Guns N' Roses Greatest Hits: the most dangerous vinyl in the world?

Guns N' Roses' blockbusting Greatest Hits is released on vinyl for the first time

Guns N' Roses - Greatest Hits
(Image: © UMC)

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Originally released in 2004, Guns N’ RosesGreatest Hits was a brazen attempt to top up the coffers drained by Axl Rose’s mad opus Chinese Democracy, still three years away from completion. And it worked. 

Greatest Hits sold by the truckload, and reminded people that GN’R used to be more than just one man’s insanely expensive vanity project.

Optimists might view this vinyl reissue as a financial bump for the new album the reunited GN’R may or may not currently be working on. There’s certainly enough bait here to snag even mildly obsessive fans: gold and red splatter discs, updated artwork, and the addition of 1986’s Shadow Of Your Love, formerly a lost treasure until it was properly exhumed for the Locked And Loaded box set a couple of years ago. But in other respects it feels like a missed opportunity to properly update the album.

If the current, semi-classic line-up can incorporate songs from Chinese Democracy into their live set, then surely there’s space here for a song or two from that flawed behemoth: the title track or the bat-shit-brilliant Madagascar. 

It’s impossible to argue with what’s already here, but you can’t help wishing there was more. Much like Guns N’ Roses’ entire career.

Dave Everley

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.