Critique And Recognition

Guns N' Roses signed with a major label within eight months of their inception and topped national sales charts weeks after garnering late hours airplay on MTV. Appetite for Destruction is the highest-selling debut album of all time.
Their peers in the music industry often spoke highly of the band: Ozzy Osbourne called Guns N' Roses "the next Rolling Stones." In 2002, Q magazine named Guns N' Roses in their list of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die". Also, the television network VH1 ranked Guns N' Roses ninth in its "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" special, and also ranked 11th on "Top 50 bands". Appetite for Destruction appeared in Rolling Stone magazine's special issue "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Guns N' Roses #92 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". "Welcome to the Jungle" had also been voted "Best Hard Rock Song" by VH1. The band has not been free of criticism. The flagrant alcohol and drug abuse by some members of the group, and Axl's fondness for Charles Manson T-shirts, were used by the media to portray Guns N' Roses as a poor example and negative influence on their young fans. The long periods of time that the band took to release albums were also a source of heavy criticism (the band's second album, G N' R Lies, was actually an EP packaged with another older EP, and one of the songs was an acoustic version of a song from their debut album. It took from 1987 to 1991 to come up with a proper follow up to Appetite for Destruction, and it took over 15 years to release Chinese Democracy).

Frontman Axl Rose has become a source of both controversy and criticism since the other founding members left the group. His constant elusiveness, such as the fact that he has not held a press conference since 1994, has led to several stories claiming he is suffering from bipolar disorder. Music critics have blamed Rose for the break-up of the original group, have criticized him for continuing the band after the original members had departed and have questioned the constant change in band members. They also cite his neurotic behavior and sense of perfectionism as a cause of personal conflict and the long delays between albums.