What the **** Is so Great about Axl Rose?
 

He seems to be one of the most beloved frontmen in all of rock music, and I just don't get it. I can't say anything about is stage presence, since I've never seen Guns N' Roses live, but I just never got the appeal. I suppose I can see liking him better than Bret Michaels, if for no other reason than he has a bit more personality to him, but if nobody had ever told me he was supposed to be special then I would have just considered him a slightly-above-average glam metal singer and moved on. If I had two main issues with him...

1.) I say this as a moderate lover of hair bands---with some especial love for Vince Neil, Blackie Lawless, and the guy from Faster Pussycat---but I find his voice ever-so-slightly grating. I suppose it's supposed to sound sleazy, but I just don't see anything special about his take on sleaze. He just comes off like another in a long line of guys who just aren't as good as Steven Tyler.

2.) When he's not doing the raspy sleaze thing he likes to drop his voice low (e.g. "Mr. Brownstone"), which I just find to be even more annoying than his normal singing voice.

P.S. And what's the thing with people who try to describe GNR as a punk band, or I guess a punk band that plays glam? Don't just about all of the not-as-derivative-as-Poison have a heavy punk influence? Wasn't that half the point of the New York Dolls worship? It just comes across as whiny tools who don't want their favorite band thrown in with the likes of Warrant.

GNR did have some Punk tendencies actually. But they were not at all Punk. Just your usual hair band from the 80's glory days. But I still think they had some good music. I can't listen to it too often anymore though, kind of get annoyed with it...not sure why.

Axl actually is a pretty talented frontman. He's an *******. But he's talented. I agree that sometimes how he sings can be annoying. But he uses his voice, and he has some good range.

And I agree that Steven Tyler is far better.

Well, he made some great music at one time. That's what it is for me. GnR made two fantastic albums that I love from beginning to end (Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion II) while literally no other glam band I've listened to ever produced an album I could even sit through the whole way without skipping tracks, let alone one I'd ever describe as "great".

I honestly have not heard anybody say anything good about him since about 1991.

Punk influenced.
Like a lot of early 80s glam bands were.

Whether or not he is a good songwriter has no bearing on his quality as a singer. Even though I'm not the biggest GNR fan, I still have some appreciation for them, but I often merely tolerate Rose's vocals.

Of course, but I've heard multiple times from people who try to call them a punk band as opposed to a glam band. I think they were trying to imply they were a punk band at heart, or something like that, in a way that other bands weren't. I've never heard anyone try to say the same thing about any of their contemporaries, just them.

You goal post mover, you. What do you want to talk about? Just the quality of his singing voice? His abilities as a frontman? I would say he beats the ass off someone like Vince Neil on both those counts. He had more range than most glam singers, and sang with more emotion and had a hell of a lot more personality than any that I can think of.

I guess the name of the thread was open-ended, but I guess I was thinking of his singing rather than his song-writing abilities. How much did he actually write anyway? I looked on the 'Pedia and saw that at least on the debut he had credits on all but two songs. Just about the whole band had multiple credits though, so it's hard to tell if they gave credit freely or it was really a band effort. Either way, I can't tell just how much he was responsible for the actual music.

Nevermind. This is too dark. :(

I think he played a pretty big role in writing the actual music. I'm not really sure what their writing process was, but he played keyboard or piano in a lot of their music and has sole songwriting credit on quite a few tracks on the Use Your Illusion albums.

Axl Rose was someone that was to make his voice distinctive from others during the early 1990s.