GUNS N ROSES Use Your Illusion I (2LP)

September 17, 1991. Guns N' Roses released two double albums on the same day, which was either the most ambitious move in hard rock history or the most chaotic, depending on who you ask. Both answers are correct.

Use Your Illusion I is the one with "November Rain," a nine-minute piano ballad that somehow fits alongside tracks dripping in swagger and spite. This is GN'R at their most sprawling, most expensive, and most themselves, a band that had absorbed Aerosmith, the Stones, and the Sunset Strip and then proceeded to destroy all of it from the inside. Axl's tantrums and Slash's top hat and the whole beautiful wreck of it. Hard rock doesn't get more maximalist than this, and that's not a criticism.

Double LP vinyl. Hard rock, alternative. USA origin. Fans of: Aerosmith, Skid Row, Mötley Crüe, Velvet Revolver, AC/DC, KISS.