Hollywood Rose’s Chris Weber joined an interview with VW Music and remembered when he worked on a famous song from ‘Appetite for Destruction.’ The guitarist said Aerosmith’s ‘Rock In A Hard Place’ greatly influenced him during the studio sessions.
Guns N’ Roses’ starting point was the glam metal band Hollywood Rose featuring Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, and Chris Weber, but the guitarist didn’t continue with them as the singer fired him due to a stage accident before founding GN’R. Some songs they recorded as demos were used in GN’R’s works later, and their debut studio album named ‘Appetite for Destruction,’ which they dropped on July 21, 1987, was one of them.
In the first record, Rose, Weber, and Stradlin had written and composed ‘Anything Goes,’ and in his conversation, Chris Weber opened up about the creation process. The guitar player admitted that Aerosmith’s seventh studio album, ‘Rock in a Hard Place,’ which was the record that Joe Perry didn’t contribute to and Jimmy Crespo performed the guitar parts, inspired him a lot while working on the song’s riff.
Weber added that it was one of his favorite records while praising Crespo’s performance on the record, and he wanted to create a groovy sound like that. The Hollywood Rose icon explained the process, saying that he came up with the riff, Stradlin wrote his parts, and then it was Rose’s part for lyrics. The guitarist highlighted that the original version was faster than the one in ‘Appetite for Destruction,’ but they didn’t change the chorus.
Chris Weber shared his ideas, saying:
“That riff, I was inspired by ‘Rock in a Hard Place’ by Aerosmith, which is still one of my favorite records. It was just the feel of it, the guitar playing – it was Jimmy Crespo on that record – and he just wrote such a great record. It was inspiring. I think ‘Anything Goes’ was inspired by some of the riffs I liked from that record.
I just wanted it to sound like that; kind of groovy, more in the pocket. So, I came up with the riffs, and Izzy wrote his part over the top because the guitars don’t play the same part. The original version has a faster verse than the one on the record, so they ended up changing that, and then it was the same chorus.
But again, writing it with Izzy and then handed it, which was in tape form, to Axl. It would have been the tape that Izzy and I would have recorded right into one of our tape machines. Then Axl would have gone away with it, written the lyrics, and then come back. Maybe some changes with the arrangement. That was the songwriting process.“
You can listen to the song and record below.
