Puneet Varma (Editor)

It's So Easy (Guns N' Roses song)

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B-side
  
"Mr. Brownstone"

Recorded
  
1986-1987

Length
  
3:24

Format
  
7" 12"

Genre
  
Heavy metal

Released
  
June 15, 1987 (1987-06-15)

"It's So Easy" is a song by the American rock band Guns N' Roses. It featured on their debut studio album, Appetite for Destruction (1987). The song was released as the band's first single on June 15, 1987, in the UK, where it reached number eighty-four on the UK Singles Chart as a double A-Side with "Mr Brownstone". It was also released in Germany around the same time. The songs "Shadow Of Your Love" and "Move To The City", featured on the 12-inch vinyl and 12-inch picture disc editions of the single, were written by members of Guns N' Roses while in the band Hollywood Rose, and were later released in Japan on the EP Live from the Jungle. "Move to the City" had previously been released in the US on the 1986 EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide and was later released worldwide on the album GN'R Lies.

Contents

Composition

According to an interview published in Hit Parader in March 1988, "It's So Easy" is "an account of a time Duff McKagan and West Arkeen, and also the rest of the band, were kinda going through. They didn't have money, but they had a lot of hangers on and girls [they] could basically live off of ... things were just too easy. There's an emptiness; it's so easy."

In an Eddie Trunk interview from 2006, Axl said that Duff and West originally wrote the song as an acoustic "Hippie Ya-Ya" song, and that it was Slash's decision to turn it into a rock song. McKagan stated that West taught him about alternate tuning, leading the song to have a more distinctive sound, saying "without open-E tuning, that song wouldn't have happened, that's why West has songwriting credit on it."

The song is notable for its cowbell percussion and frequent usage of the vulgar word "fuck".

Music video

There was an original music video made for "It's So Easy", the first ever made from the band; the video features the band playing live in front of a crowd on stage. A heavily edited version of the video was later made for promotional purposes. It was not included on the band's Welcome to the Videos DVD, and as such its content is rare and can only be found on the internet. At the time the video was released, Guns N' Roses were not as popular as they would eventually become, the single was never released in the United States and its video was never accepted by MTV.

Live

  • "It's So Easy" is one of the band's live staples, performed early in a typical setlist at almost every live performance since 1986. The song was the band's regular show opener after the release of Appetite For Destruction in 1987 and was a frequent opener during the Use Your Illusion Tour in 1991-1993. The song has opened every show on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour so far.
  • Slash's post-Guns N' Roses project, Slash's Snakepit, performed the song during their tour in support of Ain't Life Grand in 2001.
  • Duff McKagan, the song's primary songwriter, performed the song in most of his post-Guns N' Roses projects, including the tour in support of his 1993 album Believe In Me. Duff's band, Loaded, have been performing the song since their inception in 1999.
  • Velvet Revolver, which included Guns N' Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan, and Use Your Illusion-era drummer Matt Sorum, frequently performed the song during live performance with Scott Weiland on vocals.

    • Track listings

    All songs credited to Guns N' Roses; "It's So Easy" co-credited to West Arkeen

    Personnel

  • W. Axl Rose - lead vocals
  • Slash - lead guitar
  • Izzy Stradlin - rhythm guitar, backing vocals
  • Duff "Rose" McKagan - bass guitar, backing vocals
  • Steven Adler - drums

    • Cover versions

  • Guns N' Roses members Slash and Duff McKagan often play this song with whatever bands they happen to be in at the time.
  • The Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers released a live cover of the song as a b-side for their 1991 single "You Love Us" and 2003 compilation album Lipstick Traces (A Secret History of Manic Street Preachers). & Have played the song live on a number of occasions.
  • The American metalcore band Unearth contributed a cover of the song to the 2006 compilation album Bring You to Your Knees: A Tribute to Guns N' Roses.
  • The American nu metal band 40 Below Summer released a cover of the song on its 2006 album The Last Dance.
  • The American hard rock band Operator released a cover of the song online in June 2008. They also regularly perform the song live.
  • American metalcore band Dry Kill Logic released a cover on their 2006 EP/DVD, The Magellan Complex.
  • The American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold covered this song live with Slash at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles on April 16, 2009.

    • References

    It's So Easy (Guns N' Roses song) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA