Sick and sexist Robert Williams's rape-by-robots scene was on the uncensored (and now very expensive) original sleeve, so boycotting puritans predictably shivered behind their high horses, but then when I say this scraggly-as-sin (and interracial?) funkmetal fivesome smoke movingly and unboundingly, I'm not saying I'd want 'em to eat dinner at my house (I'd sooner invite Suzanne Vega -- she'd probably eat less!). Not only don't they cover their tattoos and needle tracks with mommy's panty hose, they've got the world's most hondo (and, real often, most gorgeous) whiskey-river twin-ax attack, and, wonder of wonders, they can actually keep a beat -- one that swings harder than Bobby Brown and Big Daddy Kane and Jody Watley combined.

Though "Out ta Get Me," "You're Crazy," and "Anything Goes" are more or less crap, "Welcome to the Jungle," "Nightrain," "Mr. Brownstone," "Think About You," and "Rocket Queen" (hard rock's answer to Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" burn first and crash later. And as "Sweet Child o' Mine" proved throughout the summer of '88 as its valentine verses fluttered down with more nail-tough beauty than in any Stones or 'Smith ballad ever, GnR attained both emotional extremes (not just the nasty one). Way-sloppy zero-perimeter long-song Delta doo-dah that takes Exile Stones to a sonic realm where dance-rock equals Aerosmith plus Skynyrd (and supposedly Zep, though I don't hear it) minus grey matter, sometimes Appetite needs an editor, and initially I figured Axl's screech killed Steve Marriot/Janis Joplin by overdoing it. but watching him drop inhibitions and shake grove-thang on stage like no white man since before disco sucked, watching him show Terence Trent D'Arby what a hardened slut with happy feet and a soulful heart really looks like, watching him vibrate outrageous and obscene, he reminded me what live rock 'n roll could be, and his overdoing it made everyone else seem insignificant. When you're high you never ever wanna come down.

More and more, especially now that 1990s's "Civil War" has made its stake as the "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" of the Iraq Age, encapsulating a point in history almost by accident, melding ambiguity and sensationalism and corny social concern into a giant nihilist/antinihlist metaphor, I can't help thinking of Bob Dylan. Axl in 1987, as much and maybe more than Dylan in 1963, came from an unexpected place, pushing further and gambling more than anybody else, so much that at first you just wanted him to go away. You hated his voice at first, and you couldn't separate the sweetness from the apocalypse, and even the nastiness seemed like a joke, and if every song was its own animal, which it was, what difference did it make? But Axl made his presence felt, maybe even in our dreams. He mind-fucked in lyrics and in interviews and in concert, did flip-flops that made similar moves by Neil Young and Prince seem timid, put good and bad ideas in people's heads. He suggested possibilities that, in hard rock, at least, nobody had ever considered, or everybody had forgotten about, or given up hope for. Ambitious guitar bands thirsty for more than mere campus respectability picked up on certain of Guns N' Roses' ideas, turning heavy metal back into rock 'n' roll, or at least pointing it in the right direction. So GnR are the '65 Stones too. Obviously.

Cynics might argue that this band would be better if Axl could learn to write more literate lyrics, but that's only to say he's artless -- he knows the overall atmosphere is what matters most, but he's also coined and radio-tested more archetypal every-man-for-himself/the-world-is-a-trap proverbs than any antisocialist evangelist his age, and his incidental side disses on A for D surpass David Johansen's on the New York Dolls' debu album, no small accomplishment. Sometimes it seems that all the guy really wants is to get back to the womb he started from. Then again, what with a libretto that details ugly uses for turned-around bitches with panties at knees and rumps in debris, what with collective lawbreak records longer than Slash's third leg, it's no wonder sensitive souls who confuse ethics with aesthetics find the stardom of such ill-mannered pelvis-weapon dumbshits reprehensible. Myself, all I can say is it's about fucking time, and I hope the dumbshits don't stop now.