Guns N' Roses

Guns N' Roses are the Los Angeles hard rock band who released the best-selling debut album in history. Formed in 1985 by Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler, Appetite for Destruction (1987) sold over 30 million copies worldwide and produced three of the most recognisable songs in rock history: Welcome to the Jungle, Sweet Child O' Mine and Paradise City.

Their sound combined the swagger of the Rolling Stones, the punk aggression of the New York Dolls and the guitar pyrotechnics of Aerosmith into something that felt genuinely dangerous at a time when danger had largely left rock. Use Your Illusion I and II (1991) debuted at numbers 2 and 1 on the Billboard 200 on the same day.

Internal tensions led to the original band's disintegration in the 1990s, but the reunion of Axl, Slash and Duff in 2016 became one of the highest-grossing concert tours in history. Slash's guitar playing — particularly his solo on November Rain — is among the most celebrated in rock.