"It's So Easy" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Guns N' Roses | ||||
from the album Appetite for Destruction | ||||
A-side | "Mr. Brownstone" | |||
Released | June 8, 1987 | |||
Recorded | 1986–1987 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 3:24 | |||
Label | Geffen | |||
Songwriter(s) | ||||
Producer(s) | Mike Clink | |||
Guns N' Roses singles chronology | ||||
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Music video | ||||
"It's So Easy" on YouTube |
"It's So Easy" is a song by the American rock band Guns N' Roses,appearing on their 1987 debut studio album, Appetite for Destruction . The song was released as the band's first single on June 8,1987,in the UK,where it reached number 84 on the UK Singles Chart [2] as a double A-Side with "Mr. Brownstone". It was also released as a maxi-single in Germany later in the same year.
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." [3]
In an Eddie Trunk interview from 2006,Axl Rose said that McKagan and Arkeen 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. [4] McKagan stated that Arkeen 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." [5]
On October 10,1989,over two years after the release of the original single,a promo video was made for "It's So Easy". The video features the band playing live in front of a crowd on stage at the Cathouse nightclub in Hollywood,and a cameo by Axl Rose's then-fiancéErin Everly who is being treated by him in a BDSM-style way. 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.
The video was finally released on May 28,2018. [7]
All songs credited to Guns N' Roses;"It's So Easy" co-credited to West Arkeen
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "It's So Easy" | 3:24 | |
2. | "Mr. Brownstone" | Izzy Stradlin, Slash | 3:47 |
Total length: | 7:11 |
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "It's So Easy" | McKagan, Arkeen | 3:24 |
2. | "Mr. Brownstone" | Stradlin, Slash | 3:47 |
3. | "Shadow of Your Love" | Rose, Stradlin, Paul Tobias | 3:03 |
4. | "Move to the City" | Stradlin, Del James, Chris Weber | 3:41 |
Total length: | 13:55 |
Chart (1987) | Peak position |
---|---|
UK Singles (OCC) [8] | 84 |
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