It's So Easy (Guns N' Roses song)

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"It's So Easy"
It's So Easy Single.jpeg
UK 7" Vinyl cover
Single by Guns N' Roses
from the album Appetite for Destruction
A-side "Mr. Brownstone"
ReleasedJune 8, 1987 (1987-06-08)
Recorded1986–1987
Genre
Length3:24
Label Geffen
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s) Mike Clink
Guns N' Roses singles chronology
"It's So Easy"and "Mr. Brownstone"
(1987)
"Welcome to the Jungle"
(1987)
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.

Contents

Composition

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]

Live

Music video

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-fiancé Erin 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]

Track listings

All songs credited to Guns N' Roses; "It's So Easy" co-credited to West Arkeen

7" vinyl (GEF 22)
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."It's So Easy" 3:24
2."Mr. Brownstone " Izzy Stradlin, Slash 3:47
Total length:7:11
12" vinyl (GEF 22T)
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."It's So Easy"McKagan, Arkeen3:24
2."Mr. Brownstone"Stradlin, Slash3:47
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

Charts

Chart (1987)Peak
position
UK Singles (OCC) [8] 84

Personnel

References

  1. "How Guns N' Roses' 'It's So Easy' Destroyed a Friend's Country Song". Ultimate Classic Rock Radio . Retrieved January 17, 2023.
  2. "Guns N' Roses". Official Charts Company . Retrieved December 17, 2008.
  3. "It's So Easy". Here Today... Gone To Hell!. Retrieved December 17, 2008.
  4. "AXL ROSE 2006 INTERVIEW w/ Eddie Trunk" . Retrieved April 4, 2009 via YouTube.[ dead YouTube link ]
  5. McKagan, Duff (2011). Stacy Creamer (ed.). It's so Easy (and other lies). Collaboration by Tim Mohr. Touchstone. p. 45. ISBN   978-1451606645.
  6. "Tour Diary | October 23, 1986 - Santa Barbara, CA". The Guns n' Roses Source. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008.
  7. Guns N' Roses - It's So Easy, archived from the original on December 21, 2021, retrieved December 7, 2019
  8. "Official Singles Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved March 25, 2017.