Yesterdays

by Guns ‘ n Roses

~ Who the hell is West Arkeen? ~

Somewhere there’s a snippet of MTV footage in the Scrap Bar in NYC, with Axl and West just jamming along with an acoustic guitar, about a year or so before the Illusions were released, and they’re tackling the first verse and the bridge from this one with just the two of them, and West continually forgetting the chords. And that’s it. It’s 2 dudes, half-singing and half-playing while obviously ripped in a bar, and forgetting the words and chords and it’s kinda like the scene where Dirk Diggler & Reed Rothchild are trying to work their way through “Feel My Heat” in Boogie Nights. Except that Axl and West are actually good at what they do, and their impromptu hack session is still better than 95% of what you got on MTV at the time, and the resulting song was one of a half dozen masterpieces on Illusion II that fell like mana from heaven in 1991 when we finally got our hooks into those records.

and while you get a bunch of still shots of Izzy Stradlin in the video, it sure looks like Gilby Clarke playing in the live cut

Originally published at http://www.sixdegreesofradio.com on May 27, 2020.

Thanks for checking out Six Degrees of Radio, and grooving along. If you don’t give this article the finger, or, y’know… a thumb, then I don’t know if you’re digging it or not.