Guns N' Roses

Guns N' Roses emerged from Los Angeles in 1985 as a filthy corrective to hair metal's lacquered excess, fusing punk's snarl with blues-rock's swagger. Frontman Axl Rose, guitarist Slash, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Steven Adler codified a sound built on pentatonic riffs, Rose's elastic wail, and lyrics documenting street-level debauchery. Their 1987 debut Appetite for Destruction moved 30 million copies globally, powered by "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Welcome to the Jungle", tracks that married Led Zeppelin's heaviness to Aerosmith's strut.

The bloated Use Your Illusion albums (1991) showcased Rose's growing ambition and the band's fraying chemistry. Lineup chaos followed, with Rose eventually touring as the sole original member before a lucrative reunion with Slash and McKagan in 2016. Their cultural footprint remains vast: they reintroduced danger to arena rock when MTV craved palatability, proving that authenticity, however chemically assisted, still sells.