“I’ll never find anyone to replace you”
I’ve never been the biggest Guns N’ Roses fan but I really enjoyed watching their recent Glastonbury set on TV and I was especially pleased to be reacquainted with Estranged. Listening to the studio version now, I find I love it more than ever. Taken from the second of their two 1991 Use Your Illusion albums, it’s a wonderful ballad of epic introspection with a heartfelt, searching performance from Axl Rose and sensational melodic guitar lines from Slash, as well as two classy guitar solos. It has the kind of emotional crescendo that I think Axl Rose is particularly good at writing, and that feature in most of my favourite songs of his. If I was whittling the two sprawling Use Your Illusion albums down to a perfect single record, Estranged is one song that would always make the cut.
HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD 
It’s a n okay song, Slash really nails the guitar solos. However, it does sound a lot like November Rain.
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Great writeup. This track sizzles and its amazing they pulled this one off considering how blasted they were at the time. When I saw them in May 91 they played this tune a good 4 months before the actual albums dropped…
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Cheers Deke. I’m not really up on the behind the scenes stuff for this album so that’s interesting/impressive to know they were all blasted! Was Izzy in the band when you saw them or had he left by then?
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Yes, Izzy was there and Dizzy Reed but but the end of 91 Izzy was gone.
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One of their best songs, man. Slash’s guitar is most excellent. Always ended mix tapes w/ this one back when that was a thing.
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Good choice, definitely one of the best things they did. It’s aged better than a lot of the other UYI stuff too.
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I’m not a huge fan either. I think they had maybe one amazing album and one good E.P., but I didn’t care for anything else…except for maybe a song here or there and this is one of those songs.
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That’s pretty much my take too although I did enjoy Chinese Democracy! Still do. But the UYI albums are mostly average or poor and they just haven’t put out enough music for the amount of time they’ve been around.
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I forgot about that one. I actually have it on vinyl and I kinda like it.
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It was a grower for me, especially the second half.
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I was a HUGE fan. Still have days where only a blast of the old stuff will do. This is so some of their finest work. Excellent choice.
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Thanks Steve. Yeah they just were never “my” band in the way that others were but they’ve done a lot of brilliant stuff. I didn’t listen to Appetite for many years cause I’d burned out on it but I’ve been listening to it a lot this year and really enjoying it all over again.
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I think this is a beautiful song, the Manic Street Preachers were utterly obsessed with it and used to talk about it in interviews all the time.
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Really?! Did not know that.
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Yup big GNR obsession. They used to cover Its So Easy and played Sweet Child the last couple of times I saw them.
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