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

"It's So Easy/Mr. Brownstone"
UK 7" Vinyl cover
Single by Guns N' Roses
from the album Appetite for Destruction
Released June 15, 1987 (1987-06-15)
Format
Recorded 1986-1987
Genre Heavy metal
Length 3:24
Label Geffen
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s) Mike Clink
Guns N' Roses singles chronology
"It's So Easy/Mr. Brownstone"
(1987)		 "Welcome to the Jungle"
(1987)

"It's So Easy" is a song by the American rock band Guns N' Roses. It featured on their debut studio album, Appetite for Destruction (1987). The song was released as the band's first single on June 15, 1987, in the UK, where it reached number eighty-four on the UK Singles Chart [1] as a double A-Side with "Mr. Brownstone". It was also released in Germany around the same time. The songs "Shadow Of Your Love" and "Move To The City", featured on the 12-inch vinyl and 12-inch picture disc editions of the single, were written by members of Guns N' Roses while in the band Hollywood Rose, and were later released in Japan on the EP Live from the Jungle. "Move to the City" had previously been released in the US on the 1986 EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide and was later released worldwide on the album G N' R Lies.

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."[2]

In an Eddie Trunk interview from 2006, Axl said that Duff and West 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.[3] McKagan stated that West 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."[4]

Live

  • "It's So Easy" is one of the band's live staples, performed early in a typical setlist at almost every live performance since 1986. The song was the band's regular show opener after the release of Appetite For Destruction in 1987 and was a frequent opener during the Use Your Illusion Tour in 1991-1993.[5] The song has opened every show on the Not in This Lifetime... Tour so far.
  • Slash's post-Guns N' Roses project, Slash's Snakepit, performed the song during their tour in support of Ain't Life Grand in 2001.
  • Duff McKagan, the song's primary songwriter, performed the song in most of his post-Guns N' Roses projects, including the tour in support of his 1993 album Believe In Me. Duff's band, Loaded, have been performing the song since their inception in 1999.
  • Velvet Revolver, which included Guns N' Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan, and Use Your Illusion-era drummer Matt Sorum, frequently performed the song during live performance with Scott Weiland on vocals.

Music video

In late 1989, over two years after the release of the original single, a promo video 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. 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 released on May 22nd, 2018.

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, Slash3:47
Total length:7:11
12" vinyl (GEF 22T); 12" picture disc (GEF 22TP)
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 Tobias3:03
4."Move to the City"Stradlin, Del James, Chris Weber3:41
Total length:13:55

Charts

Chart (1987) Peak
position
UK Singles (Official Charts Company)[6] 84

Personnel

References

  1. ↑ "Guns N' Roses". Chart Stats. Archived from the original on December 5, 2012. Retrieved 2008-12-17.
  2. ↑ "It's So Easy". Here Today... Gone To Hell!. Retrieved 2008-12-17.
  3. ↑ ""AXL ROSE 2006 INTERVIEW w/ Eddie Trunk"". Youtube.com. Retrieved 2009-04-04.
  4. ↑ McKagan, Duff (2011). Stacy Creamer, eds. It's so Easy (and other lies). Collaboration by Tim Mohr. Touchstone. p. 45. ISBN 978-1451606645.
  5. ↑ Archived May 14, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ "Official Singles Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
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