things move around

Sometimes in ‘Use Your Illusion I’ you feel as though Slash is waiting for Axl to come down to his level and rejoin the song (e.g. Dead Horse). But on ‘Use Your Illusion II’, it’s clear that Axl and Slash are of a piece, the strained melody of each looking to the other for its redemption from the bludgeon of bar-room boogie-woogie.

n.b. Axl = Don Quijote, Slash = Sancho. But the more I think about ‘Don Quixote’, the more I think it’s about complements rather than contrasts. The pity of each fool is through the comedy of the other fool - it’s a comedy which feasts on mutual pity (which includes that of the reader): a ringing guffaw against the dead philistinism of the (and any) times - like much of ‘Appetite for Destruction’ (’It’s So Easy’; ‘Out Ta Get Me’; ‘Anything Goes’).

“Now playing: Blondie, ‘Stay Pretty’.