Welcome to the Jungle

"Welcome to the Jungle"
Song

This article is about the Guns N' Roses song. For the film, see The Rundown.
For the 2007 cannibal film, see Welcome To The Jungle (film).
For the Entourage episode, see Welcome to the Jungle (Entourage episode).

"Welcome to the Jungle" is the first track from Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction, and also on their Greatest Hits album. The song peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming their first significant hit single.

Origins

"Welcome to the Jungle" was written by singer Axl Rose and Slash. (Slash considers it the first song the band ever wrote together.) According to Rose, the inspiration for the lyrics came from an encounter he and a friend had with a homeless man while they were coming out of a bus into New York. [1] Trying to put a scare into the young runaways, the man yelled at them, "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die!" This incident inspired the main lyrical declaration for the song. The eponymous line was also featured in the 1984 song "Underwater World" by the Finnish glam punk band Hanoi Rocks, whom Rose has acknowledged as inspiration.

While the New York incident inspired the lyrics, the song was written in Seattle, and described Los Angeles. In a 1988 interview with Hit Parader magazine, Rose stated, "I wrote the words in Seattle. It's a big city, but at the same time it's still a small city compared to L.A. and the things that you're gonna learn. It seemed a lot more rural up there. I just wrote how it looked to me. If someone comes to town and they want to find something, they can find whatever they want." [2]

Musically, Slash describes the development of the song in his autobiography, Slash. As the band was sitting around trying to come up with new material, Axl remembered a riff Slash had played while he was living in the basement of Slash's mother's house. Slash played it and the band quickly laid down the foundations for the song, as Slash kept on coming up with new guitar parts for it. He credits Duff McKagan as coming up with the breakdown. According to Slash, the song was written in about three hours, and was arranged virtually the same way as on the album right there.

Video

In spite of the early morning airtime, the clip caught viewers' attention and quickly became MTV's most requested video. The video and single received another boost of publicity when "Welcome to the Jungle" was featured in The Dead Pool in the summer of 1988.

The video starts with a shot of Axl Rose getting off of a bus in New York, wearing casual 'normal' clothes. Slash can briefly be seen sitting against a wall, drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag. Axl stops to watch TV in a store window. Clips of the TV shows that Axl is watching are interspersed with footage of the band playing live. At the end of the video, Axl has transformed into a rockstar, wearing the appropriate clothing.

External links

• Herbert A. Friedman. U.S. Psyop in Panama (Operation Just Cause).
• Danny Sugerman. Appetite for Destruction: The Days of Guns N' Roses. St. Martin's Press, 1991. ISBN 0-312-07634-7
• "20 questions with Steven Adler" [3]
• Music Video at VH1 Classic