Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine

The Circus Riff Slash Thought Was A Joke

Released in June 1988, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” entered the Billboard Hot 100 on June 25 and climbed steadily through the summer before hitting number one on September 10. It held the top spot for two weeks, becoming Guns N’ Roses’ first and only number one single on that chart. The track spent 24 weeks total on the Hot 100 and finished as the fifth biggest song of 1988. What nobody at Geffen Records knew was that guitarist Slash had been playing what he called a stupid little circus melody while making faces at drummer Steven Adler during a jam session, and the rest of the band thought it was a joke.

The song dominated rock radio and crossed over to pop stations nationwide, dragging Appetite for Destruction from number 182 on the Billboard 200 all the way to number one in its 50th week. In the United Kingdom, the single reached number 24 in August 1988, then climbed to number six when it was re-released with a remix in May 1989. It reached the top ten in Canada, Australia, Ireland, and across Europe. By the time bassist Duff McKagan realized what was happening, the band had gone from playing to two dozen fans in front of Iron Maiden crowds to watching entire arenas light cigarette lighters when the opening notes began.

During a jam session at the band’s communal house in the Griffith Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, Slash was warming up with a melodic guitar exercise he’d been noodling with for weeks. Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin heard something in it and asked Slash to play it again. Stradlin came up with chords, McKagan created a bassline, Adler locked in a beat, and Slash later said that within an hour his guitar exercise had become something else. Axl Rose was upstairs in his bedroom working on a poem he’d written for his girlfriend Erin Everly, daughter of Don Everly from the Everly Brothers. Rose told the Los Angeles Times in 1991 that the blue sky line was one of his first childhood memories, looking at the sky and wishing he could disappear in it because it was so beautiful.

The band recorded “Sweet Child O’ Mine” at Rumbo Recorders in Canoga Park, California, between January and June 1987 with producer Mike Clink. Clink had previously worked with Triumph and produced Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”, and he wanted to capture the band’s raw live energy with minimal overdubs. They tracked most of the song in one take to preserve their chemistry. Slash used a 1959 Les Paul Standard replica built by luthier Kris Derrig, routed through a modified 1960s Marshall amplifier. The breakdown section near the end was producer Spencer Proffer’s idea during demo sessions. Rose started ad-libbing “Where do we go now?” to himself in the control room, and Proffer suggested he sing it. The radio edit trimmed the song from 5:56 to 4:18, cutting much of Slash’s solo, which Rose later said he hated because the slow solo was his favorite part.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” was the third single from Appetite for Destruction, which had been released in July 1987. The album’s first two singles, “It’s So Easy” and “Welcome to the Jungle”, had failed to chart initially. By April 1988, pressure from Geffen Records got “Welcome to the Jungle” into late-night MTV rotation, and the album went platinum. Then “Sweet Child O’ Mine” hit, and everything changed overnight. The album eventually sold over 18 million copies in the United States and 30 million worldwide, making it the best-selling debut album of all time in America. The band followed with “Paradise City” in 1989, which reached number five and became another rock radio staple.

The song has been covered by artists across every genre imaginable, from Sheryl Crow’s 1999 version that won a Grammy despite Rolling Stone readers voting it the fourth worst cover of all time, to Postmodern Jukebox’s Dixieland swing interpretation with vocalist Miche Braden. Taken by Trees used it for the 2009 John Lewis Christmas advertisement in the UK. In 2004, Total Guitar magazine readers voted the opening riff the greatest guitar riff of all time, beating out “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Whole Lotta Love”, and every other contender. Rolling Stone placed it at number 196 on The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 and number 88 in the 2021 update. In 2022, the song topped Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart for the first time after appearing in the trailer for the film Thor: Love and Thunder.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” remains the defining moment of Guns N’ Roses’ career, the song that proved they weren’t just another glam rock band from the Sunset Strip. Producer Mike Clink knew it from the first playback, telling Q magazine that the song made the hairs on his arms stand up and that it was magical. Axl Rose married Erin Everly in April 1990 at Cupid’s Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, though the volatile marriage was annulled less than a year later. Slash spent years hating the track, telling Q that it was an uptempo ballad that didn’t fit what Guns N’ Roses was about as far as he was concerned. But eventually he came around, admitting that it would cause such a reaction from audiences that he finally got to appreciate it. That stupid little circus riff turned out to be worth something after all.