Use Your Illusion II

Use Your Illusion II is the fourth studio album by the American rock band Guns N' Roses. It was one of two albums released in conjunction with the Use Your Illusion Tour, along with Use Your Illusion I. Bolstered by the lead single "You Could Be Mine," Use Your Illusion II was the slightly more popular of the two albums, selling 770,000 copies its first week and debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. charts, ahead of Use Your Illusion I's first week sales of 685,000. As of 2010, Use Your Illusion II has sold 5,587,000 units in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. Both albums have since been certified 7× Platinum by the RIAA. It was also No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart for a single week. It is the last Guns N' Roses album to feature rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin. It also included the last Guns N' Roses song to feature drummer Steven Adler, who played on "Civil War."

Overview

The Use Your Illusion albums were a stylistic turning point for Guns N' Roses (see Use Your Illusion I for discussion). In addition, Use Your Illusion II is more political than most of their previous work, with songs like "Civil War", a cover of Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", and "Get in the Ring" dealing respectively with the topics of violence, law enforcement, and media bias. The thematic material deals less with drug use than previous Guns N' Roses albums. Use Your Illusion I featured mostly songs pre-Appetite for Destruction (with notable exceptions) while Use Your Illusion II featured more tracks written during and after Appetite For Destruction.

Use Your Illusion I

Use Your Illusion I is the third studio album by the American rock band Guns N' Roses. It was the first of two albums released in conjunction with the Use Your Illusion Tour, the other being Use Your Illusion II. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts, selling 685,000 copies in its first week, behind Use Your Illusion II's first week sales of 770,000.Use Your Illusion I has sold 5,502,000 units in the U.S. as of 2010, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Each of the Use Your Illusion albums have been certified 7× Platinum by the RIAA. It was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992.

Overview

The Use Your Illusion albums represent a turning point in the sound of Guns N' Roses. Although the band did not abandon the aggressive hard-rock sound they had become known for with 1987's Appetite for Destruction, Use Your Illusion I demonstrated a new-found musical maturity, incorporating elements of blues, classical music, heavy metal, punk rock, and classic rock and roll. This is exemplified by the use of piano on several tracks of this album by lead singer Axl Rose and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, as well as on Use Your Illusion II. Use Your Illusion I contains two of the three songs, "November Rain" and "Don't Cry", whose videos are generally regarded by fans as a trilogy. The third song, "Estranged", can be found on Use Your Illusion II.

Use Your Illusion

Use Your Illusion is a Guns N' Roses compilation album drawing from the Use Your Illusion I and II albums. It has only been released in the United States, consisting entirely of songs without profanity (save for one use of "bullshit" on "14 Years"). However, not all songs without profanity were chosen to appear on this compilation. The album was primarily sold at Walmart and Kmart, two retail outlets that refused to stock the unedited Use Your Illusion I and II due to explicit lyrics.

"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" appears in an edited version without Josh Richman's speech, removed for unknown reasons. Therefore, the track length is reduced to 5:20, instead of 5:36 from the version included on Use Your Illusion II. Richman's speech was instead included in the Greatest Hits compilation album.

The cover art of the album simply combines the color schemes from the covers of Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which were originally designed by Mark Kostabi. The image is a detail of the Raphael painting "The School of Athens". The album is certified Platinum (1,000,000 sales) by the RIAA.