Tomorrow, on June 29, Gun ‘N’ Roses will finally pull the curtain off their massive, new Appetite For Destruction box set. The reissue comes in a variety of different packages with different price points, but all of them include a smorgasbord of previously unreleased material, most of which was culled from sessions the band logged at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles in 1986. Among those is an early rendition of the power ballad “November Rain,” that would finally get polished off and released six years later on the album Use Your Illusion I. Today, the band decided to give their fans one more preview into what the new Appetite set has to offer by sharing that take on the song.
This take on the song really is a shell of what it would eventually become, featuring Axl Rose singing by himself while playing piano. All of the elements that would help push it into the Top-3 on the singles charts years later, like Slash’s volcanic guitar solos for instance, are missing, and yet, it’s shocking how powerful, evocative, and fully formed “November Rain” already feels at this early juncture.
For any fans of Guns ‘N’ Roses, the new box set is an absolute must-have, packed as it is with a mind-blowing 73 bonus tracks, 49 of which have gone previously unreleased songs. You can purchase your copy through the band’s official site here.
