basic song structures while Axl would be off working on his lyrics. Then we'd get together and see what fit together. It was amazing how even if we didn't know what the other guy was doing how the words and music just naturally fit together."¹³

Album Reviews

Allmusic.com
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

(3,5/5) Once Appetite for Destruction finally became a hit in 1988, Guns N' Roses bought some time by delivering the half-old/half-new LP G N' R Lies as a follow-up. Constructed as a double-EP, with the "indie" debut Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide coming first, and four new acoustic-based songs following on the second side, G N' R Lies is where the band metamorphosed from genuine threat to joke. Neither recorded live nor released by an indie label, Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide is competent bar band boogie, without the energy or danger of Appetite for Destruction. The new songs are considerably more problematic. "Patience" is Guns N' Roses at their prettiest and their sappiest, the most direct song they have recorded to date. Its emotional directness makes the misogyny of "Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)," and the pitiful slanders of "One in a Million" sound genuine. Although the cover shrugs them off as a "joke," Rose's venom is frightening — there's little doubt that he truly does believe "faggots" come to America from another country, and that "niggers" should stay out of his way. Since he wasn't playing a character on the remainder of the album, there's little doubt that this is from the heart as well. And what makes it harder to dismiss is the musical skill of the band, who make the country-fried boogie of "Used to Love Her," the bluesy re-vamp of "You're Crazy," and the tough, paranoid fever-dream of "One in a Million" indelible. So, you either listen to the music and are satisfied, or listen to the lyrics and become disturbed not only by Rose's intentions, but by the millions of record buyers that identified with him.

Highlights: "Nice Boys", "Move To The City", "Patience"

Rolling Stone
by Kim Neely

(4/5) Given that Guns N' Roses could probably release an album of Baptist hymns at this point and go platinum, it would be all too easy to dismiss G n' R Lies as a sneaky attempt by the band to throw together some outtakes and cash in on the busy holiday buying season. After all, half of Lies was released in 1986 (as the EP Live Like a Suicide), and one of its four new studio tracks is simply an acoustic version of "You're Crazy," from Appetite for Destruction. The arithmetic is simple: hungry fans plus any new product plus hordes of holiday shoppers equals one profitable little stocking stuffer.