Welcome to the Jungle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the film whose alternate name is "Welcome to the Jungle", see The Rundown.
- For the song recorded by They Might Be Giants, see The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).
| "Welcome to the Jungle" | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Single by Guns N' Roses | ||
| from the album Appetite for Destruction | ||
| Released | 1987 | |
| Format | Vinyl LP, Cassette, CD | |
| Recorded | 1987 | |
| Genre | Hard Rock | |
| Length | 04:31 | |
| Label | Geffen | |
| Producer(s) | Mike Clink | |
| Chart positions | ||
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| Guns N' Roses singles chronology | ||
| "Welcome to the Jungle" (1987) |
"Sweet Child O' Mine" (1987) |
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| Appetite for Destruction track listing | ||
| "Welcome to the Jungle" (1) |
"It's So Easy" (2) |
|
"Welcome to the Jungle" is the first track and the first single released from Guns N' Roses' debut album, Appetite for Destruction. It was re-released in 2004 as the first track on Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits album. Axl Rose wrote the lyrics after an encounter with a homeless man, who accosted him and a friend in The Bronx late at night. Trying to put a scare into the young runaways, the man yelled at them, "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby, you're gonna die!". The incident made such an impact, Axl turned it into one of the greatest hard rock hits of all time. This song was ranked #2 on VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs [1] .
Perhaps one of the most well-known rock anthems of the late 1980s, the song is still regularly played at sporting events worldwide. The song is also played at all Cincinnati Bengals home games in Paul Brown Stadium or as it is known to Bengals fans the Jungle. It is also used in the Arena Football League, where the Orlando Predators use it as they enter the TD Waterhouse Centre (or "The Jungle" as it is called for Preds games), and in the American Hockey League, where the Manchester Monarchs play it as they enter the Verizon Wireless Arena. Welcome to the Jungle is also the legendary theme song of the United Hockey League's Fort Wayne Komets. The Memorial Coliseum, where the Komets play, has been known as 'the jungle' since the early 90's when it was considered one of the hardest places to win a game on the road at. Also notably, the opening chords of Welcome to the Jungle signify the entrance of Los Angeles Dodgers Cy Young Award-winning closer, Eric Gagne into the game. The Princeton University Band also plays the song at the start of each home basketball game, as Jadwin Gymnasium (the Princeton stadium) has been unofficially nicknamed "Jadwin Jungle" after the DoD Member, Makkoli.
It was famously used during the Operation Just Cause invasion of Panama in 1989. When Manuel Noriega fled to the Vatican Embassy in Panama, U.S. troops surrounded the embassy and played loud music. Noriega enjoyed opera and detested rock music in general. The Washington Post News Service said, “With U.S. troops at the Vatican embassy continuing to wage psychological warfare against Noriega by blaring rock music over loudspeakers and greeting him with a hearty "Gooood Morning Panama." And so, to irritate and intimidate him (and to enjoy themselves in the process), the troops set up their loudspeakers and blast the Vatican embassy with some "good ol' kickass American rock 'n' roll" -- Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" was the first song to come roaring through the speakers. The psychological pressure of loud rock-and-roll music day and night on Noriega made him finally surrender to the U.S. military.
The song is the theme for the syndicated sports radio program The Jim Rome Show. The song is also used in the movies The Dead Pool and Lean on Me.
The song is played in both commercials for and in the 2004 PlayStation 2 (2005 PC and Xbox) video game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. A parody, "Welcome to the Summer", was used as the theme song of Australian radio station Triple M during the late 1990s.
Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine covered this as a Lounge version on the 2005 album "Aperitif for Destruction". The band Big Daddy recorded a doo-wop version to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on their 1991 album Cutting Their Own Groove.
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[edit] Video
"Welcome to the Jungle" was Guns N' Roses' first music video, directed by Nigel Dick and filmed on August 1 and 2, 1987 at the Park Plaza Hotel and 450 S. La Brea Avenue in Hollywood.
The video begins with Axl Rose stepping off a bus with a suitcase, dressed as a naive newcomer to the city, as the opening riff plays. He notices a man in a straitjacket (Rose, in another role) on television screens in a store window and stops to look. The video then delves into deeper depictions of things such as shock therapy, military abuse and other poisons of the big city, showing the metropolis as the true jungle. At the end of the video, Rose is still standing in front of the television screens, but now has the attitude and attire of a rocker.
"Welcome to the Jungle" was not immediately successful. Initially, MTV refused to play the video; they only agreed to air the clip in the middle of the night as a special personal favor to David Geffen, the head of Guns N' Roses' record label. In spite of the early morning airtime, the clip caught viewers' attention and quickly became MTV's most requested video. The video and single received another boost of publicity when "Welcome to the Jungle" was featured in The Dead Pool in the summer of 1988.
[edit] Trivia
- In the beginning of the video, Slash can be seen sitting on the ground in front of the TV store window, drinking from a paper bag. He has vanished at the end of the clip.
- Sections of the video, including some of the news footage and part of the sequence with Steven Adler and his girlfriend in bed, were censored by MTV.
- Izzy Stradlin plays the drug dealer who approaches Axl when he gets off the bus at the start of the video.
- The song can be heard at the bottom of the hour during The Jim Rome Show.
- The song is played in Selena, where a barber is cutting a person's hair and several people are trashing a hotel room.
- In the late 1980s, the Cincinnati Bengals, a professional American football team based in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA used the song to rev up the crowd especially during the run to Super Bowl XXIII. They chose this song because Paul Brown Stadium is known as "The Jungle". [citation needed]
- It was ranked #467 on Rolling Stones' "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
- It was also ranked #26 on VH1's 100 Greatest 80's Songs.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "VH1 40 Greatest Metal Songs", 1-4 May 2006, VH1 Channel, reported by VH1.com; last accessed October 20, 2006.
[edit] References
- Herbert A. Friedman. U.S. Psyop in Panama (Operation Just Cause).
- Danny Sugarman. Appetite for Destruction: The Days of Guns N' Roses. St. Martin's Press, 1991. ISBN 0-312-07634-7
- "20 questions with Steven Adler" [1]
