Album dossier / 1987

Appetite for Destruction

Guns N' Roses · Hard Rock

Producer Mike Clink -- a relative unknown chosen after bigger names (including ex-Nazareth guitarist Manny Charlton) failed to click -- tracked the album mostly live in August-November 1986: drums and bass with the whole band together at Rumbo Recorders, then guitar and vocal overdubs at Take One with engineer Micajah Ryan, working around the band's schedule at the Sunset Strip club The Cathouse. Clink close-mic'd Slash's and Izzy Stradlin's amps with pairs of Shure SM57s and used a bank of six Roland SRV-2000 reverbs to add space without losing the live-room punch; manager Alan Niven recalled the sessions nearly stalling at the mix stage until he and a Great White bandmate cut a rough mix of 'Mr. Brownstone' at another studio just to prove Clink 'had it on tape.' The $365,000 debut -- an enormous budget at the time -- became the best-selling debut album in US history.