Welcome to the Jungle

"Welcome to the Jungle"
Single by Guns N' Roses from the album Appetite for Destruction
Released	1987
Format	Vinyl single (7", 12") Cassette CD
Recorded	1987
Genre	Hard rock
Length	04:33
Label	Geffen
Writer	Axl Rose Slash
Producer	Mike Clink
Guns N' Roses singles chronology
"It's So Easy" (1987) "Welcome to the Jungle" (1987) "Sweet Child o' Mine" (1987)
Appetite for Destruction track listing
"Welcome to the Jungle" (1) "It's So Easy" (2)

"Welcome to the Jungle" is the first track from Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction, and also on their Greatest Hits album. Perhaps one of the most well-known rock anthems of the 1980s, the song is still recognized and regularly played at sporting events worldwide.

Origins

"Welcome to the Jungle" was written by 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 hitchhiking through 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 a song that would become one of the most memorable hard rock hits of all time. 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] Another line, "I wanna watch you bleed" was originally written as an allusion to AC/DC's "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)", and that song's lyric "I want you to bleed for me," but Axl changed the lyrics about a week before recording because the timing of the revised lyric was better. And yet another line, "When you're high, you never, ever wanna come down, so down, so down, so down" refers to their drug usage. Their manager was afraid that one of them would burn out before they completed the music video. 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. ^[1]

Video

"Welcome to the Jungle" was Guns N' Roses' first music video, directed by Nigel Dick and filmed on August 1 and 2, 1987 at the Park Plaza Hotel and 450 S. La Brea Avenue in Hollywood. The video begins with Axl Rose stepping off a bus with a suitcase, dressed as a naive newcomer to the city, with a piece of hay sticking out of his mouth, as the opening riff plays. He notices a man in a straitjacket (Rose, in another role) on television screens in a store window and he stops to look. The video then delves into deeper depictions of things such as the Ludovico technique, military abuse and other poisons of the big city, showing the metropolis as the true jungle. At the end of the video, Rose is still standing in front of the television screens, but now has the attitude and attire of a rocker.

Other members of the band appear in various roles in the clip: Izzy Stradlin portrays a drug dealer who approaches Rose when he steps off the bus (in the Use Your Illusion II song 14 Years Stradlin says "I've been the dealer/Hangin' on your street"). In the beginning of the video, Slash can be seen sitting on the ground in front of the TV store window, drinking from a paper bag. He has vanished at the end of the clip. "Welcome to the Jungle" was not immediately successful. Initially, MTV refused to play the video. They only agreed to air the clip in the middle of the night as a special personal favor to David Geffen, the head of Guns N' Roses' record label; and then, only after they had censored parts of it, including some of the news footage and part of the sequence with drummer Steven Adler and his girlfriend in bed. 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.

"Welcome to the Jungle" and Noriega

The song was famously used during the Operation Just Cause invasion of Panama in 1989. When Manuel Noriega fled to the Vatican Embassy in Panama, U.S. troops surrounded the embassy and played loud music. Noriega enjoyed opera and detested rock music in general. The Washington Post News Service reported, "With U.S. troops at the Vatican embassy continuing to wage psychological warfare against Noriega by blaring rock music over loudspeakers and greeting him with a hearty 'Gooood Morning Panama'." And so, to irritate and intimidate him (and to enjoy themselves in the process), the troops set up their loudspeakers and blasted the Vatican embassy with some "good ol' kickass American rock 'n' roll" — Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" was the first song to come roaring through the speakers. These were eventually stopped upon request by the Vatican. A few days later, Noriega surrendered due to international pressure. However, despite the popular conception that the music was a form of psychological torture aimed at Noriega, it has since been revealed that the entire operation was merely meant to prevent press organizations equipped with parabolic microphones from listening in on delicate negotiations occurring within the embassy Reference.

Accolades

The song is considered to be one of the greatest hard rock hits of all time. Honors for the song include:

• Ranked #2 on VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs.^[2]
• Ranked #467 on Rolling Stones' "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
• Ranked #764 on Q Magazine's 1001 Best Songs Ever [3]
• Ranked #26 on VH1's 100 Greatest 80s Songs.
• Named the "greatest song about Los Angeles" by a poll in Blender magazine. [4]

Use in film and other media

• "Welcome to the Jungle" has been featured in several motion pictures. In Clint Eastwood's 1988 film The Dead Pool, it was the song sung by Jim Carrey's rock star character; it was also featured on the movie's soundtrack. It has also appeared in Lean on Me and in Selena during the scene in which a barber is cutting a person's hair and several people are trashing a hotel room.
• In the 2004 PlayStation 2 (2005 PC and Xbox) video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the song is included on the playlist of alternative-metal station Radio X. Ironically, Axl Rose voices the DJ of its rival station K-DST, which plays classic rock, where he routinely bashes Radio X as "whining teenagers who should just go away." "Welcome to the Jungle" was also featured in trailers for the game.
• In Celebrity Deathmatch, Axl and Slash's comments while fighting is taken from the lyrics of "Jungle".
• The song is used as theme music for the syndicated sports program The Jim Rome Show and is played at the bottom of each hour of the show.
• A parody, "Welcome to the Summer", was used as the theme song of Australian radio station Triple M during the late 1990s.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic has parodied the video for his own video, "UHF".
• Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine covered this as a Lounge version on the 2005 album Aperitif for Destruction. The band Big Daddy recorded a doo-wop version to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on their 1991 album Cutting Their Own Groove.
• Industrial metal band Pigface has also covered "Welcome to the Jungle."
• John 5 recorded an instrumental cover of "Welcome to the Jungle" for his 2007 album The Devil Knows My Name.
• Grindcore band Hewhocorrupts has also covered this song on their album called The Discographer.
• In the video game Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, the character Axel makes a reference to the song where he states, "Welcome to the Colosseuem; we've got fun and games!"
• The song has been used three times in The Simpsons. It has been featured in "Marge on the Lam", "Eight Misbehavin'" and "Mobile Homer". Also, in "Bart Has Two Mommies", Ned Flanders sings a parody of the song while padding his backyard so that his sons Rod and Todd do not get hurt by playing.
• The song is a master track in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, where you play it with Slash after beating him in a boss battle with an originally-composed track by him.
• The song is often heard during Cincinnati Bengals home games due to the teams home stadium, Paul Brown Stadium's jungle-esque theme. The stadium's nickname is "The Jungle".
• There is a quest in World of Warcraft in the Stranglethorn Vale called "Welcome to the Jungle"
• The song is also played at the beginning of virtually every game in the National Lacrosse League
• The song is played as an introduction for the Minnesota Vikings during every home game.
• The song is also played as an introduction for the danish football club Aalborg BK during every home game.
• The Manchester Monarchs use the song as an introduction at their home games.
• The Philadelphia Eagles play the song during kick off at their home games.
• The Saskatchewan Roughriders play the song right before and during kickoff.
• "Welcome to the Jungle" was also the theme song of the professional wrestler Mick Foley ^[3]
• The Auburn University Football Team plays the opening riffs of the song at every home game. It is usually played whenever the visiting team is in a down and long scenario, but mostly used on Third Down to pump the crowd up to help the Defense.
• The song is played by the New York Jets at every home game during player introductions.
• World 3-1 in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is titled "Welcome to the Jungle."
• The song is played at the beginning of Pittsburg State University sporting events. (The school's mascot is a Gorilla)
• The premiere two-parter of Power Rangers Jungle Fury is entitled "Welcome to the Jungle."

References

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" [5]

External links

• Music Video at VH1 Classic