(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 19 December 2025 2:00, UK
No one in their right mind would ever try to tell Axl Rose what to do whenever he started performing.
From the minute that Guns N’ Roses began gaining traction, he seemed like a maniac being let loose for a couple hours, and every single time he played tunes like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, there was no question of whether he was going to fly off the handle or not. It was simply a matter of when the bomb was going to go off, but there was a lot more to Rose than simple rock and roll moves.
A lot of his best moments tended to be about more musical ventures than following in the footsteps of Robert Plant or Jim Morrison. He wanted to be a serious songwriter, and that came from studying what the greatest albums in his record collection were like long before he and Slash started to make music together. And if you listen to Appetite for Destruction, you can really hear that on full display.
As much as people talk about the street-level nastiness of the record, there was a lot more going on underneath the surface. All of the songs were carved out to be parts of a greater whole, and even when working on a more tender song like ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, hearing them stumble upon the ‘where do we go now’ section purely by accident is one of the greatest cases of unintentional genius in rock and roll history.
But if people didn’t get to see Rose’s musical genius on full display, Use Your Illusion was definitely going to correct that. He wanted to pull out at the stops and leave Appetite in the dust, but most people probably weren’t looking for him to break out the pianos and become a full-on Elton John-style singer on ‘November Rain’. Then again, Rose wasn’t looking to emulate John every single time he played.
He gladly ushered the piano star into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and played with him on occasion, but Freddie Mercury was the true star he was aiming for. The Queen frontman was the embodiment of what a rock and roll star should look like, and as far as the frontman’s moves were concerned, Rose felt that no one could have possibly shown him more about what rock and roll could ever be.
Compared to John’s fantastic range, Rose always looked to Mercury as his greatest musical teacher, saying, “If I hadn’t had Freddie Mercury’s lyrics to hold on to as a kid, I don’t know where I would be. It taught me about all forms of music… it would open my mind. I never really had a bigger teacher in my whole life.” And when you look at the frontman’s range, it’s not hard to see everything he did as a massive tribute to his idol.
Even if we discount the fact that he turned up at Mercury’s memorial concert to perform ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with John, a lot of Rose’s massive vocal range is descended from what Mercury did. There are definite moments where things can get a little bit squawky, but having one of the most elastic vocal ranges of anyone else in his field means trying to use it the same way that Mercury did, whether that was making ballads or the most aggressive rock and roll song of all time.
Is Rose going to get anywhere near Mercury’s range? Hell no, but that was never the point. He was going to be his own persona just like Mercury was, and even if he wasn’t on the same level, he wanted to reach a point where he could at least get close to what he had accomplished.
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